Frank G. Carpenter

“ In beauty and commercial advantages, Sydney harbour equals the Bay of Naples, the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, or the famous waters about Constantinople on the Bosporus. At its entrance, which is not more than a mile wide, great rocks rising to more than half the height of the Washington Monument form a natural gateway. No matter how stormy the ocean outside, when a steamer passes the Heads, it finds quiet waters. It enters a winding lake or stream, with hundreds of bays, inlets, and creeks studded with islands and walled with wooded hills. ”

“ HOW would you like to be sure of a pension from Uncle Sam in your old age? How would you like to know that if your income after sixty-five years of age was less than three hundred and ninety dollars a year, you would get from the government at Washington at least enough money to keep you alive?
That is the situation here in New Zealand. Every citizen is assured that if old age finds him without sufficient money to live on, the government will provide up to a maximum sum of one hundred and ninety-five dollars a year. To widows with children larger pensions are paid. ”

“ IT WOULD surprise many Americans who think theirs is the only real country on earth to come down to Australia. Take the city of Melbourne. It is not so old as Chicago, and it is younger than any town of its size in the United States. In 1837, when Chicago was incorporated, Melbourne contained five wooden shacks and eight turf huts. To-day it is a magnificent city almost as big as Detroit. There is not a country in Europe or a state of the Union but would be proud to own such a capital. ”

“ Of all the big cities south of the Equator, I like Sydney best. Especially do I like the people here. Buenos Aires has a population of more than a million and a half, but it is a succotash of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish ingredients, with a mixture of Indian, English, German, and French. Rio de Janeiro has a million and a quarter inhabitants, sprinkled with so much African blood that one can hardly tell where the white ends and the black begins. Moreover, as in other cities of South America, most of the people are wretchedly poor. ”

“ The workers and their unions are to a large degree responsible for this policy of a white Australia, but no party opposes it. The men in power say that Australia has learned her lesson in time, and that she will never let in cheap labour from China, Japan, and the surrounding islands which would lower wages and the standard of living. North and west of the continent are seven hundred millions of Orientals who would be glad to get out of their crowded countries into this thinly settled land of promise. Besides, all the Australians are proud of their British blood. ”

“ Like the Australians, the New Zealanders love nothing so well as gambling on horse races. But here the betting is regulated by the government and one seldom hears talk of crooked methods. Betting is done through a machine, the invention of a New Zealander, called a totalisator. Only those actually present at the track are allowed to bet, so there are no poolrooms such as have caused so much scandal in the United States, and there is no gambling by telegraph or telephone. All but ten per cent. of the money placed on each race is divided among the winners. ”

“ To me one of the worst features of the liquor traffic in Melbourne and other Australian cities is the fact that the drinks are dispensed by women. The Melbourne girls are especially beautiful, and the town has the reputation of having the prettiest barmaids of Australia. Some of them are witty and nearly all are charming, so that it is no wonder that the men like to come in for a chat and a drink. ”

“ I know one man who has a million acres of land, and I could hardly throw a stone in the business part of Sydney without striking the holder of five thousand acres and more. There are men here who have a million sheep, and many who own flocks of tens of thousands. Australia has no Fords or Rockefellers. Rarely does any one leave an estate worth above five million dollars. On the other [Pg 25] hand, the wealth is more evenly divided than in the United States, and the workers live much more comfortably than their brothers in Europe. Everywhere on the streets of Sydney I see signs of well-being. ”

“ The gambling spirit pervades all classes of Australians, from the farmer who stakes everything on the freaks of the climate, to the legislator who helps put a radical law on the statute books with the feeling that the chances are even that it will work out all right.
I should say that drinking is quite as much of a national vice of the Australians as gambling. I know of no country where it is more common. In many families it is usual to serve whisky and soda at afternoon teas, the men taking the whisky and the women the tea. ”

“ Their long, wavy dark hair is confined only by ribbons about their foreheads. Usually their feet are bare. The dance gets its name from the two small balls of flax fibre with which each girl is provided. These are attached to strings and, as the girls go through various movements, representing such things as swimming, the flight of butterflies, the soaring of birds, or the rowing of a canoe, the poi balls are swung in perfect time. The music is a soft crooning, which is delightful, as the Maoris all have beautiful speaking and singing voices. ”

“ I am in the Yellowstone Park of New Zealand, a land of volcanoes, geysers, earthquakes, and lakes of boiling mud, a land in which old Mother Earth seems afflicted with perpetual colic and is ever vomiting forth hot paint, or belching out steam full of alum. ”

