THE RIVAL CITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11636, 25 April 1901, Page 4

THE RIVAL CITIES.

The Melbourne census is completed. As we anticipated, it has made but little progress during the past decade ; indeed, it has retrograded when the natural increase by births over deaths is taken into consideration. By this factor alone an increase of 70,000 should have been shown, whereas only 3080 arc accounted for. It is hardly consoling to the Victoria capital to know that by counting its suburbs it still exceeds Sydney, for its majority is so slight that another year will probably reverse the order. The following population table shows' this clearly : — 1891. 1901. Increase. Melbourne ... 490,8% 493,956 3,060 Sydney ... 387,331 483,963 101,637 The glory of population leadership is certainly departing from Melbourne. The influence of the huge hinterland upon which the great New South Wales port depends is telling at last, while there can. be little doubt that Federation will markedly encourage its growth and secure its position as the commercial capital of Australia, wherever the political capital may be, Both cities show a preponderance of females, this being a new feature in Sydney and an aggravation of an old feature in Melbourne. The female surplus is 7000 in the . latter city and about half that number in the former. There is no need to seek an explanation for this in the comparative handful of men serving in South Africa. A preponderance of women is as usual in great cities as a preponderance of men in new countries. It is due not merely to the tendency of young men to seek their fortunes by land and sea, leaving their sisters and sweethearts behind them, but to the employment open in such cities to young women from the country districts. Domestic vice, shops, offices and factories all offer occupation to the mode-vi woman. The large immigration, mainly of men, which in the early colonial days made such a disproportionate number of males in colonial statistics, has almost ceased. In 1899, New South Wales only gained 2250 by immigration, so that the natural tendency to popu-lation-equalisation of the sexes is hardly interfered with by that factor. The great Australian cities will probably show still greater preponderance of females in future years, while we may expect, the same indications, even in our smaller New Zealand centres, before the balance for the colony as a whole is turned against the males. In the United Kingdom, owing to the greater emigration of men and to the drafts made by the army, the navy, the; mercantile marine and ether absentee occupations, there were very nearly 900,000 more females than males shown by the census of 1891. Such national conditions are inevitable wherever the activities of life call large numbers of men away, and are more or less in evidence throughout every settled part of the adventurous Gothic stock from which we mainly come.