THE PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT THE PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT BY GEORGE MEUDELL LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD. BROADWAY HOUSE: 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.G. Printed in Great Britain by The Botuering Press, Plymouth. CONTENTS CHAP. FACE I. EARLY EXPERIENCES . . .1 II. LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS . I I III. POLITICS, LEAGUES, ASSOCIATIONS, CLUBS. THE KYABRAM MOVEMENT . . 34 IV. BANKS AND BANKERS . . .54 V. MINES AND MINING. STOCK EXCHANGE. OIL QUEST . . . .8l VI. FORTUNES MISSED . . .130 VII. TRAVELS A TABLOID OF TRAVEL . 145 VIII. PEOPLE I HAVE KNOCKED ABOUT WITH . 190 IX. AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE . . . 227 X. EARLY EXPERIENCES. HOTELS, CAFES, DINNERS, ENTERTAINMENTS . . 273 FOREWORD MY travels in forty countries covering over 400,000 miles by land and sea, on over 400 steamships, and through about 600 hotels, allow me to claim I have travelled further than most Australians. Of course, postmen, commercial travellers, sea-captains and rail- way guards have an opportunity of breaking my record for distance. During my travels I have met lots of people who have been everywhere, have seen little, and remembered less. I have not been able to find a better country than my own Australia. The old controversy as to which is the finest harbour city in the world can only be truthfully settled in favour of Sydney, with Rio Janeiro half a length away second, and Naples a bad third. Among the " also rans " are Hobart, Auckland, Queenstown, Quebec, Nagaski, San Francisco, and Hong-Kong, precisely in that order. Before going abroad to view the world I saw my native land fairly extensively and knew something of the South Sea Islands and of glorious New Zealand. There is no such picturesque country elsewhere as New Zealand, although we have in Australia magnificent scenery of a quality unknown to the European. In fact the traveller does not need to go outside Aus- tralasia for sightseeing, or to see the best, get the best or do the best this planet affords. vii FOREWORD All these years of travel over the Seven Seas have fixed firmly in my soul and mind the belief that my native land, Australia, is the best country and the Australians are the best people on the globe. The finest people of all the nations are the French, and unlike most other peoples the French as a nation love their homeland, passionately and devotedly. The English, the Scotch, the Londoners (who are a curious sect of the British people standing apart), Germans, Italians, Swiss and all those other races from the cold north of Europe have no obsessing love of country. The Irish have mostly left Ireland, but they were forced out. For freedom, for food, for work, for money, they leave their homes as soon as they can. And most of those countries are good places to get away from. The Australian is pure-bred, of one race, and that (excepting the French) the best race of them all the miscalled Anglo-Saxon. The latest figures are not available, but those of the 1921 census give the birth places of the inhabitants of Australia as 86 per cent born in Australasia, 10 per cent born in the United Kingdom, and only 4 per cent born in foreign coun- tries. Ours is, perhaps, the purest breed of people living. The strain was a good one too, because only the strong and healthy men and women were able to travel from Europe hither, and speaking generally, the Government immigrants in later years were examined and selected. So the Australian is well and cleanly bred from a good stock, and endowed with viii FOREWORD excellent bone and blood. Given these requisites of pure blood and strong bone, it is only necessary to use plenty of wholesome food in a fine climate to produce, physically and mentally, healthy men and women. The Australian is a superior being physically. Other nations do not produce such a high proportion of able-bodied men and women as the Australian nation, because Australians are essentially livers out of doors. If our men are in every respect the finest males living, what can be said of our women ? My travels in 450 cities in every region of the globe enable me to judge, and without reserve I can declare the Australian woman is the healthiest, sanest and most beautiful in the wide world. The women of Norway and Sweden are perhaps physically stronger, those of Odessa perhaps in the mass prettier, maybe Grafton Street, Dublin, or Princes Street, Edinburgh, or Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne may offer a few picked specimens of the highest form of womanhood ; yet in the mass our Australian girls and women easily bear the palm as the best and most capable women of all the nations, fit comrades and helpmates of the very best men. Our Australian boys and girls are better educated than those of other nations ; and speaking broadly our school system is in its infancy, in a state of flux, from which is being evolved a more complete and advanced educational environment and atmosphere. In the matter of education we have been hampered ix CHAPTER I EARLY EXPERIENCES MY father, William Meudell , by descent related to the Hertford family of Seymours , was a highly educated man from Edinburgh who, with William Grant, a crony of his, came to Australia in search of health and gold. At Geelong, Henry Miller who had just helped to es- tablish the Bank of Victoria was on the wharf looking for a couple of " pommies " to work on his farm at Bacchus Marsh. He asked the two white-faced, white- handed young men whether they wanted work. They used the Scottish equivalent of " My oath, Mister." " All right," said Miller, " I want you to take a load of palings by bullock team to Bacchus Marsh." They had no recollection of ever having seen a bullock in their lives, and it took them three weeks to learn bullock driving and swearing, and as well how to travel to Bacchus Marsh. Every morning was devoted to chasing bullocks all over the landscape and then yoking them up. When they reached Bacchus Marsh they were a mass of callosities corns, warts, bunions and blisters all over their hands, arms and feet. " Money " Miller said to my dad, " How would you like to join the Bank of Victoria, Meudell ? " ' That's my profession," said my father, and he took the billet in the Bendigo branch at five pound a week, and slept alongside the gold for eight years. Not very long before he died " Money " Miller, Chair- man of the Bank of Victoria, sent for my father, then the General Manager, to visit him at " Findon " Kew. He found the old man sitting at a green baize card table playing with twenty-five new golden sovereigns, PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT red hot from the mint, delicious to the touch and sight, better than aspirin for a headache and an excellent cure for that universal complaint, tightness of the chest. Old " Money " Miller asked my father to prepare all the requisite papers to make applications to the Supreme Court to wind up the Bank of Victoria and distribute the assets among the shareholders. The old chap was in his dotage, but what a lovely dotage to be in, to just do nothing but sit all day playing with new yellow " Jimmy Goblins," to absorb their glitter and harken to their click and clink. Isn't it a delightful way to spend a long life gathering money, piling it up, seeing it grow without spending more than keeps one alive, and then to pass on to another existence conscious of having made heavy footprints on the sands of time, and indulging one's ruling passion to the utmost right up to the door of death ? It's a curious case of putrefaction of the soul. EARLY CAREER My father took me into the Bank of Victoria and I learned all I could about the craft in several positions, from " pig-boy " to teller. I learned shorthand to get into head office as secretary to the Inspector, E. G. Harrison, who sent me to Horsham during the wheat season. It was a horrible place full of banks, and inns, poor food, bad drink, too many card- players and betting men, and as rude and crude as a Californian mining camp. So I applied for a billet in the Sandhurst Savings Bank shortly after George E. Emery, the very capable General Manager of the State Savings Bank, joined the service at Castlemaine. Had I stayed in the bank I would have been a senior officer to-day. Eager for personal freedom and better pay, I became a public accountant and was doing well when the late B. J. Fink found me EARLY EXPERIENCES out and offered me the job of assistant manager of the Mercantile Finance Guarantee and Trustee Company, the pivot and headquarters of the land and finance boom then starting on its meteoric career. J. M. Bruce, Stanley Bruce's father, O. Fenwick and J. H. Dodgshun were the directors ; B. J. Fink was Chairman ; J. Me. A. Howden, manager ; and Andrew Lyell, the best accountant Melbourne ever had, was inspector. I learned high finance all right and lost twenty thousand pounds buying the blessed or cursed shares of the Company. EARLY LIFE ILLNESS The greatest mistake I have made in my life was to believe three doctors that I was dying and ought to give up work. Brought up by my parents on homoeo- pathy I never was able to understand why people had any faith in medicine. Doctors prescribe medicine of which they know nothing to cure diseases in a body of which they know less. Materia medico, and the British Pharmacopoeia should be suppressed by force. Doctors know very little and what they know they use blindly on their patients. They cannot cure cancer, consumption, baldness, or rheumatoid arthritis, to name only a few universal diseases. The few diseases they can cure are mostly mental, diseases of the nerves created by the mind, by thinking and by fear. I was doing a big business on the Melbourne Stock Exchange which was always growing. Working too hard my system ran down and I spat blood. So I consulted a doctor, a member of the British Medical Associa- tion, who said I was ill and must stop work. The second B.M.A. man, looking like a coffin-lifter's helper with a belly-ache, shook his head and asked me whether I had made my will. This put the wind up me, so I stopped work, downed tools and went to London. The first B.M.A. chap said, " You have PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT only three months to live, make your will and go home to Melbourne." That was nineteen years ago. The next B.M.A. member was a big pot, a Royal physician, who also condemned me to death as being in the last stage of tuberculosis. I swore at him gently. I went away for a long sea trip to Burma, Malaya and East Indies on my way home. Fear, fright, funk, those three most deadly and damnable curses and ills that afflict humanity, caused me to give my splendid Stock Exchange business away and thereby ruined myself. However, my mate and I went to Bendigo, lived in the open air at Kangaroo Flat, and I swallowed beaten up eggs and milk to the extent of three quarts a day. I slept like a night watchman, avoided exercise, a thing that kills more people than it saves, and in twelve months I gained three stone weight. After that my diet was crayfish, onions and stout. The hole in my lung filled up, what with I don't know, and all that happened twenty-one years ago. What funny folks doctors are, and what a zany I was to believe their doleful maunderings ! Now I believe that all diseases are mental in origin. A change in the mental outlook is therefore a health force. In a year I gained three stone weight and entirely renewed the vitality which had led to my undoing. Don't need doctors nor their beastly physic, and have only had one illness since, an attack of shingles, which a doctor friend told my wife would take three weeks to disappear. My friend, James Moore Hickson, the celebrated faith healer, attended and cured me, and I went back to the office the next day. Abolish fear from the world and you will abolish disease. Never to be born would be best for mortal man, but hardly one man in 100,000 has this luck. It is really fiddle-faddle and of no interest to any- body but myself, yet some unlucky mortal suffering EARLY EXPERIENCES from tuberculosis or consumption may make use of my experience in curing myself of the white plague. For the first forty years of life I worked too hard and used up my vitality too quickly. Ever since passing that milestone I have drifted and let things rip and I am much happier. When doing splendidly on the Stock Exchange I caught consumption and a silly ass of a doctor said, " Give it up, shut your office ; make your will ; go away. Your spit is malignant." It might have been, so I gave my seat and my fine business away and went travelling with my mate. EARLY EXPERIENCE I am glad to admit I have spent a very happy life crammed full of varied experiences. David Mickle, an exceptionally intellectual man, a Victorian Post Office Inspector, induced me to make a complete study of Herbert Spencer's philosophy to gain a groundwork of First Principles. Years after, Alfred Deakin, a friend of Mickle's, who also helped to fashion my reading curriculum, told me he had found Herbert Spencer's philosophy impracticable, and with that I agreed. The only man who could frame a workable system of philosophy would be a lawyer who had been a land shark and who had been a com- pany promoter and had gone insolvent. Deakin gave me much good literary advice and persuaded me to study Ralph Waldo Emerson to get a knowledge of the canons of conduct. So there you are, Herbert Spencer for character building and Ralph Waldo Emerson for framing one's conduct ; copious libations of Herbert Spencer and long banquets with Emerson. And in addition to being thankful for a happy life, love of travel, a product of atavism, derived from Viking ancestors who as soldiers and sailors were moss-troopers, bandits, buccaneers and pirates, nour- ished my desire to see the world. So I have seen the PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT two finest sights on earth : the Taj Mahal fane in India, and Carbine winning the Melbourne Cup in 1890, carrying 10 stone 5 Ib. over two miles. EARLY DAYS BANK OF VICTORIA The best thing ever done by me was to write an essay at the age of fifteen creating that blessed and priceless device, " Australia for the Australians." The most blessed gift by atavism to me was the sense of humour bequeathed through Scottish ancestors who were descended from Vikings. Up to my great grandfather's time they were generally soldiers and sailors. My grandfather and father were Scotch bankers, and the precious endowment of humour which had lain dormant and unused for untold generations seems to have been imbued with life amongst bank ledgers, overdrafts, bills payable, and unpayable, and Head Office circulars, the funniest of all human documents. Like Bernard Shaw, my way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world. The day I joined the Bank of Victoria in knickerbockers (listen to that first hiss of egotism) the staff assembled to receive me into the craft, and twenty underpaid and overworked bank clerks in- ducted me to their guild in the strong room. Not one of them got over 150 a year, the ruling wage. The chairman, still alive and always laughing, wound up his advice to be a good honest banker like my father, with this warning, " If you ever feel a desire to go wrong, don't prig petty cash or enter threepenny letters as sixpennies, collar 10,000, and be sure to burn the bally books." Years afterwards the secretary of the Bankers' Association, when he heard me tell that story said solemnly, " George, if you ever want to be head of the Melbourne Savings Bank drop funny stories and try and look like Archibald Currie," a dour, sour, Scotch sea-captain and then the chairman EARLY EXPERIENCES of the Savings Bank, who looked as though he never had laughed in his life, yet left a lot of money he did not know how to spend. Most rich men look wise and hold their tongues and their money. You cannot, young man, practise the divine gift of humour and get rich. This world dislikes people who laugh, unless they do it for a living like Harry Lauder or Charlie Chaplin. Henry Ford has never laughed and John D. Rockfeller has never smiled, yet regard their possessions ! Hugo Stinnes, the great German financier, and Jimmy Tyson, the successful keeper of sheep and cattle, died from the same obstruction of their risible organs. If the general managers of the twelve banks that burst in 1891 and 1893 had kept paid clowns to make fun of the valuations of city and suburban land, made by the old-established auctioneers and valuators of Melbourne in the land boom days, their banks would never have closed their doors. Every bank should keep a laughing department where absurd valuations and ridiculous securities could be laughed off the premises. EARLY EXPERIENCES As a schoolboy I cut my right eye with a knife and lost the sight. For a long time I lived under the over- hanging fear that the good eye would fail through sympathy, so I consulted several leading oculists in London and Edinburgh, and one each in Weisbaden, Homburg, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Venice. All except one advised the excision of the wounded optic. Dr. George Anderson Crichett of Harley Street, London, told me to stick to the invalid eye and for thirty-five years I enjoyed his friendship. Instead of getting stale magazines in Sir George's waiting- room, sherry, port and biscuits were provided, and patients invited by printed notice to help themselves. I think the sherry was '56 and the port a '48, both PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT excellent wines having the effect of clearing one's vision. Resting against a magnificent cloisonne" vase in the centre of the mahogany table was another fine specimen of the printer's art simply mentioning that " patients are politely requested to pay fees by cash." Sir George had specially made waistcoats with roomy pockets. In the port side pocket he put silver coins, and in the starboard one he slipped the sovereigns. Five pound Bank of England notes drifted into his hip pockets. At the end of a busy day Dr. Crichett had a decided list to starboard slightly canting towards his stern. He was a wonderful oculist and a charming man. As a young and enterprising tuft-hunter, I desired to see some of the great people of England, so voyaged to Cambridge to call on Professor Sydney Howard Vines, a cousin of my father's. He was an eminent botanist and appeared to be stuffed with the same sort of cotton wool they use to preserve dead mammals. Vine's friends were the sons of Charles Darwin, and his close cobber was Frank Darwin. Calling at King's College, Vine's man told me he was up an oak tree with Dr. Darwin inspecting a new aphis discovered that day, so I strolled down and introduced myself to my professor cousin up the tree. He asked me to go back to his rooms and wait. It was about 12.30 and I was hungry, also young. The factotum told me there were three chops, a pound of cheese, and a gallon of table ale for lunch with a sufficiency of bread. Half a crown proved a big enough bribe, so the unjust steward cooked the chops which I ate and I left the cheese and bread for Mr. Vines who arrived for lunch at 1.30. Luckily Frank Darwin had gone home, and my cousin for one time more was a martyr to science while I was well fed and happy. MERCANTILE FINANCE COMPANY When the late B. J. Fink cajoled me into joining the Mercantile Finance Guarantee Trustees and Agency Company as Assistant Manager, upon the specious plea that he would train me in la haute finance ', John McAlister Howden was the Manager, and I filled the vacancy made when Andrew Lyell, a leading Scotch accountant, left the company. Fink's high finance was pure grotesquerie, something to be laughed at. His idea of high finance was to ask high commissions. Although Howden was a pawky, shrewd man he was controlled by Machiavelli Fink whose knowledge of sound finance was primary with an Asiatic tendency. Well I remember one day after short and sharp negotiations Fink had signed a contract to buy C. J. and T. Ham's old estate agency business for a vast quantity of paper scrip. Cornelius Job Ham had been lying awake thinking it out, and next morning came to the office to plead with B. J. Fink to cancel the contract and let him off". BJ. was hard-hearted and granitic until C.J. wept scalding tears on the new office carpet. Then he went away and brought back Robert Reid, the soft-goods-man of Flinders Lane, who bluffed and blustered and demanded the return of the contract of sale which was legally returned. B. J. Fink was messianic in his conceit and made paper millions with the same ease as a schoolboy builds Meccano bridges, and the millions fell to pieces as simply. SAVINGS BANK I often wonder what would have happened if I had stuck to the Savings Bank, of which I was a senior officer when I resigned to become a public accountant. I was close up to Mr. George E. Emery, the present able General Manager, to whom the successful PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT expansion of the State Savings Bank of Victoria is almost entirely due. To Emery, more than to anybody else falls the credit for placing the Savings Bank at the top of the list as the biggest and best national savings bank in the world. During my extensive travels in foreign countries I have used my expert banking and savings banking experience to observe and criticize the savings banks of other countries, and the Australian system of keeping and protecting the savings of the poor and thrifty excels all others. It has only one weakness. The Savings Bank should have a department for lending small sums of money to small borrowers, on enlightened and improved pawnshop lines. Why should a man have to pay 60 per cent for loan money simply because he is poor ? On the whole it was a splendid thing for me, that being a rolling stone I left the bank to lead a merry life. 10 CHAPTER II LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS THIS interview with the " Daily Graphic " of London, in 1895, gives a clear idea of " The Causes of the Crisis of 1893." " For practical purposes," Mr. Meudell explained to a " Daily Graphic " representative who called on him at 28, Swithin's Lane, " three causes may be assigned for the recent financial collapse. First, there was the fall in prices of wheat, wool, and other staple products of the colony. Wheat, which in 1873 sold at 5*. a bushel in Melbourne is to-day only 35., and greasy wool which in 1873 averaged 20 a bale, say is. id. a pound, is now only 12 a bale, or 7\d. to %d. a pound. The demonetization of silver and appreciation of gold Mr. Meudell holds mainly responsible for this fall in prices, for he is an ardent bimetallist, and in Melbourne is an active teacher of the doctrine. Then," said Mr. Meudell, " another and more direct cause was the land boom of 18878 encouraged by the excessive influx of British capital into Australia in the form of Govern- ment and municipal loans, bank deposits, and moneys sent by assurance companies for investment on a 5 per cent basis. Money was thrown at our heads too rapidly to be absorbed safely, and in order to make a profit funds which carried interest bank advances were made far too freely and without suffi- cient inquiry. Under the Torren's system of registra- tion, title deeds of landed property are more easily dealt with than here, and banks freely lent on a mere deposit of documents, taking a lien on the estate. 1 1 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Australia is undoubtedly over-banked, but in new countries capital is scarce and all are borrowers. Yes, we might have been over-banked, but it must be remembered that it was the splendid banking facilities which developed the wheat, wool, mining, and other industries. Money," continued Mr. Meudell, " was so plentiful that everyone thought land values were bound to rise enormously. It's an old story this ' land boom ' after all, and those who want to under- stand how it can be worked cannot do better than read Marian Crawford's * Don Orsino,' which describes the land and building crash in Rome a few years back. The immediate cause of the collapse," con- tinued Mr. Meudell, in his clear and concise style was withdrawal of deposits from the building societies which have done valuable work in the past, but on a totally unsound basis and taking money on deposit for short terms and lending for long terms, so that when a sudden rush of withdrawals came funds could not be called in to meet the demand. A similar movement followed against the banks, which were in somewhat similar financial position and well, the result everybody knows only too well. Certainly I think the reorganization schemes adopted by the banks were the best possible under the circumstances. Liquidation of assets was impossible. It might have taken fifty years to wind up some of those concerns." The total losses of the people of Victoria in securities and property during the liquidation period amounted to 200,000,000. That much was visible, and could be reckoned. How much unseen property, chiefly personal, was wiped out it is impossible to estimate. And foreign loans and deposit receipts were the stimulus that led to over-building and over- buying. There were thousands of empty offices and thousands of vacant blocks of land. Every day the newspapers reported sales of city properties at i 500 to 12 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS ,2000 a foot, the rentals of which worked out at 2 and 3 per cent. After all, the interest test or the yield test is the only one to apply to values of land or buildings. The other day 2500 a foot was paid for a Melbourne city building which shows 4 per cent net return by rentals. The new owner cannot raise the rent, because there are nearly 4000 offices in old and new buildings vacant in Melbourne to-day. When I was assistant manager of the Mercantile Finance and Guarantee Company, I wrote a good many prospectuses of companies at the behest of B. J. Fink. The most splendid specimen of the art of imagining the basis of a prospectus ever perpetrated in Australia was my draft of the Australian Assets Purchase Com- pany, capital, j5, 500,000, to take over and liquidate the landed properties in houses, cottages, farms, sub- urban subdivisions, city lots, blank broad acres held by the late G. W. Taylor of Prahran, one of the most notorious land boomers. It was a rare farrago of high-priced rubbish, and every title or option had been mortgaged to a bank, a building society, or to a life assurance company. Our company held a bundle of equities of redemption. G. W. Taylor went up to London before the scheme materialized and the Board of Directors, all well-known men of the time, let the Australian Assets Purchase Company slither to oblivion. Saw Taylor in Cornhill, London, in 1895 an< ^ had a hearty laugh when he unfolded a scheme for securing emigrants in the United Kingdom to send in here to settle on orchards and bee farms in the suburbs of Melbourne, especially on the Glen Iris line ! G. W. Taylor was once Mayor of Prahran, a council celebrated in those days as a graduation college for land boomers, a most amusing type of speculators, who were nothing, knew nothing, and had nothing. The land boom and banking collapse was born in '3 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT 1886 when the Service-Gillies Government brought in a bill to borrow 20,000,000 for alleged reproductive public works, that blessed trilogy of words which always spells disaster in Australia. It ended on Sunday, 3Oth April, 1893, when two ignorant and weak politicians, the late J. B. Patterson, the then Premier of Victoria, and G. D. Carter, the Treasurer, lost their heads and issued a Government Gazette declaring as bank holidays, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurs- day and Friday, ist to ^th May, 1893. This silly, senseless, stupid action forced upon Patterson by Carter, an extremely self-conscious and withal ignorant man, caused the banking edifice to topple and crash. The National Bank shut down next day, the Colonial, Victoria, Queensland National, Commercial of Sydney and City of Melbourne broke in that order. There was no need for the Commercial of Sydney to shut, but Thomas Dibbs, the General Manager, closed as a matter of expediency to strengthen his bank's position. On Friday, 2ist April, 1893, there was a " run " in Sydney on the Bank of New South Wales, Commercial Banking Company, City Bank of Sydney and Govern- ment Savings Bank of N.S.W. Sir George Dibbs, premier of New South Wales, unlike the weakling politicians of Victoria, Patterson and Carter, wisely visited the Savings Bank and guaranteed the deposits on behalf of the Government of New South Wales and the " run " and the panic were stopped. Yet such an important event is not included in the official Year Book chronological table from 1788 forward. Such was the policy of hush and secrecy. The easiest marks as borrowers were the building societies and the land and estate agents, and they had a right royal time asking for and getting advances. In those halcyon days nobody was ever refused a loan by a bank manager. So the banks opened agencies in Scotland, Ireland and England, and borrowed millions 14 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS on deposit receipts for eighteen months and lent them out in Victoria for thirty years, and a great deal of the money for eternity. It wasn't a mad or pessimistic or despondent thing to do. It was one calling for laughter, for merriment, for jocosity. Why should the good-humoured borrower explain to the dismal bank manager, irritated and worried by Head Office letters and circulars censuring him for not lending money fast enough, that though he had paid i a foot for land at Coburg or Glen Iris or Mentone that it was not in his own opinion worth the 10 a foot of his own valuation. Bankers love bills to discount and the land boomers had heaps, piles, bundles of bills in tin boxes and blue and yellow carpet bags. If a suburban estate was turned over and sold five or six times at a paper profit, that meant five or six sets of bills owing on one property, enough to fill twelve baskets full. Nobody dared to laugh at these insane transactions, nobody was brave enough to say, " All this business is frenzied, delusive and pure buffoonery. There must be a smash." And there was. Prices of houses and lands jumped higher and higher, day by day, nay, hour by hour, and more and more people were drawn into the maelstrom, into a true Walpurgis ride to sudden wealth. In 1888 there were exactly 1,000,000 people in Victoria mostly under twenty-one years of age, and five years later, after at least 1 00,000,000 had been poured in molten gold down Moloch's throat, there were only 133,266 more inhabitants, chiefly babies. Rateable property in cities, towns and boroughs went up by leaps and bounds from 53 to 86 million pounds sterling in five years, while the rateable property of shire councils jumped from 71 to 108 million pounds in the five years 1886-1890. It was all so dashed funny, because there was no solid foundation for all this paper wealth. Production did not increase part passu, PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT nor overseas trade, nor exports, nor shipping, except that imports increased literally horribly. During 1886 and 1 8 90 in Victoria railways costing 8 ,000,000 and 486 new churches and chapels were built. To me it was all so ridiculous and amusing, and the best of the joke was that none of the leaders of the people in Press, Parliament, Church, or on the platform, ever uttered a single word of warning about the coming debacle, the terrible catastrophe so close at hand which brought ruin to tens of thousands of decent people and nearly smashed Victoria. Bank assets rose from 41,000,000 in 1886 to 63,000,000 in 1891. Deposits grew from 3 1 ,000,000 in 1 8 8 6 to 40,000,000 in 1891. After that they fell away and did not reach 40,000,000 until 1907, or twenty-eight years later. I am writing of what I know because I went through that critical period on the inside in a finance company and in a property company as an executive officer, and when the panic stopped I was a member of the Stock Exchange. One of the prime causes of the collapse of the land boom was the lax management of the Melbourne building societies, which were as plentiful as fleas. Owning his own home was a craze in those parlous and perilous days of land sharks and building society bounders. In September, 1889, tne "Building Societies Gazette " published what it named " An imposing array of figures." And so it was. Fifty-six societies had shareholders' capital for 3,270,773, earning 7 to 1 6 per cent with paper reserve funds of S 1 7>9%7- They took deposits from the fool public to the extent of 5,353,730, bearing 4 to 7 per cent interest. Bank overdrafts, the basis of the whole deplorable business, totalled 314,856, and there was very little actual cash in the tills or tellers' boxes. That their fellow-citizens thoroughly believed in home comforts and manly independence, they bor- 16 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS rowed upon the undoubted security of houses and land the magnificent sum of 8,482,944. It was a gem in the middle of the paean of joy, the io triumphs ! of this journal of the building societies then rotten with corruption, and drunk with false valuations, slithering blindly to oblivion by liquidation ! They are indeed noble institutions ! They enable citizens to become the proud possessors of that great blessing a home of their own, and they are an impregnable bulwark against anarchy, revolutions and strikes. Why, because their assets amounted to 20,000,000, soon to vanish into thin air ! And the house and land valuations of those days were jocular and mirth inspiring. Met a man in Elizabeth Street in 1891 who was manager of a soap and candle company. He said, " Bought that two-story building in Flinders Lane this morning for 37,000, and just sold it for 56,000." While I stood and laughed merrily his face fell and became with gloom overspread. ' That works out at 1000 a foot and you sold it at about 1500. How cynical," I guffawed. That gambler ultimately made a composition of 68,293 with his creditors and promised them one penny in the pound, which he never paid. His father and uncle " competed," as it was jokingly called in those unreal days of the Barmacides, for a total sum of 381,779, at a penny in the pound. All three eventually died wealthy. The utter absurdity of the financial situation in those bank-boom days never struck any of the frowning, dismal general managers. The boom began with the banks who inflated land values all over Australia, though chiefly in Victoria. Between 1886 and 1891 the Service Gillies Ministries floated 16,000,000 of loans in London, and these two Premiers did more harm financially to Victoria than all the other Premiers since responsible government added together. Neither '7 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Service nor Gillies ever laughed or joked. They were too superior and became the political heroes of the moneyed classes. About the same time the Commercial Bank of Australia under Henry Gyles Turner and John McCutcheon began an inglorious career of aggrandisement. They started out to show the hypochondriacs who managed the National, the Victoria, the Australasia, the Union, the London, the English and Scottish banks how to create business and open branches. To supply new capital for these objects the Commercial Bank appointed agents to receive deposits in all the big cities of the United Kingdom and chiefly in Scotland. Their interest rates for fixed deposits were most alluring 3 per cent for three months, 4 per cent for six months, and 5 per cent for one year. The result was that an avalanche of money was poured into the London office of the Commercial Bank which carried interest from the date of deposit and consequently had to be lent out on this side quickly. The bank here implored its customers to take overdrafts, to discount bills, or to lend money to their country clients, to borrow it quickly and to lend it how they pleased. Flinders Lane doubled its travelling staff, and with the cheap 7 per cent money the warehousemen over-imported goods extensively and backed country storekeepers without limit. Fortunately I was writing regularly on banking and public: statistics and got to recognize signs of financial weaknesses, so I rented a box in the Safe Deposit and when the last bank had failed, and the forty-seventh building society had gone into liquida- tion, I had saved nearly one thousand sovereigns. They came in very handy and satisfied once and for all any desire one may have had to become a miser. To-day the same cycle of financial prodigality is being run by the people of Australia. These huge empty 18 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS buildings, those new unwanted railways, these superb private homes and public hotels are being built with the savings of the community, with the deposits of the savings banks, the life assurance societies, the trustees companies and the banks. The monstrous public debt of over 1,200,000,000, owing by 6,000,000 people, mostly babies, is a finger-post pointing to trouble, disaster and suffering. City and suburban values are inflated, and all the vacant land within twenty miles of the Melbourne G.P.O. has been sold at prices that discount its value for twenty-five years. ALEXANDRA THEATRE Here is one example out of hundreds of mad loan and building contracts I saw put through during the insane land boom. A clever old Frenchman, Jules Joubert, away back in the era 18601890 acted as a promoter of exhibitions in the cities of Australia and New Zealand with varying success. Tiring of travel- ling Joubert concluded he would build a good theatre in Melbourne, a city then as now without a really modern theatre. He came to the Mercantile Finance Company to be financed, being friendly with B. J. Fink, the Chairman. Fink's only anxiety was to earn high-sounding commissions for the company, and he would charge 20 to 25 per cent for putting through a 10 per cent loan if it were big enough in size. Joubert induced him to back his theatre building enterprise, and thus the Alexandra Theatre was born. When nearly finished things began to look a delicate shade of dark blue in high finance, according to Fink, and the Alexandra Theatre contract was suddenly broken. Being assistant manager of the Mercantile Finance Company and having learned an awful lot about theatres from a coign of vantage outside the stage doors of several, I was given control of the " Alick " Theatre, now called Her Majesty's. Our only trouble '9 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT was to find money for the gas bill of fifty pounds a week. Dan Barry, an entrepreneur or actor manager of those times found the gas money and rented the theatre at one peppercorn a week, which he never paid, being so small and so useless. Barry put on blood-curdling, heart-jerking melodrama at 3^., 6d. and is. for gallery, dress circle and stalls. I did my share by getting 100,000 tickets on tick from a printer and employing a corps of unemployed to distribute them in the suburbs. At night these propagandists were given free supper and beer to act as claquers in the very best French style. We ran the show for three weeks and the only people who were really disappointed with the financial results were the gas company board of directors. I came to the conclusion that to conduct a theatrical business at a profit calls for the services of large quantities of money. The Alexandra Theatre was built on a building lease granted by the owner, George Porter. It was afterwards bought and completed by J. C. Williamson. Never forget asking George Porter to join me in a sherry and bitters at the Athenaeum Club once and he called for a pint bottle of French Hock which cost me i os. Another costly aperitif to remember was when, just before dinner at the Athenaeum Club, I asked Sir Edmund Barton to have a sherry and he ordered a bottle of Romance Conti Still Burgundy, then the dearest and finest wine of its kind, but not a drink to be taken in sips. It cost me IQS. 6d. for that " shout." Fortunately there was very little booming of farming or grazing lands, and the following list of the lords of Victorian soil in 1894 is worth reproducing. Since then most of these big estates have been cut up. Chirnsides owned in acres ... ... 279,946 Robertson's 207,097 Russell's 202,197 20 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS Sir W. J. Clarke owned in acres ... 177,952 Moffat's ... 176,874 Wilson's ... 175,872 Austin's ... 175,854 Armytage's ... 125,425 Manifold's ... 119,572 Ware's ... 105,104 Laidlaw's ... 103,852 E. Crossley ... 80,500 J. Winter ... 80,400 J. Bell ... 73,102 Staughton's ... 60,309 J. L. Currie ... 66,102 J. McPherson ... 62,194 W. & A. Armstrong ... 52,241 Simmons Bros. ... 54,622 W. McCulloch ... 55,663 Gumming Bros. ... 50,011 The late Sir M. H. Davies and I were living at the Athenaeum Club when the land banks and building societies were crumbling down. At breakfast time M. H. took his seat looking blithe and debonair, spic and span, smiling withal sombre at heart. Hidden behind the " Argus " he would whisper, " How dreadful ; another bank closed its doors. Tut, tut, very sad." Or, " Did you see the Lath and Plaster Building on Sand Society has stopped payment ? Shocking, isn't it ? Waiter, a little more buttered toast, very hot and very buttery." The poor chap had been up all night at the death of one of these flimsy, cranky, pseudo banks, or unsound building societies, which went down and out like wheat before a harvester. That breaking up of the small land jobbing companies lasted about a month with a daily killing. And M. H. Davies became invisible. Then the big banks and companies began to sway sideways and topple over. They were based on sand and false valuations, and the finance companies especially were C 21 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT corrupt and rotten at the heart. And from stupidity, mistaken for stoicism, the public did not commit suicide or shoot or maim or punish any of the guilty financiers. Forty-seven of these rotten building societies fell out with a dull silent thud, just like Abaddon, the destroying angel, into the bottomless pit of bankruptcy. Nowadays the State Savings Bank has taken the place of the building society system, which was good in theory and badly managed in practice. Some of the biggest societies were the City of Melbourne, deposits 342,469, Federal, deposits 523,689, Melbourne, deposits 456,363, Victorian Permanent, 682,576, Premier 540,000. Building societies' snares were usually paid to 5 and stood on 'Change from 6 to i o, being a favourite popular investment. They all touted and advertised for deposits. One old squatter, Tommy Robertson, from the Campaspe, took a trip down to town and went up and down the street peering into the tables of interest rates allowed for fixed deposits which were exhibited in the windows of the building societies. He made a list of six societies which allowed 7 per cent on twelve months deposit receipts, and deposited 5000 in each, 30,000 in all, which he ultimately lost altogether. The Premier Building Society was the first to smash, and the tale of corruption and mismanagement earned for the secretary, James Mirams, a short term in gaol. Of the making of many tables of figures there is no end, and much study of them is a weariness of the flesh. On 3ist December, 1889, tne zenith or apex of the land boom, there were sixty-seven building societies doing business in Victoria with various objects. There were permanent investment, mutual, terminat- ing and benefit building societies. Capital, investing shares, terminating shares, reserve funds and un- divided profits amounted to 4,365,786, while these 22 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS institutions held 5,578,359 of public deposits. What with overdrafts and mortgages, the building societies were custodians of the public money to the extent of over 11,227,207. Where are those millions now ? Certainly the societies had lent 10,000,000 to people to buy homes. One society, the Premier, the first to close its doors, had paid up capital of 268,618. On this it raised a crazy super- structure. Deposits were 652,702, and it owed on mortgages of freeholds 715,993. Total liabilities on account of capital and liabilities were 1,682,687. The Secretary, the late James Mirams, failed for 338,000. Amongst the hundreds of prospectuses I have written during forty years' connection with companies mining, industrial and financial three please me most because of their audacity. The first is the prospectus of the Mercantile Investment Trust, capital 2,500,000, in 500,000 shares of 5, Directors, B. J. Fink, J. M. Bruce and J. M. Howden. The object of the Trust was to pool investments so that the investor would not have all his eggs in one box, that is he would buy one hundred shares in each of five stocks, instead of 500 shares in one stock. We never launched this company because I had skedaddled to another financial group. The prospectus is dated June, 1888. Then in London in June, 1889, I drew up the prospectus of the Guarantee Society of Aus- tralasia, capital 1,000,000, its object being to guarantee the punctual repayment of the principal and interest of mortgage loans made by British companies in Australasia. It died still-born, no flowers and private interment. The land boom was due to over-borrowing and over-speculation, and it was engineered by bands of marauders who conceived schemes of such gross dishonesty that the fortunes of multitudes of honest people were endangered. The wages of the bread-winners and the workers were 23 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT sapped by traitors. The leaders of the boom were mostly extremely pious men and almost invariably they were teetotallers. To-day they would be called " wowsers." Like all extremists in conduct and ideals the chief land boomers were narrow, illiterate and uneducated. Mankind has always been a flock of sheep. Those with little money blindly follow those with much. Therefore the business of finance is largely in the hands of men of wealth. As R. L. Stevenson wrote of the missionaries, " Their faculty of humour is very small," and so with the land boomers while filching money from the public they put into active practice their principles of Puritanism and hatred of all pleasure and its votaries. The three best hotels in Melbourne, at the instance of James Munro, James Mirams and J. W. Hunt surrendered their licences, and the Grand, the Victoria and the Federal Hotel became coffee palaces. From 1887 to 1890 there was a systematic writing up of land and house property throughout Australia, though chiefly in Melbourne. In 1892 there were 418 insolvencies in Melbourne of which 77 were declared by firms. Total liabilities were 7,800,000, and assets 3,975,000. There were 248 compositions within two years nearly all made with banks and land specu- lators. The devil's brigade of lawyers figured largely, and some families contributed three or more composi- tions. One notable family of five brothers each made a " compote " for insignificant payments from one halfpenny to one shilling in the i. Twenty-six finance companies with total capitals of 10,000,000, of which 5,200,000 was paid up, went bung owing 12,000,000 on deposits and debentures. No wonder every individual in the community suffered directly and indirectly. Huge losses were made by the fire and life insurance companies and the State Savings Bank on their mortgages, and by mutual consent they LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS were all hushed up. And individual instances of fraud and forgery were kept quiet, so as not to upset the public and lose its confidence. Plato called the world a City of Pigs, and Melbourne during its boom years could have been so described justly. Besides excessive Government borrowings out in London between 1886 and 1890, another catastrophe hit Australia and nearly toppled her over the precipice into a financial abyss. The land boom was encouraged by the exces- sive influx of British capital into Australia in the form of Government and municipal loans, bank deposits, and money sent by Scotch life assurance companies for investment at 5 per cent. Money was thrown at the Australian banks too rapidly to be absorbed safely, and in order to make a profit on funds that carried interest, bank advances were made far too freely and without sufficient inquiry. Money was so plentiful that everyone thought land values were bound to rise enormously, and so the future was discounted to an alarming extent. Liquid capital became fixed, confidence was lost, and steady with- drawal of deposits became a universal panic. ~The first speculator to buy suburban land cheaply by the acre and sell it by the foot was C. H. James, a grocer in North Melbourne. James made a good deal of money at first and if he had only tackled subdivisional land on the foreshore of Hobson's Bay, or in Toorak, Malvern and Caulfield, instead of selling pocket- handkerchief allotments in the Fairfield Ivanhoe districts, he would have made ten times what he did. C. H. James lost most of his money in the Dominion Bank, whose fine office building, still one of the best in the city, now belongs to the Royal Insurance Co., 414, Collins Street. Frank Stuart, of Lincoln, Stuart and Co., drapers, was one of the first into the arena of the land boom. He was an intellectual of excep- PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT tional clarity of thought and good judgment and landed a fortune. When the boom reached zenith Stuart, against his better judgment, was induced to go into it again and lost much, but not all, of his previous profits. G. W. Taylor, a land agent, once Mayor of Prahran, was another pioneer boomer. He was a weak, excitable man with unbounded confidence in himself, and he managed to impress bank managers and building society secretaries to the extent of about 5,500,000 worth of land and houses. Sir Matthew Henry Davies, a solicitor, once Speaker of the Legisla- tive Assembly, was a leader of investors all through the boom and made two million pounds profit on paper. He was an able man of singularly fine presence and charming manners. Davies founded the Mercan- tile Bank with a capital of 400,000 which smashed badly at the finish. There was a prosecution of the directors for issuing a false balance sheet, quite an ordinary custom at that time. Very few balance sheets of banks or companies interested in landed securities were honest during the boom period. Sir Bryan O'Loghlen refused to allow the directors to be tried by a judge, although Mr. I. A. Isaacs, his Solicitor-General, now a Federal High Court Judge, recommended the matter should be proved. Sir Matthew Henry Davies was ably defended by Mr. Theodore Fink of the firm of Fink, Best and Phillips, then a rising lawyer. The Davies group was deeply interested in the Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank, the English and Australian Mortgage Bank, the Freehold Investment and Banking Company, the Victorian Mortgage and Deposit Bank, Henry Arnold and Company, the Gascoigne Investment Company, and the General Land and Savings Com- pany and numerous building and land societies not listed on the Stock Exchange. Far and away the ablest of all the land boomers was Benjamin Josman 26 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS Fink, M.L.A. for Maryborough, who before the boom began was practically king of the furniture trade of Melbourne. Fink began work as a boy in Maurice Aron's furniture shop in Elizabeth Street, known as Wallach Brothers. B.J. played the piano divinely and his job was to produce music from ten pound German pianos to sell them to suburbanites for forty to fifty pounds. Fink sold pianos as other men sell crayfish and peanuts, quickly and easily. When the boom opened he was interested in the five leading furniture shops of Melbourne and was worth 250,000, solidly and unencumbered. He was making twenty thousand pounds a year, and why he went into the land boom cesspit is not understandable. B. J. Fink was a subtle, astute man of business of more than ordinary capacity, as sagacious as he was audacious, a man of vivid imagination and of restless energy in carrying out his schemes. He should have stopped outside the boom vortex and when the smash came he might have gathered in four or five million pounds' worth of goods and properties. Instead he com- pounded with his creditors for 1,520,175, having assets worth 500,900, and paying a dividend of one halfpenny in the pound. Of all the financiers I have met in Australia or abroad, B. J. Fink was easily the cleverest of them all. He had no equal in Australia in la haute finance. Unfortunately for me he lured me from an accountancy practice, where I was making 750 a year, to become assistant manager of the Mercantile Finance Guarantee Agency Com- pany, Mr. J. McA. Howden being the manager. Fink carried a black bag in which were mining scrip, bank shares, Crown grants, bond warrants, pro- missory notes, debentures, bank deposit receipts, mortgages, an olla podrida of saleable things. He would say, " Here you are, George, take this title round to the Savings Bank and get them to prepare 27 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT a mortgage for ten thousand pounds, and I will call in to-morrow and sign it." Or " Here are a thousand National Bank, George, get Billy Jones, the share broker, to sell them and send me a cheque to-morrow morning." J. McA. Howden, manager, of the Mercantile Finance Company, was an extremely able man, who did not keep his head when values started to rise sky-high. At one time Howden held a million pounds' worth of saleable scrip and property. He was son-in-law of the best accountant Melbourne ever had, Andrew Lyell, a shrewd Scotchman of much common sense and fine business acumen. Thomas Bent, an ex-Speaker and ex-Premier of Victoria, was another celebrity who made a lot of money dealing in land. As secretary to many meetings where big deals were discussed amongst the big city financiers I saw a good deal of Tom Bent, and I never heard him suggest any sharp practice or propose anything dis- honest. J. M. Bruce, the Prime Minister's father, was one of my directors, and he too was a man of utmost integrity and of unblemished character. A lot of rich Flinders Lane people followed Bruce, Fenwick and Dodgshun into shares of the Mercantile Finance and " dropped their bundle." Other notable land boomers were William Bruce, the cricketer ; Bob Beeston, share broker ; H. T. Clarton, G. C. Clauscen, C. W. Derham, Alfred Dunn, H. H. Drysdale, Raynes, W. Dickson, Senior, A. F. Dean, P. H. Engel, Theodore Fink, A. J. Fuller, F. Gillman, William Greenlaw, J. M. Gillespie, A. Goldberg, A. H. and W. H. George, J. Harris, M. Herman, H. H. Hayter, J. A., Theo. and J. H. Kitchen, S. G. King, Stephen King, R. H. Lemon, E. W. Lightfoot, W. A. Mclntosh, A. D. Michie, R. Neave, F. M. Palmer, Richard Shann, W. R. Skene, W. L. Smith, A. Stewart, W. G. Sprigg, C. F. Taylor, John Turner, 28 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS Joseph Woolf, Whittingham Brothers, George Withers and many others. It is curious to note how many solicitors were drawn into the land boom. The fortunes they first won were Cadmean victories which ultimately ruined them. The only man who made money out of the land boom bought and sold for cash, and those who bought on credit either made com- positions with their creditors or went insolvent. To everyone else the boom was a volcanic calamity. Man is chiefly a two-legged bird with feathers to be plucked, and the general public is largely com- posed of people who itch to be plucked by clever schemers. One of the most powerful factors in creating Victoria's land boom was the ring of fifty-six building societies operating in Melbourne. They acted like self-raising flour, blew themselves up quickly and subsided when fully baked into flat lumps or total loss. The directors and secretaries of the building societies in Melbourne in 188691 were in a class by themselves. All of them were earnest temperance workers, and therefore abjured alcohol, wore black broadcloth clothes, the customary suits of solemn black, drank too much water and over-ate themselves and had too large families. Mostly both directors and secretaries were elders of kirks, members of chapels, bethels and churches, knew nothing, were nothing and lost nothing. Their ignorance of the ordinary rules of lending money miscalled finance was colossal. The big idea in those unlettered days was that every citizen should own his own home and buy it on building society tables, most of which were actuarial swindles. It was a mistaken policy then as it is more so to-day for each struggling citizen to try to own his own small uncomfortable little house. All the inhabitants of the other great cities in the world then, as now, lived in comfortable, commodious flats, 29 tenements or apartment houses, well built, well warmed, easy to get at and easy to leave. In 1888 this deponent found himself assistant manager of the ill-fated Mercantile Finance and Guarantee Company, whose 3 shares were selling at 8. The chairman, B. J. Fink, suggested buying some shares to make my position more stable. So through his broker I bought two thousand shares at 8 and fell in. Within nine months the last of my shares were sold at 25^., and the frying pan becoming too hot for me I jumped into the fire when another financial group offered me 1200 a year to rearrange the affairs of a leading land and property company, the Australian Property Company. After ten hours' audit, the balance sheet showed me the Company would be insolvent if much money was not raised quickly. Within seven days the directors got bona fide conservative valuations of their properties from leading Melbourne valuators show- ing a marketable value of about a million pounds. Next day the P. & O. s.s. " Oceania " took me to London, en route to Edinburgh to float 400,000 of debentures, in a frame of mind closely resembling something blithe, buoyant and debonair. In Edin- burgh I called on David Beath, a Flinders Lane soft-goods-man, who held a big parcel of shares in the company and after excellent family prayers and a meagre breakfast at his home, we assailed the hardest- headed Edinburgh firm of Scotch accountants ever born in Aberdeen and got them interested in my request of 400,000 in cash. I took my letters of instructions and valuations to an extremely powerful firm of Scotch Stock Brokers in London who agreed to float the Home and Colonial Assets and Debentures Corporation and issue debentures for 400,000 secured on Melbourne land and buildings valued at 1,000,000. They were called city properties, the 30 LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS best known of them being the building at the corner of Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street, once called Australian Building and previously the English and Scottish Bank. Most reluctantly one had to agree to cut four stories off the top of the fifteen-story building, plans of which I carried in a golf bag. Also we excised a safe deposit that had been ordered and built by Milner and Company. In three days I had secured underwriting letters for 400,000 of debentures and in three weeks the company was registered ! (This seems an appropriate place to emit another hiss of egotism, loud and prolonged.) Fancy being able with divine aid to extract 400,000 in cash from a Scotch group of financiers in so short a time, without a hem or a haw, or even a dinna ken ! It was a veritable financial battle of Bannockburn, won by a green inexperienced youth of Scotch descent, with a grossly enlarged fund of Australian cheek, or would audacity be a less harsh euphemism ? When I got home the directors neither thanked me nor paid me any commission, although I had saved them, all leading public men, from utter financial ruin ! So I re- signed. One curious consequence of the terrible wiping out of millions of pounds' worth of assets was that the heads of the banks and the directors directly responsible for misjudging the financial position did not suffer and were not punished. Not a single general manager was dismissed, as they all should have been, and both the ignorant and the dishonest directors were allowed to remain on the directorates. The sufferers by the damnable cataclysm, damnable because avoidable, were the middle class people of the community, the thrifty, the saving, the respectable. They were ruined by the thousand because their deposited money was raped from them under one-sided banking reconstruction schemes sanctioned by too complaisant judges, and their homes and properties were torn 3' PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT from them by blundering liquidators. The settle- ment of the land boom took place in an inferno of dishonesty and ruthlessness. Those who had com- piled the biggest schedules of positive debts and negative assets got off scot free and in hundreds of instances were able to ensure future freedom from monetary worry by concealing assets of all sorts from their creditors. A complete list of the alleged honour- able men who made shameful insolvencies would startle their descendants and amuse the rest of the community. In the financial history of all times there never has been such a disgraceful financial failure as the Australian land boom or one on such a grand scale. The total losses by institutions and individuals approached 200,000,000 sterling, or nearly half the country's wealth. One of the worst compositions with creditors was made by the general manager of the Colonial Bank of Australasia, who failed for 113,789 with assets of a nominal value and offered to pay 6d. in the pound. Very seldom were these purely im- aginary dividends paid by the insolvents in that dishonest period known as the land boom. This man's judgment of property values must have been warped and false, so there is small wonder his bank failed when its advances were based on wrong valuations. In the thick of the mad, insane banking boom I never could properly orient my mind to under- stand the psychology of the banking leaders who were the lenders of money to the gambling speculators most responsible for the foolish unwarranted inflation of land values. The only man with whom I used to discuss seriously the absurd chopping and changing of city and suburban land allotments was my father who protested to his directors of the Bank of Victoria against loans to the champion land boomers like B. J. Fink, G. W. Taylor, Thomas Bent and W. L. 3* LAND BOOM AND LAND BOOMERS Baillieu. Old " Money " Miller, unfortunately for the Bank of Victoria, was in his dotage and off the Board or it would never have collapsed. My father's reward for prophesying the downfall of his bank was removal to London from the general managership. When the smash came every bank manager showed himself to be a tin man painted to look like iron. 33 CHAPTER III POLITICS, LEAGUES, ASSOCIATIONS, CLUBS. THE KYABRAM MOVEMENT OF all the seven political leagues I have helped to establish, the most interesting was what was called the Kyabram movement for Parliamentary reform and State retrenchment. A public meeting was held at Kyabram, a small country village in the Goulburn Valley, Victoria, on I3th November, 1901, and it took the agitators five months to get going. Directly I thought their circulars had taken effect amongst country shire councils and public bodies, I asked George W. S. Dean, then the cleverest election secretary in Victoria, to help me to divert the move- ment to Melbourne. Samuel Lancaster was Chairman of the Kyabram Committee, and B. Goddard and C. H. Wilson were joint hon. secretaries. For months I had been writing in " The Age " suggesting a reduction of State members of Parliament because Federation ought to have meant less state spending. Mr. A. J. Peacock was Premier of Victoria, and Dean and I knowing him, knew he would be too feeble to stand up against a country demand for reform and retrenchment. So we got the Kyabram leaders to consent to explain their policy at a public meeting in Melbourne. Dean and I ran the show and Henry Butler of Sargood and Company, soft-goods-men, found the thousand pounds. The meeting on the 1 7th April, 1902, was a brilliant success. We formed the National Citizens' Reform League and in seven days enrolled two thousand members. Within six months we had established 214 branches. Our 34 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS programme demanded a reduction of the members of the Legislative Assembly from 95 to 46 ; of the Council from 36 to 23, and of the Ministers from 10 to 5. The Peacock Ministry was displaced by the Irvine Cabinet Irvine, Shiels, Murray, Bent, McKenzie, Taverner, Cameron, MacLeod and Kirton. At a General Election on the nth October, 1902, Mr. W. H. Irvine, backed by the National Citizens' Reform League, swept the country, winning 64 seats, the Opposition holding 18 and the Labour Party 13. It was a ding-dong go and two