An Australian Worker on America.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 254, 11 September 1902, Page 4

An Australian Worker on America.

American industries, resources, politics, are criticised in an interestiing fa&bion, in a private letter of (which extracts have found their |way into the Mei bourne Argus. ! The writer is a young Australian, who studied mechanical engineering at the Addinglon workshops, and after taking the degree of Bachelor of Science in the profession, went to the United Stites for experience. Me found employment as an ordinary labourer, at about £2 a week, in a big steel and iron factory in. Chicago, and was soon promoted, first to the position of' under-boss' at £2 9s a week, and then to that of night foreman at £3. The last mentioned sum, which he earns at present, is at the rate of ninepence an hour, and our Australian pays 19s a week for his board, which he describes as '• quite good eating." His experience has not taught him any special respect for the American as a worker. " The statement that this country's engineering and mechanical industries beat the English pointless, is rubbish," he declares. " She commands such a vast market that it is economical to introduce special tools—which is not so in England, where the. home market is small, and! the foreign market is diverse in its requirements. The truth is that the ordinary American engineering mechanic would never hold his jo,b in Australia or New Zealand ; he can do only one thing, and that not wonderfully well. . . . Our works, for instance, employ 1000 men, and there is not one striking evidence of any special ingenuity or good management. Give Addington workshops, where I was in New Zealand, the same market, and we. would beat them hollow." "All rubbish," is the colonial's sweeping characterisation also of the general verdict on American inventive ability. "Of course, Edison and others have made discoveries more or less original, but no great principle or theory has ever been enunciated by Americans in any branch of science." But to America itself, as practically one vast farm land stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he accords enthusiastic admiration. In his opinion it is the country which is going to " boss " the world, and which may even, "if its government holds,,"' put Great Britain into the background, though this he refuses to believe it will do. But men whose opinions carry much respect, he states, are confident that there is soon to ba a terrible revolution the present Republican form of administration, which wili be nominally a fight of labour against capital, but more especially "of honesty against dishonesty, a protest from the better-grounded ancient stock against the foreign riff-raff elements and its descendants." The opinions which the average American holds of tho British Empire and its Government may, perhaps, be safely gathered from the views which the Australian worker attributes to his landlord, whom he describes as a very typical representative of his country. This man " believes that England exists only on sufferance, that the King is a tyrant, that knowledge and learning are unknown outside America, that Australia is as big as Otago, and that, the English are practically in revolt against the monarchy."