Diseased communities; Australia, New Zealand and ..

CHAPTER I. Page

Australia — The Country 5

CHAPTER II. Present State 28

^ CHAPTER III.

OS- •

^ CHAPTER IV.

The AustraUans 80

^ CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

The Chinese Question 122

CHAPTER VII.

New Zealand 144

CHAPTER VIII.

State Socialism in New Zealand 173

CHAPTER IX.

"Look to Home" 211

CHAPTER X.

Our Lesson 239

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CHAPTER I.

Australia — The Country.

Australia is an individual continent lying south of the equator, west of the 180th degree of longitude. Its length east and west is, roughly speaking, about 2,500 miles; its breadth, 2,000. Its northern limits are within ten degrees of latitude south of the equator, its southern limits about forty, so that it covers a range of climate from Chicago to Panama. In area it is about the size of the United States, excluding Alaska, or nearly that of Europe with its more than 300 millions of people. It is all an English colony, under one government, with individual states much like the United States. With the exception of an inconsiderable number of aborigines who cut no figure whatever, a very few Chinese and Hindoos, the inhabitants are all white, Europeans who speak only English, are Christians, and overwhelmingly Protestant. So that the Australians have no boundaries conterminous with that of another race with different color, language, and largely different religion, as in our case with Mexico; or the same boundary with the outpost of a jealous foreign power, as in our case with Canada, where its chief statescraft lies in fitting canals to our great lakes so that in case of war with England that country could, within two weeks, take possession of and reduce to ashes, or levy tribute, on Buifalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Duluth, Milwaukee and Chicago. To digress a little, while the last statement seems big I have never heard it questioned by any politician in the country since the elder Carter H. Harrison, thirty years ago while mayor of Chicago, made the first determined effort to meet that problem by opening the ship canal to New Orleans, which step was then, as it is now, blocked by the jealousy of the railroads. Nor will it be solved so long as the great wealthy state of Illinois elects representatives who are pledged to block the scheme by the well-known political process of "queering" as I was informed was the case by United States officials several years ago in Washington.

So that, aside from the inevitable problems arising to all the human race, front to front with all the forces and laws of nature, beneficent only when we understand them, the Australians have only social questions to consider. They have no defense problem other than that which occurs to all of Greater Britain. They have no race problem like our negro question, which problem the Australians are so fond of throwing in our faces, which matter, however, the writer, who thinks he is as well informed on that subject as any man in the country, does not even consider a problem, but which, however, he considers a greater question in South Africa than even the Boor question.

The religious question with them is purely academic. That question the chief and most disturbing political problem in British America, the vital and overwhelming and insoluble problem to the European colonies in North Africa, the question which looms up so portentously on our horizon as our people are destined to become overwhelmingly Catholic or infidel, does not cause them, and need not cause them, a moment's reflection. And yet in no country in the world except Canada is that question, Protestantism vs. Catholicism, fought over so bitterly, as shown in the correspondents' columns of the Australian newspapers.

So that ''Down Under", "The Underworld", or "The Colony", as they are fond of calling the great continent of Australia, is a clear field where the people of British blood, language and religion, have a chance untrammeled by adverse circumstances to work out what is best in them, and they think what is in them is the best there is on earth. So that if there be any falling off in any particular they must bear, without modification, palliation or excuse, the full blame for their shortcomings.

Like the Jcavs of old, they think they are the particular pets of God Almighty who watches over them with more care and affection than the rest of the human race. In fact, they talk and write as though they had a proprietary interest in Him, that they are His only legitimate children, while the rest are bastards who are only allowed to exist at all as a great condescension. Wherein they are deficient, they cannot throw the blame upon the slavery question, the civil war, the negro question, the voting privileges of the indigested hordes of foreigners, as we do ; nor upon the Catholic question, as does Canada; nor can they attribute anything to growing pains, or to over-rapid development. I am only endeavoring to measure their degree of success in the light of the present century. I think I have the right to do so.

