336 Ni:W SOUTH WALES. 



1,224 meu, wliile saddlery and liarness-makiug occupies 324, the 

 working plant of each being about £37,000 and £53,000 respectively. 

 In the business of shipbuilding we employ about 1,300 hands, the 

 Sutherland Docks at Sydney being one of the largest single graving 

 docks in the world. The value of machinery and plant employed 

 approaches half a million sterling. The furniture-making trades 

 employ about 800 hands, though here again the numbers have fallen 

 considerably in recent years. The plant in operation is worth about 

 £15,000. The printing and bookbinding trades employ about 4,000 

 hands, and the gasworks about 1,500, in fifty-seven establishments, 

 with plant worth over £800,000. The soap and candle factories of the 

 Colony employ about 470 hands, producing 4,750,000 lb, candles 

 last year and about 204,000 cwt, soap, and using £60,000 worth of 

 plant. The manufacture of tobacco is a promising industry in the 

 Colony, where the soil and climate largely favour the groAvth of the 

 tobacco plant, and where the population annually spends large sums 

 in its consumption. These facts might well invite the attention of 

 gi'owers of special knowledge in other places. With us the cultivation 

 of tobacco has almost entirely fallen into the hands of Chinese. In 

 1894 we consumed a little short of 3,000,000 lb. weight. Of this 

 nearly 2,000,000 lb. were made up in the local factories from about 

 500,000 lb. of imported American leaf and the balance of local 

 growth. In 1894 we had in the Colony 600 hands employed, with 

 machinery and plant Avorth £51,600 and of 191 horse-power. Seven 

 years ago the number of hands Avas 562, and the value of plant upwards 

 of £83,000, and we worked about 300,000 lb. more of native leaf. 

 Last year the output was 1,732,496 lb. tobacco, 5,117 lb. cigars, and 

 114,971 lb. cigarettes, to the value of £314,671. Seven years ago 

 the figures were, comparatively speaking, much higher, and the value 

 of the local manufacture in 1887 was set down at £350,000. 



These particulars show the present position of the manufacturing 

 outlook in New South Wales. Looked at in the light of the standard 

 of comparison afforded by other manufacturing countries, they are not 

 convincing enough to establish the Colony in that category; but 

 regarded in the view of our OAvn local circumstances, the enormous 

 yield of wealth from easily-worked natural resources, the slow growth 

 of population until \vithin the last forty years, and the brief record 

 represented by the period between the great influx of population in 

 the "golden fifties" and the present, they cannot be estimated as 

 otherwise than encouraging. Nor can the actual figures for the past 

 year be taken as presenting a fair ground for estimate. As we have 

 seen, these returns represented the effects of a depression which has 

 not been confined to the Australasian Colonies, and in many cases the 

 figures of a few years previously represent a much higher degree of 

 manufacturing activity than those of last year. The locking-up of 

 capital has a tendency to restrict manufacture and throw the popula- 

 tion back on primary production, and as it happens that the facilities 

 for this are exceptionally easy in New South Wales no active pressure 

 is at work to drive labour into other channels. Local capital finds an 

 outlet in mining enterprise sufficient for its present requirements, so 

 that no special inducement to promote manufactories is held out from 

 that side. A country which has produced over £100,000,000 worth of 