dozen " old hat " politicians were wiped out for ever. If George Dean and I had not annexed the Kyabram agitators and their pet agitation, nothing would have been done and there would still have been 95 M.L.A. I suffered seriously in health, made large numbers of enemies, and lost half my Stock Exchange clients. However, I carried out an item of public service so nothing matters. Previous to Kyabram I founded the Young Victorian Patriotic League, and there we secured two thousand members in three weeks. The league fought one election for economy and lay down and died. After Kyabram I started the People's Liberal Party which perished from lack of funds. No political association can ever succeed and become permanent without plenty of money. Enthusiasm is a poor vote-catcher, and mere patriotism is valueless, but a strong banking account can win seats every time. The gravest and most serious of these political com- mittees was the Constitutional Association, and there I was the youngest member of a body which controlled the existing, but dying, Conservative Party in politics. My colleagues were R. Murray Smith, Robert Harper, Walter Madden, Edward Langton, F. T. Derham, W. F. Walker and M. R. McCrae, now of Dalgety's in Sydney. For a few years I sparkled as an official of the Australian Natives Association and 35 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT originated half a dozen suburban branches. I had plenty of fun making inflammatory speeches about the decadent British Empire, the glorious destiny of Australia, and the superiority of the native-born Australian. Between whiles I was the instigator of public meetings to advocate occupying New Guinea and the New Hebrides, to oppose French convictism in New Caledonia, to prevent the A.M.P. Society opening an office in London, and to support Aus- tralian Federation. That section of my life was always amusing and sometimes exciting. Never forget one political meeting I had called in the Town Hall, Collingwood, to expound Kyabramic economy. Of course the audience wouldn't give me a hearing till John Hancock, M.L.A., a genial, kindly soul said, " Give the little bloke a chance for five minutes. He won't do anybody any harm." You could have heard a pin drop and a few apt allusions to the grandeur and merits of every Australian in the Collingwood electorate won me a host of transient friends who cheered me to the echo when I sat down. We used to fight about nothing at the A.N.A. meetings and I am sorry I gave up close connection with it because it is the only public body worthy of my support. When the late George Dean and I conspired to get the Kyabram economy movement into our hands, Mr. William Irvine was Premier of Victoria and Messrs. William Shiels and Thomas Bent were Ministers. As the first step towards public economy the National Citizens' Reform League, of which I was a founder, made the first plank in its platform, the reduction of members from 95 to 46 for the Legislative Assembly. At the General Election the Irvine Cabinet won 64 seats and was able to reduce the assembly to 65 members at which it now stands. Shiels and Bent offered to help me to win a seat and like a fool I declined. My election with the support of the POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS Government and the National Citizens' Reform League was a certainty. My subsequent political life was bound in shallows and miseries, and I lost both my health and my business by mixing in politics as a nonentity instead of as a sitting politician. Of the making of many political leagues there is no end, and much politics is a weariness of the flesh. Here are some of the many political bodies and societies I have helped to direct, and of several of them I was prime mover. National Liberal Association in Bendigo in 1880, Young Australian Liberals in 1885, Constitu- tional Association, People's Liberal Party, National Citizens' Reform League (Kyabram), Young Vic- torian Patriotic League, Financial Reform League, Bimetallic League, Legion of Relief, and Middle Class Party. Ten scrap-books containing thousands of my speeches and articles representing forty years of public work are my only monument. I have never had a vote of thanks, a banquet, or a bouquet, though I hope some day to become a J.P. ! Before the days when political parties were organ- ized and subsidized, I stood for Parliament in a country pocket borough called Grenville, a decayed mining district near Ballarat, and made a decent showing at the poll. Encouraged by the falsity of that voting I tried single-handed to win the seat and failed badly. It was not the fault of the electors for they didn't understand me nor my highfalutin about the rights of man, the need for good public finance, the evil of too much borrowing by the Government, and woman's right to vote. I talked above their heads and they voted for the local candidate every time. It served me right to the extent of three hundred pounds per election spent in a fortnight each time. My excellent platform work began to pall on the three audiences a day, so I hired a grey horse and buggy, with a gramophone and operator and sent him to D 37 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT every one of the thirty decayed hamlets in the electorate to deliver my speech. As he interspersed the speech with comic songs and humorous recitations the children loved it and followed him in hundreds like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But as William Trenwith, the greatest of all the Labour tribunes of that epoch said to me, " Meudell, they don't understand you and they'll wooden you." And woodened I was. Before starting for Grenville I called on David Syme of the " Age," the greatest of all the political leaders of his time, and he promised me the powerful support of his influential newspaper. My speeches were reported, but the desirable leading article describing my wonder- ful sagacity, extraordinary intellect, and god-like personality, was never written, and I fell like Lucifer, Belial, Apollyon and other chaps of that sort into the bottomless pit of obscurity. Even since my last political defeat I've been laughing heartily whenever I think what a lot of fun I could have bought with the three hundred pounds I spent on election expenses. Like everybody else alive I am steeped, soaked, pickled in vanity, yet not so badly conceited as to avoid admitting I made one grave mistake in an active life. I descended into politics and became besmirched in business. By taking a leading part in the Kyabram movement for public economy I made armies of enemies and lost battalions of clients. No man can become a successful politician and prosper in business. The money I spent trying to get into Parliament, and the time I wasted outside my office would have been far better spent seeing the dream city of Samarkand or taking a trip to Kashmir or the West Indies, or even to Bali, in Dutch East Indies, the island of the most beautiful women. Very few politicians are educated as men, or trained for law- making. No man should be permitted to stay in Parliament after the age of sixty. Old men are the 38 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS main cause of Britain's decadence, and one recalls the present leading English statesmen when one wants a hearty laugh. Newspapers made gods of tin men painted to look like iron, such as Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Amery, Balfour, Chamberlain, Baldwin, all slaves of tradition shackled by ritual and convention. And what a mess they made of the war, the army, the navy, the peace and Great Britain's trading supremacy ! HE FINDS LITTLE RIGHT Mr. H. G. Wells delivers the negative side of his gospel in what he calls " an outbreak of auto-obituary," which occurs in the last chapter of his book, " A Year of Prophesying." " I am against the clothes we wear and the food we eat, the houses we live in, the schools we have, our amusements, our money, our ways of trading, our ways of making our compromises and agreements and laws, our articles of political associa- tion, the British Empire, the American constitution. I think most of the clothes ugly and dirty, most of the food bad, the houses wretched, the schools starved and feeble, the amusements dull, the monetary methods silly, our ways of trading base and wasteful, our methods of production piecemeal and wasteful, our political arrangements solemnly idiotic. Most of my activities have been to get my soul and some- thing of my body out of the customs, outlook, bore- doms, and contaminations of the current phase of life." On the positive side Mr. Wells makes this contribution to the housing question : " Plans have been made that show beyond dispute that the whole population of industrial London could be rehoused in fine and handsome apartment buildings, with night and day lifts, roof gardens, and nearly all the light, air and conveniences to be found in a Kensington flat, at hardly greater cost than would be needed to 39 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT choke all the ways out of London with a corresponding spread of Wheatley hovels, and so great an amount of space could be saved by so doing, that half the area of London could be made into a playground and garden." The familiar objective of Mr. Wells's hopes is, of course, a confederation of all mankind to keep one peace through the world. I do not think that the League of Nations at Geneva is ever likely to develop into an effective World Confederation. It is much more likely to develop into a serious obstacle to such a confederation. The sooner now that it is scrapped and broken up the better for mankind. When the United States rebelled and threw the German soldiers of the English kings out of the colonies in order to get control of as much of the land of North America as possible, the custom of transport- ing convicts from England to America was stopped for ever. One thousand convicts a year had been shipped to the Southern States for about a hundred years. It was one form of getting rid of political agitators, ne'er-do-well sons of aristocratic families, and pickpockets who stole pennies and purloined bread or meat from shop doors. All the rest of the malefactors were hung. There were three times as many convicts sent to America as to Australia. When the colonies were taken over from them, the English authorities sent Captain Cook to find a place far enough away to make a safe prison for poachers, sturdy beggars, pick purses, shop lifters, republicans, Communists and reformers. The rest of the real wrong-doers Bill Sikes, Jonathan Wild, Jack Shep- pard, Dick Turpin and suchlike were hung at Tyburn, near Maida Vale, London, or at the cross- roads, or in the Tower of London, or at Newgate Street off Holborn, just outside the Old Bailey prison. Captain Cook conferred a benefit on this old world 40 never before or since equalled by finding this good Australian continent, superior to all other countries in its varied climate, soil and fertility, the perfect nidus for a better race of people. Brutal, low-class English officers came with shiploads of these petty prigs and food thieves and created a penal system which dehumanized them. Of the early military Governors of the Australian colonies one cannot write too bitterly. It has become a rooted custom of historians to praise and idolize these early governors and treat them as able administrators and clever executants. The truth is the contrary. Of hundreds of governors sent from London to Australasia, perhaps ten or a dozen were decent civil servants who tried to do their best. All the rest were brainless duffers or worse. Of the nine governors-general since 1901 there may have been one who stood above the ruck. The rest were quite ordinary little men who earnestly strove to ape the manners and methods of royalty and create a mimic court composed of rich but quite ordinary women-folk. One governor-general, Lord Hopetoun, who has been praised to the skies and above them, resigned in a huff because the Govern- ment questioned his bill for the entertaining of the present King and Queen. Very shortly after he died leaving a cold million pounds of dross ! Both governors and government houses and the whole paraphernalia of pompous snobbery which they stand for, ought to be wiped out. What use are they in a community where nearly every one works, and some day the others will be made to work by law. Every Chief Justice is capable of signing Crown grants and leases, and sub-editing Government Gazettes, and if need be of deciding constitutional questions by a mere yea or nay. The seven governors cost the country about 100,000 a year, which when saved would support six good brass bands in the six capitals. PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT India and England are the two countries where the caste system flourishes luxuriantly, and where the people in the various classes or castes dislike or hate those not in theirs, mildly and virulently. To the pernicious caste system is due the two distinguishing features of life in England and India, snobbery and poverty 50 per cent snobs and 50 per cent paupers. Human nature not being changed for better or worse since man was first created we shall never entirely free ourselves from the yoke of the snob, yet we may try here to palliate it. Great Britain's cardinal weakness is her poverty. It is a striking paradox that the richest country in the world is also the poorest. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman once told the House of Commons that one-fourth of the population of the United Kingdom was never sure of to-morrow's food. It has been reckoned that there are ten million people in Great Britain on the brink of starvation, not sure of the next meal. In no other country in the world is food so scarce and so scanty. In India, China and Japan there is no such lack of food as in the Old Country. In England and especially in London the poor are always on view : gaunt, meagre and ravenous, crawling furtively along every street north and south, east and west, licking their lips before bakers' windows. To an Australian this constant contact with the spectre, famine, this eternal brushing against the foodless and hungry and famished, stalking after skins and pips and stalks, prowling round dark corners to prospect bins and refuse boxes, is awful and pitiful ! Great Britain does not grow enough food to feed her people. She prefers to import it, and nearly three-fourths of the food consumed comes from abroad : salted, frozen and fusty. The land is there, the soil is fertile, the labour is abundant, and Britain could, if she chose, grow all her own food as easily as France and 42 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS Germany. No, she prefers to send her coal, cotton and iron to foreigners and depend on them for what she eats. Her peril of being easily starved out, either in war or peace, could be made to vanish under ten years of scientific protection. Meanwhile the few grow richer while the many starve ! The Coal Strike proved beyond question there is not more than ten days' food supply in Great Britain. The mere thought is appalling. Ten days' food for those who can buy, and no food at all for the ten million starvers, should a blockade ever occur ! And the ten millions have full minds with their empty bellies and nourish rebellious thoughts. The War and the Coal Strike allowed the flocculent human matter to rise to the surface, and the dregs and the scum floated about the streets of the towns and cities evil, hollow and desperate. What would happen during a ten days' siege ? Poverty is the primary cause of labour unrest everywhere. The cant cry of the present day is, " There is unrest everywhere," and the compelling cause is poverty. The magazines, the books, the press, all teem with statements of the unrest and discontent now raging through the world. The upheaval of the discontents proceeds apace. Everywhere in the old countries has arisen the cry for more wages, shorter hours, and cheaper food, and this clamant demand comes from one class only, the working class, or more properly, the workers' class. For, barring the idle rich, we are all working men and women nowadays. The present time is the reign of ideas, and these ideas are seething bacteria-like in the minds of the workers. The history of humanity is the history of revivals, mainly religious. The present-day revival is political, not religious, in character, marked, however, by the same enthusiasm, the same ferocity and fanaticism as every revival that has gone before. The wage-earners have at last learnt the value of unity, of co-operation, of 43 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT alliance. All along they have known what they wanted ; to-day for the first time they know how to get it. SNAKE VALLEY ELECTION In Australia we have 7 parliaments, 7 governors, 62 ministers, 647 Members of Parliament, and the total cost of parliamentary government is 1,150,000. About 150 new laws and several hundred minor enactments are passed every year. About 4000 candidates for Parliament stand for election, so that politics in Australia is a lucrative industry. It is also a cruel tax on a population of 6,000,000, half of whom are under 21 and have no votes. It is an expensive game like golf, motoring and card-playing. Usually the man with the most money wins. Having been a defeated candidate several times I know the cost of an election and much about its humours. I was the first candidate in Australia to use the phono- graph during an election, and a bucolic constituency threw me down with a thud. At a decayed, rotten borough with 30 names on the roll my paid secretary organized a committee of 13 to collect votes and see them polled. The campaign lasted 10 days and the publican sent in a bill for refreshments, chiefly beer, for 13. There were 4 votes cast in my favour. I paid the bill without demur. Six months later the hotel-keeper sent me the same account again, so I returned him his receipt enclosed in a letter much hotter than the hobs of hell. ASSOCIATED BIMETALLIC LEAGUE The founding of the Bimetallic League was another sportive effort of mine carried out after years of study of the question of the demonetization of silver, started by Bismarck to hurt France. It was mere filibustering by old Bismarck, the leading pirate of universal history. He destroyed silver as a medium for paying 44 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS debts and harmed every debtor nation in the world, including my beloved native land Australia. Mr. Francis A. Keating of Messrs. Gibbs, Bright and Company, and now of Anthony Gibbs and Sons, London, encouraged me in my bimetallic career. Keating was a specially able and highly educated man, and what he said about bimetallism I believed. We formed a Bimetallic League and got Moreton Frewen, the famous English political economist, to address a public meeting in Melbourne, and for a year I wrote and speechified about bimetallism and dazed and hypnotized my audiences. It was splendid fun for me, because I used bimetallism as talking practice against the day when as Treasurer of Victoria I would deliver my first budget without notes and despite the help of the permanent Treasury officers. At the elections I tackled in order to enter Parliament, I was splendidly beaten by a grocer, a school-teacher, a shearer and a fruiterer ! No undertaker ever opposed me, or his unpopularity amongst really live voters would have helped me to " wooden " him. I have a genius for working dead horses on a big scale first, brown coal, next, hydro-electricity, then, petroleum, and finally, oil-shale. Have stuck tenaciously to each in turn without earning a shekel. The most disappointing of my fighting campaigns for recognition by investors was of course that for oil. The most interesting was my struggle to raise money in London to work brown coal in Victoria, totalling forty thousand million tons, for all it is worth, not alone for electricity, but for gas, briquettes, ammonia and other by-products, all saleable at a profit. We made briquettes at Yallourn, then Morwell, in 1892, and sold them in Melbourne for i a ton, and if the blessed banks had not made such asses of 45 themselves by closing their doors, the Gippsland Coal Company would have been making briquettes all these years while sitting behind a reserve fund of 1,000,000. Then I met the active antagonism of the coal importers who are also the shipping ring. They have always fought against brown coal enthusiasts and decried brown coal and briquettes. The toll levied yearly by the Newcastle, New South Wales, coal companies on every Australian industry has had a choking effect, and still the throat of industry is garrotted by them and can only be freed from the coal Thugs by a successful national briquette manu- facture. There is only one good story arising out of the creation of the electrical enterprise at Morwell, Yallourn. It was late one night towards Christmas when the Enabling Bill was before the House of Assembly. The Premier, W. A. Watt, rushed in to A. A. Billson, the Minister of Railways, and said excitedly, " W.L. says that Bill must be put through to-night." W.L. being W. L. Baillieu, M.L.C., who has pulled the strings of the marionettes com- posing every State Ministry for twenty-five years. It was just laughable because no explanation was given about the Bill or its objects ; members never knew any details of costs or expenses, and a raw, un- considered scheme compiled by two foreigners, Thomas Tait, Chief Railway Commissioner of Victoria, and C. H. Mertz, an Anglo-German electrician of Durham, England, was passed in one night simply because W. L. Baillieu said so ! The original estimate was 2,250,000, and so far the scheme has cost over 10,000,000, and will be capitalized at 15,000,000 before it turns the corner and begins to pay ! Which confirms my life view that most public men know nothing of finance or business, and their reputations as great personages is mostly poppy-cock woven by the newspapers. 46 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS CLUBS Out of four hundred members of the Athenaeum Club of Melbourne, when I was elected in July, 1889, only seven are alive to-day. It was a really first-class club, well managed, comfortable, and, excepting at the French Club, there was no better dinner in Melbourne. The Athenaeum Club was founded by James Hay who was a front ranker as a comprador, his equals being Archibald Menzies and W. C. Wilson of Scott's Hotel who were Hay's friends and contemporaries. The French Club was founded by Dr. James George Beaney, a leading surgeon, fifty years ago, and his two pals, the Denis Brothers, then leading Melbourne jewellers. Beaney wore diamonds all over his clothes wherever there was a peg to hang them on. His dinners were rare and recherche, precious as the apple of the eye, and like his diamonds of the first water. Nobody knew how to order a dinner in Melbourne in those days until Lacaton, at the Maison Doree, and Halasy and Denat, at the Cafe Anglais next to the old " Argus " office, taught the land boomers which was the right end of the asparagus to nibble, and that poulet en casserole was the summit of deliciousness. At the Australian Club founded by my father-in-law, John George Dougharty, M.L.C., and his bosom friend, Sir James MacBain, M.L.C., when I was a member, the dinners ordered from the chef carte blanche, given by Charlie Gates, the solicitor, of Taylor, Buck- land and Gates, were too ethereal almost to eat. Yet were they duly eaten. I remember that Charlie Gates had thirty-six pairs of boots in his bedroom. What a remarkable man ! As a young man I liked belonging to clubs and had a mania for founding leagues or associations. That was before my illusions were changed into delusions. There is one basic club law which ought 47 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT to be taught the novice and impressed on every clubman at his initiation, just as certain canons of conduct were sunk in my memory, when I became a neophyte in the best religion of them all, Freemasonry. That primary rule is that what happens in a club must never be referred to outside. That club law is not kept in Melbourne, where I have belonged to about a dozen clubs. It is a practice with ignorant club members to carry home talks about their fellow- members to their wives, and next day, whether the story relates to drink, gambling or conduct, every woman in the suburbs knows all about it. The Melbourne Club is the most exclusive, and the Australian the best in Melbourne, though the Athen- aeum is comfortable, and the Commercial Travellers' Club superior in its building and appointments. The Royal Automobile Club is merely a mistake, for motorists should be united only in business and not in social union. Many of the Melbourne clubs are simply drinking dives. San Francisco has some fine modern clubs, and so has Los Angeles. The Pacific Union Club on Nobs Hill in San Francisco is one of the finest clubs out of the 1 50 I have been attached to throughout the globe. The Family Club, the Bohemian, and the Olympic in San Francisco have no imitators in Australia, nor have the Australians created a club like the Athletic Club in Los Angeles, or the Bath Club in London, where swimming baths are a feature of the club. Excepting the Royal Automobile Club on the site of the old War Office in Pall Mall, London, there was no modern club-house last time I was there. The Londoner prefers a dingy, dark, dull house for his club, which he describes as a branch of his home, and so it usually is and very like his house. Since the old St. George's Club in Hanover Square, I have been made honorary member of a large number of London clubs, in clubland and in the 48 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS city. The best dinner was to be had at the Constitu- tional, the best luncheon at the City Liberal, the best afternoon tea at the Authors' Club, while the Savage Club wins the palm for the best talkers and the oldest whisky. The most grandiose club in the world is the Jockey Club I attended in Buenos Ayres in the Argen- tine. It is a palace of magnificence de haul en has. The Author's Club at 2, Whitehall Court, London, founded in 1891 by Sir Walter Besant, elected me a member because of my high authorial attainments as a contributor of quips, cranks, and wanton wiles to the Sydney " Bulletin " for forty years. The Monday night dinners were featured in imitation of the cele- brated Savage Club Saturday dinners. It is an excellent and amusing method for giving the obscure a glimpse of the mighty under the dynamic pressure of fairly well-cooked food aided by only middling brands of fermented and spirituous liquors. In this way one saw and heard Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Parkin, Professor Arminius Vambery, His Excellency, Lord Lee Ching Fong, Sir William Ramsay and Mr. Henniker Heaton of Sydney. The Author's Club was an icy sort of cave where one trod on one's own tiptoes and suppressed both smile and laughter. There was nothing really to laugh at, except the atmosphere, and I used to sit reading London " Punch " and rumbling with laughter internally. Not at " Punch's " wit, which to an overseas humorist looks as though it would make a new sort of concrete pavement, heavy, strong and lasting. " Punch " is completely English, typical of the race that for a thousand years has braved the battle and the squeeze for trade and for lending money. The English no longer is a nation of shopkeepers. It can't keep shop, but, oh my, it knows how to lend money, and inci- dentally how to annex large areas of land, chiefly jungle and forest belonging to other people. The 49 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT late Charles Garvice was chairman of the committee, and the most notable of the authors was Poulteney Bigelow, with whom I travelled once in the East Indies, Hall Caine, Andrew Carnegie (whose mono- graph on " Steel and how to make money out of it " has never been published), Francis Gribble, Rider Haggard, Anthony Hope, Cutcliffe Hyne, Morley Roberts, Franklin Lieber, the author of a very heavy, well-bound telegraphic code, and myself. No travel book worth while that touches upon London life would be perfect without a reference to the famous Savage Club, the tryst of London's clever men-authors, artists, play-actors and intelligentsia as a caste above the bourgeoisie who swarm in the world's metropolis and make it so dashed respectable and humdrum. The middle-class people of Britain, taking themselves and their caste so very seriously, are never vulgar nor outre. They may be droll, comic, farcical, laughable, at the same time they respect the conventions, pay their rates and taxes, half fill the churches, and all of them honour the King. Often have I been a guest of Savage Club members, and the best story one can tell without breaking club law was told me by E. J. Odell, a Savage Club celebrity, bon vivant, bon viveur et bon raconteur. One night about eleven he went into the bar and to his horror saw Phil May holding a whisky and polly in each hand laughing merrily at nothing. " Time to go home, Phil." ' With pleasure, Odell," so they left suddenly and slumped into the ancient growler Phil May hired by the year to take him anywhere day and night. At Phil's house in St. John's Wood he made Odell comfortable in the spare bedroom, taking care to leave a syphon of soda, a one-twelfth of a dozen of Dan Crawford, and a box of matches alongside the bed. Then Phil May slipped out back into the four-wheeler and headed for the Savage Club. Odell got tired of POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS being asleep so he aroused himself and left the house with the idea of going back to the Savage for a dock and a doris. Being penniless he walked from St. John's Wood down the Maida Vale Road to the Adelphi Terrace and arrived at the club at about one a.m. Odell told me he had to laugh heartily because in the same bar entertaining the same members with the same japes was Phil May sticking tightly to a whisky and polly in each fist ! What a precious story. I have had many delicious sprees in clubs in all corners of the earth and without telling tales out of school, a thing I detest, one particular night at the Family Club in San Francisco was the wittiest I have ever attended. Had a bonzer all-night revel at a club in Quebec, Canada, with Frank Carrell, a news- paper proprietor, and felt the joy of seeing a member ejected who said to me laughingly, " You come from Australia, don't you, where the English send all their criminals ? " " Yes," I said, " that was a bad habit of the early English who sent Walter Raleigh and Captain Cook round the globe looking for suitable prisons for their criminal relatives and so made use of Canada, the Southern States of America, and Australia." Then they fired the poor devil down the stairs quite rudely and unjustly. ASSOCIATIONS The very best service I ever rendered to my fellow- labourers in the vineyard of the Lord was when I inaugurated the movement to get better pay for bank clerks. Being born in a bank and knowing how badly my father was paid by the Bank of Victoria, who gave him eight hundred pounds a year as general manager, I made a solemn vow to agitate for better pay and more humane conditions for bank clerks. I tried several times to get into Parliament where I would have agitated for a Royal Commission on the subject. My fellow-conspirator was the late Melville Calder who was allowed a salary of five pounds a week after thirty years in the Bank of Victoria. Mel. and I frequently discussed the formation of a bank clerks' association, but we never could get any of our pals to join our revolution. They were all afraid and said so. By the head of a leading bank I was warned not to have anything to do with the agitation openly. I mentioned my project to a friend who took the risk, got a few insurgents together, and launched the Bank Officials' Association. They ignored me alto- gether instead of giving me the secretaryship. Of course higher salaries were bound to come, yet some- body had to begin asking for them, and to Mel. Calder and myself is due the honour of beginning this excellent reform which led to the proper treatment of bank employe's, better pay, better housing and better pensions. A.N.A. In my callow days as in my mature, when I lived on ideals and illusions, I was intensely patriotic and too fond of writing and lecturing. I was an ardent missioner for the Australian Natives' Association. Never missed a meeting of the Melbourne No. i Branch, read papers, started debates, helped to open six suburban branches, and to organize meetings on national problems like the New Hebrides, New Cale- donia, New Guinea, Federation of Australia and so on and so forth. Being a Savings Bank officer with excellent prospects in the service I avoided politics, until I found most of the men I was associated with in the A.N.A. were working towards Parliament through the A.N.A. Jeff. Connelly, an extremely brilliant young solicitor in Bendigo, was a mate of mine in the Young Australian Liberal Association, and I found out his chief idea in boosting the A.N.A. was 52 POLITICS, LEAGUES, CLUBS to use it to get into Parliament. That he would have got there and been Premier of Victoria was a certainty. The two Barretts, Sunderland and Field, passed into politics through the A.N.A. ; and so did George Turner, J. L. Purves, Dave Hennessy (afterwards Lord Mayor of Melbourne), Dr. T. P. Mclnerney, W. A. Watt, G. H. Wise, J. Hume Cook and Arthur Robinson. Particularly did Alick Peacock carry the A.N.A. banner all day and sleep in it all night, and it has paid him well. After a field night with my mentor, Alfred Deakin, at an A.N.A. meeting, I consulted him regarding the wrong use of this patriotic and friendly society for political ends. When I said I would resign, Deakin advised me to stick to it. However, I dropped out and the A.N.A. has fallen from grace as a national society and has become a safe sick and burial association. Our politics would have been superior if the A.N.A. had retained its leadership of the Australian born. But it has been badly officered and now it is a feeble shadow of what it might have been, a great national brotherhood, and has become a good benefit society in these latter days when all friendly societies are tottering to extinction. 53 CHAPTER IV BANKS AND BANKERS AMONGST my collection of Meudelliana is one essay I read before the Bankers' Institute of Australia, of which I was an associate, entitled " Is the Bank of England Safe ? " which brought me much ignominy and many snubs. My argument then was that the bank did not hold enough gold and the result of its efforts to attract gold by raising the bank rate of interest did harm to the trade and commerce of London and Britain. I was merely forty years before my time. The war proved that credit was the thing and gold only fustian. The war was run on paper, and the political economists, when I lay at the breast of enlightenment, told the world that gold was in- dispensable, therefore the Bank of England was safe and I was wrong and deserved being kicked. Now I repeat that the control of the money market and the power to raise the rate of interest arbitrarily is brigand- age, pillage, and buccaneering, which causes immense loss every year to the merchants, traders and business people of the Empire. The Bank of England should be cut adrift and told it was unworthy to be a national bank, because it wilfully uses its control of the dis- count and interest rate to harm the whole business community. The raising and lowering of the bank rate in London is the chief financial scandal of the greatest wrong-doing to the world's trade and com- merce that is perpetrated by the seemingly honest men who are directors of the Bank of England. My first experience of a bank was acquired as a baby born in Sandhurst. My father was gold buyer 54 BANKS AND BANKERS and accountant in the Bank of Victoria during the first gold rush. In eight years he personally bought over one million ounces of gold, and no man outside the Royal Mint ever did that in history. Gold was everywhere : on and just under the surface in flakes, as dust, in cubes, in lumps, as small specimens attached to quartz, like sparrow-hail and duck shot, in alluvial form in every creek and river, shaped in big nuggets or little ones, all over the land. Gold could be washed or picked or dollied or sluiced in every creek in Bendigo. Then when the first diggers swept the banks, basin and valley of the Bendigo Creek, clean and goldless for ten miles in length by two miles wide, they cleansed all the tributary creeks of the perilous stuff and there was no aftermath or gleaning. When the diggers began not to see the gold they started digging down from the grass to twelve feet in the pipeclay where more and more gold was won for little effort. I have seen two holes at Long Gully twelve feet deep from which my father bought 1200 worth of twenty-two carat gold from four men who had worked exactly four hours each. My first remembrance of seeing gold was when my father one rainy day filled his red bandana handker- chief with a mass of clay taken from the peak of a white pipeclay pyramid. We were on our way to the Presbyterian Church at White Hills on that particular Sunday and it would have been heterodox to wash off the 18 ounces, worth, 72 on the Sabbath. In Golden Gully, near Golden Square, where gold was first discovered in 1851, and in Long Gully and California Gully, I have been shown holes (not shafts) which yielded in solid gold two thousand pounds' worth in a day ! The dirt was easily mined with pick and shovel, and directly a claim was gutted it was abandoned. Those early gold seekers took care to leave very little gold behind ! The diggers led a 55 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT dirty, rough, uncomfortable life because of the want of water for drinking and washing. They worked in a lovely grass-lined forest free from snow and wild beasts, in a climate perfect except in summer and in a country lacking only good society, just as hell lacks water and good society. The Bank of Victoria, Bendigo, bought vast quantities of gold, both quartz and alluvial, all of the highest quality. Smelting was carried on almost continuously in the bank smelting house right under my bedroom window. For years I saw gold in every shape, size and condition, from nugget to ingot, and so much and so often, as to become familiar with it, without feeling the slightest contempt for the stuff man loves the most of all inorganic things. When very young, one became accustomed to the arrival at all hours of the bank's gold buyers, both officers and agents laden with the precious stuff. The gold escort by coach to Melbourne was just before my advent, and the less picturesque escort in a railway carriage full of armed police and clerks was the mode of transport. It is a simple boast to say I have seen more gold weighed for one escort than the whole of the last generation of young Australians have seen in their lives. Gold made Victoria, Victoria made Australia, and Australian gold made the present British Empire. Without Aus- tralia's gold from 1852 to 1872, London could not have become the open gold market of the world, and her shipping and foreign trade would not have been on the vast and overwhelming scale made possible by the possession of gold for paying foreign debts and drafts. Banking and shipping have made Britain great, but without gold her banking and shipping could not have expanded so enormously or so quickly. Truly her merchants and manufacturers, thanks to the invention of steam, were ready to capture the world's commerce and markets, and Australian gold 56 BANKS AND BANKERS largely helped Britain to conquer them. Gold mining has been allowed to perish in Australia, and the world's output is declining gradually. It needs no second sight or gift of prophecy to foresee the revival of gold mining, because the nations must have gold to pay their debts to one another, and until a better standard than gold is found and universally adopted, the world must get gold whatever it costs to win ! Nowadays in South Africa and Australasia ten penny-weights of gold per ton does not pay to produce. Without hesitation I predict the mines will soon be satisfied with ten grains to the ton rather than not mine for gold. The period of paper money and inflation will very soon fade out into an epoch of repudiation and cancellation of paper currency and paper bonds, and the people of the earth will go back to the use of gold as the basis of exchange and currency. Gold and human nature are two unchangeable things. Without gold and enough of it this civilization will decay and die, and as it is an imperfect framework for humanity it will not matter if it does disappear. My father was frequently moved from one branch to another chiefly where the gold lay thickest. The banks made huge profits buying gold at 2 IQS. an ounce and selling it in London at 4 ! One rest from the never-ending gold buying my father had when he was sent to Warrnambool to recover a mass of doubtful debts due by the squatters who originally took up land at los. to ^i an acre and ran a few ill- bred sheep on stations that were neither cleared nor fenced. Warrnambool was the market town for the squatters within a radius of a hundred miles. They were mostly Scotch and Irish peasants or shepherds and very few of them were educated. There was precious little blue blood and very few aristocrats in the Western District in those days, though there were plenty of kindly, hospitable and respectable farmers 57 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT and graziers, and none of them were very rich. In- crease of population made many of these people wealthy in course of time, and land valued by the banks then at 30*. and 2 an acre is worth 15 to 20 to-day. A lot of nonsense has been written about the hardships of these pioneer squatters, the majority of whom led pleasant, easy lives free from anxiety and hard work. As a class they were narrow, uncultured, and not public spirited. To return again to the bank collapse in Melbourne during the height of The Terror of 1893. Let me recapitulate the position after the crisis. Twelve banks of issue suspended with total liabilities of 103,315,214, including deposits for 81,331,223 ; 47 building societies, over 100 land banks, property and investment companies and innumerable land syndicates, at a guess 500, were dragged down to the dust after the Walpurgis night dance of over- borrowing, over-lending, and over-valuation. The destruction and ruin of thousands of hard-working, respectable people was horrific. The Dark Age of Victoria lasted for ten years, and the havoc and wreckage was not cleared away for thirty ! Yet nobody was punished for causing the cataclysm and destroying hundreds of homes. Not a single land valuer was sent to gaol. Only one unworthy bank or building society manager " did time," whilst most of them made dishonest compositions with their creditors, hid house and shop property away in their wives' names and generally began again with light hearts their occupations of fleecing the public on the Stock Exchange or in the real estate market. The only bright spot in Victorian industry all through that insane banking and land boom was the fact that eighty-four gold and silver mines remained on the dividend list and kept thousands of poverty-stricken people in bread and butter, but no circuses. Our 58 women were more heroic than the men and went out to work in thousands to keep the poor old ruined people in the mansions and cottages in food. There was no panic leading up to the gigantic failure. The extinction of the banks was due to a quiet weeping away of deposits, a silent, secret system of drawing a cheque for your current account or fixed deposit and paying it into the Union or the Australasia or the New South Wales. There were no frantic runs on the banks, and no frenzy was shown openly by depositors. It was first come, first paid, and the bank liquid assets and coin simply faded away. It was a good thing there were no Treasury or Com- monwealth Bank Notes in those days to bolster up rotten institutions, because every bank that broke completely ought to have done so. Indeed some of them should not have been allowed to re-open. Some of the defunct banks simply annexed their customers' deposits and wrote off 90 per cent of their over- drafts " Convey," the wise call it steal ? foh ! a fico for the phrase ! The humour of it. Nobody was punished and everybody suffered except the men who engineered the financial downfall of an innocent public. The ruin was almost universal and the Australians, specially the women, took their losses and misfortunes smiling, and kept on working. Nobody was killed or hurt and only a very few of the perpetrators of the ruin committed suicide. The leading valuators of those days should have gone to prison. On Friday, 2ist April, 1893, there was a "run" in Sydney on the bank of New South Wales, Com- mercial Banking Company of Sydney, City Bank of Sydney, and Government Savings Bank. Sir George Dibbs, Premier of New South Wales, visited the Savings Bank and guaranteed the deposits, yet such an important event is not included in the 59 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT official chronological table from 1788 forward. Such was the policy of hush and secrecy. In Melbourne the National Bank of Australasia closed its doors on Saturday, 3Oth April, 1893. The chief debtors of the bank were B. J. Fink, Chaffey Brothers of Mildura, Sydney land companies, and the Midland Railway of West Australia. The National Bank paid out 650,006 worth of coin in four weeks preceding its collapse. Finally the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, Australian Joint Stock Bank and City Bank of Sydney stopped and re- constructed. In Queensland in May, 1893, the Queensland National Bank, the Royal Bank of Queensland, and the Bank of North Queensland shut up shop. Undoubtedly one prime cause of the Victorian banks tangling up their affairs was an alteration of the banking law on the advice of a Royal Commission on banking in 1887, permitting any bank, however chartered, to advance money directly on mortgage instead of by collateral security. In Sydney, Sir George Dibbs, Premier, did the wisest thing possible by issuing a Gazette on Monday, 1 5th May, 1893, declaring bank notes then in circula- tion to be legal tender. It is worthy of noting that on 3 ist March, 1893, all the notes of all the banks in all the Colonies (a word I hate intensely) only amounted to 4,818,766. Nowadays note circulation verges close to 55,000,000, and is the main cause of high prices in Australia and the high cost of living. A wise Commonwealth bank governor would call up or sell on the open market all the 27,000,000 of Commonwealth and State stock, treasury bills, deben- tures, and fixed deposits he holds, and recall that much of the note circulation. It was terribly bad and dangerous financing to issue notes by way of loan to these impecunious and badly managed State treasuries. With how little wisdom are our public 60 BANKS AND BANKERS finances and banking functions managed ? The newspaper press is largely responsible for these very ordinary men who have been Governors of the Commonwealth Bank, Prime Ministers and Premiers, and bank general managers losing their heads from adulation and the universal process of lick-spittling. Most of the heads of banks and alleged able leaders of finance and capitalists I have met or heard about are a pretty poor lot of ordinary men and very few of them are educated or intellectual. There was absolutely no need for the Commercial of Sydney to close, but Thomas Dibbs, the general manager closed as a matter of expediency to get the chance to strengthen his bank's position. Years previously Dibbs told my father he could close all his branches, keep Head Office open, and pay 10 per cent dividend out of the bank's station properties. The City of Melbourne Bank only had 1,000,000 on deposit in Melbourne the day it shut up, and 3,750,000 on fixed deposit in Scotland. It was latterly a badly managed concern with a Board of elderly directors. Old men who want to sleep in the afternoon and do not watch the general manager and the overdraft lists sharply are a menace. There were plenty of amusing incidents during the enforced bank holiday decided by the late G. D. Carter, then unfortunately Treasurer of Victoria. Carter was a whisky merchant who was quite untrained in finance though he sustained his ignorance with a colossal conceit of himself. I went into the Bank of Austra- lasia the day it defied the Government holiday pro- clamation to shake hands with John Sawers, the superintendent, who was an old friend of my father's in the early days of Victorian banking. While standing there I noticed Mars Buckley, the draper, come in with two of his shopwalkers dressed in customary suits of solemn black each carrying two large leather 61 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT trunks. Mars drew 10,000 in sovereigns, filled the bags and toddled across to the Safe Deposit. Whatever might happen to the Bank of Australasia, " old Tapes and Ribbons " was determined to be safe. I didn't blame Buckley, because I had lodged 1000 in gold in the Safe Deposit nearly two years before the debacle. Some dreadfully irregular things were done during the boom and winked at by those who knew better. One signature to the transfer of a city property was forged, but whether the forger knew it was wrong it was impossible to discover. BANKS 1893 In 1893 Australian banks had 79,000,000 on deposit, 54,000,000 in Australia and 25,000,000 in London. These banks did not close : Bank of Australasia, Bank of New South Wales, Union Bank, Royal Bank, Bank of New Zealand, all of which ignored the moratorium or holidays gazetted by the Government of Victoria. There were twenty-six land, finance and mortgage companies with nominal capital 10,000,000 : paid up 5,200,000 and debentures issued for 12,000,000. This is the list of banks which stopped payment, reconstructed and re-opened : Suspended. Federal Bank of Australia ... Mercantile Bank of Australia Commercial of Australia ... ... 5th April, 1893. National cf Australasia ... ... ist May, English, Scottish & Australian ... 1 3th April, Australian Joint Stock ... ... 2ist April, London Chartered ... ... 26th April, Colonial ... ... ... 6th May, Bank of Victoria ... ... i oth May, Queensland National ... ... 1 5th May, Commercial Banking Co. of Sydney ... 1 6th May, City of Melbourne ... ... lyth May, Standard Bank ... ... ... 28th April, 62 BANKS AND BANKERS The City of Melbourne and Standard Bank were too hopelessly rotten to re-open, so they stayed shut. The Federal and Mercantile banks went bung much sooner. FEDERAL BANK The downfall of the Federal Bank was the most disgraceful climacteric of the disastrous banking and land boom of 1886 to 1893. The head and front of the whole offending was the late James Munro, the champion of the teetotal party of the period. Munro used this position and his building society business to push his politics, and used his politics to push railways through suburban lands he and his clan, clique or ring, had bought beforehand. So the Clan Munro founded the Federal Bank with the help of J. B. Watson, the tri-millionaire gold miner of Bendigo. The Federal was a bank of issue, a savings bank and a building society. J. B. Watson had 10,000 shares at the start, and the other chief shareholders were : James Munro ... ... 4363 shares. William McLean, Ironmonger ... 4000 W. McLean & Jenner ... ... 1000 John Robb, Railway Contractor ... 8310 A. T.Robb . ... 3350 Whittingham Bros., Graziers ... 4100 " Table Talk," a fearless Society paper, published the following facts : "James Munro, his sons, sons-in-law, and his clan of non-drinking, church-going friends borrowed all the capital of the Federal Bank, 500,000, and nearly all its deposits. Donald Munro had nine overdrafts amounting to 161,237. Donald paid 6d. in the i." " Mr. G. Munro, a third son, owed 8000. The Hon. James Munro himself owed 30,141 and on 63 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT account of his station (per Crellin) 38,702. The other directors had the following overdrafts : {. John Robb ... ... ... 21,000 John Whittingham ... ... 7,000 Whittingham Bros. ... ... 18,000 William McLean ... ... 55,297 Davies and W. McLean ... ... 7,000 Mrs. McLean ... ... ... 231 Kew Land Company (McLean) ... 4,764 The "Table Talk" account continued : " The list of the overdrafts in the Melbourne office, representing Mr. Munro's introductions, includes the following accounts, which we publish, without expressing any opinion as to their value as assets. The public, however, are entitled to know some particulars, and any man of business may judge which of the debts will be available for collection at 20J. in the 1." I Australian Alliance Investment Company ... 7,105 W. L. Baillieu, trust account ... ... 2,580 E. L. Baillieu ... ... ... 1,867 J. G. Baillieu ... ... ... 5,084 * W. L. Baillieu ... ... ... 28,034 R. F. Baillieu ... ... ... 945 R. L. Balding ... ... ... 5,188 Crellin (James Munro's station property) ... 38,702 Davies and McLean ... ... ... 7,000 A. G. Hall ... ... ... 4,067 A. G. Hall ... ... ... 1,337 A. G. Hall ... ... ... 15,000 Heart of Preston Estate Co. (Baillieu) ... 13,700 Henry George, Limited ... ... 10,300 64 BANKS AND BANKERS Kew Land Company (McLean) ... 4,764 J. A. Kitchen ... ... ... 7,000 Latham and Ashton ... ... ... 17,172 Latham and Baillieu ... ... ... 10,484 Munro and Baillieu, special account ... 20,734 Munro and Baillieu, lease account ... 7,600 Munro and Baillieu ... ... ... 70,209 Alexander Munro and Company ... 28,526 Donald Munro ... ... ... 26,161 Hon. James Munro ... ... ... 30,141 G. M. Munro ... ... ... 8,000 William McLean ... ... ... 55,297 Mrs. McLean ... ... ... 231 Queen Investment Land Company ... 31,837 John Robb ... ... ... 21,000 W P roperty Company ... ... 20, 150 Whittingham Brothers ... ... 18,000 John Whittingham ... ... ... 7,000 Total 565,215 Hon. James Munro formed a company called the Real Estate Mortgage and Deposit Bank to take over his own land speculations like the Chatsworth Estate, the Strathfieldsaye Station, the Narbethong Estate, the station in the Northern Territory and Kimberley, W.A., the La Rose Estate and other freehold pro- perties on which the ascertained loss was 608,500. The report of the liquidators of the Real Estate Bank showed that over 1,000,000 had been lost under James Munro's management. He actually had himself appointed Agent-General for Victoria in London. His estate was sequestrated : liabilities, 94,066 ; assets, 43,960. These were only remnants of his widespread foolish speculations, and the amount he got from banks and institutions must have been colossal. The following list is taken from " Table Talk" of 9th June, 1893, edited by a singularly 65 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT clever man, Maurice Brodsky, who married the sister of B. J. and Theodore Fink. For his fearlessness Brodsky had to retreat to London, and so did Benjamin Josman Fink who was threatened with assassination. When B. J. Fink died in London he left 250,000, chiefly made up of feathers from his nest, called Fink's Building, corner of Elizabeth and Flinders Street, Melbourne. By the way, three valuable corners of Melbourne had, it is alleged, faulty titles, and it is alleged all three were acquired by adverse possession, that is, by fencing them in and paying the rates for sixteen years, hoping the dead owner would never return. Fink's Building was one, the State Savings Bank, corner of Collins and Spencer Streets was another, and the Liverpool Buildings, corner of William and Bourke Streets was another of these vacant and unclaimed lots. The late Nathaniel Levi, an old bill-poster, owned this latter block, recently sold it to the British Imperial Oil Company and renamed Shell Corner, but playfully known to the wits on the village green as Blood Suckers Building. At one point of the smash period the " Argus " gave data relating to sixty-seven private compositions under Section 151 of the tenth part of the Insolvency Act. The defaulters were mostly barristers and solicitors with liabilities 3,800,982, assets 1,023,830 and deficiency 2,777,152. Under forty-seven arrangements only 65,821 was paid on the total liabilities of 2,280,807 ' Half of the " compotes " offered to pay from one farthing to threepence in the pound, most of them never paid a bean, a pepper- corn, or a mustard seed ! The " Argus " estimated the total liabilities at 4,500,000 to 5,000,000. My list of 248 " compotes " runs up to 15,000,000, and even then it was only part of the story ! The favourite offer to pay was one penny in the pound ! And even in those far-off times I have heard men 66 BANKS AND BANKERS thanking God for " our strong Supreme Court Bench." Pooh ! These liquidators never got any- where near the precincts of the Supreme Court. The insolvencies were all smothered in bank parlours and lawyers' offices ; smothered, stifled, strangled and buried with extreme unction. THE CYCLOPAEDIA OF VICTORIA The Honourable William Lawrence Baillieu, repre- senting the Northern Province in the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, is a member of the well-known firm of W. L. Baillieu and Company, auctioneers and estate agents, 375, Collins Street, Melbourne. He was born in Queenscliff, Victoria, in the year 1859, and is the second son of the late Mr. J. G. Baillieu, one of the early pioneers of Queenscliff. He was educated in Queenscliff, and in 1874, at the age of fourteen, entered the service of the Bank of Victoria, Queenscliff, and was engaged in banking pursuits till the year 1885. In that year he started business as auctioneer, etc., in conjunction with Mr. Donald Munro, under the style of Munro and Baillieu. This firm was carried on with considerable success till 1892, when Mr. Baillieu withdrew from the partnership and started operations on his own account. In 1897 Mr. A. S. Baillieu was admitted as a partner, and in 1899 Mr. H. Scott was admitted, the firm having carried on business since under the style of Baillieu, Allard and Company. Mr. W. L. Baillieu is a director of the " Herald " Company and the Carlton United Breweries Company. In 1891 he was elected to a seat in the Legislative Council, in which he represents the Northern Province. He married in 1887, Bertha, a daughter of Edward Latham, the well-known brewer, and has a family of six children. His wife is dead. 67 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT BANK MANAGERS IN BOOM The four bank managers who did the most harm during the banking boom were Henry Gyles Turner and John McCutcheon of the Commercial Bank of Australia, Alfred Priestly of the Federal Bank, and Colin Longmuir of the City of Melbourne Bank, all deceased. They were an amusing quartette who com- peted keenly and stupidly for banking business. They bid against one another for deposits in England, Ireland and Scotland, and when they got them in millions, enacted a harlequinade and scattered overdrafts, loans, and discounts right and left on the just and the unjust alike. The quality of the security was not strained, and credit dropped like the gentle rain from heaven upon the tag-rag and bobtail men of straw who were conducting a feverish land boom among themselves based upon false, faked, and untrue valuations. Having an overdraft of 40,000 against security for 60,000 worth of mushroom land, banks and building societies' shares, I contracted a fell funk and went and sold everything I had and gave it to the poor banker. Would you believe it, he up- braided me, told me I was hurting him with his board by paying off my advance, and implored to begin all over again to any extent I cared to name ! Like those other over-rated and highly-extolled bank managers, he had been led away by the paper pros- perity born of foreign deposits and foreign loans. Like them he banished care and caution and became daft. The Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank was rather a superior sort of small bank which made advances on land and houses. When it failed J. M. Davies, a sound business lawyer, drafted a scheme of reconstruction and arrangements with its depositors under which the bank re-opened and went on with its 68 BANKS AND BANKERS business. Soon after the Commercial Bank of Aus- tralia collapsed and J. M. Davies practically copied the A.D. and M. Bank scheme with which the depositors and shareholders of the Commercial were shackled. It was one-sided and unjust, especially to those who were compelled to take shares for deposits. It took the Commercial Bank thirty years to pull round. Its ordinary shares for many years were despised till a strong group of Australian brokers in London began to buy up the ordinary shares now worth about 325. and cut a great fortune out of them. During the entire period of convalescence the Com- mercial Bank has been just as carefully managed, as it was disgracefully managed during the boom period. These men did not practise pococurantism or the art of keeping cool and not worrying. They were feather-weight financiers and their actions brought the whole financial structure of Victoria to disaster. WILLIAM MEUDELL Dr. Black was the founder of the Bank of Victoria, and the Hon. Henry Miller the first chairman of the bank. " Money " Miller made a protege of my father simply because he could rely on him. The old man was as straight as a gun barrel, and although he was genial and popular he had plenty of moral courage and could say " No " quite easily, an attribute most of us haven't got, but which is essential in the make- up of a good bank manager. Twice my governor saved the Bank of Victoria from smashing. It had only .250,000 paid up and a moderate expansion of the advances meant trouble, if they threatened to become fixed or frozen instead of being liquid. One day about 1867 the old man got a hurry call to go to the Head Office and meet Mr. Miller and Mr. John Matheson, the general manager. He was ordered to Warrnambool by the first boat, in those faraway F 69 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT days the s.s. " Edina." With six balls of quicksilver at home, yclept children, it couldn't be done. When the governor got to Warrnambool he found a sticky mess. A firm of live stock auctioneers, Macgregor and Co., had got the squatters and farmers of the Warrnambool district to go in for dealing in sheep and cattle and to buy and sell on bills. Everybody would endorse anybody's bills, and especially Mac- gregor's who had won the hearts of the three local bank managers by discounting bills endorsed with full recourse by men then struggling to improve Western District sheep stations which to-day are enormously profitable to their grandsons. My father found overdrafts and bills discounted for over 80,000, or one-third of the capital of the Bank of Victoria in a comatose condition, unpaid inactive accounts, growing instead of shrinking. My father got into the collar, fixed his haims on tightly, nailed up his swingle-trees, girded up his loins and started to pull his clients and his bank out of the mire. It was a hard unpleasant task, but by nursing the good men and getting rid of the bad, he recovered the bad debts. The new managers of the other two local banks did fine team work with him, and they all got out of the bog, thanks of course to the rich land they held as security. As a kiddy I used to go with my father to squatter's homes to hold the ponies while the old man talked finance and clips and crops, just as though he was a partner of these young men, mostly Scotch, who loved and trusted him. The proof is that my father personally administered six deceased estates totalling 750,000, without losing one penny of principal or interest, and if he had cared he could have had double that number and value of estates as sole executor. Within four years, he had pulled the business back to normal and was then sent to Bendigo to square up a heavy list of bad debts which were 70 BANKS AND BANKERS crippling the bank, mostly owing by defunct mining companies, in those days all limited and not no liability, who had a habit of stopping work and, rather than make calls, of letting the overdraft r.i.p. He recovered about ,50,000 of bad and doubtful debts, and his reward was the general managership of the Bank of Victoria at 800 a year, a house over the bank in Collins Street for my parents and six sisters. Imagine the meanness of a board of directors that paid its chief manager ,800 a year to handle 10,000,000 of assets and liabilities ! The Bank of Victoria was founded by Dr. Black and Hon. Henry Miller, better known as " Money " Miller, who learnt banking and money lending in the Union Bank, Hobart. It is said Henry used to lend money to his fellow-clerks at slightly over the current rate charged on overdrafts. For years the paid-up capital of the Bank of Victoria was only 250,000, and old " Money " held most of the shares. When the Vic. burst wide open on 9th May, 1893, the published list of shareholders showed that the Millers held only a trifling handful of shares, Edward having 380, Albert 390, Septimus 324, and William Henry 276 worth 5 each, 5 uncalled, out of a register of 120,000 shares. Sir W. J. Clarke was the biggest holder with 2058 shares. Which reminds me I had a glass of sherry with Sir W T illiam at the Athenaeum Club about an hour before he collapsed to death on a tram in Collins Street. As I was elected a member of the Athenaeum Club in July, 1889, I am well within the first dozen members still alive out of 400 in that year. A fine club, the Athenaeum, composed of real leaders in every walk of life. Although I met all the celebrated men of the day there, club law forbids me to tell any tales about them. PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT W. KNOX AND JOHN ALSOP Of all the business men with whom I have been connected during my meteoric career, William Knox was easily one of the very best. With all his mannerisms he was shrewd, just and always kindly and helpful. The Broken Hill silver pioneers were fortunate in getting him to be the driving force of the new industry. If Knox had remained in the Bank of Victoria he could not have failed to become general manager. He had plenty of tact and a deep knowledge of human nature. Another fine character amongst leading men was the late John Alsop, actuary of the Melbourne Savings Bank, with which he was connected all his life. He laid the foundations firmly and well of the present State Savings Bank system by opening suburban branches and pursuing an active advertising policy. Because I was the first Victorian to win Isaac Pitman's shorthand certificate, Alsop made me his assistant, and I have a scrap book of twenty-five pamphlets on thrift, which I wrote for him, besides hundreds of newspaper letters, and each was a brilliant coruscation of literary gems adapted from Samuel Smiles, Charles Spurgeon and Ralph Waldo Emerson, on the virtue of being thrifty, and how good it was for the young. All these authori- ties saved their pennies, let their pounds rip and died poor. This much sank into my bones and filled up lesions in my brains. Save all the money you can in early youth and middle age, and spend it on what gives you happiness. Big estates and probate duties are merely lack-lustre joys only suitable for wowsers and dullards who cannot realize the joy of living in the present, because their thoughts, conduct and actions are concentrated on what they will do in the eternity after death. Carpe diem, enjoy to-day, ought to be tattooed on the chest of every babe which sur- 7* BANKS AND BANKERS vives the critical age of twelve months. These pamphlets of mine were distributed from house to house by three returned soldiers from the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny. They pushed them under doors, put them in letter boxes, under the mats, through the keyholes, everywhere except down chim- neys, literally in millions. In five years Alsop had doubled the number of depositors' accounts and set an archaic, half-dead institution on the high road of prosperity. When I suggested I might go round the world at my own expense to find out how other savings banks were behaving, the trustees gave me nine months' leave, and I visited as many savings banks in Europe, Great Britain, the United States and Canada as time allowed. The net result was nothing. Savings banks abroad were a hundred years behind the Melbourne Savings Bank in book- keeping, advertising and service to depositors. And they are to-day. Like our Australian banking system, the Australian Savings Banks lead the world. Denial of this is difficult, because in every civilized country on the globe I have seen and observed these banks of the poor. That trip cost me 250, while my second world's tour ate up 1000. When my father was general manager of the Bank of Victoria in Melbourne, he was presented with a letter of introduction by a new chum early one Monday morning written by the young man's uncle, whose famous family had extremely large sums on fixed deposit in the London office of the bank. The youngster was a typical product of an English public school : well groomed, quite illiterate, very athletic, and enormously superior to everybody. He was affable, courteous and ignorant ; in fact, a real scion of a true British aristocrat. He said he wanted to learn banking, so my father handed him over to the paying teller who set him to work sorting 73 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT crumpled notes. Entering the over-crowded teller's box with its piles of gold and silver and hillocks of notes, Monty loudly exclaimed, " Bai Jove, what a lot of munnay ! " That was all he uttered from ten until one o'clock, when the teller told him he might go out to lunch and be back at two. The well-groomed cadet of a noble family never came back and has never been seen in Melbourne from then till now. When the paying teller tried to balance his cash at four o'clock he found he was 2500 short in notes of assorted denominations, singles, fives and tens ! His uncle was advised by cable of the episode and his reply authorized the bank to debit his account for the missing amount. Ned Kelly was a man born out of his time with no education excepting his great knowledge of the Book of the Bush ; his leaping thought, rapid action and fertility of resource marked him as a clever fighter who in a modern war could have entered as a private and ended as a general. His father had been a convict, but not a convict of the brutal type. Rather his offences against the law were of the kind natural to a new country of few fences. The lifting of horses, and the duffing of cattle were not crimes generally execrated. In fact, they were the crimes from which many a great pastoral family in many countries have dated their beginnings. His mother naturally accepted the commercial morality of her husband and of her times. Her only crime was to protect her children from pursuit of the police, then more hated than in more settled times, and probably deserving some of the hatred. She was in gaol when her son was under sentence of death, and her last words to him are recorded to have been, " Ned would die like a Kelly." Ned Kelly's first brush with the police and his first convictions were the matter of lifting a horse. 