And Australia is a continent. I think we are not allowed, even by a stretch of the imagination, to term it an island. It is more truly a continent than Europe. It is as much so as North America or Africa. It is washed on all sides by the ocean's waters, but so are North and South America. Cuba is an island because its fauna and flora are precisely the same as on the adjacent American continent; so England to Europe, or the island of Vancouver to British America. Australia is independent, selfrisen from the primeval waters. It is trite to say that while it is summer there it is winter here. To one who has spent over twenty winters in warm climes, ten of them within the tropics, that applies to most of the world; that while it is day here it is night there; that applies even in our own country, as while the sun is still shining on busy San Francisco the peopie of New York are comfortably settled in their theatres just when the villian is most triumphant, or asleep in their beds ; that while it is Saturday here it is Sunday there. In our part of the universe lighted by the sun no one minute is more holy than any other minute, but what is more important to a scientific man, it is one of the centers of the world 's development. Agassiz, who fought the Darwinian theory to his last breath, asserted it was one of the five creations. As we go south by train from Chicago we experience no shocks. Every mile almost discloses the northern limit of some well-known plant, scrubby and insignificant at first, then larger and more abundant until too familiar to notice ; then another, and then another, until nearly under the equator one arrives at the apex of vegetation familiar and satiated.

Not so in Australia. The scientific man arrives there as though projected from a catapult on to another world. Leaving out the question of European culture, it is another world. The minerals are, of course, the same, but we are taught by scientists that they are precisely the same on every body in the universe. The same revolutions and ages may be traced in Australia as elsewhere in the world, but a geologist could probably fiud nearly similar ones and read them as easily on Mars. But the shells are different, the corals different, the fish mostly new and different, while the vegetation and animal life is almost wholly strange. The gloomy, dirty, stinking eucalyptus, an exotic in North Africa, is there the prevailing woods. It offers no incitement to rambling, as the woods of Europe or America. Together with the strange plants and flowers it gives one a sort of unearthly feeling, which, I believe, can never be eradicated. It is said that the poetic significance of the palm is " Far from home. ' ' To me, familiar with the palm since my twentieth year, that tree is a friendly, beneficent relative, the green cocoanut the mother of a second childhood. Not so the eucalyptus. It represents to me all the strangeness, unfamiliarity and repugnance of an individual of another race, color and language. Perhaps I could in time overcome the feeling of dislike it causes in me, but I doubt it. The beautiful woods around my home by the Kankakee River have never seemed so dear to me as since my stay in Australia and New Zealand.

I am not a naturalist, and animals interest me but little. During forty years residence in Chicago I have never seen its zoological garden. The stuffed animals in the excellent Sydney museum, however, were a revelation to me, and of absorbing interest. I did not dream that there were in all the world so many varieties of the marsupials, or pouched animals, represented on the whole x\merican continent solely by the opossum, as are found in Australia. For instance, there are thirty-seven varieties, the authorities say, of the wallaby. Pretty much all of the mammalia are pouched. There were no indigenous ruminant, or grasseating animals There Avas the dingo, or so-called wild dog, not pouched, but whether it really belongs to that family (the canine) or not I was not sufficiently interested to investigate. There was also the bear, a little animal hardly larger than a cat, but whether really a bear or not I do not know, but except these and some other exceptions, all the mammalia seem to be pouched, even the rats, mice, hares, and squirrels, I suppose some hundreds of varieties, and there is always the ornithorhynchus, or duck-billed platypus, all of which are so strange that it caused Australia to be considered as one of the original scenes of crea-

Australia — The CountrV. 13

tion. That the continent is favorable to animal life is shown by the kindly manner with which it has treated all imported life. Pheasants, ducks, geese, turkeys, chickens, thrive as well there as any where on earth. English foxes were introduced, and have prospered so w^ell that now they wish they had not introduced them. Hares were introduced and have multiplied "like rabbits", until now they are the chief pest of the country. Their hogs, while not attaining the elephantine proportions and weight of our Illinois pigs, are better eating from their greater proportion of lean meat. Their hams are sweeter from their manner of curing them, and are also lacking in the vitriolic creosote taste of our Chicago products. Their cattle, like those on our great Texas and Montana ranges, increase tremendously, but, like them, are tough and stringy. Like all of the rest of the people in the world who never ate corn-fed beef, the Australians do not know what good beef tastes like. I know in this assertion I am stirring up a hornets' nest. You may insult the nobility, or even the royal family ; you may deny the Englishman's God and he will bear it patiently, but if one dares to allege that English beef is no good he flies right off the handle and burns to wash out the reproach with the blood of the ''alligator." I only know that except one piece on the Mariposa, I did not eat one mouthful of good beef from the time of leaving Chicago until I returned to that town. On the other hand, Australia is the best home on the earth for sheep. No where on earth can sheep be raised so easily, with so little effort and so cheaply as in Australia and New Zealand, and no where else do they have finer lamb and mutton. The product of New Zealand is superior to that of Australia, but even that of Australia has spoiled me for mutton eating in the United States. All that I have eaten since reaching home, whether lamb or mutton, has seemed dry and tasteless, but then it may have been goat masquerading as sheep. And then, too, one must take into consideration that pork and mutton are the only things on earth the English know how to cook. In the matter of sheep, the figures will startle anyone from the United States. From traveling on the same trains and stopping at same hotels in New Zealand and Sydney, I became quite well acquainted with an Australian farmer and his wife who were doing a summer's trip. He owned 30,000 sheep and seemed to think he was only a small sheep farmer, while to me, accustomed to the herds of Mexico and the States, the figure seemed overwhelming. One hundred thousand to 200,000 sheep with one owner is a very common number, while one man, Mr. Scidmore, is said to own over a million.

