MINERALS OF THE PACIFIC LITTORAL. 415 



The tilling of the soil must be left to specialists, while others fabricate 

 for the husbandman the tools of his trade, others carry the food to 

 the millions of empty stomachs, and still others make and others 

 carry the further requirements of the complex life of civilisation. 



Under such conditions, it will be said, the Chinese will have an 

 unanswerable advantage in competition in the Pacific. It is a 

 ■common saying that a Chinaman can " live on the smell of an oil rag," 

 and, therefore, can afford to work for wages on which a white man 

 would stai-ve. This is a popular fallacy. The truth is that in China 

 " going on the land"' is overdone, the result being a widespread dead 

 level of poverty, and that here in Australia the Chinese of whom we 

 see most are those who take up industries which white men avoid 

 as unremunerative, and who must of necessity practise severe economy. 

 In fact, the Chinaman who lives on the smell of an oil rag does so 

 because necessity compels him. The Chinese thoroughly understand 

 the philosophy of the proverb that the man 



" . . . will never go bare, 

 Who knows when to spend and when to spare." 



Whenever a Chinese can afford it he spends liberally, and even 

 lavishly, on comforts and luxuries. 



When there comes to be a brisk demand in China for workmen 

 for those industrial arts which depend on the use of metals, there is 

 no doubt in my mind that wages will speedily rise to the level they 

 have reached in other countries. The West has nothing to teach the 

 East in the tactics of trades unionism, and the Chinese craftsman, as 

 soon as his services are sufficiently in demand, will insist on being 

 taken at his own valuation, like his brothers abroad. For this reason, 

 I venture to predict that in a short time wages in the industrial arts 

 throughout the world will be so leveUed up that competition between 

 nations will, so far as wages are concerned, be carried on on fairly 

 ec^ual tenns. 



I believe that China is the last country in the world to desii-e 

 to occupy by force any territory belonging to others ; but a natural 

 law will bring her sui-plus products into the markets of the world, and 

 especially of the Pacific. She will not need to go abroad, but will 

 sit at home, as others must, and offer what she can produce beyond 

 her own needs in exchange for exotic commodities. 



When this free trade ideal has been universally attained, the 

 necessity for" a greater population in Australia will be brought home 

 to Australians witli a force transcending that of academic argument. 

 Face to face, on equal terms as regards wages, with a competitor 

 whose industrial army has a hundred possible recruits to draw upon 

 to her one, economies — in other directions than wages — denied to 

 her are within the reach of the competitor with the larger population, 

 while they are unattainable to the one with the smaller. It is devoutly 

 to be hoped that before the foreshadowed changes have taken place 

 Autralia will have a population approximately adequate to the 

 exploitation of her natural resources. 



I have intent ionall}' confined my attention to the countries form- 

 ing the shores of the Pacific. But the Pacific is no mare clausum 

 either for peace or war. We have seen that the introduction of manu- 

 factured articles — even when the raw material originally came from 



