been the commercial emporium of Australia. Previous to the formation of the Federation New South Wales was the representative free trade, as Victoria was the representative protectionist, Australian colony. These conditions have been modified under the uniform fiscal régime of the Commonwealth.

As a whole, therefore, Australia is a scantily populated largely undeveloped country, whose urban growth has been stimulated beyond the wont of most young nations, and whose chief industries are as yet pastoral and mining. The freeholding population is relatively small as compared with the wage-earners, and agriculture has lagged somewhat as compared with other forms of primary production. Conditions partly climatic, and depending upon the character and resources of the country, and partly social and due to historical causes, have reversed what we are accustomed to consider the normal order of development in a virgin land, and the employing have antedated the independent occupations.

HISTORY.

Australia had been partially known to European navigators for nearly two centuries, when Captain Cook, in a voyage that retains permanent significance in the history of discovery and colonization, coasted its eastern shores in 1770. His favorable reports of the country around Botany Bay and in the vicinity of what is now Sydney Harbor were not forgotten, and when, after the loss of her North American colonies, England sought new ventures seaward, and especially a place suitable for convict settlement, Australia and New Zealand were already places prominent in the public mind as lands likely to prove suitable for occupation. Thus it happened that in January, 1788, a settlement was effected at Sydney by a body of some 750 English convicts and a third as many officers and guards. After the usual vicissitudes of a young and distant colony, the population gradually began to take root, free settlers came in, local explorations revealed new resources, and by the close of the governorship of General Macquarie in 1821 the routine conditions of early colonial life had become thoroughly established. Tasmania had been settled in 1804, and a year before that the first shipment of wool was made to England. Civil courts and banks had been established, and several ship loads of voluntary emigrants had arrived, while many convicts whose time had expired were beginning a new life in the country. Pastoral occupation gradually extended, and a certain degree of participation in the government was granted to the colonists. In order to anticipate French settlement a township was established on King George's Sound, in what is now Western Australia, and, following the coast exploration northward, a penal post was placed on the site of the present capital of Queensland. Voluntary settlement began in

what is now Victoria, and under the Gibbon Wakefield plan a formal colonization of South Australia took place. So by 1836 the nucleus. of each of the six States of the present Federation was in existence. Public opinion was at this time centered upon the struggle to abolish convict transportation to the colonies, and here first appears the line of cleavage between the large landowners and the free working classes that has remained, in one form or another, characteristic of Australian politics. The "squatting" interests wished to retain their convict laborers. Even to-day in the "back blocks" of Queensland one may hear faint reminiscences of the old assertion that the best workmen. ever had upon the stations were the men contracted from the stockades. The question was fought over in New South Wales during the decade ending with 1840, in which year an order in council in England abolished transportation to that colony. But the penal establishments in other colonies continued to receive recruits from the mother country until a later date. The rudiments of an elected parliament were created in 1843, when the legislative council, which had heretofore been a small advisory body appointed by the governor, was increased to 36 members, 24 of whom were made elective under a franchise limited by a property qualification of about $1,000. There was a $10,000 property qualification for members. The mother colony at this time included the present States of Victoria and Queensland, Tasmania and Western and South Australia were still under more autocratic forms of government.

The year 1851 marks a turning point in the history of Australia. The next decade saw the discovery of gold, the influx of a great population of adventurers and free laborers, the establishment of constitutional government upon a modern parliamentary basis, the beginning of systematic development of interior transportation routes and railway construction, and the disappearance of the convict labor question and the rise of the land question to the most prominent place in public interest. The following forty years of political history are occupied with the struggle between the squatter and the settler, or between cultivating and grazing interests, for the control of the government and the making and administration of the land laws. The political division was in a very general way along lines which had been defined by the convict labor issue previously, and which, with some qualifications, have been continued in the more recent alignment of parties. upon the labor question. The baronial sentiment of the great landholder manifested itself in 1852, when the committee of the legislative council appointed to draw up a plan for a new constitution reported in favor of creating a colonial peerage, from which should be selected the members of the upper house of the new legislature. The convict labor question itself gave birth to the desire for an independent government in Queensland, but the fight between selectors and squatters

for the public lands continued until 1868, when a temporarily satisfactory act was passed, without finally disposing of the question. Victoria, which had secured separate government in 1851, escaped the convict labor question entirely, and to a less degree escaped the land question. An inrush of a quarter of a million miners in the three years ending with 1855 placed her government upon a permanently democratic basis. The year last mentioned a constitution was proclaimed establishing a parliamentary government, with a legislature of two chambers, both of which were elective. In less than eight years this constitution had been amended so as to establish manhood suffrage and vote by ballot and to abolish the property qualification for members of the lower house. State aid to religion was done away with, and large tracts of land were opened to settlement, the maximum area allowed any selector being 640 acres. But the fight between the popular and the conservative party raged with possibly even greater bitterness around fiscal issues in Victoria than it did around the land question elsewhere. This resolved itself finally into a contest between the upper and the lower house upon the question of a protective tariff, complicated by a dispute over constitutional points relating to the respective legislative authorty of the two bodies. The popular branch tacked tariff bills upon its appropriations, which were as persistently thrown out by the landholding freet raders of the council, until revenue ceased and the treasury was empty. The governor was recalled by the home government for becoming involved in the difficulty, but the protectionists finally won the day, and held their ground in that colony until federation, when they led successfully a second campaign with this as a Commonwealth issue.

