OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13455, 4 June 1907, Page 6

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

[FBOII Ot?E OWN COBBESPONDENT.] Sidney, May 30. THE STATE DEBTS. The financial relations between ..the .vAustralian Commonwealth / and the States is the very important subject just now en gaging the attention of the Premiers' Conference, which opened at .Brisbane or , Monday. Last year in Melbourne the conference approved generally of the proposals then made by Sir John Forrest for • the transfer of State debts to the Commonwealth, his scheme providing that the Commonwealth Treasury should assume the management of the debts of the various States, and call upon them to pay all charges, in connection therewith ; each State to continue to be solely responsible for the interest and all other charges. Another feature ;'■ of Sir John Forrest's scheme was that the States should surrender their right to borrow outside Australia, the Federation alone having the power to raise money in England. At the present conference Mr. Kidston, the Premier of Queensland, has brought forward this subject, and has devoted some attention to the question whether the States can secure all the advantages which the Federal Treasury scheme offers without, any loss of status or efficiency on the part of the State Parliaments. In his opinion they cannot, and the scheme he proposes is that ;an Australian national bank should be established, to be managed by a permanent non-political manager and staff, under the control of the Federal Treasury and the six State Treasuries, as a responsible board of directors. The bank would be subject to such agreement or engagement as any State Government may have already entered into, would manage the whole of the existing public debts of the States; raise all future loans authorised by the Parliament of the Commonwealth, or by any State Parliament, subject to the condition that the bank should have power to determine when, where, or on what terms it should be raised; issue national bank notes; receive from the Australian banks a proportion of their cash reserve in exchange for such notes,. and devote all net profits to the reduction of the national debt. Sir John Forrest attended the conference on Tuesday, when he made a long and interesting speech regarding the financial question, saying that none of the schemes which he had considered were preferable to his own. With regard to State debts, he hoped that the Premiers would agree that the Commonwealth should take them all over. Indeed, he had authority for saying that if they failed to come to some arrangement upon this matter it was the intention of the Government to proceed to carry out its powers under the Constitution, and take over the £202,000,000, which it had the right to do. It was believed that if they had only one denomination of stock firmly established on the London market, secured on the consolidated revenue of the Commonwealth, a considerable advantage and saving to Australia would eventually result. The States should be asked, he thought, to undertake not to borrow on the London market, except through the Commonwealth. This arrangement should continue until December 31, 1920, the date on which it was proposed that the amount and basis of the annual payments by the Commonwealth to the States might be reconsidered by Parliament. The. States should limit their borrowing during that period to the Australian market. His inquiries in England last year had led him to the conclusion that the Commonwealth should be able to raise money in London on better terms than the States; and by the time the whole of the States' debts were redeemed or converted into Commonwealth stock it would mean a saving to! the States of £26,000,000. „. " I

VISIT OF PROFESSOR JORDAN. Professor David Starr Jordan, of - the Leland Stanford University, one of the greatest authorities on education in the United States, is here on a visit,: at the invitation of the Sydney University Extension Board, under whose auspices : he has begun a series of lectures, which are oi exceptional intenest, ; by reason of the high position which he occupies in the educational world. In his first address, "The Call of the Twentieth Century," Professor Jordan drew attention to the strenuous and complex conditions of life in our time, and pointed out that because life was so strenuous and complex it must be democratic. If we had something that needed doing we must find the man. who could do that thing. - , , " We do not seek for a son of Lord This or the Earl of That, for . a scion of i some family which , has lain on velvet , for a thousand years. We want the man who can build the ship, establish the enterprise, invent the machine, carry the message \to Garcia. We do not care what his name is, or where he came from, or. who bis father was, or where he got his education, if he can do the work." Democracy - meant opportunity—opportunity for the man to find - the work -he could r do, opportunity for the work that needed to be done to find the man who could do it. Democracy did not mean equality. It ! meant forever increasing inequality from an equal start. 'It meant equality before the law, a fair start, and a generous. education for every child of the Commonwealth, and after that only the fair play of a fair competition. It was the man who did most for the community, for whom the community should do the most. The most that any community could do was to see fair play between man and man, and to look after great matters of common- interest too large for the individual As to the work for young men to do, Dr. Jordan referred to the wealth of opportunity in engineering, in commerce, in agriculture, in medicine, in law, in teaching, in journalism, and in all forms of applied science. Never before in the history of the world was the young man who could do things and who could be trusted to do them as they should be done, so much in demand. The young men the century did not want were in the "drinking saloons, gambling houses, and about the race tracks ; there were too many of these. It was fair to say that one-third of the strength of the young manhood of America was lost through drunkenness and vice, and he was sorry to be told that conditions in Australia were much the same in this regard. It was only the other two-thirds the century cared for, the rest it held in ruthless scorn. The other lectures of Dr. Jordan included interesting details of the great work which is being accomplished by the American universities.