The English race itself at the antipodes gives no evidence of deterioration, but on the contrary I think a decided improvement. I think the men will average a greater height than those in the United States, while in Sydney, at least, the women appear to me to rate some degree better in beauty than those in England. In appearance, dress and style, they resemble more nearly those in America than do those of England, but as this is a dangerous subject, and one I know nothing at all about, I drop it.

Prior to the advent of the white man there were no grains growing in that country, and, except perhaps on the tropical extremity, no nuts nor fruits. All have been introduced, and with some exceptions seem to do well. Oats, rye, barley and wheat grow as well as here, and a great quantity of wheat in sacks is exported to England. Maize, or com as we call it, thrives in Australia, but as it is used solely as feed for hogs not much is grown. As a lady said, "We do not eat corns in Australia; we feed them to our pigs". When one thinks of the hundreds of ways it is prepared for food in our country, what a deprivation we would feel without it, one can only sympathize with them in their blindness. To think that there are millions of white people speaking the English language ignorant of the superlative excellence of roasting ears, which with the water from green cocoanuts constitute the two very best things on this terrestrial ball with which man can distend his "tummy". Well! Well! This is a queer world ! ' ' The heathen they bow down to stocks and stones." "Ephriam is joined to his idols; let him alone!" Of course the real reason is that it is not fashionable eating in London, and the worst is that, as corn will not grow in England, it will never become so. So that the unfortunate Australians for all eternity, or until they have their Fourth of July will be barred from knowing the excellence of maize as an article of human food, will never feast on succotash. One wishes, for their own sakes, that the whole royal family, and the nobility down to the last "by courtesy"

Australia — The Country. IT

lord and lady, would issue a jointly-signed proclamation graciously allowing the colonials of Australia and New Zealand to eat maize, assuring them that they would not by so doing lose caste.

Upon the whole, Australia fares well in fruits, tropical, sub-tropical and temperate. The apples of Tasmania are equal to any in the world. The grapes are perhaps the finest. They are fulh^ equal to the Spanish, and much superior to those of California. These two were the best fruits I ate during all the trip, nor could I get enough of them. But all fruit is excessively dear, also vegetables, in strong contrast with meats, which are surprisingly and absurdly cheap. The cheapest grapes were 12 cents a pound, ranging from 18 to 24 cents a pound usually for the finer varieties. The prevailing and universal price, as I found it, both in Sydney and the country towns, was 4 cents each for apples, pears, peaches, oranges or plums. These things are not sold by the basket and in groceries, as with us, but invariably come to market in large cases, and are sold by Italians and Chinese, usually in little shops, where they also sell the limited supply of green vegetables known as green groceries.

This statement as to price was flatly denied to my face by an Australian on the boat returning from thence. I asked him to give me the address of one place in Sydney where one could buy fruit at reasonable prices, as I had been partly keeping house, usually ate fruit from four to six times a day, and had tramped the town over to avoid what I considered an extortionate price. His reply was: "From the push carts". As I did not see a push cart in all Sydney, except for the sale of ice cream, and as he did not live in Sydney, I will let my statement stand, in spite of contradiction. I might have cut out of their daily papers several letters from subscribers bitterly complaining of what they call a trust existing among the Chinese and Italians to fix an abnormal price upon fruit, as though there were any law to prevent any grocer, news stand keeper, meat market owner or, in fact, any one of the many thousands out of employment, from selling fruit at any price he pleases. It is a great deal like the people of our country blaming the lumber seller for the high price of lumber, or Armour for the high price of meat> It is on a par with the conduct of the people during the middle ages, when, during famine times, they imprisoned the bakers. As though, where monopolies are not given by direct grant, any combination of men could fix the price on staple articles. While my neighbors are getting, on their farms, eight cents live weight for their hogs, where they used to get three, I will believe there is some other reason for it than the benevolent disposition of Armour. As I was unable to buy fruit any cheaper in the country towns of New South Wales, where I made frequent little excursions, I will attribute the price wholly to the disinclination of the natives for intensive farming. The colonial terms fruit-growing and gardening ' ' Chinese business that no selfrespecting white man would engage in." The Australian would prefer to sleep in the parks and beg for thrip pences on the street corners after dark to making a fortune and losing caste by any such mode of gaining a living. As to profits arising from this despised business, I will let the following clipping, from a Sydney daily, answer. I think anyone would say that $1,300, from little over an acre, adequate renumeration :

