Page:The Australian Commonwealth and her relation to the British Empire.djvu/7

 As to the resources of Australia, I think you all know pretty well what they are. We can grow anything, from the productions of the colder climates to the productions of the tropical regions. We have a commerce which is expanding at a phenomenal rate. We have untold stores of mineral wealth, and auriferous areas of many thousands of square miles. Who can doubt that the dazzling discoveries of the past will be repeated? Then we have vast stores of coal, tin, copper, silver—the richest silver mines in the world, buried right in the heart of the continent.

We all hate figures; but I do want to give you some figures which will incidentally show you what our resources are, beside showing what our recent progress has been.

I think we are about 200 years younger than Canada (laughter). Of course you spent several hundred years in fighting; we have never done that. (Laughter). We have as many horses in Australia already as you have in Canada or they have in Great Britain. We have a million head more cattle than you have in Canada. We have ninety-five millions of sheep. I think that is a few millions more than you have in Canada (laughter). Canadians are so patriotic that I cannot get anybody to tell me how many sheep you really have. (Loud laughter.) Our ninety-five millions of sheep produce no less than 800,000,000 pounds' weight of the finest wool in the world. Then, in agriculture, we have twelve million acres already under many kinds of cultivation, wheat being the chief crop. Of minerals the annual production is over $120,000,000 a year. Manufactures do not flourish so readily or quickly in a young country as the primary industries—still we have a splendid variety of manufactures, which has reached $600,000,000 a year in value, and that output has increased during the last three years by 39 per cent, I think that a phenomenal rate of progress, especially when you remember our distance from the great consuming populations of the world. There are 287,000 hands in Australian factories, and in three years there has been an increase of 42,000 hands, that is, 17 per cent, in three years. Our banks have deposits amounting to $720,000,000. The increase in two years in our bank deposits is $130,000,000, or 18 per cent. Our savings banks have, in addition to those figures, deposits