“ But there is another side to the picture of New Zealand’s government activities. A man is worth not what he makes, but what he has left when his debts are paid. It is the same with a nation, and New Zealand has rapidly rolled up a huge public debt. At the end of the century it owed about two hundred and twenty million dollars, or more than three hundred dollars per head, or fifteen hundred dollars per family of five. This debt kept on growing, and then was more than doubled by expenditures in the World War, which were a tremendous burden to a small country like New Zealand. ”

“ In such times, even a man with thousands of acres and tens of thousands of sheep may have to sit helpless and watch the animals die before his eyes.
The droughts clear the land of everything green. The pastures become as bare as the roads, and the sheep stagger about, nosing in the dust for the seeds of grasses and trees. Sometimes trees are cut down to give them food. During one drought a sheep-raiser who had four thousand acres of land kept one hundred men busy cutting off the branches of his apple and other trees to feed the flocks. The sheep ate the leaves and even the twigs. ”

“ Great Britain has a preferential tariff arrangement with Australia so that certain of her goods come in at lower duties than those paid on similar goods from the United States or other countries. Yet, in spite of this “imperial preference,” our trade is healthy and growing. We sell Australia more than one fifth of all the goods she buys abroad and take a good proportion of the half billion dollars’ worth of wool, hides, pearl shell, and other raw products that she annually sends into the markets of the world. ”

“ I have no doubt that Australia will be turning virgin gold into sovereigns for years and years to come, but its production of the precious metal is on the wane. The mines of Kalgoorlie are still paying, but those of Coolgardie are worked out. The annual production for the whole country is now only half that of Victoria in its best days, and is considerably below the best year’s output in Queensland and Western Australia. It may be, though, that more Golden Miles lie hidden under the vast unprospected areas of the continent. ”

“ Here you may find out just how much the body politic is willing to bet on the chances of life and death of its people. The government has been in the life-insurance business for fifty years, but it has never forbidden the private companies to operate, and competes with them right along. Indeed, it is said that the latter are getting most of the new business because they put more life and energy into selling insurance than the state institution does. The government life insurance company uses the postmasters as its agents, and thus has offices at every crossroads. ”

“ WHILE other countries have talked about land reform or their peasants have staged revolutions to get farms of their own, New Zealand has quietly gone ahead and put through a system of land ownership and taxation which in the United States would be called socialistic.
What would our people say, for example, if Congress should pass laws carrying out a land policy such as was explained to me by one of the national leaders of New Zealand? He said:
“We do not look upon land as like other property. Land should belong to the state. It is given to it by the Lord, to be held in trust for the people. ”

“ New Zealand is one of the most remarkable botanical regions of the world and nowhere are there more beautiful forests. The giant fern is so common that it is the emblem of the country.
The southwest coast of the South Island rivals both Norway and Switzerland in its scenic beauty. There the glaciers have made fourteen great sounds, walled with steep cliffs and lofty mountain peaks. ”

“ Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November, is a general holiday, and the city does little or no work during the week of this race. Flemington is crowded with a brilliant throng. Often one hundred and fifty thousand people attend, some coming from points three thousand miles distant. Nearly all bet, the women as well as the men. The bookmaker is in his element, and one hears many stories of crooked methods and thrown races, though how much truth there is in them I do not know. Clerks and shop girls go without lunches for weeks to save money to lay on the favourites. ”

“ When the Australian stockman has a nightmare, he dreams of a rabbit, the pest of the Commonwealth and the terror of the pastures. There are tens of millions of rabbits all over the country, and but for the constant warfare against them they would eat up all the grass of Australia. ”

“ Then Maoris, who in ordinary life may be doctors, lawyers, grocers, and landlords, put patches of black paint on their faces, array themselves in knee skirts of flax fibre, and arm themselves with feather-tufted spears. With their bodies bare to the waist and with bare feet and legs, they leap and stamp, stick out their tongues, and make faces such as the old natives believed would frighten their enemies, give sharp barking shouts, slap their knees, and swing their spears in perfect time to the music of a band. ”

“ When it first sees the light of day the baby kangaroo is not more than an inch long. It has no hair and is almost transparent, like an earthworm. Its mother puts it into her pouch, and there it lies and sucks until it grows big enough to come forth and eat grass. Even then it crawls back into the pouch whenever it is tired or at the least sign of danger, poking its head out now and then to see if the coast is clear. It leaves the pouch for good after eight or nine months, when it weighs eight or ten pounds, and has become too heavy for the mother to carry. ”