The logical outcome of such a condition of affairs is that what the uneducated and irresponsible majority want they get. It is not a question of general utility or national prosperity. If the government of a colony does not do what the more ignorant mass of voters want, that government has either to give in or get out. As a rule ministers give in that they may stop in, because places are snug and salaries liberally proportioned to the labours which earn them.
The observant wanderer picks up proofs of this all the time that he is travelling, and the most significant of these is found in the very thinly veiled hostility of the various colonies towards each other. If you are in Sydney you must not say too much in praise of Melbourne; just as, when you are in New York it isn’t wise to say too much about Chicago; or, if you happen to be the guest of a club in San Francisco, you had better not descant too eloquently on the culture of Boston. Still, in the United States there is a healthy and unrestrained rivalry between these and many other cities. There is free trade from Maine to Mexico, and from New Orleans to Talama. In fact, as an American Senator once said in defence of the first tariff, America within its own borders is the biggest free-trading country in the world. For instance, throughout the length and breadth of the United States you can communicate with other people by letter or telegram on the same rate. Now, when I got to Albany, Western Australia, I found that I owed a small account of one and sixpence to a firm in Sydney. The money order cost me two and ninepence. Again, all over the civilised world, saving Australia, a Bank of England note is worth either its face value or little more. It happened that when I landed in Sydney I had £80 in £10 Bank of England notes. I went to two or three banks to get them changed, and I found that I could only get gold for them at a discount of two and sixpence on the £5, or £2 in all. I then went to the Comptoire d’Escompt, in Pitt Street, and got my £80 changed into English gold for five shillings.
When I came to inquire into the matter further I found that the Australian banks had entered into a sort of conspiracy to defraud the unsuspecting traveller who ventures to bring the best paper currency in the world into the Australian colonies. For instance, you pay a deposit into the Sydney branch of an Australian bank, you take its notes for the amount that you may need in travelling, say, from Sydney to Melbourne, and when you present those notes at a branch of the same bank you are charged two and a half per cent. for cashing them. In other words, the bank goes back on its own paper to the extent of five shillings on the £10-note. This seems bad enough, but my friend the Accidental American told me of something even worse. He was representing one of the biggest manufacturing firms in the United States. Their credit was as good as gold anywhere. He paid a deposit in Auckland into the Bank of New Zealand, believing that his cheque would be good for its face value throughout the colonies, but when he tried to draw cheques on the branches of the Bank of New Zealand in Australia he was charged two and a half per cent. discount!
I once had a similar experience in the Transvaal, but that was only what one might have expected under the then governmental conditions, I was in a hostile country and I didn’t look for anything better, but to run up against the same swindle in a British colony was somewhat of a shock. After that, when I wanted any money on my letter of credit, I took gold because I didn’t see the force of giving English paper at par for colonial paper at two and a half per cent. discount.
I also noticed that if you complain about this sort of thing in Sydney they put the blame on Melbourne, and if you are travelling further, Melbourne puts the blame on Adelaide, and so on, and from Adelaide they will refer you back to Auckland, while Perth will tell you that it is the only really honest city in all Australasia.
There is, however, one subject upon which all the Australian colonies appear to be absolutely agreed. This is the relative importance of work and play. They mostly play at work and work at play, especially the officials. Australia seems to me to have almost as many legal holidays as you find feast-days in Spain, and an Australian would as soon go to work on a holiday as a member of the Lord’s Day Observance Society would go to a music-hall on a Sunday, unless, of course, he happened to be on the Continent. Still there is a considerable difference between the amount of work which you can get done in the several capitals of the Commonwealth.
I came home with a man who might be described as the Universal Provider of Australia, and he told me that he could do more business in Melbourne in a day than he could in a week in Sydney, or in a fortnight in Adelaide or Perth. My American friend told me that he could do more business in the States in an hour than he could do in a day anywhere in Australia.
One reason for this, no doubt, is the climate. “That tired feeling” is very prevalent, and it affects the native-born much more than the home-born. In fact, British-born parents at fifty and sixty have more energy than their sons and daughters have at thirty and forty. All the conditions in Australia are against indoor work, and in favour of outdoor play. Hence the new Commonwealth’s physical vigour is considerably in excess of its mental energy.
Another very serious feature in present-day Australian life is the craze for gambling. Of course most of us would like to make money without working for it if we could, but with the Australian this desire amounts to a perfect passion. Almost every other tobacconist’s shop is the branch office of a bookmaker, and you can go in and plank your money and take your ticket without the slightest fear of legal consequences. As for mining stocks, you scarcely hear anything else talked about unless there happens to be a horse race, a cycle meeting, or a cricket match on. This is, of course, only one of the failings of youth, and in some respects Miss Australia is very young. Still, now that she is growing up into a nation, she would do well to put something of a curb on her youthful ardour for playing. Sport of some sort is an essential both of individual and national manhood, but colonies don’t grow into nations on race-courses and cricket-fields any more than men can become permanently wealthy by laying and taking odds, or speculating in futures.