74 BANKS AND BANKERS In his youth he knew Power, the bushranger, an inoffensive, old, bad man. When released from his first imprisonment the dislike of the " currency lad " for that which he regarded as his oppressive supervision by the police made his course rapid down the latent ways of crime. The cold murder of Sergeant Kennedy put him outside the pale ; after that he shot the traitor, Aaron Sherriff, who had been in his pay and was about to sell him to the police. Ned Kelly shot Sherriff at the door of SherrifFs house, while the police who were there to " take " the outlaw, Kelly, cowered in a back room. From that time Ned Kelly became more daring and intrepid ; he knew the value of speed to the moment ; he struck swiftly and moved swiftly to a place fifty or one hundred miles from the scene of earlier robberies, paralysing a slow-moving police force whose heart was not in the chase which had such a dangerous animal for its quarry. At the end a train-load of police sped from Melbourne to capture an outlaw gang that had no resources but those it made, and the police in the fight that ended the gang at Glenrowan even used a cannon. I met the Kelly gang only in their works and through Ted Living, my fellow-bank clerk. At one time Living was accountant at the bank of N.S.W. branch at Jerilderie, a small N.S.W. town north of the Murray River. The Kellys had already robbed three banks and had been posted missing four months until suddenly and early on a Sunday morning they appeared at Jerilderie police station. The Kelly gang rode into the police yard and bailed up the three policemen whom they locked in the cells. Then the Kellys donned the policemen's Sunday clothes. In full sight of the public they spent the day in the precincts of the gaol and Ned Kelly escorted the ser- geant's wife to the Roman Catholic church on Sunday 75 ' PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT morning and stood guard while she dusted the church before the visiting clergyman arrived. All day the gang held the police and not a townsman knew. On Sunday night they cut the few telegraph wires leading from the town, telephones and automobiles were not then invented. Tartleton, the manager, and Living, the accountant and teller of the Bank of New South Wales, had been at near-by stations spending Saturday and Sunday, and they rode to the bank early on Monday. Tartleton went upstairs for a shower bath and Living got out his cash and sorted his notes. The junior clerk had left the front door ajar. Ned Kelly walked in a little before ten and placing the muzzle of a Brown Bess rifle against Living's temple, ordered him to put up his hands, which Ted did with much zeal and rapidity. Ned said, " Gimme yer keys," and Ted replied with the swiftness of a flashlight, " All right, Mr. Kelly." By this time Steve Hart had been upstairs and collected Tartleton at the point of his rifle from under the shower. Tartleton dropped his soap, threw up his arms and said, " Won't you let me dry meself." " No bally fear," said Mr. Hart. " Come along down as y'ar." And come as he was he did in nine and one-fifth seconds by the stop watch. Mr. Ned Kelly then filled two saddle- bags from the safes and tills with notes and gold valued at j 15,000. A big heavy canvas bag took his fancy, and he was about to drag it along when Living smilingly remarked, " Them's coppers, mis- ter/' ' That be damned for a yarn," said Ned, but he drew a jack knife, used for trimming his nails and cutting tobacco, from his pocket, cut the bag and punted pennies with his boots all over the bank floor. " Come and 'av a drink," said their genial host, Mr. Edward Kelly, so they left the bank to its fate, disdaining to take title deeds and overdrafts, loans and advances, and crossed the road to the 76 BANKS AND BANKERS public house. Dan Kelly and Byrne had rounded up every man, woman and child in the village and put them in the pub. The police had been given some tucker and beer and were left in the lock up. They missed all the fun that day. Just as the gang entered the hotel corridor, Dan Kelly had drawn a bead with his gun on the publican who had suggested that Daniel was tipsy. Ned threw his brother's rifle up and the bullet was shot into the ceiling instead of through Boniface. One shearer had a concertina and another a riddle, so the bar room was cleared and everybody danced. The Messrs. Kelly generously bought drinks for all hands, most generously and frequently, and by noon both cellar and bar were empty of anything to drink. Living managed to slip out the back door over to the bank stable, got his horse and rode like Steve Donoghue, Tod Sloan and Frank Dempsey, not gracefully but very fast, towards Deniliquin to break the news. When he reached the telegraph office his favourite prad fell down dead. He bought it as a colt for five pounds. Very bravely Ted pushed on with the good work, took the first train for Melbourne, and turned up at ten o'clock precisely next morning before one Walsh, the inspector of the Bank of New South Wales in Melbourne armed with a huge red and yellow carpet bag. Walsh, without looking up said, " What's that for," and Living brazenly replied, " Want more." " More what ? " said Walsh. " Cash," hinted Ted. " Mr. Kelly took the lot on Sunday." " Oh, did he," said Walsh, and without taking breath, said, " Mr. Living, why are you absent from your branch without leave ? ' Of course the newspapers had answered that for Ted. However, old Walsh said, " Go back at once to Jerilderie by the noon train." Then he relaxed, and Ted and I spent a joyous night with the lads of the village (and some of the lassies) telling 77 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT about the vile and rude behaviour of the Kelly gang in collaring fifteen thousand of the " best," mixed and all that it was. Ned Kelly gave Living an account of his life written in his own blood. This we tried to sell to the Melbourne newspapers, but the best offer by Sam Winter of the Melbourne " Herald " was only five pounds, so Living kept the MS. which was afterwards lost by a friend. Tartleton was so angry with Walsh's harsh reception that he resigned from the bank. By midnight on Tuesday neither Ted's halo or mine fitted nicely, but we both agreed the Kelly gang ought to have made the event a quarterly affair. When the popular Kelly gang of bushrangers were successfully dodging the Victorian police, the banks took more than ordinary care not to be stuck up. In the tiny branch at Corop where I was, we were fur- nished with ancient pistols and one hundred cartridges each with elaborate instructions how to load and fire them. Mine were all used to shoot swans in Lake Cooper, and I felt safe as a marksman because Ned Kelly was three times as big as a black swan. The north-eastern district of Victoria was the Kelly's stronghold and the Oxley branch of the Bank of Victoria was an isolated outpost in Kelly land. There was a staff of four, one being a new junior from head office, called Gaff George, who was eager to shoot a Kelly or two to get the rewards. An old gentleman named Lane, a director of the bank, senile and nervous, visited the Oxley office to inspect the strategic plans laid down for shooting and catching (preferably shooting) the desperadoes Ned and Dan Kelly, Steve Hart and Steve Byrne. Old Lane rehearsed the staff in the manoeuvres to be followed when the Kellys called, which by the way they didn't. ' You, Mr. Wallis, will stay in the manager's room and on the first alarm will aim through the door at the 78 BANKS AND BANKERS easiest object." ' You, Mr. Sutherland, the teller, will drop on your knees directly Mr. Edward Kelly enters the front door, seize the revolver provided by head office, and kill Kelly without delay ; then you will run out to the stable, mount your grey horse (for which the bank allows you twenty pounds a year fodder allowance) and ride swiftly to Oxley for the police." ' You, Mr. Williams (the ledger-keeper) when you notice Mr. Daniel Kelly pointing his rifle at you, you will instantly fall to the floor of the ledger desk and shoot him without wasting time." " And you, Mr. George, will take your weapon from the drawer and aim at Mr. Byrne or Mr. Hart, whoever may first appear. I trust you are practising marksman- ship assiduously, Mr. George, and you know it is your duty to protect the bank's property." They went through the defensive action several times, but the last time GafF George, who stuttered badly was choking inwardly. Old Lane said, " And now, Mr. George, when the Kellys enter the bank chambers, what will you be doing ? " " Well, Mr. Lane, I really think I would be still sitting on my stool making a mess of things." Poor young George was trans- ferred to Head Office for want of respect to a senior officer, and the Kellys never called. COMMERCIAL BANK When this bank failed in 1893 ^ should have stayed shut. It was in a most awfully putrid state, for out of 13,000,000 of assets only about 2,000,000 was realizable. The bank was able to reopen because under its scheme of reconstruction the Supreme Court allowed it to annex 2,000,000 worth of customers' deposits and turn them into preference shares at 4 per cent. The ordinary capital left from the wreck was only 95,619, and the lucky holders of ordinary shares were so protected by an unjust scheme of 79 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT reconstruction that they now draw the bulk of the profits. For many years the ordinary shares hung round 4^. because no dividends could be paid till the old debts of the bank were completely cleared off. Now they are 335. and within three years four issues of these los. ordinaries have been made and nothing has been done to increase the dividends of the preference shares, whose money was taken from them by force. I was nominal plaintiff in a case brought against the directors to stop them paying dividends on ordinaries. We lost the case although Sir William Irvine, C.J., and Justice Mann, then leaders of the Bar, presented our arguments mag- nificently well. 80 CHAPTER V MINES AND MINING. STOCK EXCHANGE. OIL QUEST THIS is the proper place to tell the story of how one great gold-mining fortune was begun. Naturally I was a fine baby, and as there was no need to drink typhoid water, I throve mightily. We lived in a small bluestone bank building near the Bendigo Creek, and George Lansell, the Quartz King, started making soap and candles in Forest Street, behind the Oriental, New South Wales and Union Banks. He made a villainous smell and my mamma thought the rank compound would affect my health, so she persuaded papa to get the other bank managers to join the Bank of Victoria in buying Lansell out and tearing his soap works down. He took one thousand pounds cash and put the money into the Adventure and Advance Mine, struck it rich till he gathered two million pounds from his mining and put them for " safety first " in Government and municipal debentures. If he had made only highly scented soaps he might never have gone into quartz mining. Lansell had an overdraft in the Bank of Victoria just before he struck gold in the Garden Gully United Tribute Companies. Head Office told my father to call up the account against his wishes. He gave Lansell a fortnight's grace and gold was struck in two of the shafts during the period. Within twelve months Lansell took 200,000 of gold out of those tributes and paid off and closed his account. Six months later he showed my dad a twelve months' deposit receipt of the Union Bank for 125,000. 81 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT J. B. Watson was another lucky digger. From the Kent Mines he won twelve tons of gold worth 4.00,000 from between the 300 and 500 levels. Altogether J. B. Watson made and left a fortune of nearly two million pounds made quickly and invested shrewdly in Melbourne city property. The sight of nine little Watson boys and girls and nine little Meudells marching like eighteen Christian soldiers hand in hand to the Rev. Dr. Nish's Scotch kirk in Bendigo must have afforded plenty of fun to the angels above. The first big cheque I ever saw when I was a bank " pig-boy " on the exchanges was for 25,000 signed by J. B. Watson for a mortgage over Billy Heffernan's Shamrock Hotel, Bendigo. The signature looked like a sketch of a hot-water radiator. Barnet Lazarus, a quartz miner who owned the two Lazarus gold mines at New Chum, did well and left 80,000. He killed himself by doing his own retort- ing and inhaling quicksilver fumes from the amalgam. Old Barnet should have allowed somebody else to do the retorting or ought to have worn a glass mask. My father was his executor and when Dan Lazarus came of age seven years later the estate was worth 1 20,000, or ,40,000 each to Sam, Abe and Dan Lazarus. For doing that Sam and Dan each gave my father 50, and Abe sent him a letter of thanks from London without any enclosure. STOCK EXCHANGE, COLLINS STREET BUILDING In 1887, j ust as tne Broken Hill boom was failing and fading away, the committee of the Stock Exchange of Melbourne allowed itself to be swayed by that arch land boomer, B. J. Fink, then a member of committee. B. J. persuaded them to buy from some obscure land syndicate the land opposite the existing Stock Exchange then housed in a tumble-down building owned by Messieurs Miller (Ted, Sep and 82 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL Albert) and now belonging to the Commonwealth Bank. The Mercantile Exchange, a first-class news- paper and advertising concern owned by H. Byron Moore, W. H. Waddell, and J. E. Gilchrist occupied the hall in front, and the Stock Exchange sessions were held in a ramshackle, dark, stuffy room at the back. Most of the trading was done in a small vestibule, ten feet by eighteen feet, opening into Collins Street. Seats on the Exchange had sold up to 2,500 and the committee thinking the boom was first cousin to perpetual motion lost their heads, bought the land from the E.S.A.C. bank and erected a fool of a building for an Exchange which cost them 280,000 and kept the Stock Exchange dog-poor for the same time nearly as it took Moses to cross the desert with the children of Israel, about forty years. The A.M.P. Society lost a lot of money on the "mort- gage " as B. J. Fink used to call that form of security. The purchase of the land was a wrong deed and the erection of a costly, dark, dull building was a pure act of treason to the members. Later I helped to save the Stock Exchange Building Company a big sum of money. The Australian Property Company had bought the old E.S. and A. Bank at the corner of Flinders Lane and Elizabeth and pulled it down and started a fifteen-story building before they had arranged for the money to finish the job ! That was one of the maddest things done in the mad boom era by a board of the city's leading men. They tempted me with a salary of 1600 a year to take the managership of their company, and I told them money could only be raised in London to finish the Australian Building and pay off the bank overdraft. I raised 400,00 for the Australian Property Com- pany in London and got no thanks and worse still no brokerage ! A safe deposit had been ordered from Milner and Company of Manchester and a deposit 83 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT of 1000 paid. Part of the strong room was packed and about to be shipped. Promptly I forfeited the deposit, paid Milner's another 1000, and they can- celled the contract. That action of mine saved the Stock Exchange Safe Deposit from failure and its profits kept the Building Company alive for many years. BROWN COAL Away back in the pre-smash days when banks burst wide open and overdrafts were closed with a click I became interested in brown coal, its uses and its possibilities. My handbook and vade-mecum was the parliamentary report of the Royal Coal Commission of 1891. My brother, William Grant Meudell, was the pioneer of the Morwell brown coalfields now called Yallourn. We were interested in several boring and mining companies and for many years shepherded brown coal areas in Gipps- land, so as not to be out of it when brown coal was making fortunes for everybody interested in it. I became obsessed with ideas of its potential value, and as I was making pots of money in those boomy days I spent some on a trip to Europe to see brown coal mines for myself. In Germany, Austria, Bel- gium and France I saw brown coal being mined and used raw and in briquette form. That was thirty-six years ago, and to-day the Yallourn people are pottering round on the fringe of the science of using brown coal and are still throwing money away in a tinpot shed at Fitzroy, called a research laboratory, in a futile attempt to find out what the Germans have known and been using for fifty years ! What a funny farce the history of brown coal in Victoria has been, played by oafs and officials still in their pupilage. The drill has located thirty thousand million tons of brown coal in Gippsland of varying calorific value, 84 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL and the brown coal industry is still in the experimental stage ! Another trip I made out to London to form a company to work the big brown coal deposit on George Chirnside's Werribee Park. I formed one of the strangest syndicates ever collected in London, headed by the powerful A. E.G. Company, or General Electric Company of Berlin to put up or lay down half a million pounds to open a brown coalfield to supply electricity from Laverton to Melbourne. Directly Thomas Tait appointed C. H. Merz as consulting electrician to the railway department my syndicate declined to go ahead and the project failed. Thereby I lost what is known on 'Change as a wad of money. C. H. Merz has drawn from the Victorian Railways Department 221,000 in fees and com- missions for reports and consultations. Some of that might have been mine. ' Tidapa," as they say in Malaya, ' Why worry ? " I missed another fortune. That's all, well " Nitchevo," it doesn't matter. Altona is a much better brown coal body than Yallourn and is only ten miles from Melbourne compared with ninety to Yallourn. Ultimately Yallourn will be abandoned and Altona will be operated to supply drier brown coal and cheaper electricity at half the cost. There are splendid possi- bilities in the brown coal deposits near Adelaide, South Australia, and near Welshpool, Victoria. STOCK EXCHANGE The Broken Hill Silver Boom was just reaching its climacteric when William Knox suggested I should join the Stock Exchange and do his business and that of his most intimate friends of the Broken Hill crowd. These half-dozen big shareholders and directors formed a syndicate called the Barrier Ranges Associa- tion, and I was given most of their orders. Knox gave me 2000 to buy my Exchange seat, and I o 85 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT had 2000 of my own to open an account with the Bank of Australasia. The first day I took 200 in commissions and at the second session I lost 50 by buying 100 Central Broken Hills instead of selling them. In three months I paid my debt to William Knox and record this action of his as by far the kindest I have experienced in life. He was an exceedingly able man despite certain idiosyncrasies and his intuitive knowledge of psychology enabled him to select as his lieutenants to handle the extensive and growing business arising from the creation of the silver mining industry, such able men of high character and sound sense as Alfred Mellor, Thomas Rollason, John Brandon, Colin Templeton, F. M. Dickenson, James Campbell, John Bristow, C. L. Hewitt, and many others who were attached to the powerful Broken Hill organization from the very outset. On two occasions I went to London with Mr. Knox and acted as his secretary in connection with his missions on behalf of the Broken Hill Proprietary and the Mount Lyell Railway Mining Company. When I joined the Stock Exchange silver mining was proceeding vigorously in Zeehan, Dundas, Whyte River and other fields on the west coast of Tasmania, where 44 companies were being worked. In 1891, 1 68 gold mining companies were operating : Bendigo ... ... ... ... 84 Ballarat ... ... ... ... 21 Smeaton and C res wick ... ... ... 10 Timor (Duke group of mines) ... ... 5 Miscellaneous in a dozen Victorian districts ... 36 Now South Wales and Queensland Gold Mines 1 2 1 68 If it had not been for the gold mining industry Victoria would have disrupted and gone to pot for 86 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL twenty-five years, and when I hear imported Governors, modern Members of Parliament and Pommy visitors of more or less distinction talking disparagingly of mining, one cannot help sneering, laughing and gibing at them and all such ignorant people. Amongst the New South Wales gold companies were two in which we had " corners " Bear Hill, Hillgrove and Earl of Hopetoun. A " corner " is a most amusing and highly exciting event in a Stock Exchange. I took part in four of them, the other two being Round Hill Silver Company at Broken Hill and Duke of York Company at Meredith. A " corner " is not played like golf, or Mah Jong, or croquet, or rounders, it is not nearly as simple and stupid as these games, but vastly funnier. The plan is to form a syndicate to buy, take off the market and put in a Safe Deposit box all the scrip possible up to more than half the register. Then the market price is put up and down and sometimes over sideways to encourage the inno- cent to " spec-sell " or " bear " them. When the mug speculators (the world is full of them, for they are born at the rate of ten a minute all the time) are well and truly over-sold and the last scrip certificate has been imprisoned, the price is steadily bid up to an impossible and false value and held there. Notices to deliver scrip at once are sent to every broker who is over sold and he has to go to the syndicate, confess he has sinned, and pay whatever the syndicate chooses to exact. When Tommy Arnfield, once a butcher boy in Bendigo, cornered Duke of York shares, several brokers came to him crying to be let off, and being an ex-slaughterman, and therefore pained to see tears, Tommy compounded for merely nominal prices and the corner was gradually dissolved. There were 200,000 shares in Bear Hills and J. S. Vickery, one of the very shrewdest brokers we ever had, made up his mind the register was too large to PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT " corner." It wasn't and Vickery had to pay up, it was said 10,000, to be released from his bargains. Fitzgerald Moore, another brainy member, an engineer by profession, engineered the Round Hill " corner " and squeezed extremely able and crafty members like G. W. Staples, Tom Luxton, C. Von Arnheim and others. The Earl of Hopetoun corner was worked on a commission by an outside broker, Colonel Alfred Wilson, who afterwards distinguished himself in the Boer War. It was only a small affair. It is surprising some of the present generation of share- holders don't plan a corner just for the fun of the thing. None of them have the courage of the old gold-mining crowd, like Jimmy Taylor, M. B. Jenkins, J. R. Rippin, Arthur Sprague, Dev. Call, Dave Green way, Tommy Luxton, or J. B. Simmons. These old diehards never took the trouble to teach the young eagles to fly, so these young eagles do not live in eyries. They are content to live in hen coops and make $s. commission out of bonds and debentures. There have been no great men on the Stock Exchange since Agammemnon. The shouting that once tore open hell's concave has died down, and the din and dash of conflict for speculative stocks has passed into the limbo of oblivion. G. W. Staples was a truly great operator, full of knowledge about every stock, primed with early news from every mine of importance in Australia, and quicker than light- ning or radio in acting. Staples was a king amongst share dealers. He would quote a buying and selling price for almost any active stock, and he was a god- send and a fountain of blessings to a commission broker like myself who had a host of small clients' orders to transact. Staples took 30,000 Commodore Vanderbilts from me one night at market price i$s. and had sold them all by next evening at up to jCi. He thought nothing of buying any number of Broken 88 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL Hills up to lOjOOO, and some of my best bargains were made with him privately because Staples was an honourable gentleman and dealt justly. He left Melbourne for the London Stock Exchange when at his zenith, and has never been replaced either as an operator or as a creator of business. Another splendid operator was Bill Clark, of Clark and Robinson, who was talented in feeling the course of the market. The broker with the best nose for a good or a bad market was Billy Jones who learnt sharebroking at Ballarat, where he failed three times. Like Clark, Jones drifted to London after he made his pile. Then there was Harry Karlbaum who joined the Melbourne Stock Exchange from Adelaide, and being possessed of high courage cut a fortune out of the timid speculators, whose name is legion. The gradual decline in prices on the Stock Exchange between end of 1889 and 1892 cast its shadow before the fiasco of 1893. Here are the figures showing the total shrinkages in each section in 1892 : L Six Banks ... ... ... 4,500,000 Banking & Financial Institutions ... 8,500,000 Melbourne & Silverton Tram Co. ... 8,500,000 Breweries ... ... ... 1,000,000 Metropolitan Gas Co. ... ... 1,000,000 Miscellaneous Companies ... ... 2,500,000 Building Societies ... ... ... 4,000,000 Davies' family group of Companies . . . 3,500,000 Broken Hill Silver Companies ... 3,000,000 36,500,000 As an illustration, Goldsborough, Mort and Com- pany ji paid shares fell to 2J., although the last dividend in 1891 was 10 per cent. Goldsboroughs 89 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT owed 2,599,382 on debentures A and B issues. A friend of mine bought B debentures 100 paid, in quantities at 40 through me and held them for a fortune. In January, 1892, the shares of coal, brick, and coffee palace companies were unsaleable, and thereby 1,273,802 of paid-up capital was tied up and became fixed and unfruitful. Fortunately gold mining was active in Bendigo, Ballarat, Smeaton and Creswick, Timor and all over Victoria. This table ought to be recorded for sake of permanence. The following figures from a circular I posted broadcast in April, 1896, gives a faint idea of how bare land was used to make scrip as gambling counters and then boomed by bad men like myself. These leases were all " weaners " to the Mount Lyell Company, and most of them have since been absorbed by the big company and have produced payable copper ore : Shares Market Market value Company. Issued. Price. of Mine. North Mount Lyell ... 600 *45 87,000 Lyell Consols ... 100,000 12/6 62,500 Mount Lyell Extended... 600 90 45>ooo Lyell Pioneers ... 3,ooo 8/5/0 24,750 Lyell Blocks . . . 50,000 8 /- 20,000 Lyell Tharsis ... 24,000 io/- 12,000 Tasman Lyells ... 30,000 9/6 14,250 Melbourne Tramway Company shares was a stock very cleverly worked by those in control. By a successive series of " watering " the stock, that is by giving shareholders the right to apply for new shares at a price under the market price, and by increasing dividends to boost prices. Trams were put up to 8 5-f. for the i share, paid up to ics. with IQS. uncalled. It was the most brilliant sequence of attractive coups ever employed on the Stock Exchange 90 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL of Melbourne. The business done throughout the land boom for nearly ten years in Melbourne Tram shares was literally enormous. Tens of thousands of pounds were put into the 960,000 shares that were issued from time to time out of 2,000,000 authorized. At 8 a share, Trams were once worth 7,680,000 on the market, a simply fabulous price and rotten to the core. Hundreds of people were ruined when the shares fell away to 8j., and at no time in the career of this spectacular stock were they ever worth more than i. The company was well managed by F. G. Clapp, H. A. Wilcox and W. G. Sprigg. The latter died in 1926 leaving 100,000. In 1893 in the land boom Sprigg made a composition with his creditors for 150,172 at 4^. in the i. BROKEN HILL Towards the^ close of the land boom other stocks besides those connected with land dealing suffered depreciation, mainly because holders wanted cash, therefore gold and silver mining shares were flung on the market. During the month of March, 1890, the depreciation in the values of nine leading silver mining companies was over five million pounds ! It suited me very well because I had just got home from out in London and had found splendid agents interested purely in Australian stocks on the London Stock Exchange. The pioneer of the business of selling Australian shares in London was the late F. W. Prell, a Melbourne merchant, who very cleverly used Australian scrip to pay his London obligations and made profits on his local purchase of shares. The first sharebroker to sell Australian shares of all sorts in London was myself, and when the banks broke I bought bank deposit receipts in a big way chiefly in Scotland. The winter climate in 9 1 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT London prevented me joining the Stock Exchange there, and several offers of partnership were made to me because of my special and intimate knowledge of Australian companies. Had I stayed in London I could easily have made a fortune quickly for that reason. Three good things did I do on the Stock Exchange. I proposed that the Exchange should endeavour to secure that a proportion, if not the whole, of every Government, Metropolitan Board of Works, and all other public and municipal loans should be floated in Melbourne. My resolution was opposed in the room, the only supporter being a man of wide vision, E. Millard, an old Ballarat broker. My reason for proposing such a radical change was that I had happened to be in London when E. G. Fitzgibbon, chairman of the Melbourne Board of Works, was negotiating in Throgmorton Street. I heard a conversation between two leading bond brokers who openly and laughingly told me they were going to squeeze Fitzgibbon, who was a new chum in London and green at the loan raising game. They made him pay 4 per cent and sell the loan at 98. The money could have been got much more cheaply and with less expense for brokerage, etc., in Melbourne. The next Board loan was raised by the Melbourne Stock Exchange, and the custom of local loans was thereby established, and had grown to large dimensions. Nobody ever gave me any money or thanks or flowers for my idea. Another, the third, of my schemes beneficial to the Stock Exchange was the establish- ment of the system of arbitrage in shares between Australia and London. During one of my numerous visits to London I made arrangements with a leading firm of stock brokers to send them daily orders to sell shares in the principal Australian companies on the London Stock Exchange. The first stock we 92 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL dealt with was Broken Hill Proprietary Company, which at that time had no London office. The object was to buy the shares here in a quiet market and cable a selling order to London at a price above Melbourne value. Gradually we enlarged the number of stocks by offering Metropolitan Gas, Melbourne and Silver- ton Trams, and occasionally a few Mount Morgan shares. The business was most profitable and we never made any loss, because we got from 5^. to los. a share above the buying price here. When Mount Lyells came on the list we did a roaring trade before the London register was opened, an action in which I was personally interested, being in London at the time. Mr. F. W. Prell, the remarkably clever Mel- bourne merchant, was in the field before me using Australian shares to settle his exchange transactions in London and New York. That is to say, he sold shares at a profit in London to meet drafts on time for goods. Another scheme of much importance to the Stock Exchange was suggested to my friend, F. T. Derham, then Postmaster-General of Victoria. In 1 889 in Berlin I noticed and made use of the " rohr- post," a system of sending letters and telegrams by pneumatic tube across the city. These tubes, now universal, were not at that time used in any other city, because I made inquiries at post offices in Paris, London and New York and elsewhere. Mr. Derham, who was a splendid business man, and then the active head of Swallow and Ariell, one of the world's greatest biscuit manufacturers, seized my suggestion, and the first pneumatic tube between the Stock Exchange building, then about to be opened, was laid to the G.P.O. in Elizabeth Street. It has been a great convenience, and has saved much time in despatching sharebroker's telegrams. For that discovery I got neither reward nor thanks. Later on F. M. Dickenson, my partner on the Stock Exchange, and I placed 93 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT before the Post Office Department an option I had secured from the Exchange Telegraph Company of London to establish a " ticker " system of sending quotations and news by tape from the Stock Exchange all over the city. Our offer was turned down flat by the Post Office authorities and I lost a good commission. Hon. W. A. Zeal, M.L.C., an ex-railway contractor, was Postmaster-General, and being ignorant of the use and value of the tape machine for the quick distribution of news, he sneered at the idea and turned us down. Zeal bossed the Legislative Council of Victoria for many years. He was as aggressive as a bull-ant and could bite as keenly. Mr. William Knox, first secretary, then director, of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, a life- long friend of mine, suggested I should join the Stock Exchange, and offered to pay for a seat. With his powerful influence I was elected a member on the 1 5th January, 1890, and paid 2000 for my seat. B. R. Harris, a son-in-law of Mark Moss, a well- known city moneylender, paid 2500 just afterwards and holds the belt for the record price. There are 129 seats on the Stock Exchange of Melbourne and only enough business for 29 members. Until the Exchange is reorganized the value of the seats will never reach 2500 again. The members will not employ or pay agents, touts, or runners to create orders for them, according to the custom of every Stock Exchange outside Australia, and consequently their business is small and circumscribed and the total done is contemptible. About ten big firms do 90 per cent of the business while 119 members sit round and watch them doing it. It is a purely farcical and nonsensical state of affairs. So I joined the Stock Exchange and went through several years of exciting, tense work, seeing fortunes made and lost, and men made poor by dabbling in the market. I 94 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL discovered the first sound principle of speculation to be that success awaits the man who is not always speculating, but who watches his chance in one stock either to buy or to sell, and preferably to sell or to " bear " it. Money can be made on the Stock Exchange only in this way. Take one stock at a time. Never attempt to juggle with three or four, or thirteen or fourteen as some gamblers do so foolishly. Not once did I observe a man make money on the Stock Exchange who was interested in numerous stocks at one time. The fool who thinks he can win every time with any stock he fancies, invariably ends by losing his money and frequently by being bankrupted. The sensible gambler, and there are very few of this species, learns everything he can about one stock, gets the best expert advice about it and then acts or does not. Most people buy and sell shares on straight tips, street tips, advice from brokers holding the shares themselves, or they are influenced by newspaper information, which is generally carefully prepared for the public by those who control the company. Another sound principle to be laid down for investing, is never to buy bank shares or shares in any company liable to calls. My experience has been that most prudent investors avoided bank shares as being too risky. At the end of the land boom came a very iliad of woes, a train of disasters. In that day I cast my idols to the bats and moles. The banking crisis and collapse followed closely on the heels of the obliteration of the building societies with which Melbourne was engorged. These societies were generally managed and directed by men without any financial knowledge of monetary training, and they were the easy prey of sharp land and estate agents, jerry builders and land boomers. A building society can only succeed under the most careful management and by keeping closely to the business 95 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT of lending money to bona fide house-holders and repelling speculators as borrowers. During the debacle an opportunity occurred of reducing the number of banks, and several of them should have been wiped out ruthlessly. A mistaken sympathy was exercised and several dangerous institutions were permitted to exist. Through avoiding dealing in bank shares and land bank scrip I got through the tumult for 2 IQJ. calls due on Real Estate Bank shares. That was all the money I lost as a share- broker after the smash. Two of my best exploits were working on the Stock Exchange for the issue of local loans, and going to London to arrange to export scrip from the Australian market to the London. There were very few other share brokers in that business then, and there were no Baillieu's, or Robinson Clark's in the game. I did very well and ought to have stuck to the buying of shares in Melbourne and selling them by cable in London the same day. I have made as much as IQJ. a share on Melbourne Trams, Mount Lyells and Silverton Trams, and occasionally did better even than that. Cabling was costly and I had a specially fine code by which I have sent as many as eighty-five words by one message at a cost of IGJ. I found one Queensland broker in London doing a roaring trade in Australian scrip. He made 100,000 in three years and foolishly started " punting " stocks on his own account and lost it all. Am still hoping to see the day when Australian borrowing in London will be restricted and when all loans, old and new, will be raised in the Commonwealth. There is a silly craze nowadays to try and build Rome, meaning Australia, in two or three years. Slow growth is sound growth. Though many hundreds of competencies have been made out of mines, and though gold mining 96 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL is the quickest of all methods of making a fortune, most of the big fortunes of Australia have been made by corruption and chicanery. The public, meaning the small investor, gets no consideration when it comes to scuttling a mine to buy in cheaply after a drop, or in the other usual instance, where the reef is " covered up " till the persons in control have secured enough shares cheaply. An old gold miner I met years after the coup of his life told me he had covered up a rich reef successfully when a great mine was on its last legs for working capital. He did not report his find and the mine was closed down. Ten years later he got possession of the mine, uncovered the gold reef and in a short time made 50,000. Another Bendigo miner after firing a shot uncovered a quartz reef that looked like a jeweller's shop. He quickly concealed it with mullock, crawled slowly to the shaft, signalled for the cage, and with both hands on his stomach told the underground boss he had a bad attack of dysentery and must go home. There he put on his Sunday suit of broad-cloth, went to the Beehive, where the Stock Exchange met, and through his broker bought thousands of the shares in the Great Extended Hustlers which very shortly soared from is. 6d. to 7 IOJ. He invested most of his winnings in a big terrace of houses which the ribald and the under-bred brokers named Diarrhoea Terrace. He lost all his money on the Stock Exchange and died in poverty. MOUNT LYELL DEBENTURE ISSUE When the Mount Lyell mine had been fully opened up and proved it had no capital left for develop- ment, William Knox took an office in St. Swithin's Lane, London, right opposite the iron gates leading into New Court and Rothschild's Bank. There I acted as his secretary and as pro tern, secretary of the 97 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Mount Lyell Company. Knox's visit was to raise money either by shares or by debentures to build a railway from Strahan to Mount Lyell and to erect treatment works. The Rothschilds called in J. Hays Hammond, an American mining engineer of much tonnage and high status. Knox went confidently to the conference which lasted half an hour. He offered 50,000 Mount Lyell shares at 3 their face value, a proposal quickly turned down when somebody held up a cable from Melbourne quoting the shares the day before at 27 s. So that settled that. Hays Hammond was unfriendly towards the mine's pros- pects although he admitted that Dr. E. D. Peter's report was technically sound. He would not listen to any debenture scheme and advised further prospect- ing to find another rich pipe of ore in the mine like the one which the year before had yielded about 150,000 cash to the Mount Lyell Company. The business went fut and Knox went home ill and dis- appointed. George McCulloch and I saw him off at Victoria railway station, London, en route to Mar- seilles, and George said, " Poor old Knox ; he will never reach Melbourne alive." He did, however, and lived to make Mount Lyell a highly successful enterprise. As with Broken Hill Proprietary, the Mount Lyell mine was fortunate in having directors above suspicion and thoroughly capable secretaries in F. M. Dickenson and Alfred Mellor. The Stock Exchange as the deus ex machina in the drama of commerce has violent ups and downs. One year business will be brisk and extensive and the next year there will be nothing doing, and excepting a few of the big firms, sharebrokers are idle and workless. There are for too many members for the volume of business, not of course all active. If the Committee had bought and extinguished fifty seats when the price dropped to 250, after the bank smash MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL in 1893, seats would have been worth 5000 to-day instead of 1700. The chairmen from the first year of the reconstructed Stock Exchange have been, F. W. Howard, W. Noall, Walter Slade, Joseph Thomson, R. H. Clarke, J. McWhae, W. J. Roberts and Forster Woods. The best operators when I was a member were G. W. Staples, Dave Thomson, H. G. Evered, F. D. Call, M. B. Jenkins and myself ; who they are to-day I don't know. An operator must be quicker than lightning in saying, " Buy," " Sell " and " Yes." It is far quicker than the bidding at a wool sale. The brokers are a decent lot of men, liberal in the cause of charity, and that of good fellow- ship. Their best feature is the sacredness of their verbal agreements. A sharebroker's word is his bond and that will account for good unto him in the hell where most of them generally go. MINES Captain Charles Sturt, the Australian explorer, found Broken Hill in 1844, and Charles Rasp, the boundary rider on Mount Gipps' station, rediscovered it in 1883. A mining prospector told him it was a hill of mullock, that is of worthless stone. In thirty- five years the "Hill of Mullock," the despised Razor- back, paid in cash and share dividends 13,452,388, and in wages 13,000,000 ! In 1883 a syndicate formed in the house of the manager of Broken Hill, George McCulloch, decided to peg out the whole of the Hill of Mullock, and they finally secured seven leases. They were seven poor men : Charles Rasp, George McCulloch, George Urquhart, George A, W. Lind, Philip Charley, David James and James Poole. The original seven shares became fourteen paying los. a week in calls. In 1885 the Broken Hill Pro- prietary Company, Limited, was registered in 16,000 shares of 20 each, issued as paid up to 19. The 99 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT directors were : George McCulloch, Bowes Kelly, D. W. Harvey Patterson, Kenneth E. Brodribb, William Jamieson, W. A. Horn, J. W. Bakewell, William R. Wilson and S. F. Hawkins. All except Harvey Patterson were poor men, while he owned Corona Station, covering 3,200,000 acres and carrying 80,000 sheep. Later on W. Knox became secretary, and Duncan McBryde and W. P. MacGregor directors. Through W. Knox I had the good fortune to be associated with most of the big holders of the Broken Hill group of mines. Never had I a better friend. BROKEN HILL THE GAME OF EUCHRE FOR A SHARE In 1884 William Jamieson bought three shares in the original syndicate which owned Broken Hill for jno, jioo and 100. One night he called on George McCulloch to pay him for the last share at 100, and found an English " new chum " named " Fairie " Cox bargaining with McCulloch for one of the original fourteen shares in the syndicate for which McCulloch was asking 200. Cox was chaffing Mac. by offering him 100. After a lot of airy persiflage Cox raised his bid to 110, and McCulloch stood pat for 200. Finally Cox offered to play Mac. euchre whether he gave him 120 or 200. Mac. agreed, and the following evening the historic game of euchre was played and won by " Fairie " Cox, afterwards a prominent racing man in London, so he bought for 120 a share that repre- sented within six years on the market 1,250,000. McCulloch got out of his loss by buying a share from one of his station hands for 90 cash, thus making 30 on his game of euchre. In 1883 the Broken Hill mine had unexpectedly disclosed silver ore of an extraordinary richness, and a group of Scotch back-blocksmen found them- 100 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL selves enriched by magic beyond the dreams of avarice. Mile after mile on the line of lode was floated into public companies, and the shares of good mines and wild cats alike formed counters in the terrific boom in values which ensued at the Stock Exchange of Australia. In 1885 I went to the Hill of Mullock, called Broken Hill, and beheld primitive mining which startled me. Nobody knew anything about silver mining, and the directors and managers were learning their business at the expense of the mines. Without exception every mine was being mismanaged. Unsuitable machinery, ignorant miners, wrong methods, above and below ground, and an appalling want of knowledge of the value of the different ores combined to make Broken Hill present a pitiable picture. The Broken Hill South mine, with a market value of one and three-quarters of a million pounds had a shaft 80 feet deep and was being worked by a man, a boy, and a horse, with a whim and bucket. The 100,000 shares in this company were assessed by the public at 17 los. each. Wild cat mines miles north and south of the Broken Hill mines had shallow shafts, neither machinery nor water, and market values of anything from a quarter of a million upwards. Here was a chance to make money quickly, and the young speculator quickly availed himself of it. I sold the 17 los. shares persistently, and when a lull in the boom occurred covered my sales at a profit of several thousand pounds. Neither in the land boom which followed the Broken Hill boom nor in the Zeehan- Dundas, Mount Lyell, Kalgoorlie, or Chillagoe booms which came after was ever such a chance offered for easily making money out of the ignorance of the public then blindly following alleged leading men who knew absolutely nothing about silver mining. There have been booms of magnitude in H 101 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Australia, and there will be booms of greater magnitude again times without number. When mules have foals, or crows turn white, it is likely such a combination of enormously rich mineral deposits, stupendously ignorant mining men and a stupid investing public may be crystallized out of such fortuitous atoms. Only one Broken Hill mining squatter, George McCulloch, came solidly out of the boom, having sold a quarter of a million pounds' worth of Broken Hill shares at their highest and bought pictures of great artists who were in delicate health. Death doubles picture values, and the crossing of the Stygian ferry by celebrated painters made McCulloch's collec- tion one of the most valuable in London. The day before Vicat Cole, the famous English landscape painter, died, George McCulloch bought every one of Cole's pictures held by the art dealers and auctioneers and of course they doubled in value soon afterwards. MINING One of the closest shaves I ever had of making a shocking lot of money quickly was when William Macmurtrie, brother-in-law of William Knox, brought to my office John Godkin, the prospector, who dis- covered the Hampden Copper lode at Cloncurry, Queensland. Godkin had pegged out three leases and we went quietly to work and formed three small syndicates among three groups of the leading men of Melbourne. David Syme of the " Age " was the chief of one syndicate, Malcolm MacEacharn of the second, and Alfred Tolhurst, a sharebroker, brought his friends into the third. The three syndicates were formed and the money paid within three days. We had overlooked William Knox and the mighty Broken Hill crowd in picking our shareholders, so mark, lo ! and behold, next week a telegram was published from H. H. Schlapp in Cloncurry advising 102 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL Knox that " much work had to be done before the extent of the lode could be known," which was obvious as everybody knew. Yet one after another of the investors " cray-fished " out of the ventures, and we had to return their money ! The Hampden mine proved to be a great copper producer, and all the best ore came out of our three blocks ! What do you know about that ? Recollect two occasions when I made a lot of money by going down mines to see for myself. Once the late A. E. Wallis of the Bank of Victoria and I went to inspect the Cordillera Mine, west of Goulbourn, New South Wales. We hired a light buggy and pair of horses and drove them hard and fast to the mine, shares in which were 7 IQJ. We arrived in time to go through the mine with the night shift and con- cluded the amount of work done and the ore in sight did not justify the price. We went back to the rough bush pub, took two beds just vacated by two miners on night shift, tied our pyjama legs and arms with string to keep out the pulex, and slept like tired policemen. Next morning we drove back to the Melbourne train and passed two buggies with the directors of the Cordillera Company Josh Cushing, Phipps Turnbull and Fitzgerald Moore who had with them G. F. H. Schuler, then chief of staff on ' The Age." Schuler had lived in Bendigo and knew his mining. The second buggy contained a distended supply of food and Heidsieck's dry mono- pole in case the horses ran out of grass and water. Directly I got back to the Stock Exchange I oversold and specked 2000 Cordillera's and bought them back under 5, not so bad for a three days' trip. Another funny episode occurred at Wood's Point, a gold field then in its second childhood. Got there one Christmas Eve, having done fifty miles in a buggy without a hood in a three-inch fall of rain all the day. PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT At dinner the room was crammed with miners in from the jungle to knock down their cheques. I had earned a bottle of " boy " and picked on Krug, a sweet wine dear to the hearts of the demi-monde of Paris, whence I had just come. The bloke alongside poured the precious fluid over his corned beef and cabbage, and turning to his mate said, " Gor blimey, Bill, the blooming termater sauce is gawn bad." The room rocked with laughter. Jim and I became friends, and I used his information to knock the stuffing out of several overvalued stocks on 'Change. At midnight I was roused from sleep to go and meet a deputation in the " dead-house " up the yard. My reception had been carefully staged. There were four stark naked men standing silent, smiling, silly, but not berserk, on their heads in the four corners, and three more nude musicians playing the fiddle, concertina and Jews' harp. My " shout " was three dozen bottles of beer at is. 6d, a piece. Then came along another huge chimera, known to the public as the Chillagoe Copper Mines and Railway Company, a venture blessed with the patron- age of some very big personages in the mining world. And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. The public played " follow my leader " in a mad, hare- brained rush, and shares jumped from half a crown to two pounds. At top price they were sold in thousands chiefly to London by the big holders. It was sending owls to Athens with a vengeance. Oft- times the jingling guinea helps the hurt that honour feels. Is it not lawful for them to do what they will with their own ? as the Apostle of old asked. Once again I stood upon Achilles' tomb and heard Troy doubted, just as time will doubt of Rome and by that time be tired of following leading men into mining companies. I kept clear of the Chillagoe company and warned my clients so that when the 104 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL crash came we were not bitten by the snapping of the trap. As cold water is to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. Sensational reports were circulated in favour of the mine, and after London had provided the debentures and bought most of the shares the Chillagoe Mines were found to be a collec- tion of meagre surface shows. Then came a series of damaging reports, some public, some private. There was, in fact, a terrible talk about lentils. Shares toppled from 40^. to nothing, and several big fortunes were made while the losses were well spread over a large body of shareholders. The Chillagoe Com- pany's fate is merely another illustration of the maxim that investors should never buy shares in a mine where thousands of miles separate the directors and the mine manager. For a mine to be successful the directors and the manager must be in close touch. Occasionally and very rarely, as in the case of the Mount Lyell Company, the manager (Robert Sticht) was an exceptionally able man. The directors are merely administrators. Then it may be safe enough to hold shares in a mine at a distance. My records are full of details of mines which failed because the mining manager was too far away to be controlled by anybody. MOUNT LYELL My first visit to Mount Lyell Mine, near Mac- quarie Harbour, Tasmania, was in 1893, when I went across in a steamer of 125 tons in thirty-three hours to Strahan. A stormy crossing in the Irish Channel mailboat from Holyhead was my worst sea trip up to then. The beastliness of that trip to Strahan is indescribable. Of twelve small cockle shells, mere bum boats driven by a kettle full of steam, in which I made many trips to the west coast of Tasmania, six were wrecked, and that was their fore- 105 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT ordained destiny. On a pure bred Clydesdale palfrey, with feathered legs and a capacious back, it took me ten hours to cover the thirty-one miles from Strahan to Mount Lyell. They were mere bridle paths, not roads, over which we stumbled, down " Kelly's Stone Stairs," and over a rocky torrent called " Roaring Mag." We slipped down 400 feet in one mile and clambered up 600 feet in the next. It was a ride of horror, tempered by a perpetual feast of gorgeous scenery. Bill Dixon and Jim Crotty, who found Mount Lyell in 1883, deserved every penny of their ultimate reward, for it was a hell-uv-a place to get to. F. O. Henry, the storekeeper at Strahan, who " grub staked " Bill Dixon, once quietly slipped a small blacksmith's anvil into one of the tucker bags, and Bill carried it the whole thirty-one miles, grunting all the way without knowing wherefore he should grunt. Frank Gee Duff, whom I met in New York living obscurely in 1919, introduced Mount Lyell to Bowes Kelly, William Knox and William Orr, whose Broken Hill winnings had been sadly depleted. These three paid .25,000 for 50,000 shares in a company of 150,000 after H. H. Schlapp, metallurgist of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, had examined Mount Lyell and reported favourably. Next to Robert Sticht, the greatest metallurgist who ever came to Australia, stands H. H. Schlapp as a thoroughly experienced scientist and a gentleman. Sticht was easily primus inter pares, and to his unrivalled skill Mount Lyell's success is due. Schlapp recommended that Dr. E. D. Peters, Junior, an American expert on pyritic smelting, should be imported to report on the best way to work Mount Lyell. He came for the small fee of 1250, and his report is a mining classic. I had the luck to travel with Dr. Peters in Tasmania. He was short in stature, round in figure, grizzled in mien and a typical Bostonian in speech 1 06 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL and conduct. Peters told O. G. Schlapp, nephew of H. H. Schlapp, and then mine manager of Mount Lyell, to put down a winze on the footwall. This unearthed fabulously rich ore worth from 1000 to 2500 ozs. of silver to the ton. One chunk of ore assayed by Ward, the Tasmanian Government analyst, gave 8765 ozs. of silver, 45 ozs. of gold and 19 per cent of copper per ton. The average value of the ore was 3 ozs. silver, 3 ozs. gold and 5 per cent copper per ton worth 3 a ton. That pipe or rich ore saved the company as it was most difficult to raise capital because of the ignorance of mining investors concern- ing such a low-grade pyritic deposit. Dr. Peters estimated there were 4,600,000 tons of ore in the Lyell mass worth 15,292,920. A similar mine, the Rammailsberg in Germany has been working for 800 years. OIL QUEST IN AUSTRALIA When I think about the speeches I heard Lord Roberts make urging the British public to gird up their loins and prepare to repel a German onslaught, it reminds me of the repeated warnings given to Australia by leading sailors and soldiers like Lord Jellicoe, Admiral Henderson, Generals Birdwood and Fitzpatrick that this country should strive to secure an oil supply of its own so as to be independent of foreign sources of petroleum products. There is bound to be war in the Pacific Ocean within the next twenty years, and when it comes Australia will be weak and helpless, an easy prey to a raider or an invader unless she has a domestic supply of petrol for her aircraft and submarines. There is not a reserve of petrol in the Commonwealth which would last more than two months. There is no reserve of fuel oil at all for the use of the Australian Navy. We have no domestic supplies of lubricants, benzol, 107 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT or engine kerosene. Our automobile industry is like a subverted pyramid, plenty of cars, trucks and tractors and no petrol to run them with. It is farcical and would be laughable if it were not so damnably dangerous. When war in the Pacific is declared, it matters not by whom, every automobile in Australia will stop dead, because the Government would have to put an embargo on their use, and commandeer every gallon of petroleum products in the Common- wealth. The Australian Navy, its submarines and its warships could not leave their harbours, and the Australian air force would be as impotent as a cut cat. This all sounds strong, yet it is true. Australia is placidly standing on thin ice over a deep abyss because it lacks the first instrument of defence petroleum. My travels round the Pacific, from Japan to Patagonia and from Vancouver to Invercargill, enable me to laugh at the journalists and publicists, who have never been outside Australia, and who daily write and utter cautions and warnings against the Japanese and their urgent desire to take this big continent from us. To me it seems childish blatherskite. The Japanese would need one thousand vessels to transport men and enough food to effectively occupy this vast territory. They cannot ever try it, because they have not got the money, and the second solid reason why the Japanese will not for a long time to come attack Australia is that it would be a signal for the white races of the world to band together to sweep back the rising tide of colour. No white nation could afford to stand back and watch the Japanese trying to effect a landing in Australia. For their own sakes they would come to the rescue without being invited. If the Japanese occupied Australia, not a single tribe of white people would be safe from destruction. The whites of the world would come at a run to help us so as to save their own skins. The 108 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL Japanese know better than to do as Germany did, and by defying the world call loudly for defeat. Day after day we Australians are told we must not rely on Great Britain for help if we are attacked. Lord Burnham said it and so did Lord Salisbury. The feeble Press delegation was almost as weak as the gimcrack British Parliamentary party, and both of them continually told Australia she would have to help herself in any warlike trouble, because she could not depend on the British Navy for protection. This silly bleating advice became a parrot cry with both these visiting missions, and my reply to the craven threat that Australia cannot defend herself without the aid of Britain is, " In that event what is the use of belonging to the British Empire, if Australia cannot call upon every soldier and sailor in that Empire to come and help her in time of trouble." No, there is no chance that the Japanese will ever risk a descent on Australia, for the defeat of the Spanish Armada would be a marionette show alongside the annihilation of the Japanese fleet. My dread is that some day this century the United States will want Australia as a spillway for its surplus population and as a land of exile for its negro citizens. Only 25 per cent of the people of the United States are of British descent, and the other 75 per cent are people from seventy-five different races who hate the British intensely and therefore hate the Australians. The only nation we have to fear is the American, which leads right back to this grave problem of where we are to get an independent and domestic oil supply. Without plenty of petroleum products Australia is vulnerable. With enough oil we could face the world at arms and keep our country to ourselves against all comers, whether Great Britain came in or stood out. There is no difficulty about getting oil inside Australia. It is not a question of the cost of 109 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT getting it when our existence as a people is concerned. If petrol cost us, to make here from coal and oil shale, los. a gallon, and if fuel oil from the same substance cost us 25 a ton, we ought to have it, and we must. It is simply a question of money to build the retorts to extract crude oil from coal and distil it from oil shale and lignite, of both of which materials we have the richest, if not the largest, deposits on earth. Twenty million pounds would be a molecular sum to spend to make sure of our national safety and perpetual independence. AUSTRALIA MUST HAVE HER OWN OIL SUPPLY BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE WHATSO- EVER AT ANY COST AND QUICKLY. OIL SHALE TASMANIA If I missed a fortune over brown coal I feel sure I ought to make its substitute out of oil shale. For years I have been intrigued by the rich possibilities of treating successfully the tasmanite or kerosene shale deposits of Northern Tasmania. About 25 million tons have been proved by boring, running from 35 to 45 gallons of petroleum to the ton, averag- ing in the laboratory about 40 gallons to the ton. The sole drawback to the oil shale deposits of Tas- mania is a thin band of mudstone lying between the upper and lower seams of oil shale. This mud- stone carries only about 5 per cent of oil, yet it has to be mined and treated along with the shale, thereby increasing the cost of treatment, and pulling down the average oil contents of the shale. So far no satisfactory retort has been operated, and the con- tinuous failure of retorts working at Latrobe has cast a slight upon the prospects of the oil shale industry. It is a simple question of finding the right retort, and that must come in course of time. Then Tasmania will employ an army of miners delving unceasingly to supply the vast quantities of no MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL shale that will be wanted for the batteries of retorts working day and night, year in year out, without stopping. BROWN COALS ALTONA, MORWELL I have wasted a lot of time and money hanging on to the development of the brown coal industry of Victoria, which sooner or later must become one of the most important industries in the State. It was during one of my earliest tours through the continent of Europe forty years ago I saw brown coal being used as briquettes and as raw fuel in special locomotives drawing freight trains. I got the usual bee in my Scotch bonnet about brown coal and began a study of it and its uses directly I came home. Since then I have made three voyages to Europe to raise capital for the Altona and Laverton brown coal fields, an infinitely superior deposit to Morwell, alias Yallourn. Altona is ten miles from Melbourne, Morwell ninety, and in that factor alone lies the immeasurable superiority of Altona over Yallourn. My mistake was in not joining forces with W. L. Baillieu, who forced Morwell into the W. A. Watt government when A. A. Billson was Minister of Railways. Parlia- ment was not properly informed about the project, yet once it was started, it seemed impossible to stop it, and finally the working out of this important public work was handed over to the wrong set of men, who were provided with the wrong lot of executive officers. Primarily then as now, from first to last, Morwell (Yallourn) should have been treated as a brown coal mine demanding special scientific knowledge and skill to work. Instead it was looked upon as an electrical undertaking, and the character, quality and faults of the brown coal deposit were never properly examined. It is not Sir John Monash's fault, and he is not to blame for the disagreeable mess the in PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT chief executive officers and their inefficient administra- tive commissioners have made of Yallourn. The syndicate I formed in London to develop Altona and provide a proper electrical supply for the State investigated Morwell years before the Electricity Commission was established, and the firm of engineers who reported upon it has neither peer nor equal in London Messrs. Kincaid, Waller, Manville and Dawson. Sir Philip Dawson, M.P., is easily the leading electrical engineer in the British Empire and his verdict was in favour of Altona and against opening up Morwell, alias Yallourn. OIL QUEST On a trip to California, during my wild-goose chase after petroleum, lasting over nineteen years of fruitless search for oil in Australia, I took a secret process for distilling oil so as to yield a higher quantity of petrol, or as the Americans call it gasoline. I placed the process before eight leading oil companies in California and had the good fortune to meet their chief chemists at the various demonstrations of the process which failed to appeal to them, because it was imperfect. And when on another occasion I interviewed a dozen or more leaders of the petroleum industry to ask them to take an interest in the search for oil in Australia and provide men and money, I made numerous acquaintances who showed me much kindness and gave me plenty of information and advice, but no capital. Amongst them were the following heads, all notable men, all wealthy and influential : Captain John Barneson, of General Petroleum Corporation. W. E. White & A. P. Bell, of Associated Oil Co. B. D. Adamson, of Balfour, Guthrie & Co. F. D. Boyce, chemist, for E. L. Doheny. 