THE CRICKET CRISIS. The Hon/ W. J. Trickett, M.L.C., "who sought to heal the present cricket trouble by proposing that the suspension imposed upon certain players should be unconditionally lifted, now finds that his wellmeant efforts, instead of solving the problem, have merely complicated it, for when he came down at Monday night's meeting of the Cricket Association with his proposal! a motion was immediately submitted that the subject should be discussed in committee, whereupon Mr. Trickett retorted that if tin's were agreed to, he should resign his office as president of the association, since lie saw no reason why the discussion should not proceed in the full gaze of the public. But the motion was carried by 10 votes to eight; and Mr. Trickett at once resigned, and left the room. The meeting then adjourned, since there was no one to move the resolution. Hence the cricket crisis appears to be as far oft' settlement as ever.

THE .WAGES OF FACTORY , '. '■■'; -WORKERS; y; 5 The statements recently made i, in the Arbitration Court. in Sydney as to the conditions under which the ~ shop assistants live in this city are being equalled. by the revelations of the circumstances of employment in the starch trade in Melbourne, where Mr. Justice Hood is conducting an ( inquiry on, this subject. Ono witness, -a

starch-maker, a ';•■: married man -with three children, said he received 36a for 54 hours | work per week, and thought he had been a coal-lumper ho found work in the starch I factory harder. r His weekly expenditure j was: —Rent, ss; baker, 3s " 6d; batcher, ss; groceries (including tobacco), 12s; wood; 2s 6d; vegetables, :2s ; total, £1 10s. Milk was a luxury to him, and he had to borrow the newspaper. This witness and nearly all the others stated that they bought their clothes on time payment. He said he mended his own and his children's boots, and his wife could not go out, as she had not suitable clothes. Another witness, with a wife and three children, said in order to-keep the home together his wife bought a sewing machine on the time payment system, and with it managed to make from 10s to lis per week, | but even then they got into debt, though •he did not drink or smoke. As his wife was always sewing he had to get his own tea,wash dishes, and look after the children when he came home. One girl who gave evidence said that the cloak she wore cost 12s 6d, and it had taken her twelve months to pay for it. The demand of the employees is for a minimum-wage of £2 per week, and certainly it seems little enough in view of these statements.

COAL LUMPERS. The men who left work at coal lumping the other day and found their places quickly taken by free labourers have had to look elsewhere for work, and a large number of them have gone up to the Queensland sugar plantations, . where they will find _ employment at cutting cane. * The officials of the union claim that-this does not mean', that the men have surrendered in the struggle, but the fact remains that the work of coaling ships is now proceeding quite regularly. , There was quite a scene at one of the Miller's Point wharves on Tuesday evening when many of the unionists left by the steamer Aramac for the sugar plantations. Speeches were made prior to the vessel casting off. It was stated that the wives and "families of the men would* be cared for, and the hope was expressed that when the unionists returned to Sydney they would find conditions more settled. Then, having bidden their comrades good cheer, the men, and even the women and children in the crowd, directed their attention to a big steamer not far away which was being coaled by non-unionists. Epithets were hurled at the men who were working there, and the seamen of the steamer were appealed to not to help "the blacklegs." During this demonstration, it was stated, a shot was fired from somewhere. After this the crowd moved up the hill hooting and jeering, but no acts of violence occurred.