333 



The Manufacturing Interest. 



By Frank J. Donohue. 



The employment of a people depends always in the fii'st instance on 

 whatever may happen to be the natural outlet for its energies, and on 

 its own prefei'ences. The settlers who went west in the United States 

 grew wheat, just as in Australia we grow wool. On the Californian sea- 

 board the population took to minings and our people having learnt tlic 

 way followed them in the search for gold. When conditions are 

 favourable, as they are in England, and as they have grown to be in 

 the United States, the era of manufactures comes in, — but not, as a 

 general thing until from one cause and another, whether the inci*ease 

 and spread of population or the decline of other means of employment, 

 the attention of work-seekers and capital-investors is forced in that 

 direction. We can hardly be said to have advanced very far to that 

 stage yet, but the evidences are present that it is beginning for us, 

 and that New South Wales will offer a tempting field for the pioneer 

 manufacturer on a large scale as time goes on. The fiscal policy of 

 the country has been, with few intermissions, one of consistent free- 

 trade. Now and then a politician of prominence has come forward 

 with a theory that in order to establish manufactures we must follow 

 the example of the United States and adopt a protective policy. Sir 

 James Martin eloquently advocated this nearly thirty years ago. He 

 drew a picture of the country given up to sheep-runs, employing a few 

 shepherds and station-hands, or working its mines for exportation from 

 Sydney ; of which port, he said, it was the aim of the exporters and 

 commercial classes to make a bastard kind of antipodean Venice. He 

 introduced a protective tariff, as Sir Patrick Jennings and Sir George 

 Dibbs did after him ; but the feeling of the country Ayas against the 

 policy, and the year 1896 again sees the Colony under a free-trade 

 tariff. It is not the intention to discuss here the question as to which 

 of the two policies is best for the Colony. The subject has been 

 debated to weariness, and the electors have recorded their decision. 

 The development of a country's industries, after all, depends not ou 

 tariffs or politicians but on the preferences of labour and capital and 

 the natural law of supply and demand. 



But the manufacturing interests have not been idle. The latest 

 returns available show that last year (1894) there were 42,751 persons 

 in the Colony actually employed in one branch or other of manufac- 

 ture, the principal occupations utilising their services being the prei)a- 

 ration of clothing and textile fabrics, food and drink, metal works and 

 machinery, building materials, and pastoral raw material. Most of the 

 works in connection with these interests have been established near 

 the metropolis, where the conditions favour industrial enterprise; the 