112 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL Dr. V. Bredlik, chemical engineer, Foundation Oven Co., New York. E. L. Cope, hydraulic engineer, San Francisco. E. Dobell, Union Tool Co., Los Angeles. E. J. Dyer, Union Oil Co., Los Angeles. E. B. Kimball, General Petroleum Co., San Francisco. M. V. Quigg, Independent Oil Producers' Agency, Los Angeles. H. M. Storey \ J. Lander I Standard Oil Co., of California. Dick McGraw j J. Gallagher, Shell Co., of California. A. Sclater ) and Union Oil Co. E. W. Clark ) Far and away the most interesting oil magnate I met was E. L. Doheny of Los Angeles, the lord and master of the oil industry of Mexico. He was as hard to approach as a lyre bird or a wild deer. It took me six days to get into his private office and reminded me of Mark Twain's effort to get past the janitors to see an old friend of his in a New York sky scraper. After being rebuffed by half a dozen lackeys, Mark Twain, when asked what his business was with the great man, said, " Tell him I've come to ask his hand in the bonds of holy matrimony." Mark was passed into the presence. By patience and tenacity, on the fifth day of waiting I reached Mr. Doheny who was snowed under by dividend cheques he was signing. He was a small, thin, quiet, gentle- manly little man, kindly and courteous. He heard my proposal patiently that he should embark on the quest for petroleum in Australia. My extempore speech had been prepared during the five days of waiting and utterly failed to convince this extremely sagacious suzerain of illimitable oil fields. " Mr. Meudell," he said, " in Mexico alone I have a hundred "3 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT years work for my Pan-Mexican and other corporations are capitalized at a round forty million pounds." E. L. Doheny it was who saved the British Navy from utter destruction by supplying it with oil from his Mexican wells direct to British fuel bases. If Doheny had been unfriendly to Great Britain it is certain Admiral Tirpitz would have received Jellico, Beatty et </., and their fleets in Hamburg. Doheny was the saviour of England's honour. He told me he had diverted the whole of his oil resources from Mexico across the Atlantic, and it was done without fuss or noise. Mr. Doheny was educated as a lawyer, and after repeated drilling failures he struck oil in a back-yard in Los Angeles, a spot I visited as though it were a holy shrine, or as sacred as the black stone of Mecca, the Kaaba. When the pile of cheques was nearly signed Mr. Doheny produced a tumbler of water and a thin captain biscuit and apologized for starting his lunch. He explained that he suffered from weak digestion and could eat very little solid food. Fancy a clever, intellectual man of his calibre being afflicted with a physical weakness which short- ened his pleasures and destroyed his joie de vivre. He kindly invited me to bring my wife and come for a week's tour with him over the Californian oil fields. We were booked to sail for home within a week, so I had to decline his offer. Fancy being so fragile as not to be able to eat crayfish, jugged hare, roast goose and pineapple any Saturday night one fancies them ! E. L. Doheny is a gentleman, and besides he owns 50,000,000. Yet he cannot get tipsy or eat like a glutton. So I went back to the Hotel Alexandria and ordered a chateaubriand or porter house steak, twelve inches square, underdone, and garnished with six sorts of vegetables and assimilated the mess to my protoplasm without a qualm or a quake. 114 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL PETROLEUM, NATURAL GAS, OIL SHALE Although an obscure, unpopular and unknown citizen it is pleasant to reflect I have been able to be useful to my native land by employing my pen for nearly forty years in drawing attention through the newspapers, of which there are nine hundred pub- lished in Australia, to certain neglected natural resources. Long ago, while travelling abroad, I became obsessed with the idea that Australia was in a perilous position because it had no oil wells of its own. This was first made clear to me at the first automobile show ever held in France, at Paris in 1898, when my wife and I spent a day examining the embryonic motor cars, the infants of the new industry. It is certain we were the first Australian couple to see the first motor show and are probably the only Australians who saw it. The petrol supplied then was costly and scarce, because kerosene was the constituent of crude petroleum in most demand, and not petrol, the lighter volatile spirit. And that became condensed in my brain as a great and abiding thought. After all these years we are not much further along the road of complete independence of the oil suppliers of other countries. Supposing war broke out in the Pacific between the United States and Japan, or between the United States and Aus- tralia, what would be the effect on this Common- wealth ? Where would we get the oil which is the life of all industry and vital to human life itself ? Where would we get the petrol or the kerosene, or the greases, or the fuel oil, which are so necessary to existence because they are essential to all machinery ? Of course a certain amount would be brought in, yet a practical oil blockade would exist round our coasts. It is dreadful to contemplate, and so simple to realize the straits of this great country. There is PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT no problem of national work so important as this question of finding or making oil within our own boundaries None. Borrowing, migration, building development, railway making, not one of them is so vitally important as the duty of establishing a domestic oil supply. And it is all the more regrettable that our Seven Governments are doing nothing because we possess the means to create an oil supply here at home. No geological survey is being made by any Mines Department of any likely petroliferous region, and not a single Government borehole is being drilled, nor one Government at work distilling oil from coal or shale or lignite. Yet of these carbon- aceous substances Australia has vast resources so far not fully delimited. We don't know how much coal, brown coal and oil shale we possess, yet every ton of it carries more or less crude oil. Petrol, called gasoline in the United States, costs tenpence a gallon there and half a crown here. Pack- ing, insurance, freight, handling and duties do not amount to more than one shilling a gallon, and as gasoline only costs one penny a gallon to make in the United States of America, the profits made by the big oil-refining companies, who are importers here, must be enormous. With profits on kerosene, greases and lubricants, the total profit earned here must be simply extraordinary. The two big men of the foreign oil group are E. E. Wagstaff of the British Imperial Oil Company and H. C. Cornforth of the Vacuum Oil Company of U.S.A. Wag- stafF is an extremely shrewd expert in oil with nothing to learn about handling men and markets. He is a Londoner, and Sir Henri Deterding, the Dutch-German Napoleon of Petroleum, picked out Wagstaff specially to build up the Royal Dutch Shell Company's business in Australia. And right nobly has Wagstaff done it. Cornforth is not so profound 116 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL as Wagstaff, yet he is exceptionally clever, and is ably supported by his lieutenant, H. M. Hamilton, a Scotchman. All three pleasant, genial gentlemen are paid bigger salaries than the Governor-General of Australia, and make most admirable enemies within our gates, preying as they do upon Australia's trade and commerce. SOME GREAT MEN One of the ablest and most efficient men I have known abroad is Captain John Barneson of San Francisco, who was born at sea and educated at the Sydney Grammar School. His father owned his own sailing ship and traded between Australia and England. Young Barneson was trained as a seaman, and following his father's occupation owned and sailed his own ship. He married a Sydney lady and drifted to the United States where he became con- nected with the American Army in the Philippines as a Commissary-General. Barneson was attracted by the oil business and settled in San Francisco as founder of the General Petroleum Corporation, recently merged with the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Under Barneson's shrewd direction the Corporation developed in an amazing manner in a very short time. At one time it was short of capital so Captain Barneson went to London and had arranged for more money when the War broke out and his negotiations fell through. Nothing daunted Barneson stuck to his guns and beat off all his enemy troubles. He has, of course, become a naturalized American and Australia has lost for ever an Australian of commanding ability and integrity. Barneson was director of twenty-three companies when I first presented my letter of introduction to him from Alfred Deakin. The other precious letter I carried from Deakin was honoured by Sir Wilfred Laurier, i 117 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT then Prime Minister of Canada, who, like Captain Barneson, was exceptionally kind to my wife and myself. Tom Whaley, a Canadian oil-driller from Petrolia, Canada, an engineer trained on California oil fields was sent to me by John Moffat, the best-known mining man in Queensland. Moffat wanted to drill in a deposit of kerosene shale on the coast of Queens- land, near Rockhampton, and Whaley advised him that it was not done in the best of oil society. When John Moffat died the old custom of grubstaking prospectors with food and material to roam the wilds looking for minerals and metals died with him. I have known dozens of these useful old-time prospec- tors, the scouts of the mining army. Without them mining could never have expanded and flourished in Australia. Tom Whaley came to Melbourne, and I adopted him temporarily and took him through the western district of Victoria. Afterwards I sent him to South Australia, and I personally inspected every locality he thought had a chance of having petrol lying perdu. Encouraged by an excellent work on the geology of South Australia by Father Julian Edmund Woods, parish priest at Penola, South Australia, published in 1862, I took a fancy to the region between Mount Gambier and Kingston, South Australia, as a likely oil-bearing locality, and so dreamt another dream of Alnaschar. Whaley took charge of a bore-hole near Kingston and drilled to noo feet without success. I became part owner of oil licences over 60 square miles, or 38,400 acres, near Whaley's bore. To give my chateaux in Spain an earthy foundation it was my practice to take up as much land as I could get near an active bore-hole directly drilling started. In all the nineteen years I wasted looking for oil, and not finding it, I pegged leases or took out prospecting licences over tens of 118 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL thousands of acres. If oil had been struck in any quantity anywhere in any of the States I could not help making a fortune, and not a small one. No man ever engaged in a bigger gamble with zest and gusto all the time. Life was gay, life was exhilarating, and my alias was Croesus. I often wonder what I would have done with so much money if I had won it. Even the great Napoleon could not dine twice a day. Some day, somewhere, petroleum will be found deep down when the drillers are supplied with proper geological maps and reports made by Australians. Not one visiting foreign geologist, and not a single official geologist, has seemed to be worthy of being trusted to tell the truth about the existence of oil in Australia, and their advice has mostly been bad and prejudiced. After numerous visits to Tasmania it seemed full of likely spots for boring. There are wide and deep deposits of tertiary and sedimentary rocks all round the island in the valleys of ancient rivers and lakes where oil ought to be found in its right nidus. At time of writing not one single oil well has been sunk in Tasmania with proper modern drilling appliances worked by qualified petroleum engineers. Until a first-class Australian engineer, who understands petro- leum mining, is given the right machinery with proper plans and maps, and endowed with enough money, it cannot be said there is no flow-oil in Aus- tralia. My experience has made me prejudiced against oil experts who are strangers and outsiders, and I don't trust them. Tasmania has great reserves of coal of all kinds and oil shales and lignites of low and high grades, and Tasmania will yet become a country famous for its oil industry. A number of quite unimportant people, from the national viewpoint, must die and get out of the way before Australia is ready to produce oil. Especially must all foreign and semi-foreign oil companies be sent away or put 119 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT out of business before Australia will get a chance to find oil. The basin of the Rivery Murray must contain more or less petroleum because from the beginning of time it has been draining an extensive basin of 10,000 square miles and carrying the detritus and alluvium towards the sea. Yet no proper effort has been made to locate oil in the River Murray valley. No proper bore-hole has ever been drilled, and no geological survey ever made. What shocking treachery to Australia's future ! Once I applied for 100 square miles of the bed of the Coorong to prospect it for oil from jetties as I had seen practised at Summer- land in California. It took a year to get a title, and by that time a local company had struck excellent road metal in three holes nearby. How much land in the Coorong district of South Australia I held by scrip and by licence from time to time it is hard to say, perhaps 50,000 acres. A thimbleful of crude oil found there would have made me a tri-millionaire in one night, and the shock would certainly have turned my hair glossy black ! The most likely spot to find oil on our big continent is in Central Australia where for ages the rivers draining Queensland and New South Wales have been depositing earthy sediments containing foraminifera, the true bacilli of petroleum, along the two ancient beaches made when a sea ran diagonally from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Great Australian Bight. If this, my book of memorabilia, is not all used up in bath-heaters, some bookworm in the next century will republish this prediction. Among other oily will-o'-the-wisps I have followed, I went once to New Caledonia after oil leases, and took some concessions to San Francisco for considera- tion by some heads of the oil world. Their experts did not like the serpentine formation from which the oil seepages emerged, so that failed. Another time I went by rail to Bunbury, in West Australia, and in 120 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL two places saw oil expressed from algae floating on water and valueless. Visited Albany, one of the finest harbours on the planet, and found that bitumen was deposited on the floor of the harbour which had floated in from the ocean. All the asphaltum or bitumen I have received from Cape Raoul, in Tas- mania, to Cape Leeuwin, the farthest point in West Australia, comes to the surface of the sea after a submarine disturbance on the continental shelf deep down below, and yet scientific ninnies and zanies have reported that it must come from Trinidad, at our very antipodes, borne hither on ocean currents, and I still laugh at them though I have lost, or rather not gained, any fortune from my oil quest. NATURAL GAS VICTORIA. Not one Australian in a hundred knows that natural gas is the cheapest and best of all the agents used for lighting, heating and power. Very few Australians know that the gas generally used in the United States and Canada is chiefly natural and not coal gas. We are so accustomed in Australia to use gas made from coal that little or nothing is known of the superior natural gas which exists in many places far apart in the Commonwealth. Drilling for oil at Lake Bunga, Lakes Entrance in Gippsland, Victoria, the bore-hole produced an excellent natural gas of good quality and unlimited quantity. Unfortunately the drillers never tried to shut oflF the water, so the gas for over two years has been forcing its way to the surface through a column of water iioo feet high. If the pressure exerted against the gas by this water were removed a most valuable gas field would be uncovered. I worked incessantly to get investors the public and the Government interested in this valuable discovery without any result. The gas field covers 800 square miles and will some day be 121 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT utilized. Meanwhile the natural gas is blowing into the air and I have missed a pot of money. DESTRUCTION OF BENDIGO GOLDFIELD It has not been often in the history of this com- munity that half a dozen men have been given the power to destroy a goldfield. That power has been used in a hideous manner by a few men to wipe out mining in Bendigo, where 80,000,000 of gold was raised in seventy years. In 1916 an elaborate pam- phlet was compiled by E. C. Dyason, son of Isaac Dyason for many years George Lansell's superin- tendent, advocating the amalgamation of about fifty mines in order to economize, to reduce mining costs, to save labour, to sink new shafts, to introduce modern mining methods which were badly needed, and generally to improve the position of mining in Bendigo and add to its wealth and population. Not one single promise, not one prediction, has been fulfilled. Instead of progress a policy of destruction was in- stituted, machinery and equipment were stripped, dynamited, broken up, torn down, dismantled, turned into scrap metal and sold. Gradually the mines were drowned by the rising water, and one by one they were abandoned until to-day there are only three working of the forty-eight mines taken over by the Bendigo Amalgamated Goldfield Company that undertook to do wonderful things. The net result of the Bendigo Amalgamated Company's efforts has been the destruction of what was left of the industry. Of forty-eight mines that were ultimately brought under one control, only two are now working. In the others the plant has been stripped, iron castings dynamited, steam engines broken up, winding and pumping plant dismantled, batteries destroyed, and rails, trucks and tools sold. Machinery and equip- ment that would now cost 250,000 to replace has 122 been passed out as scrap iron. The mines are flooded out and drowned ! Water is rising in all the aban- doned mines. It is within 100 feet of the surface. The cost of installing pumps to take the place of those that have been destroyed or sold would be three times its value at the time the Amalgamation took the mines over. Along one line of reef covering three miles there are twenty shafts, and if a company started to work one of its claims it would have to begin by pumping out the whole of the shafts along that line. The mines that did not come into the scheme are on the New Chum line of reef. That line which has been opened up for four miles is full of water. Nothing more damnable in wanton destruc- tion has ever been done in Australia. Bendigo was a grand goldfield which yielded 70,000,000 of gold between 1851 and 1921, say in seventy years. It has had as many as 200 mines working at the same time of which 105 paid dividends. The war crippled the mines ; the world stopped using gold in favour of paper ; the cost of living and of materials arose tremendously, and gold mining became unprofitable. The directors of the numerous gold mining companies, in order to keep going, used dynamite to blow up, tear down and scrap machinery which was sold as old iron. Poppet heads were sold for firewood and the utmost care taken to destroy every vestige of anything that would indicate the existence of a once great gold mine. The mines were allowed to fill with water and the great gold mining field of Bendigo was stabbed where it lay by its lawful protectors. Whatever view historians may take of the mean and dastardly destruction of a fine industry and good city, as a native of Bendigo I protest against the vandalism of its massacre. 123 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT TARNAGULLA NUGGET FIELD To the end of 1926 from 1851, in seventy-five years, just a man's lifetime, Victoria produced 318,000,000, three hundred and eighteen million pounds' worth of gold ! Fools and economists call gold-mining " the robber industry," overlooking its great value as the very foundation and moving power of Victoria and of Australia, and turning away from the romance in mining. Here is one romantic story out of many I could tell. The Poverty Reef at Tar- nagulla, Victoria, ranks as one of the richest gold reefs in the world. The yield of gold from this reef often went as high as 50 ounces to the ton and became richer as it went down. From the surface to 400 feet the reef was 20 feet thick, and this big mass of stone averaged 6 ounces to the ton throughout. The amount of gold taken from four claims along the line of reef for only 141 feet yielded 1,500,000 ! Welsh- man's claim gave a profit of 270,000 to nine share- holders who worked it themselves. There has been no such hill of gold in history. The nuggets of pure gold found in the Tarnagulla and Dunolly districts were fabulous. The Welcome Stranger nugget found ten inches below the surface sold for 10,000. The Welcome nugget found at Bakery Hill, Ballarat, was sold for 10,500. The Blanche Barkly nugget was worth 7000, and it was 96 per cent pure gold. At Canadian Gully, Ballarat, in 1854, two new chums, only two months in the colony, found a 1619 ounce nugget at 60 feet which fetched 6400. Two other immigrants just landed unearthed a solid lump of gold weighing 1008 ounces, worth 4080 ! At Back Creek, Taradale, digging to 12 feet, a party of three divided 3000 for a week's work. But why continue to emphasize the lucky side of digging for gold. In 1852, in Victoria, gold valued at 14,000,000 124 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL was raised by a population of 86,000 people ! Think of it ! What do you know about that ? There is no record of money-making like it in the history of this planet. Nor Great Britain, nor America, nor South Africa can tell any tale of glory like the vast produc- tion of wealth from gold mining in Australia. And fools call it a " robber industry." Without gold mining Australia would still be a sheep run peopled by selected British criminals, lording it over a half- caste population of black fellows and mean whites. Without Australia's gold Great Britain would be to-day a small huckstering and money-lending nation, like the United States, lacking a navy, wanting in ideals and over-crowded with half-educated humans. By reason and because of her gold output, Australia stands forth to-day as the very best of the new nations of the earth. THE OIL QUEST IN AUSTRALIA In 1907 at the summit of my career, overwork from stockbroking and politics combined, brought on consumption and three doctors predicted my sudden death. So I left the Stock Exchange and went travel- ling to find health after spending twelve months living on milk and eggs in the open air. My first knowledge of petroleum came to me in Burmah, where an inspiration clutched me by the brain that there might be an oil-field to be found back home in Australia ! What a dazzling prize to win ! What a magnificent ideal to find oil for my beloved native land ! And what a grand gamble ! If I struck oil I might equal the wealth of J. D. Rockfeller or J. P. Coats or W. D. Wills ! (There was no Henry Ford in those days.) Merely thinking of the gigantic reservoir of money, fame and power at the far end of the search for oil, brought back my health. And I set out blithely on the biggest adventure any little 125 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Australian has ever attempted. It was a grand gamble, for if any of the numerous drilling companies had struck oil, the fortune I would have cut out of the Stock Exchange must have been colossal, because the Australian is the best and pluckiest gambler on earth. Gambling to him is inherent and instinctive, part of his heredity. For were not the Australian pioneers gamesters and adventurers ? So my mate and I went all over the earth looking at oil-fields and oil-wells, and I learnt the business side of petroleum mining, the most fascinating because the most risky of all the great industries. All the time I was reading about petroleum and when I formed my first syndi- cate with a modest capital and an immodest name as the Standard Oil of Australia it made people laugh. That syndicate floated the Australian Oil Wells Com- pany, no liability, which provided funds to raise capital for a drilling company I christened the South Australian Oil Wells Company, N.L. still extant. My friends scoffed, my enemies laughed, and so did I. True I was a crank, yet so was Colonel Drake who first struck oil by drilling in Pennsylvania in 1859. It took fifteen months to form the company, and it was accomplished by my incessant work in the Australian press and by means of a box of lantern slides of " gushers " and oil wells (a very few dry holes) to illustrate thirty-one lectures I delivered in Victoria and South Australia. Finally I secured over 2000 shareholders by my own persistent efforts. Never did I sell fewer than ten bob's worth of the is. shares. That would have been demeaning a great enterprise. After my meetings I used to fill up application forms and take the cash. At one small farming centre a " cocky " farmer was so excited and bedazzled by the bright future I painted with a broad brush, and of the easy fortune he ought to seize, that he gave me a ten-shilling note along with the names of his 126 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL five daughters for one is. share each ! There may be, but I don't know of any Victorian who has written more prospectuses or helped to float more companies of all sorts than myself. To form that little group of three oil-prospecting companies was the hardest promotion job I have ever tackled. And by the time the job was finished every one of the 882 newspapers then published in Australia, had received from me at least half a dozen articles, paragraphs, or circulars, some of them even more. Hercules, Roget the Thesaurus man, Webster the dictionary chap and Sir Walter Scott combined never worked so hard at easier tasks. We began a policy of blind stabbing because none of the likely oil-bearing country in South Australia had been surveyed or mapped geologically. Even to-day there is no complete geological survey in any state in the Commonwealth. Our official geologists have surveyed the gold fields and produced geological plans, but nothing has been done towards a complete geological reconnaissance of the country for other minerals. And this is the right place to call the omission a dastardly disgrace. After a long voyage with my mate through India, Burmah, the Malay States, and the Straits Settle- ments, we decided to come home to the best country and the finest people in the world, by way of the Dutch East Indies. In those days one could travel from Singapore to Java and right round the East Indies, New Guinea and British Papua by the Nord Deutscher Lloyd line of steamers, surely the very best passenger boats on the seven seas in those days. We both cling firmly to that dictum, and what married couple in the world are better able to judge by com- parison and give that opinion. We had sailed on all the leading lines of all the maritime nations British, American, German, French, Austrian, Dutch, Belgian, Japanese, Italian and Turkish on every great river PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT and across every great ocean. For comfort, quiet, sociability, food and attention the N.D.L. steamers had no equal, although some of the Messageries Maritime and the P. and O. boats are fairly comfortable for passengers. Perhaps it was the snobbery and flunkey- ism of the British, American and Canadian steamers that was repellent. There is a long list of apt words to use to describe travelling Anglo-Saxons, Anglo- Indians and Anglo-Americans. They are swanky, jammy, stiff, starchy, self-conscious, baroque and bizarre, all arising from conceit and a false claim to be the superior people of the world ; and they are always so patronizing and condescending, therefore can one forbear to laugh, my friends ? All through that long voyage to Sydney we talked oil, read oil, and saw oil. Then a great inspiration was formed in Olympus and descended on my brain, formulated in this manner, " Australia holds every other metal and mineral, so why not oil ? If you find oil, George, you will perform two great services enrich yourself enormously and make your native land the most powerful of all countries. Go to it, George so I went. Think of my stimuli. I had studied mining, lived amongst mining men, been down hundreds of mines, and had seen on the Stock Exchange men make big fortunes quickly and easily out of mines gold, silver, copper and tin. It did not take more geology than I knew to convince me Australia, being a tertiary, a sedimentary, a carbonaceous land, must and does contain petroleum in some part of it. All my task was to find two bucketsful of petroleum and I was not only a made man, but certain to be a very rich one. So I gave up all else and went to work to educate a few people ready for a tremendous gamble to find money to drill for oil. For two years, I wrote, spoke, lectured about the existence of petroleum, taught its geology, urged its necessity, pointed out the reward 128 MINES, STOCK EXCHANGE, OIL to be won if oil were found. It was a glorious concep- tion, a splendid motive, and every day I stood on velvet with a bet booked of two million pounds to nothing. None of my contemporaries had ever laid such a wager. The fabled adventurers, the mythical rich men could not have been closer to their vast riches than I was. Monte Criste, Croesus, Timon of Athens, Aladdin, King Midas, even Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, " Cotton " Coats of Paisley, " To- bacco " Wills of Bristol never had such an opportunity to amass wealth quickly. I only wanted two buckets- ful of petroleum and NEVER GOT ANY. 129 CHAPTER VI FORTUNES MISSED SOME big piles of money have been derived from gold mining. George Lansell of Bendigo, who started life as a soap and candle maker, left .3,000,000 in debentures and bonds payable to bearer. He did not invest in land or city property like J. B. Watson of Bendigo, who left 2,000,000 made out of one mine, safely invested in Melbourne city property. Latham and Watson made a million in no time and put it back into mines. Sir W. J. Clarke's father, originally a butcher in Hobart, bought the best land in Victoria for ioj. to ji an acre, and left his family 2,000,000. His grandson, Sir Rupert Clarke, cleverly handled his share of his father's estate and had an income of 90,000 a year, which at 5 per cent represents i, 800,000. Edmund Jowett, a Yorkshire wool stapler, backed by trusty friends, collected sixty sheep stations during droughts and is worth 3,000,000 in a good season and 1,000,000 in a bad. I first knew Jowett when he got five pound a week for writing the " Argus " wool reports. James Tyson gathered a lot of sheep and cattle stations, lived meanly, and died without a will, leaving nearly 3,000,000 for the Supreme Courts of the States to distribute amongst his kin. Sidney Kidman, another squatter, a colossus among sheep owners, a mammoth Brobdignagian among cattle owners, has nearly seventy stations, and until he dies will not know how much more than 3,000,000 he is worth. The Syme Brothers, pro- prietors of the Melbourne " Age," enjoy a joint income of a 100,000 a year which capitalizes at 130 FORTUNES MISSED 2,000,000. The Connibere Brothers, the wisest men in the Flinders Lane rag trade, sold out lock, stock and barrel at the height of the post-war boom in soft goods, and putting the proceeds into city property a little way out are good for 2,000,000. Jimmy Richardson, once a ship's steward, now the Antaeus of the liquor trade of Melbourne, must pay taxes on a million pounds. Sir George Tallis, whose autobiography would be entitled " From Clerk to Theatrical King," is drawing very close to being a million-pounder. Darling Brothers, the wheat firm who would be small fry in the wheat pit which I saw in Chicago, command 2,000,000 and perhaps more. Joshua Brothers started in Melbourne as sugar- boilers and left off as whisky boilers. How much more than a million they made is esoteric, concealed, cryptic. Foy and Gibson, the suburban drapers who became woollen manufacturers and universal providers, are easily worth 3,000,000. Harry Howard Smith is the richest shipowner in Australia and some day will cut up for 2,000,000. Sir Edward Miller, son of old " Money " Miller, has barely a million, and really doesn't deserve any more because he does not know what to do with the million he very nearly has. Bowes Kelly made a fortune out of a one-four- teenth Broken Hill Syndicate shares and lost it nearly all in Zeehan and elsewhere, until he got into the Mount Lyell Mine. Bowes owns eight hundred Queen Anne villas besides a tin box full of scrip and is worth easily a million. H. V. McKay, the Sunshine Har- vester Maker, died far too soon or his 1,800,000 would have been doubled. William Angliss, the meat king, was a " pommy " butcher from Devonshire and his 2,000,000 is creeping towards 4,000,000. The spectacular fortune made recently in Victoria belongs to W. L. Baillieu, a hero of the ancient land boom, if not the hero. Dick Garland gave him the '3 1 Dunlop Rubber Company, Herbert J. Daly put him on to the Broken Hill Zinc dumps, and De Bavay found a flotation process to treat them. Johnnie Wharton bought the North and South Broken Hill shares for him. Carl Pinschof showed him how to form the Carlton United Breweries. Theodore Fink told W.L. he was sure " Herald " shares were worth buying. H. W. Gepp hinted that Electrolytic Zinc Company was a safe gamble, and W.L. made a coup and a separate fortune by amalgamating the London Chartered Bank, of which he was local director, with the English, Scottish and Australian Bank. If W. L. Baillieu is not worth 5,000,000 it is a shame, a very great shame, for he ought to be. He suffers from sand in his arteries and is not over happy. Theodore Fink is rapidly approaching the six figure boundary, but he's a brainy little man with a kind word and a smile for everybody except those he hates. Nicholas, the maker of the confectionery known to headachy women as " Aspro," has since the war began put together more than a million pounds. Robert B. McComas, the shipping and wool man, is rapidly nearing the millionaire class, and of course Mac- pherson Robertson has got his third degree of million- arity and could realize 5,000,000 for his confectionery business to-morrow. Alfred D. Hart of the British Tobacco Company, will cut up for a couple of million, and his American partner, Willie Cameron, for even more, because he has rich relatives in the tobacco trade away down in old Virginny. The late Zeb. Lane, well known in Broken Hill and Kalgoorlie, met an Indian maharajah on a P. and O. boat who told him of a remote spot in the heart of India where diamonds were mined by the bucketful without the aid of machinery. Zeb. wanted me to go with him to secure a concession over the diamond field from the reigning prince, with the object of taking FORTUNES MISSED it to London for flotation. Diamonds what a new and splendid word to conjure with in a well-constructed prospectus ! Telluride, bornite and carbonates were getting worn out as symbols of the great wealth to be won in new mines on far-distant fields, poor bait now for feeding to the public, which was, as always, ready to take a few shares in any new show provided the bellwethers on the prospectus were successful or notorious. With diamonds as the mine product there was no need for either guinea-pig directors or reports by an M.E. mining expert, or mining engineer, as the reader pleased. What widow, clergyman or retired civil servant could resist applying for a few shares in the Indian De Beers Diamond Fields, Limited ? So it was settled, and I found my way to Madras to meet the agents of the Nawab. Accompanied by a young rajah, the journey to Banganapalle was easily, though tediously, accom- plished. At the small railway station a cow cart was waiting, and a trip of twenty miles to the capital of the native state was made over bush tracks through a desolate country inhabited by pariah dogs and children. Before a palatial marble building, set in the centre of a village composed of mud and adobe huts, the Diwan or Prime Minister of the state met me and offered me the hospitality of the Nawab. Certainly he had no bedroom to offer me, but a shake-down would be placed on the roof. A tin basin and a gourd of water represented the furniture of the roof, and there were no mosquito curtains, but a plentiful supply of mosquitoes. Dinner was a rough affair of chicken soup, chicken fricassee, chicken cutlets, chicken curry, and chicken on toast. Four of us sat down to it : the Diwan, the rajah, a doctor and myself. They were all Madrassis, educated at college and spoke English fluently. The salon had been magnificently decorated, but was now tawdry and K 133 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT filthy. The night spent with the mosquitoes on the roof with only the stars winking at me was one of horror. Next morning the Diwan told me only one other Englishman had been in the town in twenty years, as the Nawab was an independent native monarch not beholden to the British raj. Further, I learnt that the palace has recently been converted into a temporary hospital for cholera patients, of whom there were two hundred in the rooms beneath me. After a one egg breakfast we went to a durbar with the Nawab in a vast unfurnished apartment. The Nawab sat on a throne of Austrian bent wood at the end of the room and listened to his Prime Minister translating my request for a concession. His Royal Highness, although he spoke English, could not talk with me directly, according to court etiquette. He wanted twelve new nautch girls in exchange for a fifty years' concession over eighteen square miles of diamond mines, with a 10 per cent royalty and a substantial cash payment the Nawab wanted that urgently. Then the Nawab signified my requests would be granted, and the deputation thanked the Minister and withdrew. The Diwan drove me in a dog-cart to the chief diamond mine. There was a decadent Eurasian in charge, and we found him engaged in the miser-like occupation of playing with heaps of uncut diamonds on his office table. The shaft was fifty feet deep and a windlass was the only machinery. Holding on to the rope, with their feet resting in holes in the side of the shaft, were about ten native women who passed the blue dirt in small osier baskets up the shaft to the lady just above, and so to the dame on the brace. Two men washed the dirt roughly and every bucket yielded some diamonds. There was evidence for miles round of ancient mining, for this plateau had been the main source whence were supplied the diamonds to the 134 FORTUNES MISSED Orient for centuries. When Aurungzebe or Akbar, kings of Delhi, wanted more diamonds, they sent an army to Banganapalle, put the men to the sword and carried off the females and diamonds. The field had of course never been worked with machinery. With the precious concession safely in my possession, imagination led me to sneer at Rockefeller and Carnegie. The Nawab was so pleased with me and my Stock Exchange knowledge that he lent me a motor car to go to the railway station to catch the Madras train. The coloured chauffeur brought about one mishap after another, and it took from six till eleven at night to do the twenty miles. Towards the end of the journey the rajah and myself started to walk to the station while the chauffeur mended his engine. At the first village we were chased back by hundreds of dogs of every breed, reinforced by jackals and what looked like cheetahs. We caught the train at midnight and the chauffeur went back to be ham- strung, disembowelled and crucified for ruining a perfectly good Ford car. In London my first visit was to a director of the De Beers Diamond Company of Kimberley, who took exactly five minutes to tell me the Company knew all about my diamond field, and with the aid of two Governments and the Stock Exchange the directors would not permit me to raise capital or float a company ! He mentioned, inci- dentally, that his company had locked up in Hatton Gardens vaults 35,000,000 worth of cut diamonds which were filtered into New York a few at a time to feed a constant and growing demand. Within a week it was certain he spake the truth. Nobody would look at either my diamonds or my draft prospec- tus, and the scheme died stillborn. These Bangana- palle diamonds are sold clandestinely in India, but the power of the big De Beers Corporation will keep these mines unworked until such time as the Kim- 135 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT berley deposits are worked out. Then the De Beers people will give the reigning Nawab thousands of nautch girls and automobiles in exchange for a per- petual concession over that desolate tableland of eighteen square miles. The adventure was one of my failures, most regrettable because with untold wealth I had made up my mind to buy a second pair of braces. Another time I should have made a pile of pounds, shillings and pence was when I formed a syndicate to send me to the Federated Malay States to secure options over tin mines. I meant to follow up and make use of the success of the Tongkah Harbour Tin Com- pany on an island in the Mergui Archipelago belonging to Siam. In Penang and Kuala Lumpur I picked up a number of options over producing mines easily and cheaply. And I also got a short option over a tin- smelting concern in Penang owned by a German, a Chinaman and a Chetty. There was only one other smelting company in F.M.S., the Straits Trading Company, and the one I bonded for sale in London only needed more capital. So far so good, tin began to fall and rubber to rise, and when I reached London, tin was 90 a ton and rubber touched los. a pound with one fluke sale at i is. 6d. So I waited in London till my options ran out and somebody else floated the tin smeltery and bagged the profit. Wasn't that bad luck ? And we put in two winters in London the Dreadful, when the cold, fog, rain and icy matters make life an abomination of desolation. I think that was the trip when I saw the clever, half-witted and wholly dangerous Winston Churchill, in bell-topper, spats and frock-coat, very like my own, directing twenty Grenadier Guards in their rifle fire at a house down in Whitechapel supposed to be inhabited by an artist called Peter the Painter. Churchill was an amusing sight that day. Next please ! And kindly, don't worry. For forty years have been obsessed 136 FORTUNES MISSED with the belief that the Brown Coal at Altona on Hobson's Bay would pay to briquet and yield gas, ammonia and various by-products, so we formed a syndicate and took an elaborate scheme to London with a view to interesting leading people interested in electricity for the production of which the dry brown coal of Altona, with its high content of volatile and fixed carbon, is eminently suitable. In fact, Altona and not Yallourn should have been the seat of Victoria's electrical industry. It would have been, but for the landed interest in Yallourn of two powerful Victorian politicians who thrust Morwell (Yallourn) down the throats of Parliament late one hot night in December ; and that's another and a sensational story. With the aid of Sir Philip Dawson aud Lionel Robinson, Clark and Company, the famous Australian stockbrokers in London, I nearly put the Altona business over, and if I had done so Yallourn would not have been developed at an ultimate cost of 15, 000,000, and Altona would have been sending electricity all through Victoria at a capital cost of 5,000,000 all told ! With my usual gaucherie I missed the financial bus and a large entry in the Consols ledger at the Bank of England no importa ! Here is the list of shareholders in the Melton Syndicate Limited, Palmerston House, Old Broad Street, London, Manager : E. Habben : Capital 3000, in 3000 i Shares. Directors Shares Joseph Dowling, The Minery, Rusper, Horsham, Sussex ... ... ... ... 100 Hon. Edmund W. Parker, Brookside, Rugby ... 100 Hon. B. R. Wise, K.C., 12, Sloane Terrace, Sloane Square ... ... ... ... IOO J. Hadley, General Electric Company, 122, Charing Cross Road, London (for Allgemeine Elecktrici- tats Gesellschaft of Berlin) ... ... IOOO 137 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Sir E. J. Manville, M.J.E.E., 29, Great George Street, Westminster ... ... ... ... 130 Sir Phillip Dawson, M.J.E.E., 29, Great George Street, Westminster (Electrical Engineer to Lon- donBrighton Railway) ... ... ... 140 Shareholders Lionel Robinson, Clark and Company, 24, Throg- morton Avenue ... ... ... 100 A. McHarg, 20, Bridgewater Square ... ... 50 J. O. Byrne, 12, New Court, Lincoln Inn (Mel- bourne Trust Company) ... ... ... 200 J. Waller, M.J.E.E., Kineaid, Manville, Waller and Dawson ... ... ... ... 130 W. Heaton Armstrong, M.P., Private Banker, Pal- merston House ... ... ... ... 250 G. D. Meudell, Whitehall, Bank Place ... ... 600 Babcock and Wilcox, High Holborn, Boiler Manu- facturers 100 Total 3000 Some people, Midas for instance, have asses' ears, being asses and yet make pots of money. It is fear- fully easy to make money, given a fair beginning, provided you give up all else and devote yourself to turning every pound over at a profit. Something besides thrift is needed, because saving is dull plod- ding and not at all clever. Anybody can save, and it did not need Micawber to point out how. The man who means to die rich ought not to gamble. He should be always, night and day, on the watch for invest- ments to yield him small profits quickly. They are like thrips, those small safe chances flying about in millions. Fifteen years on the Stock Exchange, a life lived amongst money and monied people, taught me that lesson. If you want to make money surely, scorn delights and live laborious days looking out for 138 FORTUNES MISSED certainties. Then buy them and hold for a small profit which grab. I missed a fortune by not acting on my knowledge of the prices of fixed deposits and shares in bung banks. Just after the breakdown in 1891 Tom Ellison, of Ellison and Evered, share- brokers, drew up a form of transfer which he wrote on the back of the fixed deposit receipts, all of which were of course offered for sale at a discount by holders who needed money badly. I began buying deposit receipts early and got some cheap bargains in Com- mercials, Bank of Victorias, Nationals, at IQS in the i y or half their face value. These gradually went up, but before the public became wise to what was going on and found out how safe and sound the purchases were, fixed deposit receipts were sacrificed to the extent of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Then some of the banks allowed their debtors to buy the bank's own deposit receipts and set them off against their overdrafts. For several institutions and their overdrawn clients I subsequently did a big business buying bank fixed deposit receipts here and in London, Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow. There was money to be picked up buying cheap bank shares, which I did, but not to a large enough extent. As W. L. Baillieu once remarked to me after the flurry was over and the clouds had rolled by, " Fancy, Meudell, there all these bank things were fructifying under our noses and we didn't notice them." I did, but I sold out too soon, and went for a trip round the northern hemisphere. I missed a fortune but found a lot of happiness. Petroleum mining has always had a fatal fascination for me and has cost me a competency. When C. F. Lungley brought me his invention of a method of squeezing more petrol out of kerosene I went into the business with vim and verve. Thomas J. Green- way examined the machine and found that Lungley 139 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT used a catalyst or third agent in the process of distilla- tion and seemed to get more petrol at the expense of the kerosene content of the crude petroleum. Lungley would not disclose what the catalyst was, and Green- way told me to drop it for that reason. My natural cocksureness led me to ignore Greenway's good advice and carried me along to my undoing. It seemed all right in actual practice because Lungley did get more petrol and less kerosene by his process with his own machine. If the process and the machine worked all right in California amongst the local refiners and refineries we could sell the Lungley process readily for a few million dollars, so we raised enough money to transport Lungley and his machine to San Francisco where it was worked before no fewer than twelve chemists representing Standard Oil, Shell Oil, General Petroleum, Associated Oil and Union Oil companies, all of whom turned it down because Lungley would not disclose the secret of his process. Another big wad of money I should have made never materialised. FORTUNES I DID NOT MAKE Among half a dozen chances of making and keeping a competency I had a chance once to settle in London and join the Stock Exchange as partner of a firm doing a large business with Australia. My Melbourne experience would have been most valuable to the firm, because I had been inside every big mine of import- ance in Australia, excepting those in Queensland. It was simply a question of climate and I could not stick the London winter. To a sun worshipper not to see the sun for months at a time is the worst of all penances and punishments, so I came home. The firm who wanted me to join easily and quickly rolled into riches and retired from work, so I missed that purse of Fortunatus. No importa ! After all a pile of money is often a nuisance, and when the desire to 140 FORTUNES MISSED create wants fades out one can be very happy on a little money. Another flood of wealth poured through my hands when I was buying receipts for a bung bank. I had accumulated about 30,000, in partner- ship with a canny friend, the worth of fixed deposit receipts at an average of i $s. in the 1, and we could have gone on buying up to 300,000, if we had had enough gumption or acumen. " Carpe diem " being my family motto we sold out and I sailed up to London to " enjoy the day." One ought to have bought heavily certain bank shares which could be got on credit and were fructifying under my eyes. The late William Knox suggested I should go to London and help the late D. J. Mackay to place 200,000 of debentures for the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company. We joined forces and formed a small limited company to handle that debenture issue and to float South Lyell and North Lyell com- panies on the London market. I worked very hard and helped Mackay to secure the underwriting of the issue. It took a long time to do, because London mining people were affected by reports against the Lyell district as a copperfield. One clause in our prospectus which I suggested gave holders of deben- tures the right to exchange one 100 debenture for thirty-three Mount Lyell shares having a face value of 3. Mackay exceeded the time given him to float the issue. One Thursday we cabled Melbourne to say the issue was sold at 90 less i\ per cent broker- age. Next day the Melbourne Board cabled with- drawing the issue, and on the Saturday morning three share-brokers and the directors and friends took the lot at 90. We had proved the money could be raised in London, so they gambled on a certainty. As I clearly foresaw, it was only necessary to boost the price of the shares above 3 to make the deben- tures more valuable. They eventually went to 405, 141 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT and Mackay and I missed making 50,000. I was never paid my expenses or given a bonus or a few debentures. The still small voice of gratitude was stilled and never even squeaked. Wordsworth knew his humanity well when he wrote : " I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds, V/ith colours still returning, Alas ! the gratitude of men, Hath oftener left me mourning." Personally I do not believe gratitude exists in any human being. It is a mythical legendary sentiment peculiar to dogs, but to nobody else. When ill and supposed to be dying, I gave my business to a bloke who had come to my office in knickerbockers as an office boy, and I've only seen him once since ! That does not hurt or upset me, it only makes me laugh. But I know I deserved a cut out of those exceptional profits on that Mount Lyell debenture issue, because I laid the foundations of its extraordinary success. And what is more all those Mount Lyell holders, save one, were in low water financially and the debenture proceeds saved both them and their mine ! D. J. Mackay and I had put a valuation on the Mount Lyell mine and its debentures in London, and B. J. Fink, Bowes Kelly, H. Karlbaum, W. Knox and John Goodall, quick to see that point, withdrew the issue, floated it in Melbourne in two hours and each made a small fortune out of the float. Debentures went to 405, and shares to 13 IOJ., and I got nothing, not a penny. Two flourishing drapery businesses were placed in my hands for sale in London. After the bank smash in 1892 business of every kind in Melbourne went to pot. George and Georges Company had a big overdraft with the National Bank and I took the papers and the data with me to London, where 142 FORTUNES MISSED I placed the matter before several big wholesale houses at St. Paul's Churchyard, who were shy of trusting Australian firms, several of whom in the soft-goods' trade were shaken and some shaky. The price asked was .100,000 and my commission would have been so fat as to verge on obesity. Nothing came of it except a succession of dashed good luncheons at Sweetings, Pirns, and at the City Carlton Club. Another time I was asked to cable to London and offer to sell Craig Williamson's building and business when it was only one quarter its present size for 100,000 cash. It was placed before a syndicate of Fore Street merchants who thought the price too high and a reply cable ended the business. After that Mr. W. E. J. Craig, a remarkably sagacious business man, took control of Craigs and made it one of the most profitable as it is the best conducted business in Melbourne of its kind. There again I lost another fat wad of cash and shares. No importa ! Next please ! Tid'a-pa^ nitchevo and nothing matters, does it ? For two years I tried to get the Tasmanian State Government to join me in an arrangement to gather funds in London to start an oil shale industry in Tasmania. My plan was to form a company of 1,000,000 capital in London, give the Tasmanian Government half the shares fully paid up, free of calls, costs, expenses, and without recourse to them in any shape or form. I meant to form a syndicate to lay down the preliminary expenses of presenting the business properly in London. With 500,000 shares we could easily get 250,000 cash, not to experiment on the local coal and shale, but to erect retorts on the spot to distil oil from the cannel coals, tasmanite, pelionite, lignite and oil shales which lie unused all over Tasmania. With Government backing we could raise the needful cash ; without it, nothing doing. So put that on the list of my alleged failures. H3 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Next please ! In drilling for oil near Lakes Entrance, Gippsland, Victoria, a flow of natural gas was struck, forcing its way through a column of water 1 1 20 feet high in a six-inch pipe, and blowing off under that difficult condition at a rate of ten million cubic feet a year. It has been going into the air for two years. In Canada or the United States the lease would be worth millions and I might have been a millionaire ! No importa ! Another occasion I missed a great coup was when I first assumed the role of pioneer in search of oil in Australia in 1903. Some years after that I formed the conclusion that oil would never be found in Aus- tralia until plenty of cash was available, so I began the promotion of a company in London to put up j 1 00,000 in cash and an attache case full of scrip for myself, my heirs, executors and assignees. The idea caught on and we had promises to underwrite half the cash when the Mines Department of South Australia sent abroad apparently to government departments, petroleum institutes, and societies a bulletin written by L. Keith Ward condemning the prospects of ever finding oil in the Commonwealth. The bulletin had not been published here, and it was a shock when my London friends let the business fall fut. If we had gone to flotation I feel sure we would have proved oil in the basin of the Murray River system, which has been the sewer for bringing the carbonaceous matter of three states towards the sea for thousands of years. Petroleum will be found yet when the right amount of money is provided, and the right men, Australians and nobody else, are given the right machinery to use in the search for oil in this marvellously rich mineral country with its illimitable store of coal, brown coal and oil shale. 