able area of the earth's surface 

 inhabited by man. 



A modern warship, if allowed 

 access to the bays and harbors, 

 could bring about one-half the 

 population within reach of its 

 guns. A belt of country ioo miles 

 wide along the east, south, and 

 southwest edges of the continent 

 would include probably 80 per 

 cent of the Commonwealth popu- 

 lation. There are no inland cities 

 of over 10,000 population, except 

 six mining camps, and the most 

 remote of these is about as far 

 from the sea as is Pittsburgh. 



In the center of the continent 

 is an area larger than all the 

 United States west of the longi- 

 tude of Denver, in which less 

 than 5,000 people reside. 



CITV LIFE EVEN MORE POPULAR 

 THAN IN THE UNITED STATES 



AUSTRALIA 



UNITED STATES 



FRANCE 



ARGENTINA 



A striking feature of the Aus- 

 tralian census is the concentra- 

 tion of population in cities — a 

 phenomenal situation for an agri- 

 cultural and pastoral nation with 

 less than 1 per cent of its area 

 under cultivation and 47 per cent unoccu- 

 pied. The six Australian State capitals 

 include 38.80 per cent of the Common- 

 wealth's population, and five of them are 

 growing at the expense of the back coun- 

 try. Xo other nation, and few States, 

 can match these figures. In South Aus- 

 tralia 45.68 per cent of the people live in 

 Adelaide ; Perth enrolls 37.95 per cent of 

 the people of West Australia ; a large 

 part of the remainder are in mining 

 camps. Sydney, the capital of New 

 South Wales, has 725,000 inhabitants, 

 39.6 per cent of the entire population of 

 the State, and 71 per cent of the increase 

 for the period 1911-1913 is credited to 

 the metropolis. 



Victoria shows an even more marked 

 tendency toward urban concentration. 

 The proportion of the population of Mel- 

 bourne to the total population of the State 

 has steadily increased from 43.3 per cent 

 in 1909 to 47.1 per cent in 1914, and there 

 seems no prospect of a diminution. Dur- 

 ing the three-year period ending 1913, 84 

 per cent of the increased population was 

 credited to Great Melbourne, which is 



A COMPARISON OE THE DENSITY OP POPULATION 



OF AUSTRALIA, THE UNITED STATES, SIBERIA, 

 FRANCE, AND ARGENTINA 



The squares represent the relative areas of several 

 countries and the dots the population, there heing a dot 

 for each 1,000,000 inhahitants. If small squares are 

 formed hy connecting the dots, the relative sizes of 

 these will represent the relative amount of land per 

 inhahitant. 



growing three times as fast as the remain- 

 der of the State. During 1914 a net loss 

 was recorded for the population outside 

 of the metropolis. 



It has interested me to compare the dis- 

 tribution of the first 5,000,000 people 

 within the United States ■ — a number 

 reached about 190 years after the first 

 English settlement — with the distribution 

 of Australia's first 5,000,000, attained in 

 1915 — -127 years after the landing at 

 Botany Bay. In both cases the people 

 were grouped on the edge of the conti- 

 nent, in corresponding positions, their 

 centers of settlement determined by cli- 

 mate and soil and nature of the coast. 

 The chief point of difference is the ab- 

 sence of large cities in the United States. 

 In 1800 New York was one-ninth the size 

 of Sydney, and the entire urban popula- 

 tion of the United States (4 per cent of 

 the total population) could be accommo- 

 dated in the city of Adelaide. 



WHITE AUSTRALIA 



A "white Australia" is the settled 

 policy of the Commonwealth government, 



5T3 



