Industrial Pioneers 267 



lation of the continent rose from two million to 

 three million in eleven and three-quarter years. 

 But it has taken more than sixteen years to in- 

 crease from three to four million, the present 

 population. The position would have been 

 worse but for an opportune discovery of gold 

 in Western Australia. An outlet for the rest- 

 less surplus of unwillingly idle people was 

 found in the continent, and while the rest of Aus- 

 tralia was languishing, Western Australia ex- 

 panded in the rays of a golden sun of prosperity. 

 But the continent could not be bolstered up for 

 long on the basis of gold mines, and would have 

 fared exceedingly ill but for the genius of one 

 man, whose name is still unknown to many 

 Australians. 



Some day Australia will build a national 

 Walhalla perhaps in the bush capital of the 

 Commonwealth to hold the statues of its de- 

 parted great ones. John MacArthur will be 

 there, no doubt, and Hargraves, as well, for 

 these are the pioneers of two of Australia's 

 greatest industries. My third worthy is James 

 Harrison, who first experimented in the ocean 

 carriage of perishable produce. Harrison was a 

 journalist when he was not an inventor who 

 lived in the sleepy little town of Geelong, near 

 the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. The State of 

 Victoria at that time was trying to dispose of the 

 surplus products of its agriculturists meat, but- 

 ter, fruit, poultry, and the like, by creating a 