144 CHAPTER VII TRAVELS A TABLOID OF TRAVEL To me travel is the supreme joy. There is nothing on earth in art or science comparable with the delight of seeing new sights, hearing new sounds, and talking to strange people in strange lands. And the recollec- tion of travel is a glorious possession. To aid that remembrance I have collected several thousand printed and written mementoes, theatre programmes, hotel bills, menus, entree cards, tickets, maps, plans, guide-books, and the rest. A piqure of morphia, a whiff of opium, a nip of hashish would not have the same soothing and pleasurable effect on me as ten minutes with the tin box holding the gleanings of forty years of world travel. Before me is a pro- gramme of the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, dated July loth, 1889, when Gounod's opera, Romeo and Juliette, was performed in French, Madame Melba and Jean and Edouard De Reszke sharing the honours. During the balcony scene we three Australians played leap-frog in the corridor ! The tyro of 1889 and Melba of 1929 are surely not the same person. In 1902 prices were amphitheatre, is. 6d., amphi- theatre stalls, 5^. and IQJ. 6</., balcony stalls, 15*., and orchestra stalls, ^i U., do not parallel with 1926 prices either. On February 9th, 1898, I heard Ada Crossley at the Queen's Hall, Langham Place. Madame Belle Cole was the other star artiste. There is only one Ada Crossley, and Clara Butt and Dolores and Albani are just next in magnitude. On March 1 8th, 1901, at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, I heard Melba in " La Boheme " and the mad PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT scene from " Lucia," Signer Mancinelli conducting. Some of the " 400 " of New York were there, and we saw Jacob Astor, Perry Belmont, W. G. Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan (parterre box No. 35), and a young Vanderbilt. The list of box-holders is printed on the programme, but as the Yanks are an unmusical nation the performance went flatly. Next day the Opera House was let as a music-hall. Here is a New York programme of Koster and Bial's, Decem- ber, 1897, alongside a gorgeous bill of the Empire Music Hall, London. They hissed Marie Lloyd at Koster and Bial's the night I was there, and the hissing was deserved. Anna Held, perhaps the most beautiful woman at that time on the stage, also appeared. Next I note a memento from the famous Maple Club at Tokio, given me by a Geisha after an elaborate dinner and a pleasant evening of music and dancing. The greatest compliment a Geisha can pay is to be curious regarding one's jewellery, or hair, or clothes. They are dear little women, whose ways are not like unto ours. The afternoon of Sunday, March 27th, 1898, was spent at the Concours Hip- pique in the Champ de Mars, Paris, when sixty-two horses competed for the prix d'essai of thirty-two pounds for jumping. There was a splendid lot of spills. Frenchmen are safer in automobiles, an exhibi- tion of which I saw the same week in the Tuileries, the first show ever held in Paris. The next Sunday, I find from the card, was spent at Auteuil watching several steeplechases, and playing a few francs on the tote or pari-mutuel. The jockeys were chiefly English. Mr. Kewney of the V.R.C. should go to Auteuil to learn how to provide food and drink for a crowd ; it is done so badly at Flemington. On July 1 4th, 1898, my wife and I had seats near the President at the grand review of troops at Longchamps. The final charge of six thousand cavalry was worth 146 A TABLOID OF TRAVEL untold gold as a spectacle. Speaking of races, Dor- ling's list of the Epsom Races for Wednesday, May 25th, 1898, is interesting, because Jeddah won the Derby, starting at 50 to i and I backed him. William Cooper's Newhaven II, who won the Melbourne Cup, was beaten in the Epsom Cup. Here comes a programme from the Theatre Royal, Hong Kong, of May yth, 1901, when the Brough Company played " The Village Priest." The Broughs were great favourites in the East. August i8th, 1889, we two Australians attended a military concert at the Schutzenfest platz, " unter den eichen," at Wiesbaden. There was a mimic battle, too. Next are four more opera programmes of 1889, from Berlin, Frankfort, Vienna and Dresden. At the latter we saw several Wagner operas, in the company of Professor Petersen afterwards at Melbourne Uni- versity. What a dreadful bill is this of the Gran Hotel de las Cuatro Naciones, Barcelona, but that of the Grand Hotel de la Paix, in the Puerta del Sol, Madrid, is worse. The catalogue of the Museo at Madrid, which I visited on Christmas Day, 1895, has pinned to it a ticket for the bull fight. I preferred the Museo, with its Velasquez and Murillos. . What Australian abroad has not been to the Jardin de Paris, and tried la glissade ? A reminiscence of the Boule Miche, in the shape of a ticket from the Bal Bullier, is here. The bill of the Hotel Hungaria, Buda-Pest, has somehow got mixed with that of Maiden's Hotel, at Delhi. We paid 8*. a day at Maiden's, but there was no Durbar in January, 1901. Here is a supper menu from the Hotel Carlton, London, which cost IQJ., " Bovril soup, scalloped lobster, chicken, game patty, cold beef, tongue and ham, salade, iced pudding and biscuits." It costs is. 6d. a breath in these big London hotels. A better dinner was that to the Earl of Hopetoun, on October H7 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT 1 5th, 1889, when Sir Graham Berry, K.C.M.G., presided at the St. George's Club, Hanover Square. Sir Hugh Childres, Sir Andrew Clarke, Sir George Tryon, Mr. Thomas Sutherland, Lord Knutsford and Lord Rosebery were notable speakers that night. On April ist, 1889, I heard Miss Jennie Lee in ' Jo," at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, and the dear little lady was then at her best. Foila, see this billet d'entree for the Casino at Monte Carlo ! Of course they have a cirkus variete at Copenhagen, the chief feature being a good orchestra. There was some pretty ballad singing by Frk. Nanny Bergstrom, whom I had heard previously at Stockholm. A ticket from Thomas Carlyle's house, 24, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, keeps company with a bill from the New Prince Charles Hotel, New Orleans. The bill with " chits " from the Oriental Hotel, Yokohama, clings to one from the Hotel St. Petersburg, Berlin, and they resemble one another in being reasonable. On the Southern Pacific dining-car from Orleans the carte for dinner contains fifty-two items, while that of the Cunard liner " Campania " holds thirty-seven. What pretty and artistic reminders I have of Nikko, the beautiful inland Japanese town ! " Nikko wo minai uchi wa, kekko to iu na ! " which means, " Do not use the word magnificent till you have seen Nikko." We have nothing tangible to show regarding the earthquake we enjoyed there. On December 9th, 1893, I saw a football match, Blackheath v. Cardiff, at Rectory Field, Blackheath. Rugby football to an Australian is merely stupid. On June yth, 1889, we had rather a good dinner at the " Cri," Piccadilly Circus, in honour of David Christie Murray, the late Edmund Yates being in the chair. A few of my neighbours were Haddon Chambers, Hume Nisbet, Marriott Watson, Mannington Caffyn, Philip Mennel, Justin M'Carthy ; and I remember the Veuve 148 A TABLOID OF TRAVEL Monnier, the Theophile Roederer, the Calon Segur (1879), an d the speeches, were all nice and dry. Two notable circus programmes, Barnum and Bailey's, at Olympia, London, and Buffalo Bill's, outside Paris, are appropriately folded together, and close by lies one from a Geneva Hippodrome, also a book of the Hamburg Zoo. The illustrated route of the Mount Saleve Railway, near Geneva, nestles with an account of the funicular railway up Vesuvius. One cannot forget Chamounix, because of our honeymoon, an hotel bill, a telescope, and Mont Blanc, all of them long. It is a far cry from the Chateau of Miramar, near Trieste, to the Jama Musjid of Shah Jehan, at Agra, and it can be heard just as easily as the pin I heard dropped in the elliptical Mormon Tabernacle at the Zion of the Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City in 1884. Here is an account of that most glorious of beautiful human creations, the church of St. Peter at Rome. Bramante and Michael Angelo ! // fine loda r opera. It is not flat blasphemy to say the Capitol and the Congressional Library at Washington come next after St. Peter's and the Taj Mahal in the contest of magnificence. The owner of ' The Victory," Lionel Robinson who won the Melbourne Cup with him, and I went once to Waterloo, and a small photo- graph of the Lion Mound on the battlefield is a pleasing remembrancer. Next comes a bill from Shepherd's Hotel, Cairo, and here I must stop. Of all this I am proud, for I can say, " Vengo di Cosmo-poli" I am a citizen of the world ! AUSTRALIA, LAND OF COLOUR A strangely false idea of the beauty of Australia has been given by writers, songsters and poets, who have led strangers to believe Australia is devoid of colour, that it is mostly desert, brown, dry, sandy, and that our glorious possession, the eucalyptus tree, L 149 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT is scraggy, scentless and shadeless. The truth is the opposite. Australia, because of its wide range of territory within the temperate as well as the tropical zone, is especially endowed with vivid colours and tinted foliage. There is no blue atmosphere like ours elsewhere, nor is there any colour in the sky like Austra- lia's in any country. There is no country of all I have seen can compare with Australia chromatically. So far as the science of colours goes for diversity and beauty our country leads and leaves the world behind it. And this applies to both fauna and flora. England and Scotland are drab and dreary all the year round, compared with Tasmania, and in Ireland alone did I see anything colourful and that was the grass. The pioneers who came from cold, bleak, poverty-stricken England and Scotland to open up Australia and brought numerous falsities here did not understand their new environment of colour and beauty. We, their children, know better, There is no Northern European tree oak, elm, birch, beech or poplar equal to the indigenous eucalyptus, probably the most useful and beneficent tree that grows. COST OF TRAVEL Since I started travelling I reckon it has cost me 20,000 for my wife and self. To-day I could not have covered the same ground much under 50,000. In India, China, Japan, Malay States, Dutch East Indies, the hotels charged from 6s. ^d. to 12s. 6d. a day inclusive. The same hotels would charge three to four times those prices nowadays. And everything else is proportionately higher : theatres, entertainments, railways and steamships. In 1884 I went first class to London from Melbourne by the ss. " Orient " for 63, the return fare being 100. The same cabin to-day would cost me 132 single, and 231 return. The Orient boats were about 150 COST OF TRAVEL 4000 tons, " Potosi," " Garonne," " Lusitania," " John Elder " and " Sorata." The P. and O. steamers were all about 3000 to 4000 tons, and fares ranged round 60 single and 100 return. Not so long before that era the P. and O. Company did not charge for wines or liquors. The little P. and O. steamers in 1884 were, " Pekin," " Khedive," " Massilia," " Thames," " Sutlej " and " Ballarat." The White Star Com- pany, from Liverpool to New York, ran the " Celtic " and " Germania," charging 12, 14 and 16 first class for the trip lasting about nine or ten days. The Cunard Company charged the same rates and doubled them for return tickets. The " Cephalonia," " Cata- lonia," " Scythia," " Servia " and " Bothnia " were the crack boats then. We took ten days on the " Bothnia " to cross the Atlantic. Out of hundreds of hotel bills here are a few extracts. In 1884, Grand Hotel, Leghorn, breakfast, 3 francs, dinner, 5 francs ; Grand Hotel, Milan, 28th April, 1884, breakfast, 1.50, lunch 2 and dinner 5 francs ; Hotel Swan, Lucerne, 8j. a day ; Hotel de la Poste, Brussels, IDS. a day ; and Arundel Hotel, London, bed and breakfast, 6s. a day ; Hotel Victoria, Venice, 15 francs a day ; Grand Hotel, Naples, 18 francs a day. Finally, First Avenue Hotel, Holborn, then brand new, charged an inclusive fee of 15^. a day, while you could get a table d'h6te dinner at the Holborn Restaurant, then the best of modern cafes, for 35. 6d. The cheapest place to travel round is the Pacific Ocean, and you will find Oceana and Polynesia no less amusing and no less instructive than Pall Mall or Paris. MEN I thought I had known a large number of rich men throughout Australia and during my travels in Europe and the two in America, until I made my first trip through the Malay States from Rangoon in Burma, PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT via Penang and Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, I did not really know how many large fortunes can be rapidly compiled from other things besides wool and gold. At the Spotted Dog Club in Kuala Lumpur, called so because white, brown and yellow are eligible shades of membership, I met some rich Chinese who had made big " rises " out of tin, rubber and the spirit and opium licences hired from the Government and farmed. One charming Chinese gentleman, who was very kind to me, was Kong Lam, a member of the council of the F.M.S. He had made in a few years 250,000 out of the three sources of wealth just named. His home at Kuala Lumpur was a revelation in splendour. Another Chinese at the Singapore Club was then drawing 96,000 a year from tin mines at Billiton and Banca and drinking too many whisky stengahs with the money. My mate and I went over a palace unoccupied by its Chinese owner in Singapore which cost him 100,000 furnished. His income was 100,000 a year ! His favourite tipple was gin pahits every ten minutes all day long, a pahit being only about an eye-bath full. SHIPPING LINES Of the hundreds of ships by which we have travelled, it is hard to say which was the best all-round vessel. This much one can claim without dread of denial, comparing the steamers and awarding points for cleanliness, comfort, safety, healthy cabins, and good food, the Australian coastal shipping services have no equal on the seven seas. Have travelled on dozens of steamers along the coasts of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, and have a list of six boats which were wrecked after I had been on them, though I never went through an accident at sea. My first sea trip was by the ss. " Edina," the oldest steamship on Lloyds' list, to Warrnambool, fifty years ago, and 152 SHIPPING LINES it took twenty-four hours to do the 165 miles, or seven knots an hour. To the Zeehan-Dundas silver- field, on the west coast of Tasmania, and afterwards to the Mount Lyell copper-field I made numerous voyages in craft of all sizes, but all small ones from 90 to 150 tons burthen. Think of it, ye armchair lovers who live at home at ease, and who have only travelled by big luxurious liners. The smells, the dirt, the horrible sleeping shelves, the poor food and the abominable motion of these tubs is nearly in- describable. The Union Steamship Company of New Zealand is without peers among the coastal lines of the world, and Denny Brothers of Dumbarton have built for the Union Company some of the best steamers afloat. Have been on about forty Union ships and liked them all. Mikhailovitch's steamers, on the River Plate, are excellent, and so are some of the ferries on the Hudson River to Albany ; have had enjoyable trips on the Rhine and Danube, the Clyde, the Thames (the latter the most beautiful of all rivers), the River Mississipi and the Clyde, and at one time or another we have travelled by all the great European fleets and by every passenger line out and into Aus- tralia, and know nothing superior to boats of the Burns Philp, Howard Smith, Mcllwraith, Mac- Eachearn or Huddart Parker lines. Have been on most of the great Atlantic liners including the Inman, the Anchor, the Allan, the Cunard, the White Star, the Hamburg-America, the America and the Nord Deutscher Lloyd. It is not fashionable to say so, but with my wide experience of steamboats I plump for the N.D.L. as the best equipped, best managed and most comfortable vessels sailing the oceans. That sounds like rank heresy, but facts are stubborn things. The next best line is the Messageries Mari- times Company of France, and then the Nippon Yushen Kaisha of Japan. We have been literally on '53 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT dozens of P. and O. and Orient ships and detest them for their snobbery, swagger and swank. The officers are allowed far too much freedom in these services and on some boats are allowed to be a nuisance amongst the female passengers. Especially on the boats carrying Anglo-Indians, the heaven-born civil servants and the haughty military officers maintain their alleged superiority of caste and are intensely disliked by the Australian passengers. Talk about racial and national hatreds ! They are mere trans- gressions of politeness compared with the bitterness between these two clans of the Anglo-Saxon family. A hardened voyager I have found it good policy to laugh heartily at the airs and graces of these suburban residents of the outer Empire. IMMIGRATION PERIL With forty-two different foreign languages spoken in 26,239 religious organizations in the United States, what hope is there for even that simple basic element of cultural and spiritual union in a nation a common language ? What chance for a united United States is there when fourteen million foreign born whites and yellows in that country, and their like- minded, support 1052 foreign language publications of all kinds ? By the census of 1920 more than a quarter of the entire population of 105,710,620 was foreign born or of foreign parentage. In 1926 there were nearly 120,000,000 people in the United States, and therefore over 30,000,000 are aliens racially and culturally, opposed naturally to the Yankees or those of British blood, and some day these aliens, applying the principle of self-determination, will make the United States spiritually bonded and destroy the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon progenitors of these present- day Americans. To call them Anglo-Saxons and to 154 IMMIGRATION PERIL address them as our cousins is to act a lie and to dis- honour our own traditions. In the South American republics, like Brazil, Argentine, Bolivia, Chili and Paraguay, the Americans have not gripped the foreign trade, having so far been too busy and fully employed at home. They must tender for part of the trade of these rich territories, and the Atlantic countries once fettered, those of the Pacific will offer themselves to be bound with the chains of American trade. The Panama Canal means the ultimate creation of a foreign mercantile marine to carry American goods, and the Panama Canal will be its porch to the Pacific. The effect on Australia's destiny will be that the United States will gradually become Australia's most dreaded enemy. And why not ? The Anglo-Celtic element in the North American is being washed out by the Teutonic, the Latin, and the Slav blood, and the feeling of the kinship has really disappeared despite post-prandial orators. Our only chance of safety from subjugation by the United States is the rift likely to be caused by the need for trying to expel or keep under the Negro Americans, and also by the want of cohesion amongst the American peoples themselves. One cannot place too much reliance on the loyalty of Great Britain to Australia, and as a real Australian I don't believe Britain cares the shadow of a shade for Australasia, and will lend us no aid when the Yankees want our beautiful continent for the over-plus of their millions of hybrids. Australia's destiny is in dire peril and the sooner we have a system of conscription, a rifle for every man, our own arsenals and navy, the better able shall we be to try to retain our nationality, and resist the cohorts which will bring hither the satraps to destroy our autonomy, and make Australasia an American colony. My mate and I had a splendid voyage, no longer '55 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT possible, by a North Deutscher Lloyd Company route from Batavia to Brisbane, calling at Sourabaya, Java, Macassar in the Celebes, Banda and Amboyna in the Moluccas, all through the Spice Islands, stopping every day at one or two ports to pick up trade, and then along the Dutch and German colonies in New Guinea which they ought never to have been allowed to annex. The sooner the Dutch are forced to give up the East Indies the better for the British. They hold all their oversea possessions with a feeble hand. How can it be otherwise when the other hand is always filled by a sandwich ? We called at a lot of German settlements along the north coast of New Guinea, and at Eitape we had a whole day ashore. This place or a village near by had been blown to a frazzle, as Theodore Roosevelt, the over-valued Yankee President would have said, by a German gunboat because the niggers had killed a priest and eaten three nuns a few weeks previously. The German school for the native kiddies was the Guildhall or Louvre of the village. Here we saw on the walls a large chromograph of the conceited German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, the chap who ran away from his army to save his neck, exalted between framed pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary ! The Kaiser was six inches higher up the wall. It wasn't blasphemous so much as it was laughable. On a back beach, while gathering shells, about a dozen small black fellows joined the party. A box of chocolates made them friendly. Assuming the position of fugleman I formed a line and drilled them, then word by word I taught them to sing the first verse of the national anthem, " God Save the King." When they knew the song perfectly I led them through the village laughing and singing lustily. It was damned funny and most edifying, though not applauded by the Germans on the wharf. Naturally that was seven 156 IMMIGRATION PERIL years pre-war. Next day we went over a German Government plantation at Friederickshafen growing kapok, cotton and coconuts. The manager told me he worked 1000 natives with the aid of one Mauser automatic and two long buggy whips. At Herbertshoe we saw Queen Emma, a Samoan Princess, who kept a general store and made money trading and planting coconuts. Her son, Coe Forsaythe, is a well-known Sydney racing man. His father was a Yankee. On that delightful trip one passenger was a fellow called Poulteney Bigelow, a nomadic journalist who bossed everything on the " Prince Waldemar," including the captain's cockatoo. When they go travelling why won't Americans stop talking and drop blustering. Nobody cares a damn whether the United States is a great country or not. If it really is, how can that fact give joy to the rest of us ? The only place in the world I have never been offered a cigar, a drink, a luncheon, a dinner, or a club membership is New York, the earthly hell of noise and incivility. We went on to Simsons- haven, now Rabaul, then being built by Germany as a naval base in prospect of the occupation of Australasia and all the British islands in Oceana. That plot failed, as every similar attempt to occupy Australia effectively must fail whether made by Japanese, Germans, or Americans. The coastline of the Aus- tralian continent stretches for 12,000 miles, and the area is 2,948,306 square miles. The mainland is 256 square miles larger than the mainland of the United States of America which thinks and calls itself a great country, or in pure blasphemy " God's Foot- stool." These are the three most wonderful sights on earth : the Grand Canyon of Colorado, the Niagara Falls, and the view of the Himalayas from Darjeeling. The Thames is the most beautiful river, the Mississippi the most impressive, and the Ganges far and away 157 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the most interesting. Of the three great limestone cave systems of the world, Adelsberg Grotto near Gratz in Hungary, the Kentucky Caves in U.S.A., and the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, the latter is infinitely the most entrancing and the best developed. Which are the three most magnificent buildings one has seen ? In this order, the Taj Mahal shrine at Agra in India ; St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome ; and the Congressional Library at Washington in the United States. Which are the three finest hotels on the earth for comfort ? The Hotel Stewart in San Francisco, the Kaiserhof in Berlin, and the Hotel Australia in Sydney. There are of course more expensive and more pretentious hotels, but out of a list of five hundred I have slept in, I plump for these three, because they combine luxury and comfort in the highest degree. Hotel Stewart in California, and Hotel Australia in Sydney are homely hotels splen- didly managed. There are no quiet hotels in New York or Chicago, and all of them are fit places for mob-men who love noise and hustle. MALTA Have been to Malta, the key of the Mediterranean, and wonder why the British don't make a second Heligoland of it, an impregnable fortress to dominate the Near East. It is in the very centre of the Mediter- ranean, and with its safe harbours it could be and ought to be made the strongest place in Europe. When the League of Nuisances fails from lack of subscriptions to carry on its funny amateurish game of keeping peace, Malta, as " the Nurse of the Mediterranean " and its strategic centre, will assume its true position as one of the principal keys of the Empire. We have spent a day at Malacca in the East Indies where there are no canes for sale, and another day at Macassar in the Spice Islands, where there is no hair oil made, 158 SOUTH SEAS although there are nutmegs a-plenty. In Brazil, at Santos, Rio Janeiro, and Pernambuco, we tried in vain to buy Brazil nuts, yet I bought an excellent pair of Wellington boots, long ones for riding, at Wellington, New Zealand. There are two commodi- ties not mythical or legendary, because we have had them up and down all round the globe, in jungle, desert, or city Lea and Perrin's Worcestershire Sauce and Guinness's Stout. SOUTH SEAS Have seen most of the chief groups of islands in the South Seas and must confess their glamour is fleeting. Saw Fiji first and was entranced by its novel beauty. The contrast of its greenness with the dryness of my homeland must have lent the charm. Samoa was visited next when there was a tripartite control by Germany, Britain and the United States. There was more to rave about in the country behind Apia, and the natives were more attractive than the Fijians. Made a pilgrimage to Vailima to pay homage to the memory of Robert Louis Stevenson, the King of Stylists, and can understand the fascina- tion the beautiful surroundings of his home had for him. We had a gay time with the natives, the women especially being likeable and friendly. Still, the bases of a truly happy life, the food, the good bed, the hot bath, the lavatory, and the wire blinds were wanting, and the insect pests made life partly disagreeable, and the humid heat was a constant penalty on pleasure. On another trip I stopped off at Tutuila, now called Pango Pango, an American colony with the prettiest harbour and one of the best of earth's land-locked havens. There the natives were neither so charming nor so clean as their Samoan relatives. Before the Hawaian or Sandwich Islands were Americanized and ruined as beauty spots I spent a holiday there ever so many years ago. There were very few Japs, Chinese, Portuguese, or other aliens in Hawaii in those days before the United States annexed the territory. Honolulu was a sleek and glossy paradise, and the unspoilt natives quite as attractive as their cousins the Maoris of New Zealand. Then Claus Spreckels started growing sugar, pineapples were planted for canning, and the glory of Hawaii departed. The aborigines are decadent and will shortly vanish as a race, their places being taken by the lascivious Jap and his average dozen children. Japs breed quicker than flies or rabbits and every child ranks as an American elector. Some day the Japanese problem in Hawaii will be as difficult of solution as the negro problem at home to the Americans. Meanwhile they keep their powder dry and their forts fully manned by 5000 gunners. Pearl Harbour, near Honolulu, is a naval base, becoming as strong as Gibraltar is or Heligoland was, and at the first sign of insurrection the Japanese will be driven over the precipice at Pali, as the Hawaians were driven by King Kamehameha. The best group of South Sea islands is called Society, of which Tahiti is the largest and most beautiful. Although that is so it does not justify the arrant nonsense written about it by Yankees like O'Brien and new chum Englishmen like Robert Keable. The town of Papeete is a pleasant enough place, though crude, raw, primitive. The truth is Tahiti has been spoilt by the tourists and the Chinese. It is not an Isle of Dreams, a garden of the Hesperides, or an abode of the blessed. Rather is it a pretty tropical island, debased by strangers, the Tahitians spoilt by the missionaries and the traders, and the island itself being commercialized and despoiled of its natural loveliness. There is nothing to rave about in Tahiti which is certain to become a travel resort for more and more Americans who will some day be supplied 1 60 SOUTH SEAS with a ten-storied hotel with elevators, central heating and toilets, to which will be attached a casino con- trolled by the French administration. Real travellers, and not mere tourists, should try hard to visit the Marquesas Islands, made notable by Herman Mel- ville and R. L. Stevenson, whose people are fast disappearing through European diseases. The Mar- quesas group, like Greece, has a series of mountain ranges and valleys running parallel, and naturally divid- ing the tribes and keeping them apart. The decline in the population is as rapid as it is shocking. The Pau- motu group, or Low Archipelago, should be seen, especially during the pearling season when com- munication is regular and certain. The pearling is strictly controlled by the French authorities. A number of the islands are mere atolls, coral reefs just peeping up out of the sea. Raratonga is an uninteresting island, but typically Polynesian. It is a true example of all the other South Sea islets which are much alike green, hot and moist. The best island to see in Oceana is New Caledonia, found by Captain Cook and annexed by the French to whom it ought never to have belonged. Like the British, the French were looking for an overseas prison for their worst convicts, and like the British they hung the very bad malefactors who stole bread or poached pheasants or didn't stand up when " God Save the King " was sung. It gave Australia some trouble to get the French Government to stop sending prisoners to Noumea, and now they go to Cayenne in French Guiana. Noumea is a delightful centre for a holiday. There are two good hotels, excellent roads for motor- ing, and the scenery is right for motorists. ADEN, BUDA PESTH Aden is another of the unpleasant spots on the globe. A long time ago we spent a day there and 161 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT visited the dry tanks and the cantonment for the use of the British soldiers under a C.D. Act passed for the benefit of the military and naval forces. It was a curious walled area guarded by armed sentries, as though it were a Royal Mint. The women, living in little cottages, were of a dozen nationalities and of as many shades of colour. The regimental surgeon was there at the time writing out and handing certifi- cates to the examinees. It seemed a sensible plan of handling the social evil. Years after at Buda Pesth on the Danube, an American Consul took us for a night prowl around the city, one of the sights being a house of pleasure tenanted by an aged patronne, her assistant, and about eighteen to twenty girls, aged twelve to sixteen years. They entertained us with dancing, singing, music and sherbet. Here again there was not more than two girls of the same nationality. We were told by the Consul these girls began their calling as far west as Tiflis in the Caucasus and moved via Constantinople up the Danube, then north to Dresden, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and finally, if they lived, to Siberia. CAIRO Cairo is a bestial city and all Egypt an overrated abomination. People only go their to cure ulcerous lungs and enjoy dry heat which we Australians have always in our temperate zone covering half our continent. Sensible people who know always keep away from sandy countries and deserts and places with scarcity of rain. Insects and lack of sanitary conveniences keep me away from countries like Egypt and Palestine, where flies and fleas symbolize the life of these outcast regions. One month in Paris is worth several cycles in Cathay or in Cairo. Stayed at the old Shepheard's Hotel ages ago before the irruption of the Yankee waifs and strays from Cohues 162 CAIRO and Podunk. Had a good dragoman and saw the sights and did the tombs and museums. Wishing to learn something of the family life of the Egyptian upper class I asked the dragoman to introduce me to a girl from a Pasha's or Bey's harem. He said that was easy and one night at the Hotel Arabe we all met, the dragoman, Lady Lais, her brother and myself. When she removed her yashmak and showed the dirty face of a street walker I let out a yawp and fled, telling the dragoman to pay them ten piastres each and donkey fare home. Had a trip up the Nile and left wondering what Napoleon saw to want in an offensive country like Egypt. BURMA A long course of Rudyard Kipling, who is a replica of myself so far as his face goes, caused me to make up my mind to go to India and Burma, and specially to follow him over his voyage in the Seven Seas to the Far East. Kipling comes next to Robert Louis Stevenson as the finest author of the last fifty years, and that is why I despise his travel talk as poor stuff. We went laboriously from Rangoon to Mandalay by a beastly train with bad bedding and tucker just before the monsoon broke. It was a painful journey through a terrain lacking interest. The inartistic pagodas built by rich Burmese to give them a lift into their heaven dot the landscape without im- proving it. The umbrellas and the tinkling bells are trivial and not pretty. King Theebaw's palace at Mandalay was a wash-out, once showy, garish, gawdy, then a sorry sight, worm-eaten, mildewed, crumbling and mouldy. The best part of it was the old moat round the walls, in which the night before his capture by the British General Fitzgerald, Theebaw drowned his wives, concubines, and all their aunts and mothers-in-law, tied up in bags with heavy bits '63 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT of basalt included. That sounded funny if it were true, and proved London " Punch " in its childish manner is quite correct in calling a mother-in-law a bother. The Burmese men are splendid fellows, although idealists. They neither believe in work nor do it, and even go so far as to hate people who like work. So do I. Therefore the Burmese women have to do all the work, having the children, keeping them clean and fed, doing the cooking, minding the shop, paying the rent and taxes, even unto bringing home the beer. The men sleep always and babble about the streets when awake. No wood to chop, no boots to clean, no letters to post, no bills to pay. What an idyllic life ! And Kipling wrote nothing of all that. He fell in love with a Burmese girl, brown, soft and luscious, on the platform of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, and seemed too pre-occupied to tell us of the joy of life in a town where a fellow had nothing to do. Was taken down by an Aus- tralian and a Chinese storekeeper who sold me stolen rubies from the Burman ruby mines, which turned out to be valueless zircons, of which I have in my box- room one kerosene tin full found in South Australia. Major Elliott asked us to go to Moulmein where he said I could commit murder or rape, or rob a bank, or get tipsy, or eat hashish, or do anything violent without chastisement. I asked, " What about the strong arm of the British Raj ? " " Ah ! " he replied, " I am the British Raj in Moulmein," and so he was. SPAIN In Madrid I went to a bull fight, a low-down brutal performance, only fit for Spanish people, 50 per cent of whom can't read or write. A small bull of the polled Angus breed who had been left in a dark room under the grandstand to tame him was driven into the arena by much prodding with 164 SPAIN sharp pitchforks. The bull trotted in and leisurely started to eat an appetizing green programme he found in the arena. Then an unshaven Spanish brigand in gaudy clothes, mounted on a Timor pony with bandaged eyes and a lame hind leg, trotted in at a slow gait. The toreador began prodding the bull with a small dart or banderilla while he was chewing the cud and reflecting on the length of the programme he had eaten. Then gaily-caparisoned banditti came bounding into the arena to supply the poor bull with further large quantities of prods, and by the time his hide was stuck full of holes the gallant matador rushed in clad in a costume made out of the flags of Spain and the United States. The audience shrieked with delight, and when the bull trod on the toreador's toe the infuriated gladiator drove his two- handed sword down the poor beast's throat. They harnessed one mule to the carcass, another to the disembowelled nag, the band played the Spanish National Anthem and the bullfighter withdrew amidst the plaudits of 10,000 spectators, to collect a fiver from the man at the ticket-box. A fully-horned Queensland bullock would have gored and eaten the matador, the pony, and several of the bandits inside five minutes. Hunting the Tantanoola tiger would be soul-stirring work compared with a Spanish bull- fight. A two-up school is far more genteel and picturesque. In the Museo at Madrid I saw forty-two paintings of Velasquez, and twenty-five Murillos besides gems by Raphael, Tintoretto, Rubens, Van- dyck, Guido Reni. Next to the Dresden Gallery, that of Madrid has the best collection of old masters. Went through Spain by myself and think the Escorial and the Toledo Cathedral the best things to see. What struck me most in Spain was the ruin wrought by the destruction of the forests which caused the reduction of the rainfall, the drying up of the rivers, M 165 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the washing down of the alluvium from the moun- tains and all the desolation and dreariness which follows the cutting down of trees. It ought to be an object lesson to us in Australia where planting and saving trees ought to be a religious rite. Many ideas about the Spaniards learnt from books were washed out by inspection during my Spanish tour. The Spanish peasant usually has a square bullet head, small green eyes, flat features and an aldermanic stomach. He is built rather on the lines of Sancho Panza than of Don Quixote. The Spanish grandee of one's reading is not visible and the Spaniard of to-day is small, fat and ugly. What to say of the women ! Ah ! that is another story. In the north they are small and plain and Shades of Cervantes ! Many of them are red-headed, not auburn or blonde, just downright red. The Spanish dame de campagne does not wear the graceful lace mantilla over head and shoulders. She doesn't wear a hat, and generally has a cheap Glasgow handkerchief coloured like an Italian sunset, and covered with horses, windmills and things. Each abode in the country districts I traversed has plenty of loopholes and at least one paneless window on the second floor, while bits of roof are missing, and portions of the wall probably taken away by American tourists as specimens for cabinets in Oshkosh, Illinois, or Kalamazoo, Texas. In Florence, Italy, I met an Amurikin tourist who had been touring Palestine and Egypt gathering antiques and relics. He came from Schenectady, New York, and showed me a blue and yellow carpet- bag full of nails from the cross, Crusaders' snuff- boxes, a shoe nail worn by Balaam's ass, a brass nail from Mahomet's coffin taken probably during its state of suspension between heaven and earth, and a chip off the Sphinx's nose. " Gosh," he said, " that vurry rullic cost me wan hundred dollars for the 1 66 SPAIN shike who climbed up and gotten it for me." The country Spanish seem poor and live poorly. The food and wine in the posadas or inns was miserable. Domestic animals in Spain are very sociable. Here a pig will walk out through a hole in the wall of a dwelling, there a donkey can be seen sleeping in the salle a manger^ and again a barn-door fowl will perch on the week's washing which is flaunting from the window-sill of the solitary window in every home. Under one's bedroom floor the sheep, the pigs, the goats and the cows snore and talk in their sleep all night long. Spain is a very poor country with a very rich past. On the whole the people are politer, lazier and happier than we are, and life is altogether gentler and more domestic. JAPAN Japan is a poor nation of poor people dependent for profits on her foreign trade. She has no accumu- lated wealth made by past generations, so has nothing to tax for use in making war. Japan has no borrowing power on the money markets of the world, and the only nation able to lend her money is the United States, a potential enemy and a white nation with one coloured problem within her gates and therefore quite unlikely to help another coloured race with funds for warlike purposes. War cannot be made without iron and oil, and Japan lacks reserves of both. The idea of an invasion of Australia by Japan is a chimera, a fantasy, a mere frenzy fit for fools to frighten boys and babies with and is not rational to thinking people. My mate had the glorious red-gold hair that Titian loved so dearly, a mantle of living gold. It was remarkably beautiful and strangely abundant, filled with a light that never was on sea or land, a very poet's dream. One afternoon in Tokio we drove in 167 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT jinrickshaws from the Imperial Hotel to present our letters of introduction to the heads of the Mitsui Bank. For a quarter of an hour my mate was left with our Japanese guide outside the bank. At first little notice was taken of her until some inquisitive yellow Puritan noticed the colour of her hair, and spread the news. When I came out of the bank a crowd of about five hundred men, women and children had gathered and were touching her clothes, laughing furiously, and evidently using lots of bad Japanese language. We got away safely, and Sato, the guide, told me that to those people my mate's hair was an evil sign and they believed her to be an extremely bad woman of no importance. After that her beautiful crown of hair of golden chestnut was well hidden by veils. On another occasion, in India, the ignorant driver of a bullock-gharry, who had never before seen a white woman, on a country road behind the ruins of Amber in Jaipur, scarcely took his eyes from the brown gloves she was wearing. He could not reconcile a white face with brown hands. When she took off one glove and he saw the white hand covered with rings, the doddery old Hindu waggoner indulged in a paroxysm of laughter that would have made the walls of Jericho reel on their bases. No book of travel about Japan ought to be published unless it described how the Japs have tried to solve the social evil, or W. T. Stead's plague of Babylon. To anybody who fully realizes that from the two chief venereal diseases flow 90 per cent of the ill- nesses that afflict modern humanity, it is blind folly not to explain fully how these wise people try to abolish these accursed scourges, and at the same time endeavour to satisfy the ruling passion of both sexes, the desire to pro-create. Notwithstanding the extend- ing use of rubber contraceptives, venereal disease is spreading and engulfing the human race in a filthy 168 JAPAN morass of sickness due directly or indirectly to two sexual complaints. The Yoshiwara is a government bawdy-house controlled like any other public health resort. There is a Yoshiwara in every town in Japan, and there ought to be one in very town in the British Empire and dozens of them in the big cities. At Tokio years ago, when an American and I visited the Yoshiwara, we found two soldiers at the entrance to the encampment guarding the gate with fixed bayonets as was the custom when the C.D. Act was first enacted for the benefit of the British army over- seas. In the centre of the cantonment was a hospital built like the ruins of Borobodoer in Java on a terraced platform. There were four doors to the building and all day and all night the hetirae were tripping gaily up and down, to and fro their weekly examination by the doctors. One of the doctors told us that the records showed only one half of I per cent of the women contracted venereal disease, and those tainted were kept in hospital until cured. Fancy only one half per cent of the females examined being found to be on the verge of one or other of these foul and loathsome complaints ! Why 90 per cent of white women have one or other of the two sexual diseases by heredity or by direct or indirect contact ! Think of the saving of sickness and pain, O ye Puri- tans and Pharisees who personally have rheumatoid arthritis or tuberculosis, or cancer, all diseases due to filthy sexual contact either on your own part or that of your parents or grandparents. The system was very simple. The women of all ages were classi- fied and the poor ones exposed in the shop windows, sometimes with posters announcing that " Mimosa San, 1 6 years old (and looking sixty), had just arrived that day from Nikko (or some country town) and would be pleased to make new friends." A qualified chartered accountant practised on a Government 169 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT ledger in a doorway just round the corner, took the two yen or the ten, as the case may be, gave a receipt and entered it to the credit of Madame Chrysan- themum or Monkey Margaret, or whatever was the nom de -plume of the lady student in ethics and morals one had determined to dally with. There was no bootlegging or drinking or bad conduct possible. The unfurnished retiring rooms were very plainly furnished with mats, one pillow and a kakemona on the wall, having painted on velvet pretty pictures of little blue wrens pecking one another's beaks pre- paratory to hopping into sweet green nests. Isn't this system preferable to our cruel and anti-social method of building hospitals for fallen women, clinics for diseased men, asylums for lunatics, retreats for feeble-minded and reformatories for neglected children ? Don't all these charitable institutions nourish and continue the custom under which when a boy reaches puberty he naturally does a natural act with some young lady friend instead of being able as in Japan to satisfy his naturally manly appetite from is. upwards ? And hence all these tears ! Men and women nowadays die like flies from cancer, which is undoubtedly the final form of syphilis, of gonorrhoea, or perhaps of both acquired in youth by themselves or by their papas or grandpapas or possibly their female ancestors near or far. All the great religions of the world Buddhism, Shintoism, Con- fucianism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, recognize the passion to be a natural appetite, and Christianity alone condemns it as a sin and makes ample provision to cure and help the victims after they have obeyed nature and incurred horrible pain and disease, not only for their natural lives, but for the lives of all their progeny to come. 170 AUSTRALIA, A WONDERLAND OF TRAVEL AUSTRALIA AS A WONDERLAND OF TRAVEL Why Australians go away from home to find better scenic beauty one never can understand, because we have everything to please and charm in our great big country. The most picturesque coun- tries are Switzerland and India, and neither of them equals either Tasmania or New Zealand. If perpetual snow on high mountains is the supreme ideal, as it seems to be for all those people who are, unluckily for them, not Australians, then must the critic stop criticizing. Of all North America, California is the nearest region to Australia in the possession of natural beauty and a delightful climate all the year round, perpetual sunshine, eternal blue skies, and soft balmy air always. Have seen Mont Blanc, Fujiyama, Rainier, Vesuvius, Niagara, Nikko, Mississippi, Rhine, Danube, Lake Como, the Riviera, Rio Janeiro, and the Bay of Naples. The three lovely islands of the seas are Ceylon, Hawaii and Java, yet none of them for sheer loveliness excels Tasmania. Within ninety miles of Sydney the traveller can see all that is beautiful in mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and sea-coasts, and in Sydney itself he will see the Queen city of Earth. There is no paradise for the wanderers like New Zealand where Milford Sound and Sutherland Falls are unparalleled sights, and until the sightseer comes to Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand he cannot possibly say he has seen the most beautiful countries on the globe. Earth proudly wears Aus- tralia as the finest gem on her zone. TRAVEL PLACES My wife and I have travelled further than any married couple in Australia. We made one trip round the globe covering two years from home, which took us to all the continents. The record was 29 steamers, 19 railways, and 50 hotels in eighteen 171 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT months. Before we married, my mate had made three world voyages with her father and mother. She was wrecked in the steamer " Korangamite " off the coast of New South Wales, and in 1898 was on the P. and O. ss. " China " when she ran ashore at Perim Island in the Red Sea. The only observer of how the " China " ran into the island was the man at the wheel. The captain and all his six officers were not on the bridge. Lady Willingdon, then Mrs. Freeman Thomas, was giving a birthday dinner party when the ship struck and all was bubble and hilarity. My mate says the wreck was due not to the dinner, but to lack of discipline. It is curious that although we have travelled so much we have never met with an accident or with any adventures. Once, at the ruined city of Amber, near Jeypore, India, she was pitched out of a howdah when the elephant shied at a monkey. The moral is that when you travel avoid jungles, deserts, mountains and stick to cities, hot baths, good meals and modern lavatories. In this order the three most beautiful seascapes are the Inland Sea of Japan, the Barrier Reef off Queensland, and the vicinity of the Thousand Islands on Lake Ontario in Canada. The most picturesque of all views is Sydney Harbour at night. In the day of course it is unequalled by any other harbour. We didn't care for Rio Janeiro. Take away Corcovada and it is nil. A prettier haven is Pango Pango, on Tutuila, a Samoan island in the Pacific. India is the glory land of the earth, and the Taj Mahal the superb gem of architecture. The Palace of Miramar, in the Adriatic seen by moonlight, is another beautiful building. There is nothing to see worth the journey to Japan, not even Nikko. The Japs write, " Until you have seen Nikko you cannot understand beauty." There is a spot on a hill near Kangaroo Flat in Victoria, Australia, infinitely to be preferred to Nikko. The best pleasure trip we 172 AUSTRALIA, A WONDERLAND OF TRAVEL took was all round the Dutch East Indies. There you live amidst heat, colour, light and water, the four joyous things of life. After you have seen the Niagara Falls on the Canadian side and the Grand Canyon of Colorado there is nothing left to see in the United States which you cannot see better elsewhere. And you will never find good manners nor good temper. In the United States they are lost arts. New Zealand is the true wonder land of the planet. The scenery is varied and variegated. There you find lakes, rivers, waterfalls, mountains, volcanoes, and forests of every kind. The New Zealanders themselves are an amusing people because they are so religious and so conceited. Go to New Zealand if you are fond of the primeval and the primitive. The people are the healthiest, strongest and finest, yet puritanical and worthy. Of the South Sea Islands we have seen, Tahiti is truly worth while, and New Caledonia undeniably delightful. Keep away from British Papua and New Guinea for travel there is not rewarded. Don't trouble to go ashore at Honolulu. When I saw it first in 1884, Hawaii was a paradise. To-day it has been commercialized and destroyed. American civilization poisons wherever it enters. Its chief ingredients are noise and roughness. Try and get to the Marquesas and Paumotu islands, but avoid Fiji and Tonga, both spoilt by the uncalled-for and unwanted missionaries. Keep out of Egypt, which is dirty from Alexandria to Khartoum. Cairo is a repulsive city lacking the merit of being amusing. Old dead tombs, mummies, mosques, and temples can never be attractive to civilized twentieth-century people. During seven trips have been in nearly every State of America and regret the money it cost as being wasted. Their cities there are mere agglomerations of noise and unpleasant people of whom the chief characteristic is childishness. Americans are a syn- PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT thetic race, a mosaic of all the other races. The result is disappointing because refinement of body and mind have been lost and the human has slipped down to a lower plane. Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, St. Louis and the rest are merely vulgar and businesslike. Reno, the divorce centre, stands as the material symbol of American mentality : lawless, intolerant and selfish. When they rebuild Boston and clean up New Orleans they may be pleasant places to visit. Keep away from Chicago the noisy, New York the rude, and Los Angeles the vulgar. San Francisco is a pleasant place, but windy, noisy and over-crowded. The traveller should slip over and look at it, lest another earthquake, sure to arrive, spills 'Frisco into its own harbour. None of these American cities has a good art gallery. The New York collection is finicking, full of dull indistinct rubbish by old masters, mostly uneducated Dutchmen and Italians. There is no American school of art. The best native artists all live in Europe. In the " Ville de la Ciotat," a Mes- sageries steamship, we called at Victoria, the chief town of the Seychelles Islands group situated on Mahe Island. This is a British coaling station taken from the French in 1794 after John Bull's best land-stealing manner. The biggest moneylender on earth, John Bull has been easily the largest-sized land-grabber. He has taken by peaceful means, captured by wars, both honest and dishonest, bought, sold and exchanged land ever since 1066 A.D. The War gave him a great opportunity to invent a phrase called " mandated territories " and John Bull added immense tracts of land to his demesne. Certainly the British paid for it in lives and money, the lives a regrettable mis-waste, the money stupidly lent to France, Italy, Belgium and others, who if they could not have defended themselves should have vanished AUSTRALIA, A WONDERLAND OF TRAVEL as nations. Very few Australians alive have been to the Seychells group of ninety islands because the Messageries Company does not call there on the Australian route. Mahe is a drab, dreary village without a hotel. You can smell the vanilla from the deck of your ship, also the cheap scent used by natives. Copra, cloves and tobacco are grown and exported. Mahe, with 20,000 people on the island, is as drab and dull as an English country village, like Waldron in Sussex, and hundreds of other hamlets where men and women exist half decayed. JOURNALISTS' CONFERENCE One of the most delightful episodes of our lives was the entire Annual Conference of the Institute of Journalists in September, 1910, in London. It was a tidal wave of good things to see, to hear, to eat, and to drink. Being an overseas Fellow of the In- stitute, I seemed to be specially honoured. We went everywhere, were introduced to everybody, and ate and drank everything offered, moderately or in excess. Lord Burnham, then only the Hon. Harry Lawson, was President that year, and he made an ideal Chair- man of the Conference, which was composed of the real brainy men of Britain, the journalists. The Conference Dinner at the Hotel Cecil was everything that was good. I sat between Sir Herbert Tree and Mr. Stanley Makower, who did not know me from a bar of soap, and never even asked me where Aus- tralia was. There was a function at the Guildhall, and the Corporation of London strained itself cor- poreally to treat us well. Towards midnight I was sorry I had not worn rubber waders over my trousers because the refreshment room was nine inches deep in champagne at low water-mark. Gog and Magog and I got soused together. There was a number one luncheon in the King's Hall at the House of '75 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Lords, Earl Beauchamp in the Chair, and among those present, reading from left to right, were, Messrs. Amontillado, Liebfraumilch, Pommery Greno, Chateau Lafite, 1896, and Hennessey Liqueur brandy twenty- five years old and still very strong. The menu translated was chicken soup, soles, partridge, grouse, mutton, chicken in jelly, York ham, ox tongue, compote of pears and eaux miner ales ^ all of which proves that a little French is a dangerous thing to learn. I sat next to S. J. Sewell, one of the most charming fellows I have ever bored in my life, and opposite Mr. Frank Newnes, who simply revelled in the tit-bits from soup to nuts. We were hon. members of seven clubs : Press, Constitutional, Royal Societies, Savage, Lyceum, National, Liberal and British Empire, and I regretted my non-election to a really good ambulance club for service towards dawn. Herbert Cornish, F.J.I., the Secretary, couldn't have been kinder to us during our nine days in Wonderland and Joyville. If the Journalists' Confer- ence were made a monthly affair my mate and I would go and settle down in London. There was a journalists' function at the Garden Club in the Japan- British Exhibition at White City managed by that King of Entrepreneurs, Imre Kiralfy. The best speaker in London was Rev. R. J. Campbell of City Temple who reminded me of the first great preacher I heard in 1884 at the Tabernacle, C. H. Spurgeon, with whom I chatted about Australia. The most striking figures at the Journalists' Conference were Robert Donald, Waldorf Astor, Sir Douglas Straight, Sir Edward Clarke, Sir George Reid of Sydney, Sir Edward Russell, H. B. Irving and the Countess of Warwick. Four Members of the House of Com- mons were produced as specimens of homo sapiens, A. C. Morton, Henniker Heaton (of Sydney " Even- ing News "), Colonel Seely and L. G. Amery, the 176 JOURNALISTS' CONFERENCE latter being fully entitled to be President of the Federation of Ugly Men's Associations of the United Kingdom. And here is the right place to append the menu of the choicest dinner I have ever eaten during forty years of wandering up and down the world : Caviare, oysters on ice, lobster soup, schnapper with mussel sauce, filets of sole, sweetbreads conti, supreme of chicken, Parisienne, saddle of mutton, English fashion, quail, omelette souffle, chartreuse of straw- berries, parmesan cheese straws, coffee ice, with wines en suite. That dinner was ordered carte blanche to be entirely made of Australian materials, bar the Russian caviare supplied by a general, and it was served at Scott's Hotel, Melbourne. Neither Escoffier nor Rector, nor Krasnopolsky, nor Delmonico, could cook or serve better a better dinner. This is said by the owner of a thousand menus gathered from a thou- sand hotel, ship and railway dining tables throughout the world. " And J. P. Robinson, he, said they didn't know everything down in Judee," nor do they concerning dining and wining. LONDON Landing in London on Saturday, 22nd March, 1884, I hurried up the Strand by bus and had my dinner at Romanes for is. 3^. It was then a narrow corridor of a shop with red steaks and chops in the window, flanked by a platter of spaghetti and a basin of French salad made of borage, lettuce, endive, cress, and shallots with nasturtium leaves and flowers on top, and lots of garlic on the bottom. Ecrevisses and escargots were not on Romano's menu forty-four years ago, and bisque homard quite unknown. A fiasco of chianti, costing u. 3^., irrigated a sumptuous meal of three courses and gruyere Eheu fugaces annos ! Next day I called on Cashel Hoey at the Victorian Agent General's office and got a card 177 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT signed by George Errington, M.P., for admission to the House of Commons. The first afternoon I spent there I saw and heard W. E. Gladstone, the Marquis of Hartington, H. W. E. Childers, an ex- Victorian minister, Henry Fawcett, Parnell, and of course T. P. O'Connor. In those days there was no orator equal to John Bright whose style and diction were as purely Anglo-Saxon and simple as the prose of John Ruskin or R. L. Stevenson. There is no pure Anglo-Saxon spoken anywhere nowadays. The films and the dreadful Niagara of American books by American slang writers have entirely destroyed the purity and harmed the genius of the English language. It's a pity Geordie Washington, Benny Franklin, and Sandy Hamilton did not, out of spite, originate a language for the use of the American colonists who fought England to grab the fee simple of the land of the United States, because they got it for nothing. In 1884 I went to London, starting out with ^250 from Melbourne and landing back home, after cross- ing Canada and the United States, with exactly ten shillings in hand. That was the cheapest eight months of foreign travel out of my 400,000 miles. Travelling under Thos. Cook and Sons I saw thirty- six cities in Europe, and went all over the United Kingdom and Ireland. Everybody was very kind to me and nobody could make out how I spoke English with the Oxford accent. I was easily better educated and better read than any of the men of my own age I met, because our high school training for the Melbourne University was superior to any English curriculum. Australian universities are quite efficient and will be more so when the authorities stop importing professors and employ only Australian teachers. Took ten days to get to New York on the old Cunarder " Bothnia," and disliked that city intensely. Hurried off to Niagara and by the Thousand Islands to Mon- 178 LONDON treal, then a half-baked, backward and primitive town. Caught glimpses of Chicago, Detroit, Salt Lake City, and found the San Francisco of those days an overrated city with only one really bright spot, the Palace Hotel, the first hotel of its class in the United States. Thence home via Honolulu then an unspoilt Elysium, and across the Pacific, the best oceanic trip on the planet. A VIEW OF LONDON Having seen most of the great cities on earth, London to me is repulsive, hideous, unattractive. London lacks the grace of Paris, the dignity of Berlin, the beauty of Vienna, the cleanliness of Copenhagen, the quaintness of Stockholm, the majesty of St. Petersburg. London possesses the narrowness of Canton, the noise of Chicago, the vulgarity of New York, the crowding of Calcutta, and the filthiness of Buenos Ayres. London is a queen city wanting in brilliance and steeped in gloom. Most Australians are overwhelmed by London's vastness and its press of people, and stop to adore without thinking. In a gold-topped temple at Benares I saw a sacred cow standing in a byre on the filth of months, and crowds of worshippers kneeling in the muck and prostrating soul and body before the beast. London is an apt