456 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION PF, 
when any considerable immigration of labour occurs from countries where the 
standard of living is essentially and, as it were, permanently lower, and these are 
rendered graver when accentuated by difference of race. In old and new 
countries alike the entry of a low type of foreign white labour may bring about a 
lowering of the general standard in certain industries or certain places, with 
harm, not necessarily limited to the district or employment in which it settles. 
Still, apart from the more general considerations of policy, interference would 
probably involve restriction of the more desirable type of labour already dealt 
with and thus be economically disadvantageous. The case of coloured labour 
is admittedly different even in this respect. Standards vary and the racial 
barrier seems to prevent their speedy adjustment. But the difficulties of the 
whole matter are shown more clearly if we turn to consider immigration in its 
relation to general social progress and political government. Here the main 
point is the possibility of assimilation. How far or how easily, it is asked, can 
such new elements be absorbed into the general life and made an integral part of 
a homogeneous population? Now, it is not my business to discuss the question 
in detail, still less to examine any particular policy which may be advocated or 
which may have been adopted. All that is necessary is to note this difficulty and 
to emphasise its existence in the case of new countries and especially of those 
countries or places where labour of this type is required or attracted by reason of 
climate or other like causes. Two considerations may come into sharp conflict : 
on the one hand, the rapid production of wealth may be assisted; on the other 
hand, serious effects in respect of economic progress, nationality, and orderly 
growth may be experienced. 
In no country, it should be added, has the question of the supply of labour 
from outside played a more important part in economic history than in 
Australia. During the early period not only was it one of the influences which 
tended to the continuance of the transportation system, but it was, if not the 
chief, one of the two chief factors in the policy of colonisation and settlement 
devised and advocated by that very distinguished man, Edward Gibbon 
Wakefield. In more recent years it has been associated with state assistance, 
and also with forms of indentured labour. And it remains one of the problems 
before the country. 
Thirdly, modern methods and modern science are applied to production even 
in its early phases, to agriculture and the extractive industries as well as in 
trade and manufacture. The consequences are both many and great. Rapid 
and sudden growth is rendered possible, but this, as already indicated, results 
in consequences not always or wholly advantageous. Such effects are the more 
evident when the natural resources of the country are rich. Furthermore, when 
such occurs there is an invariable tendency to substitute large-scale systems of 
production for the small-scale systems characteristic of production in the past 
when in an early stage, and this is not without significance both economic and 
political. No doubt this is of greater moment when a development of this 
order takes place in a land peopled by native races, who are forced, as it were, 
into a system wholly alien to their social surroundings, and one which they fail 
to understand. There is a disastrous incongruity between their method of 
employment and their social environment. ‘Though of less it is still of some 
importance when the population itself is modern in civilisation and outlook. 
To some extent, but only partially, they inherit from their ancestors in other 
lands the lessons slowly acquired in the time of small industry and occupation, 
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the more rapid progress due to 
the reasons given, accompanied as it is by greater vicissitudes, offers a more 
general opportunity of success to those willing to work hard than is possible in 
other countries. Rapid progress always tends towards this end, and it does so 
the more especially when the organisation is more flexible and less marked by 
custom. Not only is the field itself wider, but the changes in the field are more 
frequent. : : : : 
The difference in economic development, thus briefly depicted, implies, it 
must be remembered, a somewhat parallel difference in administrative and 
political life. If we take such a country as England, small-scale production 
was part and parcel of a system in which small local communities grew up 
. practically self-contained and self-governed. Thus the strength of the Govern- 
ment rested largely on local administration which made its influence felt in the 
