DAYS OF TRIAL 293 



heedlessness with which financial obligations were under- 

 taken and ignored. 



4. An all round depreciation in the market value of the colony's 

 staple products wool, wheat and metals. 



These factors were patent, and on the surface, but there was 

 yet another of a more insidious character, the influence of which 

 was not so generally admitted. It was the restriction which the 

 real productive interests of the colony suffered by the transfer of 

 labour and energy to artificial industries bolstered by a misleading 

 fiscal system. The staple industries in full swing, and the produce 

 of the mines fully manned, would at least provide exportable pro- 

 ducts to materially help in adjusting the balance of trade ; but the 

 factories which were propped by the State gave no assistance in 

 that quarter. In nearly every case they were inadequate to local 

 consumption. Their chief recommendation was that they gave 

 employment to a- number of people of both sexes at a higher rate of 

 wages than they could have earned in England. These conditions 

 precluded competition in the world's markets, and the result is that 

 despite the millions which the Victorian taxpayer has had to pay, 

 no industry genuinely beneficial to mankind has been founded in 

 the colony. In the eagerness, however, to make the experiment, an 

 overcrowded Metropolis has developed much frowsy expansion, 

 "hands" have multiplied out of proportion to their surroundings, 

 and the sunny plains of the interior wear an aspect of neglect and 

 desertion that invariably attracts the attention of all visitors to the 

 colony. 



The breakdown in credit was felt throughout all the Colonies, 

 but it was severest in Victoria, and it is only with institutions hav- 

 ing then colonial headquarters there that this record professes to 

 deal. South Australia had passed through a severe ordeal a few 

 years earlier, resulting in the liquidation of two out of her four 

 local banks. New Zealand and Tasmania had suffered under a 

 kindred experience. New South Wales led the van in the suspen- 

 sion of numerous land banking companies and building societies 

 early in 1891, some months before the crisis assumed severity 

 in Melbourne, but the total amounts involved in that colony were 

 far less than in Victoria, even after the disasters of 1893. 