parallel to that cow. The love of Londoners for London passeth my Australian understanding. Those Australians who have not seen London have only to read the descriptions of Charles Dickens the prophet and high priest of dirt and poverty to get an idea of its awfulness. There is something cryptic and mystic about London, this city of dreadful day and night which one accustomed to our bright sky, clean cities and lively people cannot fathom. Above all other characteristics London is noisy. The seven and a half millions of humans contrive to make one 179 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT everlasting din and clatter. Even as the sense of smell in man has been dulled through the ages, so is the sense of hearing of the Londoner becoming enfeebled, if indeed it be not purely rudimentary. The Londoner loves noise for its own sake. He continually creates loud sounds and revels in them. It is impossible to rest or be quiet in London because of the eternal roar. And next to this evil feature of London comes its odious climate. From November to May, the climate consists of fog, damp and gloom in equal parts. The Icelander's lungs are white, the Londoner's purple. The fog is palpable, material, a very pall to body and mind. No drug in the pharma- coposia is so depressing. The sun cannot penetrate the London fog, a canopy of smut, a shroud of soot. Then the fog's handmaiden, those furies zero, cold, ice, rain, snow, biting winds and mud ! The third horror of London makes an uncomfortable Trinity to wit, the crowd of people. Noise, climate and crush. Daily did I thank old Hoddle for giving Melbourne ninety-nine feet streets so we might have twelve feet footpaths. A hand laid on my shoulder even by a friend feels to me an infringement of my liberty. And one's sense of personal freedom is hurt every minute in London's swarming streets. As you walk down Fleet Street, or Old Broad Street, or Lombard Street you are elbowed, pushed, touched and harried by fellow-passengers who are mostly unwashed. And it is a species of indignity from which there is no escape. In our spacious Australian towns one's body is free from defilement ; in cramped London the insult is perpetual and unavoidable. London is too full to be pleasant. Outdoor existence in London being disagreeable it might be thought the inhabitants would build comfortable homes. On the contrary, the houses are as uncomfortable inside as they are forbidding and ugly outside. The 180 A VIEW OF LONDON streets are built with two stout buildings at each end and the houses in between just lean up against them. Dark, airless, chilly and stuffy, a London house from the underground area, where the sun never enters, to the attic is the acme of all that signifies discomfort. Londoners hate fresh air, and windows are seldom opened. There are no special ventilators in the walls, and the ceilings of most houses are low, while the rooms, except in the mansions of the rich, are small and narrow. The area where the servants live and the food is kept and cooked are merely dungeons unfit for human habitation. The absence of baths in the older houses is amply compensated by the presence of lavabos, part of a fine sewage system. The retirata in London houses are not secluded, but placed alongside the chief rooms or off the main hall. After seeing Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Brussels, even Washington, the traveller has nought but contempt for London's public build- ings. The British architect is an imperfectly developed person wedded to tradition and soaked with stale ideas. Take the new War Office and the new Board of Trade building as typical of modern architecture, and one's artistic sense is offended by the common design, the trivial appearance in each instance. Of course there are the Abbey and the Houses of Parlia- ment, and besides them nothing. The Bank, the Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, and the Stock Exchange are worm-eaten microbe-stricken structures. Truly the Londoners are plain people and love plain things round them. And they are essentially shopkeepers, and inartistic shopkeepers at that. They conduct shopping under cramped conditions in tiny shops. The big shops, like Whiteley's, Barker's, Robinson's, and all that species, deal in everything ; mostly rubbish exposed in tiny rooms in untidy heaps. There is one notable exception Harrod's N 181 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Stores which are modelled on German or French lines, where dainty goods are shown in spacious rooms prettily decorated and filled with light and fresh air. The most pitiable feature of London life is the habit of eating stale food forced on the Londoner because, thanks to her idiotic policy of free trade, Britain has squelched her agricultural industry and cannot raise enough food to feed her people. Every other great nation except Britain raises its own food. This inability to grow its own breakfast will some day lead to the subjugation of Britain and the dissolution of the Empire. Just think of it ! Except in the houses of the rich, the big hotels, clubs and restau- rants, one cannot get fresh food. The food of the middle classes, probably originally of good quality, comes to the table thawed, and from several to many days old. Meat, fish, flour, eggs, butter, fruit, vegetables are all imported from other countries, chiefly in ice. Eighty per cent of the meat comes frozen from North America, and 60 per cent of the wheat. All the fish is frozen, and so is most of the game. Siberia sends eggs fourteen days old ; Den- mark and Holland supply butter, cheese and milk of older growth ; and the fruit and vegetables make voyages of from six days to six weeks duration. Much of this stuff starts stale and arrives tasteless, insipid and innutritious. No wonder the Londoner is thin, ansemic and dyspeptic. One shudders to think what the very poor live on. In the lower middle class homes, the cheapest and poorest fish always smoked or salted, forms the staple diet. Such common stuff as smelts, bloaters, herrings, haddocks, sprats, all poor in proteids and inferior in quality, has to nourish the Londoner's protoplasm and supply him with fat, brains and muscle. This salty diet is responsible for the Britisher's tremendous drinking habits. A VIEW OF LONDON In my opinion the breakfast bloater and the dinner herring compel the Londoner to be thirsty and need beer. To achieve temperance reform I would put on a heavy land tax ; force land into cultivation, take the Chow slaves out of the Johannesburg mines, and set them to planting cabbages and lettuce in Devon and Sussex, and forbid by law any able-bodied man of soldier's age between twenty and forty to eat salt fish or salt meat. Never more will I scoff at the Kyneton sandwich, or a Junee chop. At any rate they are not frozen and then thawed. I missed the sun and the blue sky in London dread- fully, and nearly as intensely did I crave for fresh food. My pity is for the Londoner and my pride is terrific, because I'm an Australian, and can get a good egg and sweet milk, both only six hours of age and less. And its food has affected the British type. The race in the parent country is undergoing a metamorphosis through its food. Frozen food is only a factor of, say, twenty years existence, and already it has wrought modifications of function and structure in the Londoner. His acquired char- acteristics due to the change in the nature of his food and drink in one generation will be transmitted, and his offspring will show the variation markedly, because changed habits produce an inherited effect, and alteration in the Londoner's food is nearly a total one since 1884 when I first visited Noiseville. The effect of this stale food on the Londoner, and that he is decadent is proved by the loss of supremacy in home-grown arts and sports. In tennis, boxing, billiards, cricket, rowing, running, shooting, football, most of the championships are held by Australians, and in Melba and Mackennal, Australia has produced the leading British-born artists at the very top of their respective professions. These are a few of the results of pure food. And by the way, while the Englishman 183 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT wrangles about the Disestablishment of the Church, reform of the House of Lords and Home Rule, he omits to stop adulteration of food and drink, which goes on merrily, to the evident detriment of the race. A disgusting symptom of degeneracy is the custom of the London women in fondling and kissing and petting dogs of all sorts and sizes. They carry the beasts everywhere, and take them to bed with them at night. The travelling Australian generally sees London life as presented in the hotels, clubs and restaurants. Owing to the monstrous value of land excessive ground rents, every London hotel is expensive from and Australian view-point, whether it be a temperance caravanserai in Bloomsbury, or the Ritz, Carlton, Cecil, or Savoy. Notwithstanding these extravagant charges few of them pay the owners. Three, four and five per cent are the usual dividends on hotel shares, and a great many London hotels remain open by grace of their creditors or liquidators. Competition of late years of course is a factor in the failure of the London hotel. Too many pretentious hotels have been built in recent years, and bankruptcy ends the vista the day the front door is open for business. So too very few London clubs pay their way. Except- ing the big political clubs kept alive by donations from teamen and brewers seeking baronetcies, the ordinary social clubs are submerged in debt, chiefly as debentures. Of the hundred ladies' clubs, about three or four flourish, while the rest decay. Most London clubs are housed in dull, poky, tiny houses free from air and light, and therefore described by the draught-hating Londoner as "So cosy, you know." Like the London church, the clubs are used as dormi- tories, being soporific and unsociable. The restau- rants do very well, and Monico, Frascati, Holborn and Gatti, even return good profits. The stranger 184 A VIEW OF LONDON should stick to the table d'h6te plan of feeding. Let him not gambol in the pleasant meadow of a la carte, or his browsing will cost him dear. There are at least a hundred good table d'h6te cafes from the Cavour to the Pagani, where imported food is made up by imported cooks and served by imported waiters. And what of the people who live and move in the milieu thus described ? The Londoner is a greater slave of caste then the Hindu. He stands in dread of the man in the castes above him, and glares con- temptuously on the worm in the castes below. There is no personal freedom, and from birth to death a Londoner lives strictly by the rules and laws of his set. He doesn't make friends easily and his outlook on life is narrow and limited. Did his grandma know Brown's grandma ? Then perforce he must cultivate Brown and cherish him. Was his father in a bank ? Well, he cannot talk to Jones in the train from Croydon because Jones serves in Hope Brothers' shop. If his dad was a lawyer, then he must become one, join dad's club, and in peril of his social position he must not know James the stockbroker (stock- brokers being common persons), though he is entitled to address Howard, a do-nothing mollusc, who sleeps at Boodle's Club all his time, and does not work. This system cramps the Londoner's activities and warps his brain. The Londoner is a polite person, politeness being a peculiarity of all people who have to live in an over- crowded area. But he takes care not to be civil to people under him. It would never do to unbend to an employee or servant, for are they not unmistakably inferior ? The Londoner is only half educated, and rarely accomplished in the trivial artistic pursuits. The public schools teach Latin and " footer," both imperfectly ; the middle class schools pay much attention to deportment and the correct crease in the 185 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT trousers, while the Board Schools, run by untrained and sweated teachers, teach the children the rudiments of simple knowledge, after having given them their free breakfast. Technical education is a luxury to be sought in Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham. The Londoner detests reading, avoids his great museums, keeps away from lectures, and anything scientific, while he crowds the music-halls and theatres which abound in the metropolis. There are nearly nine hundred places of entertainment, with few exceptions supplying piffle in vast quantity to their frequenters. To use a generic term the stage is at very low ebb in London just now. There is no really great actor or actress, and the way for others is blocked by elderly men and women, who linger superfluously on the stage, because they were once public favourites. To the visitor it is lamentable that decrepit mummers should be retained to play, years after the joy of life has fled from them. The visitor does not care whether Ellen Terry or Marie Tempest or George Alexander or Charles Wyndham were good actors in the 'seventies, for he sees they are not now. And so it is in opera bouffe. The leading players are mediocre, with poor voices and inferior knowledge of stage-craft. Tell that to a Londoner and he will laugh at your ignorance. You, as an Australian, accustomed to good singers, a well- trained chorus and pretty girls, know better. You have been spoilt at home, and cannot appreciate the rubbishy theatrical work the Londoner adores by tradition. I have seen theatres in every quarter of the globe, and assert that in the last twenty-five years London has never seen an actress in opera bouffe the equal of Nellie Stewart or Florrie Young. The English are unmusical people, the proof being that London has not yet produced a great singer or player. The leading concert and opera singers are either foreigners 186 A VIEW OF LONDON or Australians. In bygone days London possessed Reeves and Santley, good British-born singers. To- day there is not one above mediocrity. Climate, food and environment in London do not make for the production of either musicians or a musical public. And the Londoner can't paint. If it was not for a Scotch element, a few Yankees, like Sargent and Abbey, and fortuitous foreigners like Alma Tadema or Herkomer, the Royal Academy would be a jejeune body of artists. Who is the great British painter to-day ? Is there one ? The exhibition of the two salons of Paris is infinitely finer than the show at the Royal Academy in imagination, variation and tech- nique. The collection of the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris, and the Prada at Madrid far transcend the National Gallery and Tate's Gallery in London. Having stripped the Londoner of most of the things he is supposed to own in excehis, one would like to say he's a good sport. Here one chances on cold comfort. The Londoner is distinctly not good at sports and he doesn't practise them. Here's a list of things he can't do, for I've seen him trying for many years past. He can't swim, skate, ride, box, shoot, run or play cricket, tennis or football. All these sports are played by professionals, and the Londoner pays to look on and yell. It's a wonder he hasn't taken to bull-fighting, because that's a nice dangerous game to look at. One virtue remains to our cousins in the world's greatest city. They are all politicians, and talk politics incessantly and vote for " safe " men of the calico-jimmy variety. For this reason I have some hope for the regeneration of the Londoner. Some day the scales will fall from his eyes, and he'll vote protection, and go in for developing his old, old country which is destitute of home industries, small trades and intense culture. Wait till the poor chap fully realizes that his country 187 can't feed itself, and he'll pull down every Bright and Cobden statue, and delete the Asquiths, Georges, Churchills, and other chatterers, who tell him to trust the foreigner for his bread and meat. To me two things are appalling in London the inrush of aliens and alien goods, and the terrible poverty every- where. The poverty is unspeakable, and nearly indescribable. The poor, who exist on offal, live in rags, and never inhabit a room, walk the dingy London streets in thousands. You don't see them (dear reader who is annoyed with my criticism) in the Burlington Arcade or Bond Street. Go east and south- east, observe keenly, and make quiet enquiries. You'll be astounded by the ragged, filthy depravity. It is starvation and slow death for tens of thousands particularly of children. The causes ? Locked-up land and the open door ! Too few landlords and too many foreign competitors. The remedies are far away because for the present the British have no leaders, neither in statesmen nor newspapers. The epoch of the ha'penny paper coincides with the death of big men. The London newspapers wield no power nowadays. They are poor, badly-written sheets anyhow. Except the Tory " Morning Post," no daily tries to teach or lead through vigorous writing. The " Mail," " Chronicle," " News," and " Mirror " are mere travesties of journalism. They abound in scrappy paragraphs of news, badly selected and want- ing variety. The leading articles are trite and trivial, sloppily written, and without objective. Outside the ponderous " Times " and lubberly " Telegraph " the rest of the London papers are commonplace ; the Sunday papers, bar two, being smutty and vulgar. The present House of Commons is a collection of second-rate politicians, having neither capacity nor cleverness, and whose constant attitude towards great affairs is expressed by the Arabic " Malaish," 188 A VIEW OF LONDON or the Spanish, " No importa," meaning " No matter." In business the Londoner is provokingly slow. He can't hurry, and he thinks and acts sans haste. He is, generally speaking, too well off to bother. The other nations use his banks and his money, while the Germans absorb his commerce. Tell him his trade and commerce are declining, and he'll point to the yearly growing figures of imports and laugh at you. Those imports are iced foods ! And his increasing export consists of coal, Britain's life-blood sold to her rival manufacturers abroad ! Strip London of its parks and its river, and you have an ugly, detest- able city whose gigantic size squelches all that is naturally good out of its inhabitants. As the Arab sheik's horse stamps the life out of the prone wor- shippers newly returned from Mecca, so does London tread to death the virtues and the lives of tens of thousands of devotees who adore its immensity Personally I made a present of London to the cabman who drove me to catch my train down home to the best of all good countries, Australia. 189 CHAPTER VIII PEOPLE I HAVE KNOCKED ABOUT WITH THE GAIETY COMPANY THE tour of the first Gaiety Company from London, headed by Nelly Farrem and Fred Leslie, was the greatest theatrical event in the annals of Australian play-going up to that time. The land boom in Victoria had reached its perimeter just prior to the debacle which broke twelve banks and wiped out 200,000,000 worth of assets. The Gaiety Company was inimitable, containing as it did the creme de la creme of the leading revue artists of London : Sylvia Gray, Letty Lind, Florence Levey, Maud Hobson and Marian Hood, with Teddy Lonnen and Fred Storey, the eccentric dance, to support them. One night at the Princess Theatre bar Fred Leslie's party was bored by a commercial traveller who was worrying one of the girls and would insist on shouting " bubbly " for all hands. Fred Leslie finally suggested to the bore to go to Menzie's Hotel to get sober. The soused one was put in a hansom cab and some wag poured a glass of brandy down his coat and lit it. The driver was paid a pound to drive the likeness to a Christmas pudding to his own hotel and deposit him. That same night, Fred Leslie put Nelly Farren in a hansom, mounted the box and drove the cab himself to Men- zie's. That was against the law and it cost Fred a fiver to close the scrape. During that hectic boom period, the art of good eating was first expounded in Melbourne by two French chefs, Lacaton and Denat. It is a strange thing that the fine art of good dining has to-day not even a -pied a terre in Melbourne. 190 THE GAIETY COMPANY At the age of ninety years the magnificent city of Melbourne does not possess a high-class caf where recherche food can be enjoyed. INTERESTING PEOPLE Have been present at some interesting dinners in London. The best was one given on varnishing day to a bunch of Royal Academicians by George McCulloch, the Broken Hill millionaire and art patron. McCulloch had bought a freehold from the authorities of the Imperial Institute and built a house to his own design. The dining-room was octagonal with eight arches leading into other rooms, the walls of which were covered with modern paintings. There were present some notable painters, E. J. Poynter, Alfred East, Alfred Gilbert, David Murray, Bougereau, the famous French artist, Vicat Cole and B. W. Leader. The only Philistines present were Mr. (afterwards Sir) R. W. Jeans, general manager of the Bank of Australasia, and myself. The dinner was excellent, well cooked and well balanced by wines en suite. Another amusing dinner was a regular one of the Whitefriars' Club at Alderton's Hotel on Ludgate Hill. Herbert Cornish, the genial and able secretary of the Institute of Journalists took me along. Alfred Sutro was in the Chair and the discourse by Arthur Bourchier was called, ' What should influence a playwright in writing his plays ? " Bourchier pleaded for the uplifting and improvement of the mental condition of the masses of playgoers and took a high ethical view of the question. There were a number of producers of " best sellers " and dramas, and society comedies present, including a handful of minor poets and poetasters. It was so long ago that the names of the speakers have faded, though one can recall Hichens, Jerome, Weyman, Pinero, Hope, 191 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Barrie, Philpott, and several other notables who were pointed out to me by Cornish. As " our visitor from the Antipodes " I was asked for my opinion as to how a dramatist should shape his plays, and I suggested he should keep his eyes firmly fixed on the box- office takings and write what was likely to pay most. In June, 1889, I was at a dinner given in the Criterion, Piccadilly, to David Christie Murray on the eve of his departure for Australia. Edmund Yates, than a noteworthy London journalist, was Chairman. Some of my neighbours were the Australian dramatist, Haddon Chambers, Hume Nisbet, Marriott Watson, Dr. Mannington Caffyn, Phillip Mennell, Justin McCarthy, M.P., Thomas Archer, Agent-General for Queensland, Sir George Elliott, M.P., David Anderson and Edmund Yates were the chief speakers, and I remember the Veuve Monnier vintage 1880 and the Theophile Roederer like the speeches, were all nice and dry. A more pretentious feast at St. George's Club, where I was living, was a farewell to the Earl of Hopetoun, Governor-Elect of Victoria, with Sir Graham Berry, then Agent-General for Victoria, in the Chair. The menu was exceptional and the wines so-so. There I hobnobbed in my small snobbish manner with some very eminent people and ruffled it with the best of them. Particularly is my memory cloyed in remembering the canetons au Salpicon, the pluviers dore"s, and the Chambertin and Romance Conti burgundy. That night I was the fattest hog in Epicurus' sty. Sir E. J. Reid, the naval architect, proposed the Army and Navy, and Sir Andrew Clarke, Admiral George Tryon and Mr. (afterwards Sir) Thomas Sutherland, M.P., responded. Lord Knuts- ford proposed Hopetoun 's health, and Lord Rosebery responded for " Our Colonial Empire." Those speeches were good, but I did not appraise too highly others by Hugh C. E. Childers, an ex-Victorian 192 INTERESTING PEOPLE Cabinet Minister, who drew 1000 a year pension in London for donkey's years, or that of Sir Charles Tupper, then Commissioner for Canada. Sir William Robinson, afterwards Governor of West Australia, spoke a piece, and the music directed by Chevalier Wilhelm Ganz, then a celebrity, was comforting. It is useless to pile Pelion on Ossa by detailing several guild banquets in the City of London where one ate venison and boars' head off gold plates and picked plovers' eggs worth half a crown each, just as one eats grapes at sixpence per pound. The only other of thousands of notable meals worth recording was my own wedding breakfast at the Princes Restaurant in Piccadilly. There were only the four of us, the dramatis -person* present, and it was the pinnacle of epicurism, a true symposium of gourmets, unforget- table, and the correct effect of that barbarous function, a wedding. INTERESTING PEOPLE Long ago I collected the equivalent in sixteen languages of " Nothing matters," such expressions as " N'importe," " No importa," " Nitchevo," and so forth. They make the most valuable of all philosophies. Does anything really matter in life that we should worry, fret and weep over it ? One doesn't know why one is on earth or where one goes to after death. Is it worth bothering about, anyhow ? Very few people reason in this way, and so live in the shadows of worry, care and anxiety, enjoying a hell upon earth through fear of a baseless and imaginary, because impossible, hell after death. Who knows ? Enjoy the day, it is not always Christmas. The rich men I know amuse me. Usually they lack resources of mind. They cannot play, sing, or dance, or enjoy a good play or a fine picture, and as for reading, the rich man who can read for pleasure is a rarity, a strange 193 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT prodigy, an unusual event ! Jimmy Tyson was said to eat grass to save food. When the waiter at Menzies' Hotel said in reproof, " Mustard with mutton, Mr. Tyson." ' Yes, you damn fool, we eat mustard with everything in the bush," was his reply." " Money " Miller before his death amused himself jingling sovereigns on a green card table. What fun has Sidney Kidman got from his money ? Edward Jowett dances a little and badly. When he was poor he wrote and read. J.B. Watson and George Lansell, both millionaires, knew nothing and learnt nothing, not even joy. W. L. Baillieu is a money spinner of much capacity. He cannot do a single thing to give him pleasure, not even through the medium of the pedal of a piano player. Rupert Clarke with .100,000 a year, less income tax, used to growl his way through life. Harry Howard Smith with 80,000 a year is an invalid. Not one on the list can or could laugh or tell a funny story. What value or reward does great wealth bring ? L. ROBINSON, CLARK AND COMPANY Let me tell briefly the story of the romance of L. Robinson, Clark and Company, a firm of Aus- tralian stock-brokers on the London Stock Exchange. Over thirty years ago Lionel Robinson and William Clark failed on the Stock Exchange of Melbourne, and failed badly. The gold rush to Coolgardie in West Australia was just starting and most of the share business was being done in Adelaide instead of Melbourne. Leaving their families in Melbourne and armed with two guarantees from their fathers for ioo each with the Commercial Bank, Adelaide, the two adventurers went to Adelaide and hung round the Stock Exchange, gradually worming themselves into the thick of a tremendous boom which ensued upon the flotation of numerous good and bad and 194 L. ROBINSON, CLARK AND COMPANY medium West Australian mines in London. Robinson and Clark had good friends among the share-brokers in Melbourne, Sydney and London, and business increased so much that they were able to join the Adelaide Stock Exchange as members. Then they threw away their gloves figuratively and with bare knuckles went into the game of buying scrip cheap in Adelaide and selling it dear in London. Soon their transactions became extensive, and at one time they had ,200,000 of drafts going and coming on the sea at the same time. If they had failed, the Commercial Bank might have closed for the second time perhaps for ever. Fortunately nothing went amiss with the market or with prices, the boom being kept alive by fresh discoveries of gold-fields and new flotations of London companies. Robinson and Clark soon became leaders on the Exchange and worked night and day and always for a profit. When they had amassed 50,000 clear and landed it high and dry, the late Lionel Robinson came to London to spy out the land. I was with him every day introducing him to all the worth-while people I knew. l< Robby " did not like his chances of success in the wider arena of the London Stock Exchange and got stage-fright. One night at dinner at Kettner's Cafe in Soho he told me he had cabled Bill Clark to say he was returning home to Adelaide. Clark's reply was, " Stay there ; am catching steamer ' Arcadia.' ' When Bill arrived in London he became a clerk of the Stock Exchange to qualify for membership, and they opened an office in Old Broad Street, and subsequently in Palmerston House. They never looked back and made one coup after another. They were both fine operators and quicker than lightning or wireless. One deal " Robby " made with Sir Christopher Furness, the shipping king, will illustrate my point. For the sake of advertisement the firm kept a string of racehorses, 195 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT which gave them entree to the exclusive racing circle of England. Robby met Sir Christopher at Good- wood and the chat turned to mining and then to Great Boulder Perseverance Shares. Then and there Robinson agreed to give Furness ,10,000 cash for the privilege " to put " 20,000 Perseverance shares into him within three months. These wily and daring experts got to work and made Perseverance rise and fall, jump and drop, do everything except gyrate sideways. At the clean-up, three months later, the firm had bagged 96,000. Within ten years of joining the London Exchange, Robinson, Clark and Company were reputed to be worth a million solid. Their joint career has been a romance. When they left Melbourne stone-broke they owed roughly twenty- five pound each to the grocer, butcher and milkman. To-day the firm is easily the most powerful Australian house in the London Stock market. INTERESTING PEOPLE Though mixed up all my life with people who owned racehorses and bet on races, I have never been tempted to lose money to enable bookmakers to have caviare for breakfast, plovers' eggs for lun- cheon and braised caneton, sauce Portugaise, for dinner. I made one sensational wager and renounced betting for life. A party of Australian racing men went by drag from the old St. George's Club, Hanover Square, to Epsom on Derby Day, 1898. We had a sprinkling of the fair sex and a dozen bottles of " The Boy " aboard with assorted pates filling seven baskets full. Merson Cooper, Harry Simms, of Adelaide, " Prince " McGill, with Lionel Robinson, and Billy Jones, both of whom had won the Melbourne Cup, were in the party. About three weeks previously I had been suppering with some of the lads of the village at Rule's Supper House, in Maiden Lane, in those days 196 INTERESTING PEOPLE under Mrs. O'Brien, the most delightful estaminet in London. There were half a dozen well-known jockeys at the next table with Tod Sloan as host. All of them drank G. H. Mumm excepting one chap who took a spot or two of water unmixed. He had hands and arms like a surgeon's and they told me his name was Otto Madden. In Tattersall's enclosure at Epsom our party laid some heavy wagers on every horse except J. W. Larnach's Jeddah who was nominally 100 to i. Remembering the strong, steady water drinker who was riding Jeddah I took 50 to i on him. He romped home and I collected fifty pounds. Ten pounds of the win I put on Sir William Cooper's Newhaven, a Melbourne Cup winner, for the Epsom Cup, and lost it. I have never bet since. BOB SIEVIER AND LORD DEERHURST When in a small way I was a man about town in Melbourne, and I got to know a large number of interesting identities. Had known Tommy Corrigan, Australia's famous steeplechase rider, at Warrnambool, where he was working for Hughie Gallagher, a publican whose four daughters were renowned beauties in a Bourke Street Hotel. One night a crowd of us called in to see the pretty Gallagher girls after the theatre and were just in time to see Bob Sievier, who founded the " Winning Post " as a rival to the " Pink Un," knock down young Viscount Deerhurst, eldest son of the then Earl of Coventry. The episode headed town talk for months and is still remembered by the old " bloods " of the city. Sievier started cash betting on the world's finest racecourse at Flemington. My father-in-law, John George Dougharty, M.L.C., and his brother-in-law, Major Purcell, were instru- mental in securing and surveying the Flemington Course for the Victorian Racing Club. Lord Deer- o 197 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT hurst was second cousin to J. G. Dougharty, who for some reason not disclosed refused to receive young Deerhurst at his home, Elwood House, Elwood. The Earl of Coventry had given a letter to a Duke of Manchester some time previously introducing him to J. G. Dougharty. His Grace dined at Elwood House and during the walnuts and wine tried to " tap " his host for a considerable sum. J.G.D. refused laughingly, and naturally the Duke never revisited Elwood. The Duke of Manchester was wrecked on the Orient Company's, or rather the Pacific S.N. Company's, steamer " Sorata " off the South Australian coast, but all on board were saved. HARRY LAUDER Once my wife and I were taken to dinner at the Cafe Royal, then next to Krasnopolsky's Restaurant at Amsterdam, the best dining place in Europe, by a London cousin and an Anglo-Australian banker, prim, proper and conventional, like all Club English- men. We went to the Pavilion Music Hall, " The Pav." on some sort of a gala night. There was one extra turn by a twisted Scot with a twisted face and voice and a twisted walking stick. He sang a Scotch lyric, through his throat, apparently coated with rust, called " The Girls of Tobermory." Lacking savoir faire y and despising convention for the nonce, we two Australians laughed consumedly at the cheeky little unnamed Scotch singer. Our hosts protested at our ribaldry, " You must not laugh loudly like that, it's never done." Not only did we laugh like a tornado, but we applauded with all the aplomb of a machine gun and the wee tangled up Scot sang an encore. We found out from the manager of "The Pav." that the unknown singer was called Harry Lauder. Two years later, on another trip, my cousin met us at Waterloo Station and promised us a treat at the old 198 HARRY LAUDER Royal Music Hall, in Oxford Street. He took us to hear Harry Lauder. Years afterwards at a dinner in the Penang Club on St. Andrew's night when somebody sang Lauder's masterpieces, three of us agreed to go and hear him the first time we met in London. A year later we three dined at the Great Eastern, Liverpool Street, and engaged a box at the Cambridge Music Hall. We went behind at Harry Lauder's invitation, and he rang for four Scotch and pollys, disposing of the mythical yarn that " he hained his bawbees," or bred moths in his purse. PEOPLE ABROAD SOME GREAT MEN When I first went to London in 1884, Mr. Deakin gave me a letter to Sir John Fender, the head of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, who im- pressed me as being head and shoulders above the business men I have met in the City of London. In those days business was conducted on loose lines. If you called on a man on Monday he usually fixed Thursday at 1 2-45 p.m. for an appointment, and took one to luncheon at his city club. After luncheon and a brace of green chartreuse or fine cognac, 1 842, no business was discussed, and your newly-made friend left for his week-end in the country that afternoon. Sir John Fender was not a man of that type, being most business-like and attentive. He invited me to his home at Sidcup in Kent and showed me his fine collection of pictures in his town house. His per- sistent development of the cable and telegraph facili- ties throughout the Empire placed Great Britain under an obligation to Sir John Fender that can never be liquidated. INTERESTING PEOPLE Most interesting men were three cousins of mine, James, Robert and George Inglis. The Hon. James 199 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT IngliSj known in Sydney as " Tiger " Inglis, was Minister of Public Instruction in one of Sir Henry Parkes' Ministries. He had an adventurous life chock full of colour and episodes. He began as an indigo planter in Assam before Sir William Preece found the secret of making aniline dyes from tar, which the conservative English dyemakers refused to purchase. Preece sold the secret to German manufacturers, and the first thing to be swamped by the new process of producing blue dyes cheaply was the indigo industry in India and Ceylon. Jimmy Inglis then became a tea planter and indulged in big game hunting of which he was a zealous practitioner. Malaria from jungle life forced him to travel to New Zealand to die. An open-air life midst the scenery of the most perfect country on the planet renewed his vitality and he came to Sydney to become a states- man and tea merchant. He was a clever and volumin- ous author best known by " Oor Ain Folk," a book describing life in a Presbyterian manse in a Scotch glen. James Inglis also wrote, " Tent Life in Tiger Land." Robert Inglis, his eldest brother, went to London and became a member of the London Stock Exchange, of which he was Chairman for many years. As broker for several Scottish assurance companies Robert became wealthy. He was colonel in the citizen forces and knighted in his official capacity as the judicial president of the 5000 adherents of the Stock Exchange. Sir Robert ought to have been a Judge of the High Court of Justice of England, so perfectly judicial was his mind and mental outlook on life. He was like his native Caledonia, stern and wild very frequently with delinquents of the Stock Exchange. Inglis once fined " Prince " Baillieu, our Australian member, for asking a leading Hebrew stock-broker over the telephone whether he thought himself the Blondin of the Stock Exchange, the man 200 INTERESTING PEOPLE who never made a mistake, " Because you know damn well, Ikey, if you had only made one slip it would have been fatal." George Inglis, another cousin of Robert and James, was a partner of Colonel North in his nitrate mines in Chili. Remember one luncheon party at the Woolpack Restaurant, somewhere behind Cornhill, as a guest of Colonel North's, when Zebina Lane told more funny stories in two hours than George Inglis and I could have remembered in two years. George Inglis gave us some top-notch dinners at Cafe Royal and Oddenino's in Regent Street, when those two restaurants were very nearly the best in London, although that excludes Verrey's and Romano's. Another cousin was William Inglis, a member of the Viceroy's Council of India. Consider- ing they were only parson's sons they were all extremely brainy. Oatmeal and buttermilk makes a fine quality of grey brain matter. Another extraordinary sagacious stockbroker was Faithfull Begg whom I first met in 1889. One night he took his partner, Johnston, and myself to Romano's to dinner, and during the pousse-caf e period, a journalist named Russell joined us. He had just returned from Constantinople where he represented a big London daily paper, and told us the full story of how the late John Norton, founder of the Australian weekly, ' Truth," had been caught in a harem by the Pasha owner. Norton was given his choice to leave by the outgoing Khedivial mail steamer that night for Port Said, or to be bagged and drowned in the Bosphorus. Norton chose the steamship ticket and duly reached Sydney, where he founded " Truth " on the lines of London " News of the World," and finally left a fortune. Norris, Oakley Brothers were once my London agents on the Stock Exchange when I was at my zenith and when they cultivated the Australian market out of which they made a fortune. With my intimate, 201 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT personal knowledge of the big Australian mines, like Broken Hill Proprietary, Mount Lyell, Mount Morgan, Mount Bischoff, Great Boulder, Ivanhoe, etc., I could have made a fortune in London easily. The damp foggy climate was too bad for my catarrhic Australian chest and I had to return home to the blue sky and the daily sunshine. PEOPLE ABROAD The best Englishman who came to Australia was Captain Cook, because he found the best country on the planet. The most delightful Englishman who ever dwelt here was Phil May, who like Lycidas died ere his prime. Often met Phil May when he was on the Sydney " Bulletin " developing his own talent and laying a sure foundation for the modern practice of the black and white art which so many Australians, like my friends Alf. Vincent, Norman Lindsay, Lionel Lindsay, Will Dyson, Frank Nankivell of New York, and George Rossi Ashton of London, have raised to its highest technical pinnacle. One morning George Ashton and I called on Phil May at his house in St. John's Wood to pay him a visit of ceremony. Mrs. May opened the door and said Phil was busy on his cartoon for " Punch " next day. Hearing our voices, Phil came out to settle the disturbance, and in reply to George's request that he should come out for ten minutes he said fervently and vigorously, " Boys, I'll come out and stay two days with you." And what a day it was. The morning we spent in the strangers' rooms of a dozen London clubs, beginning at the Cavalry Club in Piccadilly and finishing up at the Savage Club in the Adelphi, of which Phil May was a beloved member. How he got away with the hall officers of all these clubs I don't know. He may have been known and his tips may have been familiar. We lunched at Romano's with 202 PEOPLE ABROAD Romano himself and Pitcher Binstead of the " Pink Un " and two more of the merry staff joined us for pousse-cafes. Next we did three Press clubs and looked in at more matinees than a befuddled reveller could register on the phylactery on his left wrist. About five o'clock we called for George Edwards at the Gaiety Theatre and toddled along to Short's in the Strand for just one aperitif of sherry. And so to the Hole in the Wall, the Bodega in Glasshouse Street, and for a final to Teddy Bailey's Queen's Hotel in Leicester Square. The afternoon fizzed and bubbled with merriment and assorted liquors. It was far finer than a cycle of Cathay, or being buried in Westminster Abbey. Joseph Lyons acted as our dinner host at the Trocadero, just then opened, and we lurched round to the Empire for a glimpse at Adeline Gene*e, worth a gross of Pavlovas as a danseuse. Next we called on Charlie Morton, manager of the Palace Theatre, and met Alfred Plumpton, once a Melbourne music teacher. Maude Allan was doing Salome half-stripped to the buff and dancing quite as gracefully as could Hackenschmidt, the huge German wrestler. At that time, on dit that Maude was the little pet of a big, because powerful, Prime Minister. Naturally we strolled unevenly to the Alhambra music-hall and palace of varieties, now a beastly American movie-picture show, to call upon Alfred Moul the manager, who once taught the piano in Melbourne. Then from the pit we cooe-ed to Fred Storey, the eccentric dancer, whom I had met in Melbourne when he was with the Gaiety Company, headed by the inimitable Fred Leslie and Nellie Farren. Storey joined us and we glided into Cafe Cavour and called upon Philippe to produce his very finest cru of bubbly attended by a bisque homard, spatchcock Escoffier, golden plover sur croustade, a Russian cheese from the Volga and four goose- 203 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT quill toothpicks. Philippe accompanied us to the bar to have a whisky sour and a spoonful of caviare to stop hiccups, when lo ! and behold Mrs. May entered from the street, smiled blandly and men- tioned, " Phil, time to go home." Phil muttered, " Good night, boys ; fancy four Australians like us meeting all of a sudden," and off he went. Mrs. May told me later that he finished his " Punch " cartoon before going to bed. One story of her, because about Phil May one could tell a hundred. Mrs. May, my mate and I were guests of Mr. Lawrence Bradbury, proprietor of London " Punch " two or three years later, at Pagani's Restaurant in Great Portland Street. Phil had not been dead very long. " I suppose you have been busy, Mrs. May ? " said Bradbury. ' Yes," she replied quietly, " this morn- ing I've been tearing up a lot of old sketches and paper rubbish of Phil's I found in a big wooden box." Bradbury was horrified and I fancy he must have bought the surviving waste paper before we dispersed. But what a delight in those days it was to be chaperoned by such a cicerone as Phil May ! Here is a fair tour in those different days, amongst the haunts of the free and easy and the delightful people. On Saturday morning to go early to True- fitt's in Bond Street, have a hair cut, a shampoo, a shave, a manicure, a pedicure, and a hair dye (if advisable). Next to get your tall hat groomed at Scott's, buy a pair of gloves in the Burlington Arcade, hail your favourite hansom cab and drive to Scott's in Haymarket for a dozen Royal Whitstable oysters and a small mutchkin of porter, before getting a gardenia from the flower-girl beneath Eros' statue, Piccadilly Circus, the true centre of the earth. And so perforce to your banker in Clements Lane, E.C., for more " brass," then by a short cut into Birch's Green House for a tiny glass of port and an even 204 LONDON tinier tartletina. Thence down to Coates' Wine House in Old Broad Street for a dock glass of amon- tillado, such as Heliogabalus would have given a Roman colony for. Next along to the " Financial Times " to pick up Arthur Murray, the editor, that most brilliant and lovable journalist of his day, and to drag him round to Pirn's in Cheapside for a tiny sandwich of pate de foie gras and a taste of Pedro Ximenes, that Circean wine not known by the present generation of Londoners, who wear shocking hats, shabby clothes, made-up bow ties and bad boots, use limited English, drink whisky and think it nectar, and smoke the vilest cigars and cigarettes money can buy. The next visit would naturally be to Philip Mennell, best of good fellows, editor of the " British Australasian " and author of several books. Mennell knew everybody of value in London and personally introduced me to bankers, pressmen, authors, actors and all that genus of men who do most of the best work of the world and are therefore the best to know. To continue the ramble, we go to Sweeting's near St. Martin's-le-Grand, G.P.O., just for a few sand- wiches and a glass of adorable Liebfraumilch 1889. Continuing the route march past St. Paul's (where with five other clans of Scotchmen I once spent an hilarious New Year's Eve outside the Cathedral) down Ludgate Hill into the Alderton Hotel, across to the Bodega under the railway bridge and with a skilful chassee croisee through the thick traffic past Tom Cook and his sons' office bang into the " Cheshire Cheese," the most over-valued eating house in London. Here we stop to take breath and a glass each of black Edinburgh ale, strong enough to turn a 100 h.-p. turbine. A gentle stroll en plein air and we enter Wine Office Court and leave cards at the Press Club. Along Fleet Street, dodging alcoholic pitfalls, we zig-zag to the Cock Tavern just beyond where 205 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Temple Bar used to be. Fine beer at the Cock, which is not so far from the Victorian Agent-General's office, alongside the Law Courts, so we annex Sir John Taverner, easily the best Agent-General of all I have met, from Murray Smith, Sir Andrew Clarke, Graham Berry, Duncan Gillies, to Peter McBride. Taverner was always ready to help a Victorian to float a mining company, get bail for him, take him to a tailor, or interest him in a two-hour luncheon at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery Restaurant. The next choice was between Hotel Savoy bar and that of the Hotel Cecil. Armed with a box of Teofani or Abdulla Egyptian cigarettes, then the vogue for smokers, we were ready to sit down in the American bar and sample alluring American cocktails built by an English barman. Time now for midday lunch and the choice lay between Simpson's glorified chop house in the Strand or the buffet of the Grand Hotel. At that time Simpson's was the only dining- room where one could get genuine roast beef of Old England, or real Southdown or Scotch mutton. The latter was excellent because the Scotch lodge their sheep in barns better than their own houses and cram them like fowls with swede turnips to give them the true flavour of Scottish heather. Nowadays the Londoners get only the roast beef of Old America frozen, or the boiled lamb of the Young Argentine chilled. After luncheon occurs an embarrassment of riches. In every direction from Nelson's monument streets run in all directions filled with places where good drink may be purchased, but not borrowed. And on a bright, blue, sunshiny afternoon, which happens only a dozen times a year in London, there was nothing more health-giving and amusing than to walk leisurely along to Piccadilly, call in at the Blue Posts, drop in at Verrey's in Regent Street North, find one's way to Cafe Royal or Gambrinus Cafe and 206 LONDON from there to the Monico and look continually upon fair women and brave men all becomingly attired and behaving decorously. Grandma did not shave her hair or lop the lower half of her dress to use her legs as a lewd magnet, but she got there just the same. Other times, other tricks. And also how fast and far the years have fled ! On consulting my notes I find much of the above " gin crawl " was spread over several days and the tale is not half finished. After all human nature has not changed one jot, dot, tittle or iota since man began. Man is an untiring pleasure-seeker. This golden rule has held through the aeons of time, men and women are fifty-fifty, half of them honest, half dishonest, half clever, half silly, half good-looking, half ugly, half truthful, half of them not, half strong, and half of them weak. It is the only certain mathematical law about mankind which is divided rigidly in two classes, good and bad. All which is preaching and harmful to a best seller. My companion of the " gin crawl " was a diminutive Cockney accountant who had been a clerk in Mombassa in East Africa and who had drifted across to Melbourne where he joined another accountant from Gloucestershire. They both fared badly in the land boom wash-out and from their " compotes " saved enough money to buy deposit receipts in bung banks and make competencies. He finished his part of the inspection of West End saloons when a fair Hebe poured out a wineglass of absinthe instead of gin at the " Rose and Thistle " in Air Street. The subsequent proceedings interested him no more. One belief do I cling to firmly from among a multitude of lost illusions. To be well dressed is better than to have the consolation of one of the many religions. For years I had my clothes sent home to Melbourne from Meyer and Mortimer of Conduit Street, hats from Scott's, boots from 207 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Lobb's in St. James Street, and everything else from Whitelock's in Pall Mall. To be one of the best- dressed men in Melbourne was of higher attainment than to become an Immortal of the French Academy, or a member of New York's 400. There are no well-dressed men in Melbourne now, for the cut and material of male clothing belong to the time when dinosaur's eggs were soft and eatable. At the end of the so-called nineteenth century the Sunday morning parade in Hyde Park was a pure joy. Both men and women were exquisitely and morally dressed, and moved and behaved gracefully. To-day the sexes have the manners and morals of negroes with a similitude to the dreadful black fellows of the United States. Her hair ought to be a woman's chief glory and at the behest and for the behoof of the United Master Hairdressers' Association of the World, woman has shorn off her chief attribute of beauty and reduced herself to the level of the hags and wantons. A pity 'tis, 'tis true. With bizarre dresses go baroque manners, and the complement of the bad manners so prevalent in these modern days is weak morals. And good temper seems to have gone with good manners down the declivity to hell following the Gadarene swine. AN EMINENT AUSTRALIAN I ARTHUR LYNCH Quite easily the most talented and brilliant Aus- tralian who lived abroad away from home is Dr. Arthur Lynch, born on the old Smythesdale gold- field near Ballarat. Lynch's accomplishments pro- claim him a genius. He holds numerous University degrees, is an incomparable linguist, speaking six languages, and above all is a poet of the very first rank. Arthur Lynch is the author of " Modern Authors " and " The Poor Scholar's Quest of a Mecca." His " Koran of Love " and " The Caliph," 208 AN EMINENT AUSTRALIAN, ARTHUR LYNCH dedicated to John Keats of whom he is an intense admirer, are really beautiful poems of rare distinction. In a book of his works given me by Arthur Lynch he has written on the fly-leaf an Ode to Australia in a sad tone, complaining that his native land " stood aside with folded hands and smiled when strangers lying had his name reviled." This allusion is made to Lynch's leadership of the Irish Brigade when he fought on the Boer side in the South African War. He believed, as many thousands of other Australians believed, that the war to take away their countries and possessions from the two Boer Republics was an act of tyranny and injustice perpetrated by Great Britain at the behest of two grasping free-booters, Cecil Rhodes and Leander Starr Jamieson. It was a bar sinister across Britain's escutcheon and merely resembled the deed of an immensely strong bully who knocked down a small peaceful person and stole his money and his clothes while he lay prone, friend- less and helpless. Colonel Lynch was captured and sentenced to death for treason, though he was let off and soon after became a Member of the House of Commons for an Irish constituency. Lynch thought the forcible annexation of the two little Dutch re- publics an unjustifiable act of brigandage : cruel, unjust and dishonest. Cecil Rhodes tried to make atonement for his crime against national ideals by devoting his Stock Exchange winnings to a childish scheme of English University scholarships, to try and make a few scholars from a few countries love one another so as to live in amity. A preposterous and impossible object, for since the ape became a man he has always hated apes from other countries and always will. LORDS WHO HAVE MET ME Another Governor I met was Sir John Fuller in 209 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT London at some Guildhall function when he was Governor-Elect of Victoria. Next day he asked me to call at his house in Knightsbridge to pump me for information about Melbourne. I found out what he wanted and advised him to apply to the Government for another suite of nurseries and maid's rooms, and to ask for more money for incidentals at the two Government Houses. I believe he got both, and I was agreeably surprised to find he never asked me either to luncheon or dinner at Government House, not even to a garden party. Such base ingratitude too ! To be invited to a Saturday night dinner along with the racing crowd, the wool-growers, the high- born civil servants, and the climbers of Melbourne society gives one the proper social cachet in the eyes of the Victorian public. PEOPLE ABROAD During my first visit to London I met Philip Mennell, the author of a book of biographies of leading Australasians, who at that time was owner and editor of the " British Australasian," still being pub- lished in London. Through Mennell I met a number of leading journalists like Sydney and Arthur Murray of the " Financial Times," Dr. Ellis Powell of the " Financial News," Robert Ross a leader-writer of the " Times," and A. J. Wilson of the " Investors' Review." A. J. Wilson continually attacked the borrowing proclivities of the Australian Colonies, and for years predicted they would collapse financially. Thanks to Mennell I made a friend of the late Sir R. W. Jeans, the extremely able London manager of the Bank of Australasia. He and I have often heard Melba from the top gallery of Covent Garden for half a crown. Lord Sydenham, formerly Sir George Sydenham Clarke, an ex-Governor of Victoria, was another 210 PEOPLE ABROAD notable man who was extremely good to me when I had a highly important negotiation with the War Office when offering them the Alcock electric range- finder, an Australian's invention. Have had to do with many company lawyers in London and was more impressed by the superior sagacity of Sir Frank Crisp, although Fred Button of Blyth, Hartley and Button, a South Australian native, was a shrewd solicitor all his life connected with important Australian companies and their direc- tors. Sir Richard White was another accomplished lawyer with whom I had business when he was connected with the London County Council thirty years ago. A man of infinite tact of high repute in the City of London was Sir James Martin, then secretary to the Society of Accountants, who was exceedingly kind to me throughout a series of my business visits. Another leading accountant who showered kindness on me was Robertson Lawson who came from Edinburgh and established a fine practice in London. Another accountant closely associated with Australia through the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company was Edwin Habben. Through my connection with William Knox, Habben got his first Australian mining company, and he has had many of them to manage. Have always found London lawyers and accountants slow, but thorough. CELEBRITIES I HAVE COME ACROSS Far and away the most interesting personage of renown I have met in my wanderings was J. H. Curie, the mine valuator, who was quite easily the prince of mining reporters. Curie spent some years in Australia as a youth seeking health, and he became a very paragon as an examiner and reporter of mines of every sort. J. H. Curie stands alongside Sir 211 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Boverton Redwood and E. H. Cunningham Craig, the two British experts on petroleum mining to make a trinity of mighty mining authorities. J. H. Curie's reports on the Broken Hill silver mines were classics, and as books of travel, " The Shadow Show " and ' This World of Ours " are peerless in modern times. Another hero in my eyes was a Scotchman named Macarthur who with his partner, Forrest, invented and patented the cyanide process of recovering fine gold from tailings. I met Macarthur in Menzies' Hotel, Melbourne, where sooner or later most of the great ones of the earth sojourn. The Macarthur- Forrest cyanide process has saved countless millions of gold to the mining community and there ought to be a storied urn, an animated bust, a granite monument, or something imperishable erected in every gold-mining town on earth in honour of these two Scotchmen who did more for Australia than Bruce, Wallace and Burns did for Scotland. Amongst all the women of all the countries I have visited, from white to black, coloured brown, sepia, bay, chocolate, fawn, snuff and liver coloured, yellow, citrine, ecru, saffron, lemon, sulphur, straw and amber coloured, the most interest- ing was easily my own cousin, Margaret Jane Brand. Margaret's father was a ship captain owning a fleet of schooners and ketches in the Baltic timber trade. For thirty years he and his relatives sailed from Montrose to St. Petersburg and made money out of timber. When steamers came into the trade my uncle obstinately refused to change from sail to steam, so he lost every stiver of his cash, and all his mer- chandise and fleet of ships. Fortunately he had given his two daughters an extensive and expensive educa- tion on the European continent. Both were admirable linguists, supplied with all the family brains and savoir- faire, and amply endowed with both health and beauty. Margaret spoke six languages and English, 212 CELEBRITIES I HAVE COME ACROSS so she went to St. Petersburg and became a superior governess in aristocratic families, all of whom were rich. She was two years in the family of M. de Witte, Chancellor of Russia, and gained an intimate, close-up knowledge of Russian morals, manners and politics. She had a wide acquaintance among the great person- ages of several European countries, travelled widely in the best style, and incidentally saved all her salary and emoluments. It is difficult to imagine a more charming personality, albeit passionless and puritanical in conduct and character. A firm of rascally Russian bankers gambled her fortune on the St. Petersburg Bourse and lost every copek and rouble. Shortly after I saw her in London my cousin died in penury in St. Petersburg. RUDYARD KIPLING Rudyard Kipling once made a flying visit to Mel- bourne. He left a New Zealand steamer at Hobart and came across from Tasmania to Melbourne for I think about three days. The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly was Sir Matthew Henry Davies a reputedly wealthy land boomer then at his zenith. Davies and I were living at the Athenaeum Club and about aperitif time he asked me to dinner that evening to meet Rudyard Kipling who had presented a letter of introduction to him. There were two other old inhabitants of the club at the party and Kipling's conversation was one long ripple of delight. Being a conceited ass I was extremely upset because I could not get a word into the conversation. After dinner we went to a small card room to finish our cigars, and Sir Matthew asked Kipling to what he ascribed his remarkable skill as a writer of stories concerning so many diverse occupations and followings. Kipling replied that he thought his power of rapid observation was the chief support of his ready pen. ' Will give P 213 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT you an example if you like," he said. We all left the room and he remained by himself for about two minutes. He joined us in the corridor outside and detailed exactly every article in the room and where it stood, described the colours and pattern of the wall-paper, named many of the books on the shelves, told us the subjects of the pictures, recalled the various ornaments, and graphically named nearly every object on the tables and floor. It was a revela- tion in the exercise of the receptive power of all the human senses and a sixth. I took an opening to tell Kipling how I had made a worthless journey to Rangoon to see his vaunted and over-praised Shwe Dagon Pagoda. He laughed pleasantly and said he really did not think very highly of that gilded monu- ment himself. As a whole-hearted admirer of Rudyard Kipling I feel impelled to say no other writer about India and its purlieus has ever been able to portray India, its people and its life, so clearly and completely as he has done. Kipling renders material the inward spirit of that mystic land and its mysterious people. All which I have verified during two trips to the overwhelmingly interesting and beautiful Asiatic wonderland. TWO AMERICANS An Australian friend introduced me in the vesti- bule of the Hotel St. Francis, San Francisco, to one, John Drew, said to be a leading actor. Hearing that I came from Australia, Drew forgot to act and rudely said, " Oh, I know, from a place called Sydney where life is one long Sunday, like a day in the New York Bowery. You don't raise anything but kangaroos out there, do you ? " Have seen quite a number of American actors since ; I appreciate Drew's place in the category. Why are American actors and vaudeville people so lacking in courtesy and sweet- 214 TWO AMERICANS ness ? It must be due to their environment. Met a Kansas lawyer in the Flying Angel express from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and over a bottle of Big Tree Brand Californian Claret one night in the smoking parlour he told me a lot of stories about his buddy, Woodrow Wilson, which chiefly con- cerned the fair sex and might therefore easily come under the heading " Ben trovato sed non e vero." He said Wilson would ultimately fail through that personal weakness. One story about Chief Justice Brandeis of the High Court of the United States and how he helped Woodrow Wilson out of a tangle about a lady cannot be proved and must be left out. PEOPLE ABROAD William Fabian Meudell of Belleville, Canada, collector of customs, was a great uncle of mine. In his early youth he had been a soldier and fought in the Peninsula under the Duke of Wellington, as an ensign in the Black Watch, the famous 42nd Regi- ment. He was a despatch rider or galloper on head- quarters' staff. I went to Belleville to call on the old gentleman who received me warmly because we Meudells are a rarity and there are not many of us. So anxious was I to trace the family tree that I visited several Huguenot churches in England, Belgium and France to peruse their registers in search of the family name. My belief after all is that my ancestors