Mr. H. Jacob, a Mildura orchardist, has had a return of 17 tons of lemons oflF 1 1-4 acre of land. He paid

£29 as railway freight on the produce going to Melbourne. Five years ago Mr. Jacob received only £5 from the same lemon orchard, then rapidly deteriorating and threatening to die out altogether. Recognizing that the depletion of the humus of the soil by constant intertillage was the case of the orchard's decay, Mr. Jacob had some portable pens made, and maintained a large number of pigs between the trees. The results of the experiment were striking. Trees that were almost dead took on new life, the foliage of the orchard assumed a more wholesome hue, and each year the crop of fruit showed a marked increase, terminating this year in the heavy crop of 17 tons, which sold for £250, In addition to the great manuring value exercised upon the land, the pigs returned a direct profit at the rate of £10 per acre.

All this seems to hold true as to green vegetables, scarcity considered, but, except in case of radishes and tomatoes, I am not so positive as to question of prices. During four months of Australian eating I would say that nine times out of ten, or nineteen out of twenty, we had no other cooked vegetables, aside from potatoes, than string beans and a sort of squash called vegetable marrow. I grew to loathe the sight of both. Once, thank God, we had boiled onions. My first thought, on placing my foot on the continent of North America, was: **At last I am emancipated from string beans and vegetable marrow"

Australians make a great deal of wine from

Australia — The CountrV. 21

their grapes, all the familiar marks being imitated. It is a strong, coarse, heady wine, very like the California wine of fifty years ago. A moderate indulgence in it will cause a violent headache, or, as an American living there expressed it, "put one on the blink" for two or three days. Yet I found half a glass full mixed with same quantity of water, drank during the noon meal, a refreshing beverage. The Australian, however, cares little for wine. He wants **ile" or ''Scotch", of which he partakes inordinately, beginning early and keeping it up until late. It is no wonder the liver complaint is universal.

The mineral wealth of Australia is well known. For sixty years it has been one of the largest producers of gold. It has great mines of copper, tin, silver, lead and iron. Its coal fields are inexhaustible. In fine materials, no country on earth is richer in variety. Diamonds can be mined with certainty, but the find is not large enough to be profitable. Emeralds are not rare, but the crystals are smaller than those of Columbia, South America. Azurite is abundant, but only used as copper ore. Malachite, the finest in the world, of a deep velvety green, is only copper ore to them. For about $2.00 I bought a finer specimen of it than I had ever seen in any museum in the United States or, as I remember, in the world. Sapphires and hyacinths, of all colors, are more abundant and cheaper than anywhere else in the world. Flawless white topazes are considered only as pretty pebbles. I had about a dozen given me. Only for some perfect crystals would they take any price at all. Tourmalines are found, but are rare and highly prized, particularly the green ones. The opals of Australia go all over the world. They are magnificent, and the mining of them, and the search for them, a recognized business. It is the chief gem business of the country.

To the man versed in Physical Geography, degrees of latitude mean little. He always, in addition, considers the isotherms, or degrees of heat. This is brought forcibly to one 's mind when he lands about the first of April at Victoria, British Columbia, and finds every thing green a full month earlier than it would be in neighborhood of Chicago, 800 miles further south. So when we learn that New South Wales is about the same latitude south as North and South Carolina are north, we may not infer that it has their climate. In truth

I rather expected it myself, and knowing I was going there during tlie height of their mid-summer, I braced myself up to suffer as a martyr in the cause of science. I soon learned that Australia would make an agreeable summer resort, at least the eastern part of it would. It is both warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the Carolinas. Oranges, lemons and pomegranates, although all inferior in quality, flourish in the latitude of Sydney, which is about the same degree as Wilmington. Araucarias grow wild in the woods, and the rubber tree is the favorite shade tree in the parks and yards. The Royal Palm, too delicate even for Florida, lives out of doors, although not remarkable for size or splendor. The bougainvillia lives and blossoms in the open. In fact, their excellent botanical garden proves that practically all the tropical vegetation will live without protection.