The question of land tenures and administration has been thrown into comparative obscurity since about the year 1890 by the rise into prominence of two other issues of even greater immediate importance. The first of these resulted from the agitation for a federation of the Australasian colonies, which was effected, so far as the six States of the present Commonwealth are concerned, in 1901. This agitation brought with it, first the question of federation itself, and later the still discussed and disputed details of reciprocal adjustment of State and Federal powers, and the multitude of constitutional points and matters of Commonwealth policy that appear like a host of unexpected guests upon the scene as soon as an organic act of such importance is put into actual operation. The second group of issues relates directly to industrial legislation, and is a result of the appearance upon the political field of organized labor as a separate and independent party. This party organization of the workingmen was consummated at a moment particularly favorable to their ends. They were not hampered, like the older organizations, by local traditions and policies, by remnants of interstate jealousies, and by a general disturbance of their habitual

grooves of action by the issue and accomplishment of national union; but they began with a national platform and policy, with the effective discipline born of their trade union experience, and with views and methods absolutely unconditioned by regard for precedent and past experience. Federation, which came like a disturbing shock to the established parties, found the workingmen organized and ready to avail themselves of the new conditions thereby created. For this reason they have possessed an influence disproportionate to their numerical strength, and have been able to dictate policies to parties individually stronger than themselves.

It is in the detailed history of the 15 years just mentioned that all the movements and legislation of special interest to the student of present industrial conditions lies recorded. Behind that need be remembered only the labor and land conditions that gave rise to the large estates and the fact, most profoundly significant of all, that the small farmer and the small homestead have hitherto contributed comparatively little to the life and labor of Australia.

The Federal and state constitutions of Australia differ from those of the Union in this fundamental respect, that they are, formally at least, acts of the Imperial Parliament, and are subject to direct modification. by that body. In fact, however, they are drafted and amended by the representatives of the people whom they are to govern and formally ratified by them before Parliament takes action; so that the intervention of the Imperial Government is largely a matter of form, except in respect to subjects that involve the relations of the Commonwealth and its component States to foreign powers or to other portions of the Empire. In each of the States, as in the Commonwealth itself, there is a royal governor, who has the shadow of executive power and fulfills a more or less traditional and ornamental function as nominal head of the Government and representative of the sovereign. Real executive authority rests, as in England, with a responsible ministry. The legislature is in every instance bicameral, and the upper house in the state government is known as the legislative council. This body is elected for a term of years in each of the States except New South Wales and Queensland, where members are appointed by the governor for life. The Commonwealth senate is an elective body, in which the six States are equally represented, following in this respect the precedent of the United States Constitution. The lower house is in every instance an elective and popular body. The Federal franchise is determined by the Federal, and not, as with us, by the state governments. Women are allowed to vote in Federal elections and in state elections in South and in Western Australia and in New South Wales. There is a property qualification for voting in most of the States, and property holders still possess a plural vote in Queensland. Victoria has recently passed an act restricting the franchise of civil servants and giving

government employees separate representation in parliament. The payment of members has gradually been introduced and prevails in state and Federal parliaments, except in cases of legislative councilors appointed for life.

The Commonwealth constitution follows the example of the United States Constitution in leaving all residuary authority, not expressly granted to the Federal government by the organic act, to the individual States; but the expressed Federal powers are in many directions more ample than those granted to the central government in our own country in domestic matters; though in all foreign relations the right to levy war, to make peace, and to enter into treaties other than commercial with foreign powers, the authority of the Australian government is limited by the Imperial prerogatives. There is no bill of rights or series of express constitutional guarantees limiting the power of the legislature over individual liberty and property, except that trial on indictment for any offense against a law of the Commonwealth shall be by jury. The ultimate interpretation of the constitution rests, with the permission of the Government, in the Privy Council of England.

The more extended powers of the Federal Parliament of Australia, as compared with those of the American Congress, relate to marriage and divorce, railways, insurance, and financial and trading corporations, foreign corporations, invalid and old age pensions, “conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State," and matters referred to the Parliament of the Commonwealth by the parliament or parliaments of any State or States; but so that Federal laws enacted under this last authority shall extend only to those States by whose parliaments the matter is referred, or which afterward adopt these laws. It is under the last two provisions that an as yet undefined authority is given to the central government to enact laws regulating industry, an authority which, however closely curtailed by subsequent precedent and constitutional decisions, the labor party hopes ultimately, through the action of individual States, to place permanently and unqualifiedly in the hands of the Commonwealth.

THE POLITICAL LABOR PARTY AND SOCIALISM.

The political labor movement of Australia is an outgrowth of trade unionism. Its dominating impulse has not been heretofore socialistic in the technical sense, though its ultimate aims and actual measures look more and more toward government control of the means of production. But it is not a theoretical and doctrinaire propaganda undertaken with the idea of revolutionizing society. Rather it is a more or less empirical and opportunist movement, with its views centered upon certain practical and immediately realizable aims in the way of industrial legislation. It is the product of conditions peculiarly Austral