were not quick enough on their feet and none of them got away from the St. Bartholomew scrap. Uncle Fabian was a strictly Puritanical Scotchman, truly pious, and shackled by tradition and ritual. The first morning at his home a bell rang for prayers at seven o'clock ; there were more prayers at breakfast, a snack of family worship at one, a sleigh ride in the snow at two, no afternoon tea at four, but a couple of chapters from the Old Testament concerning battling PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT and begetting, a Psalm was read after tea and at ten o'clock the household assembled for family worship. I left for Chicago next day and gave up searching for Huguenots, being fearful lest I found any more. What an interesting man was A. J. Wilson, founder and editor of the " Investors' Review," when I first called upon him in London. He was the mildest- mannered man that ever scuttled a colonial loan or cut a company prospectus into sausage meat. In those far-off days Wilson's harsh criticism of Australian Government borrowing was not just, because the proceeds were used to build developmental railways, and though they only paid interest they were quite safe as a security for trustees' investment. Of late years we have changed all that. Far too many political railways have been built which not only do not pay interest, but are unpayable lines, and in many instances hundreds of miles of railway h?ve been closed and uprooted. No Australian Government railway de- partment ever writes off for depreciation or renewals, and not a single railway balance sheet is honest and truthful. In Victoria especially the construction of railways is a scandalous waste of money. It has had the evil effect of putting up the price of country lands so high as to make it impossible for a new farmer- owner to make either a profit or a living. Mr. A. J. Wilson was only a generation before his time as a true prophet. GREAT MEN Outstanding amongst the really great men I have met abroad is Sir Philip Dawson, M.P., of the firm of Kincaid, Manville, Waller and Dawson, the leading firm of electrical engineers in London, and therefore in the British Empire. When I went out to London to try and arrange to get the big brown coal body 216 GREAT MEN exploited on Mr. George Chirnside's property, Wer- ribee Park, ten miles from Melbourne G.P.O., I was introduced by a powerful London friend to Kincaid's as the best informed and most talented firm of electrical engineers in the city. Then I met Mr. Philip Dawson who stood six feet seven inches high and weighed eighteen stone. He was not big, but merely massive, and splendidly proportioned. His brain must have been immense, and his intellect super-excellent. When I introduced W. L. Baillieu, Australia's finest financier, to Philip Dawson, " W.L." said, " Mr. Dawson, you are the first man I have ever had to look up to in my life." Sir Philip speaks six languages perfectly, and to listen to him entertaining a dinner party composed of men of six nationalities was an astounding lesson in linguistics. His bonhomie and courtesy are rare and natural. At the famous dinners of the Savage Club, Philip Dawson as Chairman was a revelation in courtliness and savoir-faire. An extremely temperate man in character and conduct, Philip Dawson has to eat and drink largely for the sake of nourishment. When we went to Berlin together to interest the puissant General Electric Company of Germany, known the world over as the A. E.G., in the electrification of the Melbourne suburban railway system, Dawson asked me whether I could " stand my oats." In good conceit of myself I said, " Yes, certainly." On the Channel steamer for Ostend he asked me to have an aperitif before luncheon. I had sherry and bitters and Dawson easily disposed of a quart of Johannisberger. And so it was all through the trip. He ate like a gourmand because his body needed plenty of food and drink. As he had carried through the first conversion to electrification in London successfully of the railway from Victoria Station to London Bridge he was persona grata with the great A. E.G. and its incom- 217 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT parable executive. That of course was in 1911. These leading German electrical engineers worshipped Dawson as a superman. TITLES One thing the travelling Australian is forced to admire in the Americans they have abolished and will not permit titles in their country. We Australians cling to the amusing English custom of making pinchbeck noblemen of all sorts of public mediocrities. In ancient times a man won his spurs and his knighthood by his prowess on the field of battle. In modern days titles are given too freely for almost any reason to the most ordinary and unworthy people. Sham knights in Melbourne and Sydney are as thick as flies. Can anybody say what meritorious action, what gallant deed any of these people per- formed, entitling them to be singled out and placed on an imaginary plane above their fellows ? Why should plain and democratic Australians be forced to call these men Sir and own that they are in some way superior to all the rest of us ? They are a very ordinary lot of chaps and it is hard to see why they should be singled out from all other men who are scrambling for money or for jobs and billets, and be labelled with a meaningless placard of nobility. LORDS WHO HAVE MET ME Alfred Harmsworth was not then Lord Northcliffe when I called upon him once at Carmelite House to place before him a project for a newspaper like the " Daily Mail " to be printed simultaneously in Melbourne and Sydney. This was about the time the " Argus " was feeble and falling away below the " Age " in circulation, advertisements and influence, and the " Herald " was wallowing in the mire of mere incompetence. It was a splendid chance to 218 LORDS WHO HAVE MET ME create a really national newspaper with a policy like that of the Sydney " Bulletin " to attract the natural- born Australians in a solid phalanx under the Aus- tralian banner. Foreign and alien influence has always been too powerful to permit of the growth of an Australian national spirit which is even yet unborn. Australia is still in swaddling clothes and always sucking an English-made dummy. Lord Northcliffe liked my proposal and approved of the scheme. The money end of it did not seem to bother him at all. He asked me to nominate a capable business manager and gave me a week to do so. I put forward three names of Australians, whom upon cabled enquiry he rejected. He told me a good editor, and chiefs of staff and departments were plentiful, but a good general manager, the pivot of every successful newspaper, was a rare bird and hard to snare. Lord Northcliffe named (Sir) Robert Donald as a good general manager, if he could get him. I think Northcliffe was lukewarm as there was no obvious money in the venture. The Melbourne ' Herald " was obscure then and the handicap of being the first with late European news, which isn't worth a damn to Australians, was not an attraction. When I first met Lord Glendyne he was Robert Nivison, then not a very old member of the London Stock Exchange, and had been a bill clerk in the London and Westminster Bank. Nivison was called ' The Canary " because his hair was once yellow, and therefore quite unlike his heart and character. My letter of introduction to Robert Nivison was from an old friend of my father, Mr. W. G. Devon Astle, then joint London manager of the London and Westminster Bank. I think Mr. Astle was a relative of William Westgarth, an early colonist in Melbourne, who wrote a book about Victoria upon his return to London. Mr. Nivison was the first 219 stock-broker to organize the issue of what were called Colonial loans, most of which were really the infantile borrowings of the Australian colonies and New Zealand who had sent Japhet into the promised land of Canaan, meaning London, with power to exchange bonds for cash. These first loans carried 7 per cent interest, i\ per cent brokerage, i\ per cent under- writing, 2 \ per cent overriding commission, one half per cent for paying the half-yearly interest coupons, with another one half of one per cent for keeping the Colonial Government account. Reading from left to right, it will be readily seen what a really profitable industry it was for the bankers and the brokers. Like the young tiger who likes plenty of mint sauce with his lamb, these early Victorian loans were as spacious as the inflated crinolines worn by the women of those far-off days, when Australian loans were comparatively safe and well spent in Australia. Nowadays too many Australian loans are floated to pay interest due by Australia and not kept handy in a suspense account, and the rest of them are wasted on unproductive public works, such as railways and city buildings. Nivison gradually acquired personal control of the business of issuing in London loans for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India. Australia owes over 1,200,000,000, so it is not hard to believe that Lord Glendyne is the most powerful financier in the British Empire, and the word recalls that I have seen him in the British Empire Theatre, in the Gaiety Theatre, and even at the Palace Theatre having a laugh after having probably underwritten a ten million loan before dinner. Well, and why not ! It is easy work this underwriting, conducive of heaviness of heart and vexation of spirit, yet withal completely profitable. Last time I saw Lord Glendyne was in Dalgety and Company's office handing Mr. E. T. Doxat, that 220 LORDS WHO HAVE MET ME paragon of financiers, a cheque for 500 for under- writing a loan of which he had never seen the pros- pectus. Lord Glendyne once left the broad road leading to successful bond issues for the narrow path of lending money to a mining company. He once advanced 20,000 to the North Mount Lyell Copper Company of Tasmania and didn't sleep well till it was repaid. He told me so himself. I was an early member of the Royal Colonial Institute in London and used to attend their dinners and lectures. The dinners were capital and usually held in the Whitehall rooms of the Hotel Metropole. Once J. F. Hogan, an ex-Australian journalist, and Irish Member of the House of Commons, read a paper on the Irish in Australia, and somewhat causti- cally rubbed it into native-born Australians for being so perky, cocky and intolerant. Being that kind of a perfervid Australian who believes we Australians are a people utterly superior to the rest of mankind, I begged permission of Lord Rosebery, the Chairman, to reply to Mr. Hogan's scathing criticism. In most inflammatory language, in fine histrionic style, with plenty of action, I explained Australia's imaginary superiority to all other Britons, at the expense of Mr. Hogan. When I had finished with him his address and himself looked as tattered and torn as a pillow full of feathers in a baby whirlwind. Lord Rosebery seemed to be convulsed with laughter internally and when summing up remarked that if politics at the antipodes were conducted in the lively manner of his young friend from down under, it must be highly interesting and exhilarating to be a politician. Faith- full Begg, M.P. for St. Rollox, Glasgow, was my host that night and he was highly delighted with my oratorical fireworks. Another lord who had the pleasure of meeting me was Inchcape, then Sir James Mackay, the Napoleon 221 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT of British shipping. My mate and I were travelling by the P. and O. " Egypt " from Bombay to Mar- seilles, and Sir James occasionally condescended to play rope quoits with us and listen to our stories in the smoking room without telling any himself, a habit of the pseudo-great. Often I wonder whether the really great know any good yarns. If they do, I could easily become popular with them. Our one well-founded objection to Lord Inchcape was that he indulged to excess in cheap scent Lang-y-Lang, musk and sandalwood and as we were in the next cabin we were frequently and freely gassed with it. Had nearly forgotten another great satrap who often listened to my wisdom when going to Egypt, not together, but on the same ss. " Derbyshire," Lord Cromer, formerly Sir Evelyn Baring. In that aged boat there were only three first-class bathrooms and the artful High Commissioner of Egypt made his valet lock himself in one of them from six to eight daily so Cromer should not miss his tub ! What a wily old diplomat ! For years I have sat in the seats of the mighty in all the seven seas, after they had left the ship's dining saloon. Once I was fellow- passenger with a son of Chululongkorn, King of Siam. He was a genial little brownish bloke who carried in two hip pockets, two gold flasks of whisky, one for himself as shouter and the other for the shoutee. He had inveigled a pretty Parisienne midinette to accompany him to Bangkok and she made an excellent travelling companion for all of us. The Prince invited me to go to the ruined temples of Angkor Thorn and to Nom Penh with him and promised me the loan of a white elephant and an introduction to one of his twenty-five sisters. On the same ship, Mustapha Pasha and Hassan Bey had a few " spots " of Johnny Walker with us. Another Eastern poten- tate I knew was the Sultan of Johore, a native state 222 LORDS WHO HAVE MET ME under the protection of Great Britain, across the Strait from Singapore. Met him in Melbourne at Menzies' Hotel, where he was stopping with a Sultana, formerly a coryphe'e at the Gaiety Theatre, London. Johore gave her carte blanche at a leading jewellers, Gaunt and Company, and while he was trying to select winners at the daily races round about Melbourne, she was picking pearls of great price and a few dia- monds for good weight. One noonday while the Sultan was mixing with the collective devilry of Melbourne at the Moonee Valley Races, Tottie Fewclothes caught the P. and O. boat for London, and like Marco Polo her place knew her no more. The Sultan had six sets of false teeth for fixture in his lower jaw, one with two platinum bicuspids, and others with gold, silver, emeralds, agates and enamel. My wife and I went from Singapore to Johore with an order from the British Resident to visit the Zenana, where our guide told us there were twenty-eight Sultanas (enough to fill a carton) and forty-five khaki- coloured children from two months to twenty years old. Also there was a Casino modelled on the gaming house at Monte Carlo. While we were in the Malay States two girls who had been in a Melbourne bar arrived under engagement as stenographers and typists to the household of the Sultan of Johore. To preserve the dignity and prestige of the British Raj they were not allowed to land and were given a thou- sand dollars each to go back home. Sir George Sydenham Clarke, made Lord Sydenham for his services on the Esher War Office Committee, which partially reformed the British War Office, was once Governor of Victoria, and unlike every other Governor or Governor-General, he really did what he could for this country when he went back to London. Ever since I have been going up to Europe, not one single man who has represented the British 223 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Raj in Australia has been worth a pinch of mustard seed to Australasia after he left it. From Hopetoun to Stonehaven, from Loch to Stradbroke, not one of them has done a tap for this country. Why ? Because there is nothing they can do to do us any good. To use a homely simile, if any of them had wished 'to be helpful to show gratitude for the good time and plentiful flattery he got here, it would be like the vain effort of a flea to get under Mount Kosciusko and raise it one foot. So when I took the Alcock Electric Range Finder to the War Office to offer it to the British Government, the only ex-Australian official who was helpful and had any weight whatever was Sir George Sydenham Clarke. And after my first half-hour with him at Whitehall I knew I would fail to sell that wonderful invention to the War Office. Lord Sydenham's description of the inertness, and fossilization, the vacancy of mind of the heads of that over-much venerated War Office simply flooded me with contempt for that paleozoic and pre-glacial British institution, the Palladium of our Liberty ! No wonder Great Britain after the Mons lesson had to reconstruct and recondition her Army in the face of the foe ! Years previously I had heard the great Earl Roberts by public speech warn the authorities and the people they should get ready to fight the Germans. The War Office woke in its sleep, rubbed its eyes, blew its nose, and turned over to resume its placid rest. A. U. Alcock, an Australian electrical engineer and genius, invented a range finder that gave the exact range and bearing of a passing ship to a land fortress and to every gun in that fortress or near by. The instrument would go inside a No. 7 bell-topper and the operator's telescope, as he followed the course of the vessel, operated by wire dials in the gun-pits of all the guns that were ready to be fired. Angle and distance were recorded nearly accurately. 224 LORDS WHO HAVE MET ME There was then only one range finder, the Watkins, in use in British forts and not one elsewhere in the world. The War Office took the model and we got nothing for it. The Melbourne syndicate included many of the leading business men of the city, like David Syme, Malcolm MacEacharn, William Knox, Bowes Kelly, Colin Templeton, F. M. Dickenson, Henry Butler, H. U. Alcock, William Mountain and Byron Moore. I spent seven months calling at the War Office and arranging for the testing of the instrument. General Markham was irritated and incensed every time I got past his bodyguard into his presence and refused to consider my proposals. Lord Roberts, then Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, was married to a sister of Mrs. F. P. Stevens of Warrnambool, an old friend of our family. Mrs. Stevens had given me a letter of introduction to Lord and Lady Roberts, and in desperation I wrote Lord Roberts at Dublin Castle and asked for his assistance. Next day I got a telegram from the War Office asking me to call. No sitting on the cold stone steps at the Pall Mall door that day. A brace of British grenadiers in busbies escorted me to General Markham's room, and I was actually (and I am ready to make an affidavit conscientiously believing that anybody who swears falsely always gets off) offered a chair ! What Lord Roberts wrote to the authorities I do not know, but Meudell stock 5 per cent irredeemable and interminable, previously stand- ing at 50, jumped to a premium of 150. Old Mark- ham recoiled to jump better, and his volte-face stunt was highly amusing. Major Ardagh, chief of ord- nance, came and saw our model that day and three days later it was set up at Shoeburyness and tried out. Three more days later we never heard of it from that day to this, but part of it is being used extensively on British battleships. Taken individually 225 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the British officer may be inclined to practise the virtues inherent in a gentleman, though collectively as a war department he behaves like a cut-purse. Coming home by North America I called at Phila- delphia and saw Lieutenant Greig, then head of the ordnance department of the Bethlehem Steel Works, now part of the United Steel Trust, and explained the instrument to him. Then he offered me not only the full use of his staff and factories to test and develop the Alcock range finder, but offered to sell it to the United States Government for a million of money in pounds and split that upon the fifty-fifty basis. A prophet has no honour in his own country, yet he cannot, it seems to me, get either profits or honour when he goes abroad. The only good result of that costly mission was that I married my wife in London which was worth the 500,000 I didn't get. 226 CHAPTER IX AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE WHY the business men of Sydney have created, out of nothing, in less than a century, the strongest private bank and the most successful mutual life assurance office in the world ! They have made Sydney, in fifty years, the sixth shipping port for tonnage in the greatest empire the world has ever known. They have made of Sydney the most beautiful city on earth, not excepting Edinburgh. You get the same answer to the same question in one hour in Sydney as you can get in London in one week, perhaps. The business immigrant who goes to Australia to set the pace to keep the Australian business man up to the scratch must take care he is not run over and killed during his first spurt. To the end of 1925 Australia had produced 1, 129, 000,000 of minerals, and has per head the soundest public debt, the most bank deposits, the most savings bank deposits, the best birth rate, the lowest death rate, the finest land laws, the best wool output, the most sheep in the world. Australia also produces the best horses, sheep, cattle, meat, butter, rabbits, champagne, sugar and fruit known to merchants. Australia has the greatest silver mine, the best copper mine, the richest gold mine, and the largest tin mine, as well as the biggest coalfield in one spot on earth. Our trees are the highest, our coke the purest, our zinc the cleanest, and our oil shale beds and brown coal seams the most extensive on the globe. Our import and export trade is the largest per head, and so is our local shipping. Taxation is the lowest, epidemic disease 227 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the smallest, crime statistics the lowest, milk supply and food the purest, and old age pensions at one pound a week the highest known to humanity. Finally we get more sun, warmth and good weather than any place outside Southern Europe, and our population weighs more and measures more than any other people. SOME GREAT AUSTRALIAN BANKS AND COMPANIES You will never hear Australians blowing and boasting about their country or its institutions. Misguided men like Donald Mackinnon, Mark Sheldon, J. A. M. Elder, Dr. E. C. Page, G. A. Pearce, who have been on Government jaunts to New York come home and cackle about America's progress as being due to hustle and advertisement, and therefore worthy of being copied by Australia. That kind of talk is all fudge. Only weak men and weak people and nations gas about their doings. Nobody here ever writes about the extraordinary success of many Australian-made institutions. How many Australians know that the bank of New South Wales, established in Sydney in 1 8 1 7, is the strongest and safest bank in the world ? How few Australians know that there is no other life assurance company in business so safe and so successful as the Australian Mutual Provident Society. The Mutual and Citizens' Life Assurance Company is an amalgamation of the Citizens' Life Company and two small, feeble mutual assurance companies. It is so prosperous that the shareholders of the Citizens' Life Company drew 1 60,000 in dividends last year on their paid-up capital of 200,000, or 80 per cent per annum. What assurance company on earth can pay 80 per cent ? and the Citizens' Life will some day pay 400 per cent in yearly dividends and probably be dissolved by a law of the Commonwealth Parliament. There is no 228 AUSTRALIAN BANKS AND COMPANIES executors or trustees' company so strong as the Trustees, Executors and Agency Company of Mel- bourne, the first of the kind established anywhere. The Temperance and General Assurance Company is steadily forging ahead and some day Australia will be extremely proud of it. Three great pastoral companies handling wool and sheep stations are Dalgety and Company, Goldsbrough, Mort and Company, and Younghusband and Company. One has to work in London amongst banks and stock- brokers to learn what a tower of strength to Australia is Dalgety's, and in a lesser degree what a fine status in the financial world is held by Goldsbroughs. There are some great merchants, firms of pure Australian birth, like James Henty and Company, James Service and Company, John Connell and Company, Henry Berry and Company that would be a credit to any community because of their high integrity. " Flin- ders Lane," a generic name for the soft-goods ware- house businesses of Melbourne, has fallen from its high estate just as mighty Babylon fell. Bad manage- ment, bad payment of employees, and general meanness have brought " Flinders Lane " to earth. There are no wise leaders in the soft-goods trade to-day like F. T. Sargood, J. M. Bruce, Henry Butler, Robert Reid, David Beath, Neil McGlashan, or George Webster. The good retail shops have vanished and their places filled by emporia holding rag fairs, jumble sales and bargain bazaars aided by crazy and untrue advertisements. SIR JOHN MONASH Sir John Monash, the most brilliant of Australian generals, emerged from the war with a splendid reputation as a military commander. So few of the professional soldiers who led the British army at the outset of the war proved capable in the field, that Q 229 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Monash's success stands out in high relief. He was an amateur soldier, an artillery officer without previous battle experience, a fact making his success the more meritorious. Monash's father was a storekeeper in a bush town in New South Wales, and when his son left his primary school the father told a friend of mine he was selling out to reside in Melbourne, so that he could give John a University education. Monash, senior, was a highly respected citizen and his foresight was justified because Monash, junior, went through the University of Melbourne with great distinction. He is now Vice-Chancellor of his Alma Mater and deserves every honour as a great Australian his native land can bestow. Yet he was not called before Parliament and properly thanked for his magnificent services to his fellow-countrymen. Possibly because he was not a professional or high-caste soldier, or a carpet knight owing his rank and preferment to family relations and to society women. PEOPLE I HAVE MET One of the finest women in Melbourne is Miss Edith Onians, Hon. Secretary of the City Newsboys' Society, who has devoted her life to doing good to others in a splendid manner. She has been the means of saving hundreds of poor orphaned boys from drifting into blind alley occupations, which tend to lower the conduct and character of the waifs and strays of a modern city. Three prominent citizens who have amassed great fortunes in Melbourne by sheer merit through sticking to business and not missing any points, are Montague Cohen, Solicitor, who has mixed law and beer with excellent financial results. J. H. Riley, an accountant, has piled up a heap of money by having as many irons in the fire as the grate would hold. He has contrived to acquire at least a dozen big city businesses and make profits 230 PEOPLE I HAVE MET out of every one. The romance of business surround- ing James Richardson, the ex-ship's steward and now the richest publican and wine and spirit merchant in Melbourne, ought to be written to show ambitious youths how easy it is to make money in vast quantity by denying oneself any pleasure and attaching an atom of seccotine to every shilling in sight. Colonel Charles Umphelly, D. B. Lazarus, M.L.A. for Bendigo, and I went to Windsor Castle to see Queen Victoria and were graciously shown over the Royal stables ! Splendid, wasn't it ? We saw the Old Lady out driving with Princess Beatrice, and really she didn't look like a queen. She was a very ordinary, dowdy, little woman, neither regal nor dignified, fat and pallid. At King Edward's funeral we saw about twenty kings and princes and the only person in the procession who really looked royal was Emperor Bill of Germany, the chap who ran away from his army. Another quaint little person I saw once was W. M. Hughes when Prime Minister of Australia. There should be a general law for- bidding any man not born in Australia being made Prime Minister. Hughes was motored to the Liverpool camp in New South Wales, by a cousin of my wife's, who was then a private in the A.I.F. " Brab " was a first-class chauffeur whose skill pro- voked Hughes' admiration so much that he gave the young squatter thrippence at the end of the day. It is now a family heirloom. In 1915 in Los Angeles I met Edmund Mitchell, a Scotch journalist of high intellectual power. He was trained on the " Glasgow Herald," and in 1893 arrived in Melbourne in time to take part in the Shearers and Maritime Strikes on behalf of the squatters. Mitchell saw an opening for a pastoralists' journal and established the " Pastoralists' Review," which was successful from the outset. Wanting more 231 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT capital Mitchell negotiated with R. E. N. Twopeny and A. Pearse, who were then in New Zealand, Mitchell was a rover by nature and soon after found his way to California, where he wrote several books of the highest order. JACK DOUGHARTY My brother-in-law was a well-known man about town thirty years ago. He loved to pose as a leader of sports and sporting, and amongst other methods of keeping his place he helped boxing men and pugilists financially. Frank P. Slavin, better known as " Paddy," was a friend of Jack's who lent him money. Slavin was a fighter of the first order, and in England beat Jem Smith, the champion at Bruges in Belgium where he had to fight a gang of roughs. Then Paddy went to U.S.A. and hammered Joe McAuliffe, Jack Ellis and Jake Kilrain. In May, 1892, just before I reached London, Paddy Slavin fought Peter Jackson, a coloured man once the idol of the Sydney prize ring, at the National Sporting Club, London. From all accounts this was the greatest of all modern prize fights between two undoubted Australian champions, ten rounds of a titanic battle, made up of every kind of punch and wallop known in the art of fisticuffs. In the tenth round, Peter Jackson feinted with his left and quick as wireless hit Paddy on the point with his right. Paddy fell forward into Peter's arms and this epic contest ended. s. M. BRUCE The last generation of Australian politicians was superior in intellect to this, and the generation before was better still. The first Administration of the Com- monwealth, on ist January, 1901, comprised all the 232 S. M. BRUCE strong men in Parliamentary life headed by Sir Edmund Barton, whose lieutenant was Mr. Alfred Deakin. The other Ministers were, Sir William Lyne, Sir John Forrest, Sir George Turner, C. C. Kingston, Sir J. R. Dickson, Sir P. O. Fysh, R. E. O'Connor and N. E. Lewis. The Government was a true phalanx of ability and intellect. From that date the calibre of Cabinets has been slowly withering and weakening, till now we have a mediocre collection of nonentities wielding Federal power. At the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, Stanley Melbourne Bruce was prefect and captain of the school, first among equals, because he was suave, bland and tactful. That is why he is Prime Minister of Australia to-day. His father, J. M. Bruce, worked his way up from the ranks of the working drapers to be head of a wholesale soft-goods firm in Melbourne, known as Paterson, Laing and Bruce. J. M. Bruce was suave, bland and tactful and passed these quali- ties on to his son Stanley who is a splendid representa- tive of the soft-goods business, being all things to all men. Success has made him too talkative, and by no means profound in knowledge or intellect. Bruce is what people call a " nice " man, one who is more celebrated than cerebrated with grey matter in his brain. NORMAN LINDSAY The greatest black and white artist of modern times was Phil May, and next to him Aubrey Beardsley. Then Norman Lindsay of Sydney came along and surpassed both of them and everybody else. Went to London on the same ship as Norman Lindsay and had the pleasure of introducing him to Laurence Bradbury, one of the proprietors of London " Punch," who naturally knew about Norman and his work. He introduced Lindsay to his art editor, Townsend, 233 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT who asked him to illustrate three small jokelets or japelets to show his mettle and style. Norman Lindsay did his best and the jokes shone like a phos- phorescent watch among a lot of grandfather's clocks. On pay-day Norman was given a cheque for three guineas at which he laughed all the way from Bouverie Street to my office in the city. ' This microscopic thanksoffering must be spent quickly," said Norman, " lest it goes bad." So we summoned to a feast, Will Dyson, the now famous caricaturist, and E. T. Buley, an Australian, then editor of the Northcliffe Sunday newspaper, " The Weekly Dispatch," which chiefly contains the very latest divorce news and other anti-social crimes of the British aristocracy. We went to Pinoli's Restaurant in Wardour Street and knocked down the cheque amidst loud and prolonged applause. From the festa of spaghetti and chianti, Norman Lindsay went to Reuter's Tele- gram office in the Strand and sent a cable to the Sydney " Bulletin " saying he was going home very shortly, and he went and stayed there. Fancy the meanness of offering twenty-one shillings each for three inimitable drawings by the world's greatest black-and-white artist ! It takes an Englishman born within the sound of Bow bells to understand London " Punch's " heavyweight humour. Since then Norman Lindsay has won the approval of the leading European art critics for his uncanny power with pen and pencil, and his fame is assured, while his work is improving and gathering force and subtlety day by day. Lindsay has " arrived " though he has not stopped going. He is already a great etcher. FLORENCE YOUNG The most remarkable of all the attractive and clever women I have known was Florence Young, so long 234 FLORENCE YOUNG the beloved idol of the theatre-goers of Australasia. Florrie was one of the sweetest and kindest of all friends, always charming, always cheerful, and never a nagger. Every Christian home has one nagger, male or female, who is hateful and as hideous as a beastly motor-cycle. Florence Young had a rare distinction of person, with a fine mind and a strong brain and body. Look at the hard work she did through twenty-five years of acting and singing in comic opera ! She had neither match nor equal on the London stage, nor any rival here at home. Why then did she not win a diadem as queen of comic opera in London ? Because custom and convention allow half a dozen male and female veteran actors and entrepreneurs to rule the theatrical world of London with a rod of iron. The theatrical mandarins who have a monopoly of English playhouses will never permit their pets, either singers or actors, to be displaced by strangers. Melba fought her way to the top and trampled over the puny people who have always bossed Covent Garden and all the byways leading to it. Ada Crossley, similarly being an Australian, had to engage in combat with the concert monopolists of Modern Babylon. Yet Ada Crossley ended by being the finest contralto singer of her era. Nelly Stewart, a peerless Australian actress in her special art, could not get an engagement in London, because theatrical managers and owners prefer fantoccini puppets who will obey. The dearth of new plays, the death of the drama in England is due to a ring of old dodderers who will not engage a new player or read a play by a young playwright. Some of them have most improperly been ennobled as knights. To name the men and women who have destroyed dramaturgy and the histrionic art in the " old country " would be to invite myself to be burnt at the stake as an ancient auto da ft. Here is a typical programme, 235 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT dated 28th February, 1903, of " The Geisha," pro- duced at Her Majesty's Theatre by J. C. Williamson himself. Florence Young played O Mimosa San ; Carrie Moore was ultra-delightful as Molly Seamore ; Maud Chetwynd played Juliette ; Celia Ghiloni, another fascinating Australian, was Lady Constance Wynne. These capable Australian women were supported by Harold Thorley, Pat Bathurst, Hugh J. Ward and George Lauri. There was a galaxy of talent ! Nowadays the Australian stage is occupied by inferior American players who mimic like apes, jazz like blackfellows and spoil our language by the slang of the ghetto. J. F. ARCHIBALD Next to David Syme of the " Age " the greatest publicist in Australia was John F. Archibald of the Sydney " Bulletin." His real name was Jules Francois, son of an Irish father and a French mother. We went to the same school in Warrnambool, Victoria, though Jack was leaving as I joined. He went to the Mel- bourne University for his B.A. degree and drifted into journalism in which fine art he became a master, a chieftain of men, a public leader of much might. Archibald alone created an Australian public opinion without being able to call into being an Australian spirit. There is no national spirit. There is no national spirit to-day because of the accursed teaching of the schools and universities that we Australians are firstly British and secondly Australians. No Australian child is ever taught to love his own country first. The poor urchin with his pap is taught that a faraway little country with a battling past, a crumb- ling present and a desolate future, should be called "home," and adored accordingly. Home to 90 per cent of Australians is a Sydney or Melbourne slum, or a decayed mining town, or the wide and dreary bush, 236 J. F. ARCHIBALD yet they talk glibly of England as " Home." Archi- bald, perceived the pressing need of turning the thoughts of the Australians inwards, and of moulding new ideals for a new race. The British live and move by ritual, by convention, by what grandpapa or grandmamma did, and there is no freedom, no liberty and plenty of fear of their " betters," the ridiculous and conceited Whigs and Tories. At my suggestion Archibald used as the " Bulletin " motto, " Australia for the Australians," and when a "White Australia" became a living question he changed it to the meaning- less phrase, *' Australia for the White Man." Im- migration is a needless curse to Australia and some day we may have to give battle to stop it. GREAT MEN Newspapers, not Nature, make men great by writing them up. Here are a few exceptions to that canon. Sticht, Mellor, Schlapp and Dickenson. Because of William Knox's friendship I used to meet all the leading men connected with the Broken Hill Proprietary and Mount Lyell Mines, two Australian giants of what economists call " the robber industry," the industry that takes wealth from the soil and does not replace or renew it. Knox asked me to dinner at " Ranfurly " one Sunday many years ago to meet Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sticht, who had just arrived from America the previous day. Robert Sticht was easily pre-eminent amongst many eminent mining engineers we have had in Australia during my life- time. The essence of making mining profits is to stop waste and reduce costs. Sticht had no equal in working out such a policy. He was a highly educated and an extremely intellectual man of the very highest character for justness and integrity. Working together amicably and with mutual understanding, Alfred Mellor, the secretary of the Mount Lyell Company, PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT and Robert Sticht, the mining superintendent, make an ideal dual executive. Mellor was an especially fine man who died too soon. Towards the end of his life Robert Sticht suffered from worry over a bad investment in a copper mine at Mount Balfour in Tasmania, and this hurried him to his grave. As he himself expressed it, Sticht lived and died as a scientific agnostic. Another of the very great mining men of my day was H. H. Schlapp, who came from the United States as metallurgist to the Broken Hill Proprietary. As a technologist, Schlapp stands high, but his common sense and business acumen make his great strength. It was Schlapp who inspected the Mount Lyell massif and detected its value, not as a gold mine but as a huge pyritic deposit of copper and gold. Schlapp recommended Bowes Kelly, William Knox and William Orr to buy the lease from Grotty, Dixon and Company, and his advice to send for Sticht really founded that great concern. Knox was an unerring judge of men and his work for the Broken Hill Proprietary and Mount Lyell Companies is imperishable. Knox went to Spain with William Orr to the Rio Tinto Copper Mine to interview G. D. Delprat, a Dutch engineer then in charge of Rio Tinto. That was one of the best of Knox's many good appointments. He could not possibly have secured a better superintendent than Delprat, to whom belongs the credit of establishing the New- castle Steel Works, some day to be the leading industry of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Associated with G. D. Delprat was my old partner, F. M. Dickenson, a wise, acute business man, who took Knox's chair as secretary of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company. If " Dick " had not been tempted by the Broken Hill Proprietary board to leave me to become their secretary, it is certain our firm would have been the leaders of the Stock Exchange 238 GREAT MEN of Melbourne. The most sagacious of the original Broken Hill Proprietary directors was W. P. Mac- Gregor, the most popular Willie Jamieson, the most thoughtful Bowes Kelly, the shrewdest was Harvey Patterson, while the strongest headed was George MacCulloch. Yet, without William Knox as controller these directors would have made a lot more mistakes, and goodness knows they made plenty while learning at the expense of the wonderful Broken Hill Pro- prietary Mine all about silver mining. DR. RINDER Dr. " Coolie " Kinder was one of the most interest- ing of my contemporaries, clever, but slow, witty and humorous. " Coolie " was an old member of the Yorick Club of Melbourne, in those days belonging to a coterie of extremely clever professional and literary men. He had a habit of going home to his suburb at midnight, when an old four-wheeled cab called for him at the Yorick every night. " Coolie's " delight was to fill his cab with doctors living in the far suburbs and talk them to sleep on the way home. One such ramble I remember took us to Williams- town, nine miles, to Brunswick, four miles, to Kew, five miles, and we finally landed at St. Kilda, six miles from there, at 5 a.m. It was at least a novel way of killing time. Once " Coolie " took me to the Yorick Club about 1 1 p.m., and we found Julian Thomas, "The Vagabond," an "Argus" writer like Fred Greenwood who described the doss houses of London as " The Casual," fishing for rats down the lift well, with a strong line, a sharp hook and a beefsteak. He caught one rat in one hour. We adjourned to supper and four of us ate a huge leg of mutton, vast quantities of pickles and beer, and were fined a guinea each by the house committee for keeping the steward 239 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT out of bed after 5 a.m. One needed a stenographer to catch all the good things said. CHARLIE UMPHELBY Two of the finest friends I ever had were Charlie Umphelby and Hans Irvine. Charlie drifted into the Royal Australian Artillery and was a colonel when killed in the Boer War at Driefontein. He was attached to Lord Roberts' staff and was killed by a stray shot fired by a Boer who was galloping home from the battle. The bullet struck the riding cane Umphelby had hanging to his wrist and was deflected through his liver. My wife and I saw him off from Port Melbourne to South Africa on the ss. " Euryalus," and he told us in his cabin he had a premonition he would be killed. He was a kindly, cheery soul, knew his job, was popular with his men, and a born leader. Hans Irvine, the wine grower, was another notable man, almost a replica of Umphelby and, like him, well-bred. Irvine's father was a cousin of one of the Irish Dukes of Leinster and his uncle was an admiral in the British Navy. He himself was a typical Australian and will be known in the history of local viticulture as the first vigneron to manufacture sparkling wines. He imported several French Cham- pagne makers and besides made what were probably the best still wines in Australia. Irvine tried to establish his Great Western brand in London, and I met him there on three trips. Once he gave me fourteen days to sell his vineyards and stocks for j 1 00,000 cash. The time was too short and I missed making a " punch " by brokerage. Another of my numerous chances missed ! JOE WOOLF In my early business days when I nursed illusions, since supplanted by delusions, Joseph Woolf, the 240 JOE WOOLF wisest and most subtle Melbourne solicitor, and I collaborated to get a concession from the Bendigo City Council to build cable tramways in the city and suburbs. The poor little parochial councillors fiddled with us and finally refused to grant the franchise to use the streets. Interested in the scheme were James and George Duncan, the two superior tramway engin- eers to whom all the success of the Melbourne cable tramway system is due. That was in 1885. The market was ripe for a tramway float and we would have made a nice " dry bit " out of the transaction. Joseph Woolf is a replica of the late Hugo Stinnes, the German arch-millionaire. Joe made me secretary of another big enterprise which his far-sighted intelligence approved as sure to yield us a lot of money. It was to use the Evelyn Tunnel on the Yarra at Warrandyte, twenty miles from Melbourne, for the production of electricity. The tunnel was driven by the early miners through a bend of the river to divert the water and enable them to recover the gold in the river bed. Part of our scheme aimed at damming back the Yarra and creating a great lake which would have doubled Melbourne's water supply at that time. We could not get the rights from the Government and the project fell down. All through my career I have been too early and too soon with most of my best money-making ideas. Another of my bright ideas was formulated many years before it was appreciated. When going to America on a business trip I was given the plans and proposals of the Kiewa scheme of hydro-electricity, to dam back and use the waters of the Kiewa and Mitta Mitta Rivers in North-East Victoria. A leading firm of hydro-electrical engineers in San Francisco drafted the plans and got a New York group of capitalists to agree to provide 1,000,000 sterling to do the work and send the electric juice to Melbourne. We 241 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT went about the business quietly and few people knew that all we wanted was a thirty years' lease or con- cession, and the work would be started at once. The Minister of Public Works was Mr. John McWhae, who was so shortsighted or pig-headed or both as to refuse to grant more than a fifteen-year tenure, which gave the concessionaires not enough time to do more than get their money back. That was another case where I lost a " punch of cash " because I was too soon with a bright idea. Again I lost a lot of boodle when the Tasmanian State Government and the Commonwealth Post Office declined to support my project for a daily mail by air to Tasmania. That was in 1919 and a Tasmanian Air Company is being formed by others in 1929. There again I was before my time with a payable proposition. ADA CROSSLEY AND J. MOORE HICKSON I have numbered as friends Ada Crossley, the leading contralto singer, and James Moore Hickson, the faith healer. Ada Crossley along with a fine mezzo-soprano voice had a rare, charming personality. She was adored by her fellow-Australians. Born in Gippsland, a farming and grazing province in Victoria, Ada Crossley had a strenuous struggle to get to the top as a singer, and unlike Nellie Melba she did not have an over-rich father behind her to thrust her forward. With James Moore Hickson we made several trips in Victoria, and I was associated with him all through his mission. His extraordinary power of healing the sick is occult and esoteric. That he makes marvellous cures I had abundant proof and evidence. In my own case he cured an attack of shingles in a day, which my doctor said would lay me up for three weeks. 242 JAMES TYSON JAMES TYSON One day in 1853 my father was acting as accountant in the Bank of Victoria, Castlemaine, a gold-field that yielded fifteen million pounds' worth of gold inside ten years. As the doors were opened, a tall, weather- beaten young man, dressed in a red shirt and riding breeches, strode in, unbuckled a leather belt from his waist and tersely ordered my father to " Count that, young man." There were 6000 in notes of all banks and denominations in the belt. The big stranger said he wanted to open an account. In answer to the usual inquiries he said his name was James Tyson and that he was a drover without a fixed abode. Under my father's genial influence Tyson told the story of his first profit. He had gone to Warrnambool amongst the stations deserted by their owners during the great trek to the gold-fields to buy sheep and a few horses, the sheep round about a shilling and the horses up to ten shillings. He drove his mixed mob to Castlemaine and sold them at extraordinary prices for a total of 6000. James Tyson became friendly with my Dad and remained a friend all his life. Many years afterwards Tyson laughingly suggested that he would engage three of his nieces to the three Meudell boys with a view to matrimony, so he evidently believed in the advantage of heredity in producing good stock in humans as in sheep. James Tyson left nearly 4,000,000 behind him without making a will. SIR JOHN FORREST Sir John Forrest was one of many good Australians of a bygone era. His three expeditions through the unknown territory of Central and Southern-Western Australia were epical. Every journey was made under the threat of death by thirst. From day to day 243 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT John Forrest never knew where his next drink would be secured. The torments of Tantalus standing in water up to the chin and not drinking a drop were as naught alongside the ever-present fear that water might not be found that day or the next. Once I complimented Sir John Forrest at a public meeting upon his explorations, and his concept of carrying water by pipes 300 miles to Coolgardie and Kal- goorlie. Mr. Deakin told me next day that Sir John Forrest said that no public tribute of praise had ever so greatly pleased him. Beside his hazardous exploring trips, his renowned political career was nothing in his own sight. C. C. Kingston, the brilliant South Australian statesman, was another big native- born Australian, who died in his prime. Once I wrote a series of six articles dealing with the over- borrowing and over-legislation of the six States, a deadly evil to-day, as it was then. South Australia as a culprit borrower and extravagant spender was wide open for stern criticism. The day after my article appeared, C. C. Kingston came past my office at 54, Queen Street, Melbourne, and with a heavy, nullah walking stick thrashed my brass name-plate, making two dents in it. It was the highest compliment every paid to me by a really great man. THREE FIRST-CLASS JOURNALISTS Three first-class journalists I knew were John H. Y. Nish of the Melbourne " Argus," John E. Scantlebury, originator of the Wild Cat Column in the Sydney " Bulletin," and Davison, called Peter, Symmons of Melbourne " Age." Jack Nish divides with Jack Stephens of the " Age " the honour of being the best sub-editor who ever worked on the Melbourne press. He was a born editor, one who could smell a libel through an envelope, was tactful, knew his paper's policy and spirit and by striking out or adding a 244 THREE FIRST-CLASS JOURNALISTS word could change the tenor of a paragraph. Jack Scantlebury had worked as a miner in Bendigo and knew the uncertainty and the chicanery inseparable from gold mining. His paragraphs were models of clarity and hit the spot every time. Scantlebury went to London to try his luck, and got hold of a poor instrument for his purpose in the " British Aus- tralasian," then owned by an Australian firm of stockbrokers, starved for money and badly managed. He came back to West Australia, discovered that gold stealing was universal on a gigantic scale and cabled back a long article costing jiio, which earned him the sack from his Stock Exchange bosses who disliked sensations. Peter Symmons has never had a successor on the Melbourne newspapers, because he was too brilliant and too crafty, a real Machiavelli of the press. Journalism in Melbourne nowadays is wishy-washy, tame and spiritless. There are no fighting journalists because there is no demand for them. Symmons could write fine topical verse, invent good stories, and comment on politics and sport at short notice. Among Australian journalists of the day there is one facile princeps, Donald MacDonald, and another, a professor emeritus of journalism in "Bung" Wilmot, men of exceptional attainments, both on the "Argus" staff. As a sports editor R. W. E. Wilmot is un- rivalled in the Commonwealth. George Bell, the engineer of the " Argus," is an Atlas who has carried that paper on his head and back for forty years. ROMANCE OF BIG BUSINESS The career of the late Sir Henry Jones is a remark- able instance of a great success in spite of heavy handicaps. He was the head of the well-known jam works which were established in Hobart more than seventy years ago by Mr. George Peacock, and in which he first worked as a factory hand and afterwards. PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT as foreman. He learned every phase of the great business which he afterwards directed from actual experience. He was entirely without educational advantages in his youth. He nevertheless made a keen study of business affairs, and his almost uncanny business sense enabled him to exercise a foresight and insight that were the envy of men who had every advantage of education and training. When the late Mr. George Peacock decided to retire from business, about thirty-six years ago, he offered Sir Henry Jones, of whose business ability he had formed a very high opinion, an opportunity for buying the business if he could arrange finance, on extended terms if necessary. The offer was accepted and Sir Henry Jones carried it on for a number of years in conjunc- tion with Mr. A. W. Palfreyman, another " big " man, and Mr. E. Peacock as partners. Later Sir Alfred Ashbolt, afterwards Agent-General for Tasmania, who had joined the firm as a clerk, became the fourth partner. From the time Sir Henry Jones assumed the control of the business rapid and continued progress was made. From the first factory in Hobart the business extended to Sydney, Melbourne, South Australia, London, South Africa, San Francisco, and New Zealand. Factories have been established in all these places for the canning of fruit and the manufacture of jam. In Hobart the concern has other interests and acts as agents for several steamship lines. Sir Henry Jones was considered to be one of the greatest men in Australia. He was capable of holding his own in the highest business circles in any part of the world. He had a creative mind and a quick brain, with an ability to get down to basic truths and not to be confused by side issues. 246 PEOPLE I HAVE MET PEOPLE I HAVE MET Two eminent judges of the Supreme Court Bench, Hodges and Irvine, worked their way upwards without much influence or many puissant friends. My father-in-law, John G. Dougharty, was asked by Harry Ricketson, an old client of his, to engage a tutor for his sons on a Riverina Station at a salary of 90 a year and the " run of his dover," meaning his board and lodging. Young W. H. Irvine, just then a new chum from Ireland, applied and at a per- sonal interview Dougharty gave him the billet and told him he would give him ^120 a year and risk refusal by Ricketson. Irvine was the best Premier Victoria ever had and is now Chief Justice, and ought to be Governor of the State. Hodges was tutor to the sons of Sir William Stawell, also a Premier and Chief Justice. Remember being in Melbourne on my first holiday after getting through the matricula- tion examination at the age of fourteen, and witnessed a practical joke played on Hodges by his fellow- boarders in Mrs. Garlick's guest house in Mackenzie Street. Hodges was in the lavabos when the con- spirators barred the door outside with huge baulks and propped up the hose so that it poured a cooling stream through the fanlight of the place foreigners label with a double zero. The future great judge looked very bedraggled when he emerged and went upstairs to dry. We travelled to Colombo with Judge Hodges once and he told me a good story of how Sir Simon Fraser, a wealthy railway contractor and squatter, wore a leather belt round his waist day and night containing 100 sovereigns on which he wished to save exchange by not buying a bank draft. The belt became so heavy and so hot that Fraser took it ashore at Colombo and got a draft instead. Another old squatter, John Moffatt of 247 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Hopkins Hill, Chatsworth, Victoria, was specially keen on saving bawbees by similar excursions in finance. In 1867 Moffatt invited the Duke of Edin- burgh to visit him at his new house at Chatsworth in Victoria and ordered from Mullen's Melbourne book shop half a ton of books, and from MacEwan's a double bedstead, twelve feet by twelve feet. It stood four feet above the floor, and there was a mahogany ladder of four steps by which to go to bed and get up. The Duke and John spent a merry summer evening with a verandah temperature of ninety degrees, discussing hot whisky toddy with the aid of real toddy ladles and plenty of lemons. Next morning His Royal Highness confessed that he was pressed to get up during the night and couldn't climb back, so he slept on the floor, the night being warm. This is not a ben trovato yarn because my father later on did the toddy stunt with Moffatt and missed his ladder and his bed in the middle of the winter. Edward (Teddy) El burn was one of the most interesting men I met because he was adventurous. He had lived a wonderful life in various countries and has always done things, and left his footprints on the sands of time as it were. Teddy was a midshipman, but did not stop long enough in the Navy to rise any higher. First knew him at Broken Hill in the " roar- ing eighties " where he was share-broking with Charlie Von Arnheim. There was a slump in the boom and scrip prices did a nose dive. Colin Templeton, now on the Melbourne Tramway Board, was then manager of the Bank of Australasia at Broken Hill and engaged keeping a neat overdraft for the firm of Elburn and Von Arnheim advanced against scrip. Head Office began to growl about the fading margin of the security and Elburn said he would go to Mel- bourne and see the superintendent. When he was away a fire broke out in Argent Street, Broken Hill, 248 PEOPLE I HAVE MET and played havoc with the wooden, tin and hessian shanties used as offices. Horace Destre'e, then Elburn's clerk, wired him, " Fire coming closer ; what shall I do ? " Teddy sent a characteristic reply : " Burn the bally books and take a holiday." Every- thing had been settled previously with the bank which did not lose any money. Teddy Elburn was a regular visitor to mining rushes and booms all over Australia and was popular everywhere. He was at Zeehan, Tasmania, with Gordon Lyon, Reggie Pell, and Everard Brown, went to Coolgardie early, on to Hannans, now Kalgoorlie gold-field, down to Norse- man, up to Cue and to most of the outer West Aus- tralian gold-fields. Then he wandered north to Chillagoe and Mount Garnet when those sadly over- rated duffer fields were at their zenith. Next, Teddy met my mate and myself at Mikhailovitch's Dock in Buenos Aires early one morning after a night trip from Monte Video. We went with him to the Phoenix Hotel and met his wife, formerly Miss Shadforth of Queensland, and his small daughter. Teddy had made money out of a gold and diamond mine at Matto Grosso in Brazil, and was then sitting behind a pile and looking at the world over the top of the pile's head. He was lending money at risky rates on the Buenos Aires Bourse against bundles of scrip. One firm collapsed and because he did not know the law regarding such loans made by aliens Teddy dropped his bundle and went away to Burmah. The war called him and he drove motor trucks full of high explosives for three years without accident. He thrashed a bullying corporal thrice his size and earned a week in clink, a Croix de la Boxe, and loud and prolonged applause from a large portion of the British army. Two incidents of early Broken Hill impressed me. One night at John de Baun's hotel at Silvertown, 249 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the town that preceded Broken Hill as a silver mining centre, there had been a gathering of the first owners of the Broken Hill leases which were just beginning to be valuable and saleable. W. R. Wilson, the well- known racing man, Willie Jamieson, George Mac- Culloch and Bowes Kelly had been dining and cele- brating their good luck. After dinner the dining- room filled with silver miners from all the little mines round about Silverton. There were cascades of " bubbly," and rivers of Scotch to be drunk, and everybody got full of drink, including the grand piano, a Schwechten, just imported by John de Baun. With tumblers as missiles, every mirror and picture on the walls was smashed to molecules and de Baun collected .200 for damages. Another riotous day was the opening of the Tarrawingee Flux Company's tramway by a grand banquet attended by many leading Adelaide and Melbourne mining men. An American named Bill Adams, who confessed when in his cups that he really did win the Battle of Waterloo, walked up the middle of the dining-table from the vice-chair- man's end to the chairman's, kicking aside the furnish- ings of the feast, also the food, drink and flowers. It was an awesome sight. A few years later very many of the same guests went by the ss. " Grafton " to a banquet at Strahan on Macquarie Harbour, Tas- mania, to celebrate the opening of the Mount Lyell railway. Every leading mining man in Melbourne was aboard, all those most closely connected with the history of the Broken Hill Proprietary and the Mount Lyell Companies. A terrific gale raged all night and finally the shaft jammed and the " Grafton " was drifting on to a lee shore. All the mighty mining magnates were below, mostly badly sick, Captain Morrisby, Willie Jamieson and I being on the bridge awaiting the ship to strike. The engineer patched up the shaft and when he came up to tell the Captain 250 PEOPLE I HAVE MET to go ahead we were exactly fifty yards from the breakers. Travelled once with a New Zealand delegation going to an Imperial Conference. A fine old gentle- man was Timi Kara, the Hon Jas. Carroll, whose mother was a Maori, beloved by everybody and especially by the Maoris. A newspaper reporter whom we met was beastly insulting to Timi Kara by imitating exactly a description of Maori religion, habits and customs given as a lecture by him in the saloon. He copied the voice, language and motions of the old gentleman in a ludicrous manner, and those in the smoke room who heard it left the room one by one as a protest. Went once with Colonel Charlie Umphelby who was killed at Driefontein, South Africa, in the Boer War to call on Arabi Pasha the famous Mahdi and leader of the insur- gents against the British in Egypt in 1882. Arabi. was a prisoner on parole in a house in the Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo, Ceylon. He asked us to tea and chatted about nothing at all. He looked the very antithesis of a fuzzy-wuzzy or a dancing dervish and did not seem at all dangerous. He and King Theebaw of Burma were the two hardest nuts the British had to crack in the nineteenth century. GREAT MEN I HAVE GROVELLED BEFORE Chief Justice George Higinbotham was easily the greatest man Victoria ever honoured in politics or law. In my busy buzzing days when I was sort of a public blow-fly, always getting up meetings, or starting reforms, or fomenting agitations, I frequently had to see Judge Higinbotham ; a more courteous gentleman never held a high public position. John Madden, C.J., was one of a notable family of public men, who used now and again to attend our public meetings, chiefly those of the Australian Natives 251 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Association, and lend us his aid to amuse the audience. Sir William Irvine, C.J., is one of the most extra- ordinary figures in Victorian history. I had a good deal to do with the Kyabram reform movement, and on one occasion the reformers swept the polls, and sent in 65 members out of 95 to follow Mr. Irvine, who reduced the Legislative Assembly to 65, the present number of members. Like a fool I worked very hard, neglecting my business and ruining my health through politics from which I got nothing, not even thanks from Premier Irvine or any of his Ministers. However, like Tarn O'Shanter, I was glorious, o'er all the ills of life, Victorious, and so far as I can see and think nothing matters ! s. MYER The most amazing business romance of Australia is the rise to affluence of a young Polish Jew from