LONELY AUSTRALIA : THE UNIQUE CONTINENT 



527 



eight bob a day" — only the portion relat- 

 ing to rest has been retained. Stores are 

 forced, not permitted, to close at 6 p. m. 

 on four days, at 9 or 10 p. m. on one day, 

 at 1 p. m. on Saturday; but drug stores 

 and saloons and restaurants are ex- 

 empted. 



After watching railroad laborers doing 

 "the government stroke," it was easy to 

 understand the opinion of contractors, 

 who had had experience in the United 

 States, Canada, England, France, or Ger- 

 many, that the work accomplished in an 

 eight-hour day in Australia was the equiv- 

 alent of that performed in six and one- 

 half to seven hours in other countries. 



A LIVING WAGE DEFINED 



The theory of the minimum wag'e is in 

 practical operation. The fluctuating cost 

 of living is recorded in detail by various 

 boards and furnishes a basis for awards 

 in industrial disputes. It is interesting to 

 note the definition of a living wage as 

 formulated by the Court of Industrial 

 Arbitration of New South Wales in 

 1914: 



"The living wage is standardized as the 

 wage which will do neither more nor less 

 than enable a worker of the class to 

 which the lowest wage would be awarded 

 to maintain himself, his wife, and two 

 children — the average dependent family — 

 in a house of three rooms and a kitchen, 

 with food, plain and inexpensive, but 

 quite sufficient in quantity and quality to 

 maintain health and efficiency, and with 

 an allowance for the following other ex- 

 penses : Fuel, clothes, boots, furniture, 

 utensils, rates, life insurance, savings, ac- 

 cident or benefit societies, loss of employ- 

 ment, union pay, books and newspapers, 

 train and tram fares, sewing-machine, 

 mangle, school requisites, amusements 

 and holiday, intoxicating liquors, tobacco, 

 sickness and death, domestic help, un- 

 usual contingencies, religion, or charity." 



Elaborate legislative and judicial ma- 

 chinery has been devised to adjust mis- 

 understandings between employers and 

 employees and to prevent strikes and 

 lockouts — an experiment which is attract- 

 ing world-wide interest. In 19 14 five 

 hundred and twenty-two State boards 

 dealing with disputes in various occupa- 



tions were sitting and the docket of the 

 Commonwealth courts were overloaded. 



While many disagreements have been 

 composed by these various boards, indus- 

 trial unrest has increased to a discourag- 

 ing extent, and the difficulty experienced 

 by courts and boards in enforcing their 

 awards, except as against employers, 

 tends to nullify the effect of arbitration. 

 The number of industrial disputes has 

 increased since the Industrial Arbitra- 

 tion Act of 1912 became operative, and 

 shows little diminution in consequence of 

 the present war. 



Judging from the New South Wales 

 statistics, the parties to disputes prefer to 

 fight it out. Of three hundred and thir- 

 teen "industrial dislocations" in this State 

 for the year 19 14, two hundred and forty- 

 five were settled by "strife," forty-five by 

 "arbitration," and twenty-three by "other 

 means." 



THREE AUSTRALIAN CITIES 



While the visitor may feel that the 

 Australian capital cities are sapping the 

 life of the rural sections, he must admit 

 their, attractiveness. They are clean and 

 are not overcrowded, and lack the con- 

 gested districts of tenement houses. 

 Parks are numerous, the streets are orna- 

 mented with trees, and an effort is made 

 to decrease the natural ugliness of trolley 

 and telephone poles and street lights. 

 Gardens, which take the place of lawns, 

 are everywhere present, and where the 

 city meets the country the zone of ram- 

 shackle buildings and unkept yards, char- 

 acteristic of many American cities, is 

 conspicuous by its absence. 



Sydney is the seventh city in size in 

 the British Empire, being exceeded only 

 by London, Calcutta, Bombay, Glasgow, 

 Liverpool, and Manchester. It is about 

 the size of Boston or St. Louis, two of 

 the five largest cities of North America. 

 Its population is exceeded in the South- 

 ern Hemisphere only by Buenos Ayres 

 and Rio de Janeiro. 



Sydney has grown spontaneously, like 

 Boston, not according to a previous plan, 

 like Washington or Salt Lake City. It 

 has straight streets and crooked streets, 

 long streets and short streets, boulevards 

 and streets too narrow to permit double- 



