Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity

by George R. Parkin

First, the physical conditions of the countries themselves. A Canadian who has made some study of Australia may perhaps be allowed to express frankly his conviction that neither country can possibly look forward to anything that will for a moment compare with the extraordinary increment of population in the United States. He may add that to him this is a subject for congratulation, rather than regret.

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Delightful as are Canadian homes, and all the surroundings of Canadian life to those who understand and have been brought up among them, or to those who come from a similar climate, there is no doubt that the long winter, the short summer, and the necessity which both impose for strenuous exertion, render the country unattractive to vast masses of those emigrants of less stamina who pass so freely into parts of the United States. We may fairly hope that in the long run the race advantage of the slower growth will be great, and an abundant recompense for the less rapid increase of population.

Climate is, in fact, the controlling element in a persistent process of natural selection. It excludes the negro from being any considerable factor in the population. The Italian organ-grinder and all his kind flee southward at the approach of winter. Only on the Pacific coast does the Chinaman find a congenial home. Cities like New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati, or New Orleans attract even the vagrant population of Italy and other countries of Southern Europe: Canada, to her own ultimate advantage, repels it. Canada will belong to the sturdy races of the North-Saxon and Celt, Scandinavian, Dane and Northern German, fighting their way under conditions sometimes rather more severe than those to which they have been accustomed in their old homes. Selection implies less rapid increment; quality is balanced against quantity.

The obstacles to rapid growth which Canada finds {206} in northern cold Australia meets with in southern heat, in a continental configuration which deprives the country of an adequate river system, and in isolation from European centres of emigration.

The geography of the continent presents features which must be considered in forecasting the future of the country. We often see elaborate calculations, based upon the rate of increase during the last fifty years, which are intended to prove that a rapid increment of population, parallel to that which has taken place in the United States, may be anticipated. I found that more prudent thinkers in Australia reject such estimates as utterly fallacious on merely physical grounds, and facts support this different view. With a circumference of about 8000, and a diameter of more than 2000 miles, it is very doubtful if Australia can ever have a great city more than two or three hundred miles from the sea-shore. If Broken Hill be quoted as an exception, it would seem to confirm rather than weaken this view. A large output of silver, amounting already to many tons per week, has attracted to the spot and supports a population of twenty-five or thirty thousand people. But even the presence of so large a population has not led to the cultivation of the soil, and almost every article of food is brought from a distance, while a supply of water itself is only obtained with difficulty. During a recent period of drought, water was carried to Broken Hill by rail.

In America, as soon as the Alleghanies were {207} passed, the flood of immigration poured out upon the great river valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, and the prairies of the far West, capable of at once absorbing millions of people. Nothing of this kind is possible for Australia. There the want of water in the interior, the partly desert and partly pastoral character of the country, are limiting dense population to the rim of the continent. Even there it is curiously concentrated in the cities. Irrigation, with the intense culture which it makes possible, may cause a considerable change over limited areas, and artesian wells will do much to give steadiness to the pastoral industry, but after all such allowances have been made it seems perfectly clear that the centre of Australia will be conquered but slowly, and will never be densely inhabited. It is hoped that by a united effort among the colonies a railway may be thrown across the continent from North to South; one from East to West would apparently be impracticable, and the connection between the opposite coasts will be chiefly maintained by Sea. Over vast areas from five to ten acres of land must be allowed for each sheep pastured, and it is doubtful if the capacity of much of this land to carry stock can be sensibly increased. The care of sheep and cattle can be carried on with great profit and on an immense scale by an exceedingly limited population, and a large part of Australia must always be chiefly pastoral. I suspect that in the mining industry also the proportion of workers to the volume of production {208} is comparatively small. Three hundred millions of gold taken from the soil since the first discovery of the precious metal less than fifty years ago, and vast public and private borrowings in addition of outside capital have given a great impulse to settlement in the past. But the conditions of the last half century have clearly been abnormal, and can scarcely be taken as an index of the future.

There are, however, other aspects of Australian life which mark this contrast with America even more decisively than do the prevailing industries and physical conditions to which I have referred. The coloured element, which in the United States now numbers about 8,000,000, and forms so large a fraction of the whole population, Australia rejects entirely. Neither Chinaman, Hindoo coolie, nor Kanaka will ever be permitted to become to Australia what the negro is to the United States, a considerable and permanent addition to dense population. Scarcely less strong is the objection to the indiscriminate immigration of cheap competitive labour such as that which has filled up America. The arrival at Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane of half a dozen steamships with a living freight such as has been discharged at New York from the steerage of Trans-atlantic liners almost every day for the last quarter of a century would today bring New South Wales, Victoria, or Queensland to the edge of revolution. Assisted emigration has come to an end, save in the two younger colonies. For years {209} the great trans-continental Railway companies and Trans-atlantic steamship companies of the United States have acted as the most energetic emigration agencies in every country of Europe, with the one object of pouring a flood of population, without the slightest reference to its quality, over the lands lying along the newly built Railway lines. An Australian Government which tried in this manner to make its State-built Railways productive, would soon find its occupation of governing gone.

That 'pulling in of the latch string' and closing the door which the United States have decided upon reluctantly and late, Australia has begun almost at the commencement of her career. She has determined that her population shall be select. This policy exposes the working man of Australia to the sarcasm that he is quite prepared to repeat in his vast continent that selfishness in respect of land which he is rather fond of denouncing in the landlord of the old world. On the other hand, the United Kingdom has, early and late, sent too many social failures to Australia to justify either surprise or indignation at Australia's aversion to unacceptable immigration. We need not quarrel with Australia's decision in this matter, for it is one which a country has a right to make. It secures more perfect social and political assimilation of new material and avoids the great dangers which flow from placing large political powers in hands unfitted to use them. But if select, then not vast in numbers. Judging from present indications and {210} tendencies Australia is likely to have settled along its seaboard a slowly increasing but singularly wealthy population, whose prosperity will be ministered to by the highly remunerative mining and pastoral industries of the thinly settled interior.

This sea-board of the continent, the rim of which alone is or is likely to be thickly settled is 8000 miles long. A country so situated and populated is manifestly exposed, in an unusual degree, to naval attack. It is this sense of exposure which has in large measure promoted the idea of Federation among the colonies themselves. It has stimulated the work of harbour defence, important for the whole Empire as for Australia itself. It has led to the joint arrangement between the mother-land and the various colonies for an addition to the Australian Squadron. The terms of this arrangement are worthy of note. The various colonies jointly agree to contribute the sum of £126,000 per annum, partly as interest on the capital employed in construction, partly towards the maintenance of a certain number of armed ships to be reserved exclusively for service in Australian waters. To carry out this arrangement the amount invested by the mother-country in the ships, seven in number, already constructed and in active service, has been close upon a million sterling. The skilled officers and trained seamen are also supplied from the Royal Navy. It is specially agreed that any expense incurred beyond £126,000 shall be borne by the Imperial Treasury, that the ordinary strength {211} of the Australian Squadron shall not be reduced on account of this local addition to naval defence, and that during the ten years over which the arrangement extends the seven ships cannot be withdrawn from Australian waters. Surely no young country with an increasing necessity for coast defence due to enlarged wealth and commerce ever secured it on terms to compare with these. No better illustration could be given of the advantage which the colonies may derive from joint action with the mother-land.