Warsaw Sidney Myer of Myer's Emporium, Bourke Street, Melbourne. He came to Victoria cashless, but not friendless, as relatives had firmly entrenched themselves in the ready-made toggery trade, without the second pair of trousers free. Myer was grub-staked with a pedlar's pack of haberdashery, and travelled to the thinly peopled Mallee District of Victoria selling pins, buttons, needles and threads at profit ranging from one to two thousand per cent. He used to replenish his canvas holdall at Ballarat where he was financed by another Polish nobleman called Flegeltaub, who had two buxom daughters, Julia and Nancy. Their father financed Sid. Myer who married Nancy and opened a fluff" shop in Bendigo in the building once called the Lyceum Theatre, Pall Mall, where in 1855 m y father heard Lola Montez, the international courtesan, sing to the diggers at the nightly concerts. Mrs. Myer is a capital business woman with an abundance of brains. Through her, Myer's business 252 GREAT MEN I HAVE GROVELLED BEFORE steadily expanded and bumped Craig, Williamson and Company's Bendigo branch so heavily that it began to roll and it was finally sold out to him. Next he came to town and picked a foothold in Bourke Street between Robertson and Moffat's and the most exclusive Buckley and Nunn's. On his left flank was old Westmore Stephens' old-fashioned draper's shop which like Oliver Goldsmith's traveller was a remote, unfriended, melancholy slow store for shop- pers. Sid. Myer is a human octopus with as many tentacles as a centipede has legs. Rapidly he has created a departmental store bigger than the Magasin de Louvre, or the Bon Marche* in Paris, greater than Wanamaker in Philadelphia or Gimball's in New York, very nearly as extensive as Marshall Field's in Chicago, or Selfridge's in London, and on the same scale as the White House and the Emporium in San Francisco, all of which I have inspected inter- nally. Myer has created this vast enterprise just as the world was made, out of nothing. He has crippled all his big rivals in the city and smothered dozens of small shops in the suburbs. What will be the end of this gigantic wen nobody can foresee, and as a trained financier I am dubious about it. In 1925 Myer sold 100,000 contributing shares in his company for 25J.cash a-piece, or a premium of 5^., and it is said he contem- plates opening a shop in New York. If he does, the city of Much Noise and More Dirt will be able to see this profoundly crafty Jew pile up a billion dollars and land it high and dry. He knows more than Edward Bok, Isaac Marcosson, Dr. Frank Crane, Pierpont Morgan, Babe Ruth, Stephen Lea- cock and W. T. Tilden compounded, smelted and moulded into one man. The romance of an Australian industry is well exemplified by an extraordinary growth of the con- fectionery manufacture of McPherson, Robertson in 253 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne. Mr. Robertson is barely fifty years old, but with extraordinary ability, energy and foresight he has built up one of the greatest businesses of its kind on earth. The MacRobertson works cover thirty acres of space peopled by nearly 3000 employees with a wages bill of 500,000 a year. MacRobertson turns out over one thousand kinds of confectionery, and the factory is quite self- contained, because machinery and woodwork of all kinds are made on the premises. The motor fleet for transporting the productions of the firm includes 150 motor vehicles all coloured in old gold, labelled with the identifying sign of MacRobertson's " Old Gold." This business is one of the most colossal in Australia and is valued by the proprietor at 3,000,000. PEOPLE I HAVE MET Theodore Fink is easily the most intellectual man in Melbourne, and through the " Herald " newspaper group wields much power. Though he does not speak French he claims he was born in the Channel Islands. Theodore right through the last land boom and the present loan boom has been the Fidus Achates of W. L. Baillieu, the uncrowned ruler of Victoria. It has been a good co-partnership for both of these two preternaturally able and astute men. In the last boom they both took great risks, plunged into the vortex of the mad gamble and failed totally, completely and extensively, and made compositions with their creditors. The clean-up and burial of the land boom was the quickest and smartest thing ever done in Victoria. Two hundred and forty-eight compositions were made by boomers and borrowers with their creditors, and literally thousands of minor operations were performed be- tween banks and mortgagees with small borrowers 254 PEOPLE I HAVE MET who were toppled over by the fierce financial gale that ranged with extraordinary velocity. The financial fabric of Victoria was built on false valuations, just as it is to-day. It is hard for anyone who did not go through the downfall of 1891-3 to understand how complete was the annihilation of values. Every piece of land, goods, food, securities, houses tumbled down and every value crumbled, broke up and fell in dust. The present generation do not know what havoc can be wrought by the collapse of a boom. The portents and omens are that all Australia within the next few years will go through another financial break- down, another extirpation of values, another wiping out of credit, of money and of prices. We are right back to a repetition of the universal over-borrowing, over-lending, and over-spending which ended in the ruin of thousands of innocent people. And now as then the creators of untrue values and prices will feather their nests and go scot free. No dishonesty will be visited by punishment. All booms collapse so soon as this acid test is applied, " Does this farm, or factory, or shop earn a reasonable, not a high, rate of interest on its capital value ? " William Lawrence Baillieu was the High Priest of the Victorian land boom, an extraordinary astute money-maker, profoundly subtle where a profit is concerned, a remarkable financier, and a past-master in the art of handling clever men. Among the romances of big business in Australia in my time the career of William Lawrence Baillieu stands on a pinnacle over them all. Born of humble parents and only moderately educated like most successful money-getters, W.L. went to a state school at Queenscliff, Victoria. He was a clerk in the Bank of Victoria for several years, where he learnt to write a good fist and keep bank books neatly. By ancestry W.L. is descended from French, perhaps from the 255 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT Channel Islands, which have belonged to England since 1066 when the poor miserable English were overwhelmed by a French conquistador, much as Pizzaro treated the Incas of Peru. W.L. came to town as the land boom was burgeoning and joined Donald Munro, son of James Munro, a pious teetotal Premier of Victoria, and a wowser high in the counsels of that dull race. It was a gay era for real estate agents, who wore purple and fine linen and ate and drank heavily and well. Duncan Gillies, an ex-digger of the gold-mining days, had begun to borrow money in London to develop Victoria. James Munro was secretary of a building society and used his son's firm, Munro and Baillieu, to buy and sell city and suburban land on a big scale. Munro, senior, was Chairman of the Federal Bank formed by J. B. Watson, a Bendigo quartz millionaire and John Robb, a railway contractor. Watson got out of the bank early because he died, but Robb had to step in. The bank was always badly managed, and the directors and their pals soon borrowed its whole capital of 400,000 and about 800,000 of its deposits besides. Munro and Baillieu had numerous overdrafts at the Federal Bank and discounted land sale bills at any bank that would take them, which meant most of the banks. For three or four years the land gamble was a riot, subdivisional sales every Saturday, city property sales every day, the creation of building societies, land banks, and land syndicates were the chief factors of the madness. All rotten and based on false valuations by silly asses of auctioneers. Revenue or rents were never used to test values. The cry of the land leech was, " How much will you give ? " Merchants, lawyers, doctors, accountants gave up their lawful occupations to job in land blocks, large and small. Matthew Henry Davies, Tom Bent, Frank Stuart, Jimmy Mirams, all the five Finks, all the six Kitchens, 256 W. L. BAILLIEU five Davies brothers, G. W. Taylor, J. G. Turner, ' The Flying Pieman," Joe Woolf, the solicitor, Mark Moss, the moneylender, three Derhams, P. H. Engel, W. Greenlaw, J. W. Hunt, W. G. Sprigg, two Kings, and the whole of the Baillieu family of nearly one dozen joined in the merry play. All through the smash of the Commercial Bank, which told the knell of the dying boom, W. L. Baillieu was the outstanding figure of the cranky march of the citizens to nearly universal insolvency. Strong, able, self-controlled, a born money spinner, a natural gambler in land lots and scrip certificates, W. L. Baillieu is incomparably the cleverest financier in Australia. He burst for a million pounds and he will die leaving double that. His money chiefly since his smash has come from the zinc dumps and mines of Broken Hill and from the Carlton Brewery, a union of all the breweries of Melbourne. Profound and penetrating he has trained his brothers and his sons in his own methods. His is a really notable family physically and intellectually big. THE " BULLETIN " No paper in the Empire has done more to mould the thought and guide the policy and politics of a great continent destined to house a great nation, than the Sydney " Bulletin " founded by Jack F. Archibald, an Australian to the backbone and spinal marrow. Convention, ritual, tradition are the three curses of the British people, especially those of them living in that funny little group of islets in the North Sea, all cold, wet, dank and damp. These three char- acteristics make the British a placid, long-suffering, contented people, accepting without complaint just whatever their betters, meaning those in the rich and ruling classes and castes, choose to give or allow them. The Briton is a servile wormy sort of person who wor- 257 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT ships the squire and bows the knee to the titled jackanapes, who claim ancestors or wealth or both. Archibald denied the value of convention and scoffed at ritual. He possessed a brilliant intellect and power- ful will, and clamped his views and opinions on the life and thought of Australia, so that to-day it is a freer country than any other and follows the true and proper policy for any country desiring to be great, of being intensely selfish and self-protective. More than six thousand stories and poems, and over five thousand drawings reach the " Bulletin " annually. They come from every corner of the Commonwealth, Maoriland, New Guinea, Fiji and the other islands that dot the Pacific. Every overseas mail brings contributions from a diplomatic office in Spain ; from a farmer in Paraguay ; from an artist in Paris ; from a journalist at Toronto, Canada ; from a musical critic at Manchester ; from an Inland Mission station in China ; from a bank in Constantinople. The list of Australian contributors runs far into four figures, and embraces almost every walk of life, from judges up or down to fruit hawkers. I am proud to be the oldest living contributor of the " Bulletin." THE " MELBOURNE REVIEW " The " Melbourne Review " was founded by Henry Gyles Turner, Arthur Patchett Martin, Alexander Sutherland, A. M. Topp and H. K. Rusden, all friends of mine. H. G. Turner asked me to con- tribute to the " Review " and I wrote several slashing articles on " Australia for the Australians " and " Imperial Federation " from a purely Australian angle, which did not increase my popularity, because my contention was that the Australian is an improved edition of the British from up in Europe. It is a pity the " Melbourne Review " closed down in 1885, 258 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW for a magazine of its high standard was and is badly wanted in Australia to present the Australian view of every public problem in politics, in economics and in sociology. What our grandparents thought right and true in Great Britain, a cold, small, over-crowded country, is frequently grotesque and unsuitable in a young, immense, and intensely progressive country like Australia. I have contributed articles on a myriad of subjects to most of the leading journals and newspapers and have always found the best channel for any patriotic thoughts and views to be the Sydney " Bulletin," the only journal that does not mix Imperialism with Australianism. I believe in a Monroe doctrine for Australia " Hands off and Keep out." NEWSPAPERS On 1 6th March, 1887, forty years ago, I was elected a Fellow of the Statistical Society, London, for work done for the defunct Melbourne " Daily Telegraph," a morning daily newspaper of Conserva- tive principles mixed with religious tenets and narrow wowserish views about drink and sport. It was extremely chauvinistic in its support of good little Queen Victoria. The ' Telegraph's " editor, the Rev. W. Fitchett, a military historian of high repute, was a good leader writer, but not worldly enough to thrust his paper forward as David Syme was at that time pressing the Melbourne " Age " upward past the Melbourne ** Argus." Alexander McKinley and his brother, James, managed the paper and George Wamsley made a most competent financial and com- mercial editor. It was always supposed the Davies group of land speculators supplied the capital, of which there was not enough, and the paper laid down and died. As I had done a lot of journalism by this time, Angus Mackay, the owner of the Bendigo 259 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT " Advertiser " asked me to go to Sydney on the office staff of the Sydney " Daily Telegraph," then being founded by J. B. Watson, the Bendigo million- aire, Sir (then Mr.) Malcolm MacEacharn, his son- in-law, the shipping potentate, Angus Mackay and Sir John Mclntyre, with other Bendigo investors. As I was that rare bird in those days, a certified Pitman shorthander, Mackay offered me six pounds a week. The salary being puny I declined the offer. MELBOURNE NEWSPAPERS One of the greatest chances of my life was lost when it looked so easy to grasp. In 1907 I conceived the idea of raising 200,000 cash in London to start a morning daily paper in Melbourne, preferably one to be published simul- taneously in Sydney. The success of the Melbourne " Herald " and steady growth of population were the basis of my conviction that a newspaper would pay well. In 1907 the population of Melbourne was 525,000 and of Victoria 1,000,000. The circulations of the daily papers were roughly, " Age," 100,000 to 105,000 ; " Argus," 55,000 to 60,000 ; and " Herald," 50,000, while their profits were " Age," 70,000 a year ; " Argus," and " Australasian " 40,000 ; and " Herald," 40,000 a year, taken from its published balance sheet. One could see the population of Melbourne growing faster propor- tionately than that of Victoria. Outside Melbourne there was no country newspaper worth a pinch of mustard seed, nor is there now, and it looked an easy task to smother them to extinction. There was only one great business journalist in Melbourne in those days, David Syme of the " Age," and his intellectual successor has not so far popped his head up over the journalistic horizon. David Syme had a long struggle to establish the " Age " on a firm foundation, 260 MELBOURNE NEWSPAPERS His was a strong despotic personality, eager to enforce his views and will on politicians. He had an almost fierce spirit of independence combined with great assertiveness. David Syme knew the value of a good editor and he took Arthur Lloyd Windsor away from the " Argus," and as editor of the " Age " he reigned nearly forty years and carried the paper fast and well ahead of the " Argus " in power and popularity. The " Age " has always been char- acterized by a spirit of progressiveness, and its leader writing is always strongly affirmative and positive. The " Age " has always warmly advocated the broad interests of the community at large, and by its steady and energetic championship of protection to Aus- tralian industry has done more to build up Australia solidly as a nation and as a manufacturing country than any other paper in the Commonwealth except the Sydney " Bulletin." David Syme was a great Australian and the influence of his life's labour will be felt by this country for a hundred years, because it is embedded in the spirit of the people of Australia. David Syme bought out his nephew, Joseph Cowen Syme, paying 140,000 for his one-fourth interest, and so valuing the " Age " at 576,000. To-day it is worth 1,000,000. The real founder of the " Argus " was Edward Wilson, a glowing enthusiast about the foundations of British Colonies like Edward Wakefield of South Australia. When directed by Wilson the " Argus " was not only an ultra-Radical paper, but was distinguished by the use of violent and insulting language towards representatives of the British Crown, as well as for its strong advocacy of purely Victorian interests. Wilson was not a business man and drifted into financial low water when the gold yield of the colony fell off. He had to get help from Lauchlan Mackinnon, a second- or third-rate Victorian sheep-farmer. When Mackinnon joined s 261 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the " Argus " office the atmosphere underwent a complete change. The paper no longer existed to serve the community, but to return profits on the capital engaged, so anything likely to interfere with proceeds was suppressed and the editorial staff was reduced to a status similar to that of serfs and extreme parsimony was the order of the day. While the " Argus " watched its profits and curtailed its policy, the " Age " ex- panded its efforts for the service of the country and rapidly forged ahead of the " Argus," which paper was unable to retain the services of able men. The proprietorship was constituted of Edward Wilson, 77 shares ; Lauchlan Mackinnon, 55 shares ; Ross and Spowers, 12 shares ; total, 144 shares. When Mackinnon died he left 43 snares to his adopted daughter and 12 shares to her son. He left his nep- hew, L. C. Mackinnon, nothing ; but L.C. displaced Hugh George as General Manager of the " Argus," and Hugh George found a better position as manager of the Sydney " Morning Herald." The late L.C. Mackinnon was discovered by Lauchlan Mackinnon during a trip to Isle of Skye, near Scotland, and taking a fancy to him said he would make him his heir. So L.C. was placed in the " Scotsman " office in Edinburgh to learn the newspaper trade. It is said when L. C. Mackinnon reached Melbourne, the old man wanted him to marry his adopted daughter, and L.C. refused, being rebellious enough to marry a widow who died within three years. Then his uncle gave L.C. the choice of marrying his daughter or leaving the " Argus." He yielded and married, yet the old chap left him nothing in his will. G. F. H. Schuler succeeded A. L. Windsor as editor of the " Age," and for forty years has been an admirable and sagacious editor. He has had the able support of the best sub-editor this country ever saw in John Stephens. F. W. Haddon, editor of the " Argus," 262 MELBOURNE NEWSPAPERS was distinguished by conscientious proof-reading and by dull common sense unrelieved by a spark of genius. His successor, E. S. Cunningham, is much the same sort of man, not highly educated, has a keen nose for news and is addicted to rather childish forms of sensationalism ; still he suits the dull, conservative octogenarian policy of the " Argus." The council of management has David Watterson as representative of the Wilson Trustees at 2000 a year, while young " Lauchie " Mackinnon and W. J. Spowers represent the Mackinnon interest of shares. David Watterson, like Howard Willoughby who took the editorship till he had a paralytic stroke, is neither well educated nor well read, but on F. W. Haddon's death he slipped into his seat on the Council of Advice. Next I propounded a scheme to my cousin, Sir Robert Inglis, Chairman of the London Stock Ex- change, to buy the business of James MacEwan and Company, the leading ironmongery and hardware business in Melbourne. " Bob " Inglis held 20,000 of " B " debentures and wanted to realize. He sent me on to Mr. Bruty, his solicitor, but we could not arrange with the London liquidator of the company, Mr. R. J. Jeffrey, so another good money-maker went wrong from my standpoint. Thomas Luxton, an ex-sharebroker who bought MacEwan's business from the liquidator, funked the responsibility and died, but his sons have pulled it through and placed it on its former pedestal as a paying business. In some former state of transmigration of my soul I feel sure I must have either been a black cat or a Bolshevik, my luck has been so bad and despicable. Well, what does it matter ! I have had a happy and merry life, full of delightful experiences around and over all the Seven Seas. Three popular Australian fetishes are Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon, and Eureka Stockade, 263 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT an author, a poet, and a riot, all purely English and not at all Australian. Marcus Clarke's book about the brutal treatment of English convicts by English military officers and English warders is called, " For the Term of his Natural Life," was a newspaper serial story written in gruesome English, and possess- ing nothing human nor edifying. It was a bestial story bestially told, and has no literary merits nor any right to live. Marcus Clarke won a spurious fame because the book was accepted in England as a faithful picture of home life in Australia. Adam Lindsay Gordon is a versifier, a mere poetaster, more of a jockey than a literary man, and he had not a single Australian characteristic. He was born an Englishman, lived an Englishman, and preferred to die an Englishman. A small and unimportant cult of English-born Australians profess to adore Gordon's verse, written as though all Australians admired the horse and horse racing and could under- stand the loose thoughts and ideas of Gordon's second-rate poetry. Bobby Burns may appeal to all lovers of humanity throughout the Empire, but Adam Lindsay Gordon only catered for the sport- loving, unlearned and unintellectual people who like to see and read about other men riding horses though they themselves have never been upon one. The Eureka Stockade riot was a comic opera rebellion staged by a lot of alien agitators who were " Agin the Government," and were too mean to pay taxes or licences to dig for gold. There were no Australians amongst them and it is a blemish on Australian history to elevate a mere police court event to a pinnacle suitable for an historical epic. The Eureka Stockade ought to be banned and forgotten. 264 NAMES OF STATES NAMES OF STATES This is the right place to have a hearty laugh at the funny names of the seven Australian provinces. They are all misnomers and quite incongruous. Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. What poverty of imagination labelled Queensland, a most magnificent sub-tropical country of amazing fertility and great natural beauty with a name so utterly commonplace ! Having seen South Wales, a foggy, black, forbidding stretch of bleak land, it was a base libel on the truly magnificent foundation colony of Australia to call it after a dreary patch of barren waste. It is not New, it is not South, and it does not resemble Wales in any particular. The sooner the name is changed the happier every true Australian will be. Why does not some patriotic rich Australian native offer a price of 5000 for the best substitute name for New South Wales, the competition to be confined to men and women born here. Victoria, so called after a little German lady, has a ridiculous name for one of the most beautiful and diversified tracts of land on earth. South and West and North Australia, how bizarre and baroque and banal these names sound and appear. Surely we could find better. When the Commonwealth comes to be cut up into twelve states, as it surely must, these three titles ought to be the first to go. Tasmania, the counterpart of the best half of England, the south, a country of rare beauty, should not labour along under a Dutch name, that of a stupid, uncouth Dutch sailor. And it is a crime against nomenclature, against patriotism, against common sense, and above all against aesthetics, the science or theory of the beautiful, to call Maoriland New Zealand. Where is Old Zealand ? Is there 265 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT any Zealand anywhere ? And why has such a fantastic, odd, funny, grotesque nickname been fastened on the wonderland of the world ? Have you seen Maoriland ? Do you know it has no equal as a country on this planet ? Do you know it is the most splendid gem of the British Empire, fertile, superb, enchanting ? And, above all, its men, women and children are the healthiest and finest of human beings ! And yet this extraordinarily well-favoured region is called New Zealand ! Bah ! J. G. DOUGHARTY My father-in-law, John George Dougharty, M.L.C., was the doyen of Stock and Station auctioneers, and was a king among equals in his day at Flemington sale yards. He was partly trained as a doctor in Scotland, but before he finished his course he was asked by a close friend to go to Australia, then far away, like Ultima Thule. Dougharty's father was a lawyer in the town of Hamilton, who won and married the daughter of Rebecca, Duchess of Lindsay and Balcarres, sister of the then Duke of Hamilton. J. G. Dougharty was a cousin of the loth Duke of Hamilton, and through him related to the Earl of Coventry, and the present Duchess of Montrose, who was born Lady Mary Hamilton and married the Duke when he was Marquis of Grahame. Dougharty was manager in New South Wales for the Scottish Aus- tralian Pastoral Company when the gold rush in 1 849 attracted him to California, whither he sailed with Dr. Macintosh. They invested all their money in a cargo of medicine and reached San Francisco safely. In the harbour their schooner was rammed and went to Davy Jones' locker with all the medicine. The adventurers did not care for the digger's life and as they were not too successful they returned to Aus- tralia. Dougharty became a stock auctioneer and 266 J. G. DOUGHARTY made so much money that at one time or another he owned Omeo, Bindi and Tongio stations in Victoria, Yarronvale in Queensland, and Barham in New South Wales. Sir Rupert Clarke was ajackeroo on the Omeo station, along with Jack Dougharty, afterwards known to fame as the generous backer of Paddy Slavin who fought Charlie Mitchell for the championship of England, and was beaten. Years after I went with a London cousin to call on Slavin, who kept an hotel in Air Street, Piccadilly, and as we got near the front door, sailors came hustling through it on to the footpath in a slightly soiled and disorderly condition. Paddy explained that they were the crew of a Sydney ship who had been drinking their cheques all day and it was closing time, anyhow. Alongside J. G. Dougharty, as an auctioneer of live stock and almost his equal, was J. C. Stanford, of Poers, Rutherford and Company, a very prince of salesmen, whose gift of language, backed by a vast reservoir of good stories, made him the best auctioneer of his day. Dougharty was judge to the Victoria Racing Club for the first nine years of its existence. Another popular Victorian auctioneer was Joe Archi- bald of Warrnambool, a schoolmate of mine who had no equal in his era, although Arthur Tuckett of Melbourne, in his prime, and George B. Appleton, as wool salesman for Goldsbrough, Mort and Company were close runners-up to Archibald in deftness and skill. RANDOLPH BEDFORD Shortly after the first Broken Hill silver boom I had the good luck to meet Randolph Bedford, a brilliant and versatile genius, a true Australian whose thoughts are ever turned inward towards his native land and his own fellow-countrymen and their welfare. Like myself, Bedford does not believe in convention as a rule of life, nor in tradition as a guide to conduct 267 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT The daily ritual so strictly observed by the English in England does not appeal to us. Only Chinese respect their ancestors and most Australians, like us, think we confer an honour on our great grandparents by being born, and have nothing to thank them for. Randolph Bedford, without the doubtful advantage of a university training, is an extraordinarily well- read man with a highly cultivated intellect. He agrees with Voltaire and myself that solemnity is a disease used as a means of profit by those afflicted with it, such as bank managers, doctors, judges, lawyers and owners of funeral parlours. We say, woe unto the philosophers who cannot laugh away their learned wrinkles. Randolph is utterly indifferent to the praise or blame of his fellows, and does not care a pinch of sand, as Virgil wrote, for either Trojan or Tyrian. He does care for the welfare of his native land and its people, and agrees with me that for an Australian to think Imperially is mere impertinence. Let the chaps up on top of the world do all that, and let us Australians alone to follow out our destiny of finally winning the hegemony of the world, in a natural leadership of all the other nations. Bedford's chief virtue is to be everything by turns and nothing long miner, journalist, art and dramatic critic, poet, author, dramatist and legislator. In the course of nearly six hundred revolving moons (for he is nearly fifty years old) he has been a statesman and a violinist, but he has never tried to be the other thing. He is too liberal to make a lot of money, and has the softest and biggest heart possible for a human body to hold. Generosity that is Randolph Bedford. He began life resolved to play Hamlet in the biggest building in London, but had to quit that vaulting ambition because he never could train down to have a thin, lugubrious face and a flat tummy like Hamlet ought to have to succeed. 268 ALBERT EDWARD LANGFORD ALBERT EDWARD LANGFORD One of the by-products of the Mount Lyell boom was the late Albert Edward Langford, an extra- ordinary youngster who made a lot of money quickly and spent it freely. He was a got-too-rich quick lad, who fluked a fortune before learning the value of money. Langford began as liftboy in the Mutual Store, Melbourne, served as office boy to M. H. Davies, the solicitor, who became Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, and finally became clerk to Bowes Kelly, about the time Kelly quarrelled with James Crotty over the sale of the Mount Lyell Mine. Crotty took Langford, with all his confidential information, over as his private secretary, and put him into all " the good things," " the dogs and monkeys," on the outskirts of Mount Lyell, such as North Lyells, South Lyells, Lyell Comstocks, Lyell Consols, with all their litters of North and South and Extendeds, all in no liability companies. Crotty and Langford got volumes of scrip for infinitely less than nothing. When bornite, a valuable ore of copper, was exposed in the cutting of a road on the North Mount Lyell Company's lease, all the surrounding dogs and monkeys in the Crotty menagerie began to chatter and climb up on the Stock Exchange. Albert Edward thought it was time to make what Tommy Luxton of the Stock Exchange used to call a " dry bit " of solid cash, so he went into a private hospital in East Melbourne for a minor operation, like an ingrowing toe-nail or a wart on his ear, or something not fatal, and stopped there six weeks. Nobody was allowed to see Bertie, who sold every share he owned and banked ^40,000. Then he got better and came out of hospital. There had been coolness between Bertie and Bowes Kelly, but Bowes relented when Bertie 269 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT took him the option over the Briseis tin mine, Tas- mania, and finally they joined forces. Langford took the float to London and was rebuffed everywhere, tin being 90 a ton and unfashionable. The story of how Langford met a lord's son in a house of pleasure is ben trovato whether true or not, and gave him a wad of shares to help Langford to get a board of directors for the proposed Briseis Tin Mines, Limited. They met outside the door of the bathroom and Bertie invited the young scion of nobility to take his bath first and join him in a " small of bubbly " in his bedroom. The coup came off", for Bertie and his lordling went east to the city, after a light breakfast of Pommery and Greno, and bagged two directors before luncheon. The float went ofF flying, and the moral is that it is wise to be kind to titled persons you meet in cathedrals or the other places. SPORT I had the good fortune to see Briseis win the Melbourne Cup in 1876, and at the same meeting she won the Derby and the Oaks. Saw Carbine win the Cup in 1890, and having seen about thirty Cup races run I am entitled to say that Carbine and Briseis were the two best gentleman and lady race- horses Australia ever possessed. It amuses me nowa- days to hear greenhorns and new arrivals on the turf talk about animals like Manfred and Heroic, who win a race smartly and then " go into smoke," as the burglars say, for a month or two. The finest steeple- chase course in the world is the Warrnambool, for a cross-country steeplechase, and I have seen the Liverpool Grand National run over four and a half miles. Saw Tommy Corrigan win the Warrambool Steeplechase one year. He was then riding for Frank Tozer before joining Hughie Gallagher, the racing publican with the four pretty daughters. I knew 270 SPORT Wig Enderson, another rider over the sticks, Tom Hales and Bill Yeomans and think them better, because brainier riders than the jockeys of to-day. The soundest and handsomest sire we ever had here was Panic, standing at Henry Phillips', Bryan O'Lynn, stud, near Warrnambool, away back in the times of the Barmecides. MELBOURNE ARGUS AND ORIEL COLUMN Not many people know how the amusing " Oriel " column was started in "The Melbourne Argus" in 1890 or thereabouts. At that time newspaper men were underpaid, reporters especially. There were half a dozen brilliant young men on the " Argus " and " Age " who met in Matooreko's fish cafe in Elizabeth Street, near Hosie's Hotel. One Saturday evening, and over " one doushaine of the besht " oysters, they decided to add to their 4 IQJ. a week by publishing a paper of their own. Donald Mac- Donald, the best of all Australian journalists was elected editor. The most of the copy was written by John Sandes, B.A., and Davison Symmons, known to our coterie as " Peter," two capable journalists, as versatile as they were brilliant. The two clever Blair sisters, daughters of a famous literary man of the Early Victorian period, David Blair, were co-opted on the staff. The rest of us wrote pars, for honour's sake. " Bohemia " was a brilliant journal of wit, satire and humour, which had no right or need to perish. General Manager L. C. Mackinnon of the " Argus " consulted General Manager Joe Syme of the " Age," over the telephone about the excellent stuff their reporters were manufacturing in their own time. The upshot was that Mackinnon called his men in and said he would pay them each 2 a week more to open a column in the " Argus " on 271 Saturday for verse and persiflage and stifle " Bohemia." Unluckily this was done, and a journal of distinction, that ought to have become " The Literary Digest " of Australia, was quietly chloroformed, or had its throat cut, I forget which. Johnnie Sandes named the column " Oriel," after his Oxford College. " Peter " Symmons has never had an equal on the Melbourne press as a writer of light verse, and he had an uncanny power of ridicule. There were some good chaps on the " Herald " when Sam Winter was editor. It is a pity the " Evening Standard " had not enough capital to turn the corner. ' Jimmy " Thompson, its creator, deserved better luck than to be gobbled up by the " Herald," a shockingly inferior yellow paper. Rea and O'Toole, two Irishmen, and Jack Blackham, a Bendigo journalist, were on the staff for years, and the only tip-top journalist the paper ever had before Theodore Fink breathed his divine afflatus into the " Herald," was Jack Nish, the ideal great sub-editor, for many years on the " Argus." 272 CHAPTER X EARLY EXPERIENCES HOTELS, CAFES, DINNERS, ENTERTAIN- MENTS Six Bendigo bank clerks and I came to Melbourne to see Briseis win the Melbourne Cup, and we spent the night before sight-seeing. Melbourne was a roughish sort of a town in those days, wide open and frankly immoral. Hotel bars did not close till 11.30, and as "wowsers" had not been invented then, and the police force was below strength, there was no repression of drink or of gaiety. During our evening stroll we country greenhorns called in wherever there was an open house. The Exchange Hotel in Swanston Street, with bars upstairs and down, was filled with well-dressed hetirae, gay, laughing and chatty. All were drinking " bubbly " and nobody was tipsy. Diagonally across the road at the Blue Posts Hotel, now the Temperance and General Life Building, not like its confrere behind the Burlington Arcade, London, there were about six bars, filled with files de joie to the number of one hundred. The kerosene lamps shone brightly, the barmen (because then barmaids had not been dis- covered) were busy opening Moet and Chandon, Pommery and Greno and Krug, by the dozen bottles, and everybody was jolly. The next port of call was the Earl of Zetland, where more Cyprians, descendants of Thais, Lais and Phryne, were gathered in a crowd of fifty. Then we sallied up to deal's and found the PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT u pub " packed with the frail sisterhood, pleasant and charming, and not a vulgar trull nor trollop amongst them. It was an easy tack to the " Saddling Paddock " of the Theatre Royal, then a vast vestibule with a quarter of a mile of bars enclosing a coulisse crowded with well-dressed men and a few diggers in red shirts and cabbage tree hats, bookmakers, jockeys, club men and the ommium gatherum of a superior village, with more and more women. Here there were literally hundreds more ladies of pleasant manners and easy virtue, who had never even heard of a cocotte or a wanton. Right up Bourke Street to the top we called at all the places where fermented and spirituous liquors were retailed ; also at Ned Bitton's for oysters and Jack Heard's for a dressed crab. The demi-monde were everywhere in crowds. Where did they live, and how, and where have they gone ? The city only mustered 250,000 people, and here were loose women of no importance in hundreds. They mostly lived in the near-by suburbs, Carlton, Fitzroy and East Melbourne. Lonsdale Street East was the centre of the better class of prostitutes, living in the famous houses kept by Scotch Maude, Madame Brussels (said to have been a sweetheart of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867), and Biddy O'Connor, while round the corner was Mother Eraser's, a favourite pleasure house of the clubmen and merry lads of the village. They were all well- conducted bagnios, healthy and not expensive. In the suburbs were more pretentious maisons de joie y supported by city merchants and professional men full of carnal sin. What has become of these love places and their habitues ? Where are they to-day ? Gradually the Puritans annexed the money and the power of the community, and the Scots church began to head the list of collections on Hospital Sunday. Like the bells of St. Marguerite in Paris, which tolled 274 EARLY EXPERIENCES the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the police, under a pillar of the church, Chief Commis- sioner of Police, H. M. Chomley, began and carried out a social clean-up. One by one the street walkers were locked up, one after another the gay houses were closed, and the inmates of dozens of suburban joints were frightened by Presbyterian policemen, while the joyousness of Melbourne's night-life was silently squelched. That class of useful and necessary handmaidens has vanished from the public gaze, although still alive in increased numbers. One fears that the motor car has become a perambulating brothel and the hip-pocket flask does tide rest. Australia being a working man's country, in the sense that most men and women have to work for living, and there are very few idle rich, there is not much money spent upon mistresses or the maintenance of imitation harems. Of course there are plenty of rich men who have a second home in a distant suburb, but no class or caste exists of well-born, well-educated ladies who are well paid to make the rich men happy. In London, Paris, New York, Berlin, and, to a lesser degree, in many new working-men's cities, like San Francisco and Los Angeles, there are hundreds of well-kept women. In Australia there are very few such Messalinas, because the rich Australian is not a sybarite, but a home-keeping youth who is kept under surveillance, and cannot sport even a femme de menage. The poor beggar doesn't know how, and most of his equals are so bucolic and primitive they don't even know how to order a proper dinner. That is a faculty inbred and instinctive, and nearly all the rich Australians had labourers for grandpapas and shop-girls for grandmammas. We are, in fact, we Australians, a nation of crude raw people, the very antithesis of sybarites. PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT CAFES AND RESTAURANTS To my soul of a boulevardier a good cafe is a great and soothing delight, while my travelling spirit yearns for a first-class hotel. One trip my mate and I listed no dining places in London, and ticked them all off. The best dinner of that lot we had specially ordered from George Krehl, at the Cafe Verrey, Regent Street. We had reached London, across America, and had sampled the cuisine at Del- monisco's and Rector's, the famous New York restau- rants. Those two dinners were carte blanche to the chef, and Verrey 's excelled them both. Then we gave a farewell dinner to my travelling companion at Romano's, and the Roman whom I had known since 1884 produced a refection with wines en suite which could not be excelled, even though it had been ordered by Heliogabalus. One of the guests, acting as treasurer, collected the sum of five pound each, four raddition, from those present, and played poker after dinner with the Roman and two friends. He lost the whole 100 and never paid Romano's bill ! Simpson's in the Strand was a useful place in those days for a solid English dinner, a meal that always gives me varicose veins on my liver. Pagani's Cafe Royal, Oddenino's and Gambrinus were the best restaurants at that time. Many a roystering we had at supper in the Hotel Continental, the St. James' Restaurant, nee "Jimmy's," and the Globe. We tried them all and liked 'em all, including the dozens of fair and frail ladies we met in all those 1 10 taverns, hotels, night clubs, buffets, estaminets and posadas. Life then was one delirious plaisaunce, supported, by rude health and lots of money. Because the country contains people belonging to over one hundred races, the United States revels in international cookery. In the big cities there are restaurants which cater for the nationals of every 276 CAFES AND RESTAURANTS European nation, and if you care to search for them you can vary your diet and change your environment thrice daily. Mother Gum and I mapped out San Francisco once, and went to a different eating house for every meal. In my youth I've done a bit of kangaroo hunting, pig-sticking, going down mines, and climbing high mountains, but for pure placid enjoyment give me as a pastime the sport of searching for fresh foreign restaurants. And look where we've eaten good dinners. At Henry's, Paillard's, Voisin, Joseph's, Foyot, Marguerey, Cafe* Americain, Cafe" de la Paix in Paris, and in many estaminets in Boule Miche at Montmartre. How sweet their memory still ! Vienna at her pinnacle of prosperity was the most alluring city in Europe, and the food and cooking in the best cafes was a revelation even to me a citizen of the world. In Dresden, in Frankfort, in Hamburg, in Berlin one dined and wined in the very best style. And in Copenhagen, the Hague, and Amsterdam and Brussels (think of the gorgeous Cafe Riche there) every meal was a bit of bliss. At Tokio, Shanghai, Batavia, Singapore, Colombo (do you remember the G.O.H. in Gus Loosen's days ?), Rio Janeiro, Buenos Aires, yes, and at Capetown, one has had meals whose remembrance will last for eternity. PARIS Was taken to a supper at the Cafe Americain once, perfectly decorous and quiet, at which the gentlemen were dressed in evening clothes of the finest make and the four lady guests wore nothing. The can-can, or high kicking quadrille, was then a feature at the Moulin Rouge and at the Bal Bullier danced by professionals. Restaurant Harcourt was a lively rendezvous for the students, and there were a dozen brasseries near by where the patrons were artists, PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT students and midinettes, lively, jolly and not vulgar. Cheap education in the United States and England for cheap people has wiped out artistry and refine- ment. The world now belongs to the lowbrows and the mobsmen and their females. Once went with a Melbourne Member of Parliament, who played the violin, to Maxim's when it first opened. For a louis the conductor lent him his baton to conduct the orchestra for once round the course. It cost him another louis to have Braga's divine serenata played by violin and harp, and for another three louis we two backwoodsmen thought we owned Maxim's. If one tried to do that now, it would, as an infraction of the ridiculous Treaty of Versailles, lead to forty- eight hours in the calaboose of the thirteenth arron- dissement ! ENTERTAINMENTS Cr. Alfred Josephs of Bendigo was one of the best- known bookmakers in Australia in the era to which belonged H. Oxenham, " Count Abrahams," Nat Sloman, Robert Sievier (who owned Sceptre and the "(..Winning Post " afterwards), and other well-known betting merchants. Dan Lazarus, M.P. for Bendigo, joined me in a trip round the earth via the United States. We called at Apia in Samoa and went up to Vailima to see R. L. Stevenson's house and tomb, both in a state of decay. Incidentally we made friends with two Samoan Princesses who looked like Vestal Virgins and were not. We bathed with the natives and coupled with girls slid down a smooth rock into a cold deep pool time after time till we didn't know whether we were frozen or on fire. Then we slept in an open compound clad in plantain and pandanus leaves, and were treated hospitably by the chief and his female relatives. Everybody got tipsy on kava that night, and the records of the carousal 278 ENTERTAINMENTS cannot be remembered for publication, for which they were probably unfit. At San Francisco, never called " 'Frisco " by a resident, who never heard of any earthquake there, but vaguely knows there was a big fire once upon a time, we called on " Mo." Gunst with a letter from Alf. Joseph. Gunst was a leading tobacconist who was Chief Commissioner of Police by election. We asked him for the loan of two detectives to escort us through China Town, the Barbary Coast, and the underworld of 'Frisco generally. Gunst was sorry he could not spare two policemen that night because he wanted them all at the prize fight between Joe Goddard, the Barrier Pet from Sydney, and Tom Sharkey, an American heavyweight. " Mo." told us he was stake-holder, referee, and interested in the gate money, besides being head of the police. While we were enjoying ourselves on the outskirts of China Town, the crowd rushed the ring, the police rushed the crowd, and the box keepers rushed home with the money ! Truly is America the self-styled land of hustle. They're great and busy hustlers after money all the time. One thing is embedded in my memory. At that time the Palace Hotel was the best eating place in the United States, because the cooking was international and the food was infinitely varied. Then, too, it was cheap, now it is dear and not so diversified. The best hotel on earth of its class is the Hotel Stewart at 'Frisco, conducted by two charming Scotch people, Charlie and Margaret Stewart. And Mother Gum and I have lived in five hundred hotels together in all the four corners of the world, so we ought to know a good hotel when we live in it. CAFES, NEW YORK Delmonico, Sherry, Rector, in that order, were 279 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT the best restaurants in New York when I spent a holiday, making gastronomic excursions, in that savage and impolite city. American cookery has the advantage that it is cosmopolitan and international. The population is made up of nearly one hundred nationalities and races, all trained to eat some special foods cooked in special ways. Australia, having only one people, 96 per cent British, has only one diet, steak, chops, beef, mutton, potatoes and gravy (don't forget the gravy), with suet puddings and slabs of cheese. Every Australian home dinner is so amusing and so very English. Our women can't cook and our men do not know the art of good eating. There is no epicurism in Australia, no fine sense of gastronomy as the prop of happiness. There is not one first-class restaurant in the Commonwealth so far. How few Australians know anything about wines, and how very few drink anything regularly but vile, filthy whisky and gaseous, unwholesome beer ? Four-fifths of our wines, thanks to climate and soil, equal to the best of foreign wines, are sent out of the country, and the Australians drink tea all through the day, to the extent of eighty-five pounds of tea per annum per head. One morning early, my mate and I called at Delmonico's and consulted the maitre d'hotel about a special dinner carte blanche with wines en suite for every course. Then we went back to the Waldorf Astor Hotel to bed and slept till that elegant dinner was nearly ready. Even Apicius, the Epicure, who lived in Rome and spent j8 00,000 upon delicacies for his table, would have liked that meal. I hope to eat another like it on Tib's Eve or during the feast of the Greek Kalends. It was no Barmecide feast made of dreams raw and cooked. The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was the first modern hotel built in America, just as the Waldorf-Astoria was the first of the present-day 280 CAFES, NEW YORK hotels of luxury built in New York. I was among the earliest guests at both places. The Palace Hotel was supreme in excellence and led the way to the hotel world of the universe. For an inclusive charge in those days one could have six meals a day with free snacks in between, and the cuisine covered the gamut from Chinese dishes, through all European cookery, to Mexican tortillas, frijoles and chile con carne. Rector's was a perfect restaurant, a very Koh-i-noor, and it was the only place out of Paris where I have eaten fillet sole a la Marguerey, probably the most famous sauce in the history of gastronomy. CAFES The London of 1880 to 1910 was a charming, lovable city. Life was quiet, refined, enjoyable. Nous avons change tout cela the horrible, internal combustion engine invented by Otto, the gas person, has destroyed the dear ancient city. Motor cars, yahoos and motor-cycle houhynyms have made London repulsive, vulgar and abominable. It is not so much the new rich, half-educated, and wholly boorish, who are responsible for the radical change in London's character, as the rising tide of universal bad manners peculiar to all Londoners of every class. Incivility, disrespect for women and old people, and selfish behaviour are observable everywhere. To blame the war for this anti-social decadence is absurd. The chief agency for defiling London life is the American moving-picture business which has eaten like a cancer into the heart of the people. The cinema is controlled by those Asiatics, the international Jews, people of a lower type than the Anglo-Saxons, Orientals whose mentality and intellect are on a much lower plane below ours. These American Jews ought to inspire dread, because they are gradually 281 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT eating away the basis of London's former friendliness and kindliness and the Londoner of the present day inspires fear in a visitor, especially a British visitor. He is a bounder and his wife and girls imitate him. The best dining place in the former gay and desirable London was Verrey's in Regent Street, because of two factors, the chef and the wine cellar, established by George Krehl. The Cafe Royal, when Nichol and his wife managed it, came very close to the highest order of excellence. The Globe for a riotous time, and Rule's Supper House in Maiden Lane for its picturesqueness and its odd inhabitants, together with the bygone St. James' Restaurant, old " St. Jimmy's," made a trinity of joyous, gay, merry resorts where the residents of Bohemia and Alsatia mingled in order to be happy. Oddenino's came later, and Gambrinus offered a grateful change of diet, because its menu was cosmopolitan. Monico and Gatti's always seemed to be stodgy, so English you know, and Suburbia revelled in a meal at either. How can one describe the fleeting joys of the Bristol or old Kettner's in Soho, or the ancient Pagani's in Great Portland Street ! Before the Trocadero, we had as pleasure resorts at meal time, the Gaiety and the Criterion, and one could always depend on a delicious repast at the Holborn or the Frascati, at the latter of which I happened to be a first diner the day it was opened. In matters gastronomic, " Fallen, Fallen is London that Great City," and in manners she has descended to the lowest of the seven hells of Dante. HOTELS, CAFES Here is a useful list of wines en suite to be served with the various courses of a properly ordered dinner, which, by the way, is an art in itself. It is taken 282 HOTELS, CAFES from the menu of a dinner given in a leading London hotel the Cecil : Hors d'oeuvres. Sherry. Oysters. Hock. Soup. Madeira. Fish. Chablis and Sauterne. Entree. Burgundy. Roast. Claret. Poultry. Sparkling Burgundy. Dessert. Champagne. Cheese and Savoury. Port. Coffee. Maraschino and Vieux Cognac. I have a rare collection of menus, bills of fare, and wine lists from all over the earth, collected in hotels, clubs, private houses, trains and steamships. The daily literature of travel, that is the ephemeral stuff, such as hotel bills, maps, plans, tickets, concert and theatre programmes, etc., the ommium gatherum of fifty years' collection, amounts to nearly five thousand pieces, and makes amusing reading when I want to refer to the past and reflect upon the joys, the glories, the menus p/aisirs and the gorgeous beauties of art and nature I have had the good fortune to experience. THREE NOTABLE DINNERS I ATE At Penang once I was invited to a Chinese wedding, which chiefly consisted of a dinner of lengthened sweetness long drawn out. Our party was made up of three white men and two white women. The dinner began at seven o'clock and ended at eleven. The salon was the ground-floor room of a shop with brick walls and unfurnished. In one corner was a shallow well where the dishes and plates were washed and used again. The menu extended to about thirty dishes, and European wines were served en suite without any disgusting American cocktails, the 283 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT assassins of a good dinner. The cooking was excellent, the service ideal, and the table appointments of la premiere ordre. Of the thirty guests, about fifteen were Chinese ladies, most of whom spoke English that was not pidgin. All were beautifully dressed, and every one wore a perfect cascade of jewels, from the top of the head to the tip of the fingers, pearls, diamonds, emeralds predominating, and not a single piece of jade, catseye, moonstone or zircon being visible. The value of the jewels and gold adorn- ments represented a vast fortune. In brilliance the show excelled a Melba night at the Covent Garden opera. The bridegroom, a young Chinese clerk born in Singapore, spoke and wrote five languages, and played the typewriter and adding machine like a Paderewski. He was magnificently dressed in costly silk and wore expensive gold bijouterie. After a few songs, sung to the samisen, we all adjourned across the road to the house of the bride's parents, where we met more Moet and Mumm and fine champagne liqueur. In an upstairs room, gorgeously furnished, we sat round to witness the bride meet the bridegroom for the first time in their lives ! She presented him with a cup of tea and he kissed her hand. A black rooster was tied to the leg of the bed with a bit of twine, so the marriage god would bless the union with a boy, not a girl. Then the party broke up, and the brocaded counterpane, the embroidered pillows, the cabinets of silk costumes, the cupboards of underclothing, the glass boxes full of rich and dear clothing were taken away on a motor van by the firm that lends all the accessories of a wedding at a flat rate of five pounds for the evening. Even the bed was taken away along with the luck-bringing rooster, and I learnt that the newly-weds would sleep on the floor between two rugs ! Nevertheless, the dinner remains a joyous memory. The next best 284 THREE NOTABLE DINNERS I ATE dinner we went through at the Hotel Des Indes in Batavia, Java, and it was really bonzer. Seventeen little Javanese house-boys, called spadas, brought in thirty-eight dishes in slow succession, and upon a foundation of boiled rice, one raised a pyramid of things good to eat, such as shark fins, biche de mer, birds' nests, guinea fowl, lychees, pork, jams, edible puppy, turtle, ginger, lobster, turkey, and salted almonds, etc. They called it " riz-tafel," and it was both funny and filling. One perfectly splendid dinner was given at the Royal Automobile Club in London by Sir Philip Dawson to my wife and myself as a family farewell. Our host, like Bismarck, com- posed his own menu with exquisite taste and cos- mopolitan understanding. Without telling any club secrets we antipodean barbarians rejoiced most over the plovers' eggs and the ortolans ! ENTERTAINMENTS The Vienna Cafe was an active centre of life in former days, when it was called Gunsler's Caff by one of the first of Melbourne's caterers, after Spiers and Pond had pioneered the city's catering trade and retired with a fortune to London. J. F. Gunsler wanted to move his cafe to the centre of the Melbourne Block, the recognised promenade for the haul ton and the elite, similar to the " Board Walk " at Atlantic City. He advertised for a partner with 5000, and a gold buyer named H. G. lies, in the Bank of Victoria, Bendigo, who had made a " rise " suddenly out of some gold mine shares joined Gunsler. They moved into a real European cafe-restaurant, well furnished and well conducted on Parisian lines. Gunsler and lies invited me to join them at their first dinner in the new place and meet their chef, who excelled himself and justified his European reputation. After that I was a regular habitue of the Vienna Cafe, 285 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT now the Australian Cafe, which became a club for clever men and men near-clever. One night Harry Brush, the most popular of Melbourne's younger set, holding a status like William Gillette in New York's fashionable 400, " Dangles " Holroyd, son of a Supreme Court Judge, and Dick MacDermott, son of Townsend MacDermott, K.C., a Dublin barrister of high repute, dined in the basement salon of the Vienna Cafe. After treating themselves splendidly well they made numerous visits to the street where a waggonette awaited them. By-and-by it dawned upon the waiters that the three well-known diners were removing the furnishings of their table to the cab, piece by piece. They had taken everything out except the small oval table, and while busy pushing it through the door, the manageress, Miss Shepherd, angrily demanded they should return the goods. The purloiners explained they had a supper engage- ment up at Scotch Maude's in Lonsdale Street, and would return the things in the morning ! Another time Harry Brush and another lad of the village hired an ice cart from its tipsy driver late one night, and starting from the Vienna Cafe called at various hotels and sold blocks of ice at cost price. When they had cleared out the stock, they climbed into the cart, closed the doors and went to sleep. About dawn they took the ice cart to the nearest watch- house and explained to the sergeant they had kind of picked it up in the street. In the present days of strict law and order these two pranks would have earned for the boys heavy fines and possibly imprison- ment. The Vienna Cafe, in its latter days, had for hire a number of shabby cabinets particuliers^ familiar to anybody who knows the boulevards of Paris and their purlieus, where ladies and gentlemen may meet for all kinds of lawful and unlawful occasions. A Puritanical police force has wiped out that semi- 286 ENTERTAINMENTS innocent traffic, and philanderers now philander in motor cars in side streets in Melbourne suburbs. A programme of a fancy dress ball at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, lies open before me. What pleasant memories it recalls ! We went with Jennie Lee, then still wearing her halo as the creator of " Jo " in the " Bleak House " play. The ball was held on ist March, 1901, and the dances were polka, valse, lancers, barn dance, and galop, the orchestra being conducted by Dan Godfrey. Frank Rendel and Neil Forsyth directed the affair, and little Willie Clarkson the perruquier, ably helped them, while Gunter and Company served a supper in the grand saloon and boxes which cannot be supplied in these days. St. Jazz, St. Bobbed, St. Shingled, St. Hole- proof were still living obscurely near the hobs of Dante's seventh hell, and the high priests and priest- esses of vulgarity had not then procreated to pro- duce their indecent spawn of unsexed men, women and half-wits. And what happy nights out and joyous supper resorts there were in the London of twenty- five years ago, before the rich and uncultured Ameri- cans invaded Europe to destroy politeness, while the horde of international Jews headed by wealthy Attilas, the modern Huns, Goths and Vandals, had not then secured the status which gave them the power to tear down culture from its pedestal and erect a golden calf as a fetish for the people to worship. FINALE I have committed the immorality of being too far in front of my own age, and in other times gone by I might probably have been tortured and hung. It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. My excuse for acrid criticism must be love of my own native land. Having seen most of these others my 287 PLEASANT CAREER OF A SPENDTHRIFT own country seems the best. This book has been written because the buttons tore from the pants of my patience. Australia is a good country badly managed. Howard Houlder, the English shipping director, told us that development has been overdone and that it was a tragedy to see a young country headed for ruin. For twenty-five years since Federation, which has been a pronounced financial failure, Aus- tralia has been living on borrowed money. Federa- tion was a mistake. All Australia wanted was domestic free trade amongst the six colonies and prohibitive protection against the world. If there had been no Commonwealth, we would not have gone into that war and would not have been plunged into an abyss of dreadful debt. If there had been no Commonwealth there would not have been this needless craze for immigration. Why this insane loud cry to fill this good country with a horde of strangers ? Is not the shocking example of the United States and its hybrid race of people enough to warn us not to open widely our doors to inferior, ignorant humans and implore them to come in and help themselves to our land, our wealth, our peace, our work and wages. What folly ! What stupidity ! Cut bono fuerit ! For whose good is this being done ? Not for the benefit of ourselves or our happiness ! Are we such craven cowards as to listen to those who say, " If you don't fill your empty spaces with immigrants you will be attacked by other nations and perhaps lose your country." What nonsense ! What puerility! Who can take this country from us ? Only the United States and it is doubtful whether the other white nations of the world would allow them to try and take Australia from us. Australia is not as weak as the two little Boer republics whose land was stolen. Australia has plenty of good food, enough shelter and clothing, and barring the incapable and unemployable, proper 288 FINALE salaries and wages, and it is suicidal to admit even one more stranger. It is our first duty to provide happiness and comfort for our own Australians before we concern ourselves about any Europeans, British or otherwise. Until we partially abolish poverty at home we have no right to burden ourselves with millions of paupers from abroad. What we have, we hold. AUSTRALIA FOR THE AUSTRALIANS! 289 A 000 091 394 7