Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/60

 40 of employing it, and every new device is, so far, a successful rival to the tavern.

The public-house interest in Victoria accordingly have always, I believe, been opposed to the eight hours movement, and at some of the early elections it used all its influence against Ministers like Captain (now Sir Andrew) Clarke, who had shown favour to the cause. Then, according to universal testimony, while the upper and middle classes in Victoria drink a great deal more than the corresponding classes at home, the working classes there do not drink more than the working classes here, and the colonial-born are decidedly more sober than the immigrants. It may not be fair to compare the young colonials with the 'old chums'—the survivors of the early immigrants—because the old chums who are still working are the residuum, if I may use the word without meaning offence, of a class from which numbers of the best members have long ago risen to be employers; and of all working men in the colony the old chums are admitted to drink most. But the born Victorian is also more temperate than the 'new chum,' the recent immigrant from the old country. The foreman of the Australian Glass Company said before the Shop Hours Commission, 'The glass trade is, of course, a thirsty trade, and the imported article, I can assure you, swallow pretty liberal quantities of liquor, but more than half the colonial hands are teetotallers. The others make the excuse that it is such a hot trade. I find the colonial youth generally intelligent, expert, and steady.' M. R. Twopenny, in his Town Life in Australia (p. 98), says, 'The best workman, when he chooses, and the most difficult to get hold of, is the thoroughbred colonial,' and that though the sudden increase of wages is sometimes too strong a temptation for the fresh incomer, the settled working-class population are at least as temperate as they are in England. 'For often,' he says, 'the sudden increase of wages is too much for his mental equilibrium, and a man who was sober enough as a poor man at home finds no better use for his loose cash than to put it into the public-house till. But, as a class, I do not think Australian working men are less sober than those at home' (p. 96). Then, in spite of their 'larrikins'—the violent young street roughs, who are an irregular and, unfortunately, increasing product of colonial energy—the people of Melbourne need only one policeman for every 700 of population, while the people of London need one for every 350, and the people of Manchester one for every 440.

Now, all these things simply could not be, after thirty-four