In summer the winds, usually from the northeast or southeast, always blow, coming over 7,000 miles of the great Pacific. It may be excessively hot in the middle of the day, but with the night it becomes chilly, necessitating wraps and heavy bedding. But whatever the degree of heat, while the ladies dress, or undress, to suit the climate, the men never do. Putting on light clothes and discarding the waistcoat, which last a New Orleans doctor once told me was the most sensible mode ever introduced among the men, does not find favor with them. Dressed in dark, closely-fitting coats and waistcoats, they are uncomfortable, and look uncomfortable. With perspiration pouring down their faces they look at the casual American, passing with his loose-fitting coat and trousers, and negligee shirt, with a stubborn, dog-like air, as though they would say: "I know I am suffering, but I will die before I break away from London and follow American ways." To the said American they recall those famous words of the poet: "See the pale martyr in his shirt of fire." One wishes that the royal family and nobility of England would issue a decree allowing the Australians to discard their waistcoats in summer.

We may say with positiveness that European blood does not deteriorate in Australia. If anything, it rather improves. The Australian men average, I think, rather greater in height than either the English or Americans, but they lack the breadth of shoulders of the latter. We cannot say how much of this narrowness across the shoulders results from the universal custom of English tailors of making coat and waistcoat too tight and narrow across the shoulders. Anyone who has ever had such work done in London will know what I mean. Americans, with their loose coats and padded shoulders, striving for breadth in that region, have become broad shouldered. My first impression on reaching Honolulu accentuated in Seattle, was that the Americans were remarkable for their square build. The Australians, bound from time immemorial in their straight jackets, have grown narrow chested, while growth that must come ran upwards. They have lost none of the virility of their ancestors. In no country in the world, not even in England nor in America, are athletic sports so cultivated. It is an absorbing passion pervading all classes and ages, and covers the whole range of sports. Except among college students, pretty much all athletics in our states are given over to professionals. Not so there. I could see little or no signs of professionalism. It is town against town, city against city, province against province, Australia against New Zealand, etc. * But our newspapers are much in error when they assert that baseball is becoming a favorite game there. Looking over the sporting pages every day, I never once saw the name of that game e^'en mentioned. I think it never will be introduced. The mere fact that it originated in the United States, regardless of its intrinsic merit, will forever prevent its adoption, owing to the Australian bent, to be treated ujDon hereafter.

"While their excessive fondness for sports is owing greatly to the fact that, looking to England for everything and condemning everything not first favored there, willingly taking an inferior and subordinate position in literature, theatricals, arts, politics, etc., they must let their superfluous enthusiasm vent itself upon something, which something most naturally gravitates to athletic sports. Still, we must say it is a sign of virility, the reverse of physical decadence. If Australia has any national peculiarity, we may say it is its proclivities for out-of-door exercises, accompanied with the spirit of emulation.

In conclusion, I think we may assert that in climate it is superior to the United States, while in soil, barring the wonderful Mississippi

Valley, agricultural and mineral products, it is as favorably situated as that country for the sustenance and physical, moral and industrial development of hundreds of millions of the human race. If it does not equal our country, in its growth, in wealth and population, we must look for other reasons. We must disregard the environment and the natural laws, and look to the people themselves and their institutions. And this should be done as firmly, as mercilessly, and yet as kindly, as with a surgeon's knife.

CHAPTER II.

Present State.

The population of Australia is now about four million three hundred thousand. These are occupying a region about as large as the United States. In 1788 Port Jackson (now Sydney) was founded as a penal station for criminals from England. * * * ''The colony, however, from 1821 has made a fair start in free industrial progress." (Brit. Enc.) In 1851 gold was discovered in large quantities, and from that date to this the country has been as well known as any other to the civilized world. So that now we can hardly term it a pioneers' country. The towns do not have the air of frontier settlements. Sydney looks older than New York. It is older than Chicago, Seattle or San Francisco. The country is making heroic efforts to attract to its shores the surplus population of Europe. No boom on any newly-built railroad in the United States was ever more assiduously worked. They hold it up before all the world by immigration agents and hundreds of pamphlets and newspaper articles as the country of all the world best fitted for the laboring man. They openly declare it is the poor man's country, and that they will always keep it the poor man's country. As a particular inducement to that class they boast that it is a white man's country, and that they will always keep it a white man's country. In their eyes a tinge of black, yellow, brown or red is an unpardonable sin. God may permit it, but they will not. But God in this respect, they think, showed a lamentable lack of wisdom in creating such.