King Country Chronicle Wednesday, Dec 7, 1910. AUSTRALIA'S PROBLEM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 318, 7 December 1910, Page 4

King Country Chronicle Wednesday, Dec 7, 1910. AUSTRALIA'S PROBLEM.

When Mr John Foster Eraser visited Australia last year and spent some months motoring through the dillercnt States, we naturally expected a book from his versatile pen. and have not been disappointed. In "Australia: the making of a nation," Mr Eraser has given our neighbours on their great island food for thought and for chewing over. For he get 3 right at the bottom of Australia's problem when he points to the practically stationary population of four and aquarter millions trying to occupy a territory almost as large as Europe. He shows that the natural increase in

population in the ten years, 1899-1908 was only a little over half a million, and that from immigrants in the same period, only 21,272, a total increase of 610,091. And he further shows that while in the year 1908 72,208 immigrants reached Australia oo,(TiS left Australia. We are disturbed at the slow increase of New Zealand's population by immigration, but apparently the same causes producing the same effects, are at work in Australia as with ourselves. There is a disinclination on the part of the representatives of labour to encourage emigration

there as here. It is well known that no workman who has previously entered into a contract with an employer may land in Australia, except by special permission, and yet the country cries for population while all the time discouraging immigrants. Mr Fras.er states that the tendency of the Australian born is to drift into the cities, where presumably they will ultimately, when the countryside is depopu-

lated. live as the individuals on the lonely island did -by taking in each other's \vashintr. Seriously, this drifting towards the towns, and the big towns at that, bodes no good for the future of Australia. It is a grand country, with magnificent climates, illimitable wealth, and what Mr Fraser, quoting Australians he has spoken to, somewhat cynically terms, immense "potentialities." It needs an inter-State railway very badly. It needs feeder railways, not where the population now is, but in the districts where the agricultural emigrant is to be attracted to. And above all, it needs a sane policy of developing the immense northern tropical areas by means of some other labour than white labour. Only last week an Australian cable announced that certain British subjects—Hindoos—were not to have the same opportunities of balloting for sections in New South Wales as white settlers. That may, or may not be a wise policy in that particular portion of the Commonwealth. But it cannot be denied that the Northern Territory, and many parts of Queensland, offer admirable openings for the employment of coloured labour, provided the railways are built to tap the districts and facilities are given to enable produce to be shipped. Otherwise we cannot doub l ". some Eastern nation will look with envious eyes upon that uninhabited land and ask "why should the white man neither occupy it, nor give others the right to occupy it?" If the teeming millions of India had an outlet there, they would develop its agricultural possibilities tremendously, and so provide a market for the southern Australian States' manufactures. Ail trade is barter. None of us can live on exports alone. Wc must cxI change; and so every increase in our agricultrual populations, whether in the great continent wc have been writing of, or in our own little islands, must mean better matkets for our own manufacturers, and better markets for the people in the Old Land, and other countries we do business with.