594 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



reminds us tnat " tropical labor is colored labor," and that " we have 

 not yet faced the question of organising colored labor." The duty 

 of effective tropical administration becomes daily more urgent when 

 we realise that only a fourth of the empire is non-tropical. 



The fact cannot be ignored that out of the entire 30° of latitude 

 in which Austraha is situated, 19° of latitude has a climate which 

 inflicts injury more or less severe, and sooner or later, on whites who 

 attempt to work continuously in the open field all the year round. 

 Victoria lies between the 34th and 39th parallels of latitude, New 

 South Wales between the 28th and 36th, Queensland between the 

 11th and 29th, South Australia, including the Northern Territory, 

 between the lltli and 38th, and Western Australia between the 14th 

 and 35th. Thus it appears that Victoria is the only State in Aus- 

 tralia situated wholly outside the heat-belt, while a small section of 

 New South Wales is included in it. Queensland is entirely within it, 

 but Western Australia has 16°, and South Australia has 19° of latitude 

 within the climatic area which specially tends to produce fatal effects 

 upon whites, who are indigenous to the temperate zone, and who 

 consequently lack the protection of a dark skin with which nature has 

 expressly equipped the natives of the tropics and sub-tropics for pro- 

 tracted labor in those superheated areas. It is only right to say, 

 however, in correction of Professor Ireland, that there is one degree 

 less heat in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere, 

 in the corresponding latitude of the former. But this makes very 

 little appreciable difference in our actual sensations in both latitudes. 

 As a forcible writer has truly said, " The white man can no more run 

 the equator than he can run the North Pole." 



It is not, however, to be supposed for a moment that I call atten- 

 tion to the neglected fact of the heat-belt extending from 30° north 

 to 30° south of the equator with the object of depreciating, in the 

 slightest degree, the enormously rich productiveness of any section of 

 our country. On the contrary, I hold with Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his 

 able book entitled " Control of the Tropics," " That as the white 

 races of mankind increase from year to year, there arises an absolute 

 necessity for utilising the tropics and sub-tropics as sources of food 

 supply for the dense and growing inhabitants of the temperate zone." 

 He contends that there is a new rivalry destined to arise between 

 leading civilised nations, not so much for the mere possession, but for 

 the control and economic development of tropical countries. There 

 is a progressive conviction that it contributes pre-eminently to the 

 highest advantage of inteUigent communities possessing large areas 

 in different latitudes to devote themselves to those forms of production 

 for which nature affords their respective countries special climatic 

 advantages. The prevailing doctrine in the parent country of the 

 British Empire is — not that there should be an indiscriminate pro- 

 tection of all national industries by high tariffs merely for the financial 

 benefit of local agriculturists, manufacturers, and their employes. 

 The prosperity of the United Kingdom is due to free trade, which 

 involves the free interchange of products between different producing 



