Mr. Bruce, the Prirae Minister, just now travelling through far} western Queensland, or, I should more correctly say, is travelling over 'The country has had splendid rains, and is consequently a sinful place over which to travel per, vehicle. Mr. Bruce, being pushed {for time, secured an' aeroplane, be-Jonging ' to the service through western Queensland to the North, Jand was able to do in a few hours what' the ordinary man could not! have done in days. 'The Prime Minister has naturally' been - voicing the claims of the sheep in that country, but went further and handed out wh {the pugilists call some "nasty one: te those who object to large a1 under one control. He emphasized the fact that wool was our great asset to-day, and that we should of, in the desire to create small holdings, destroy the large economic snd profitable areas under sheep. [Of course Mr. Bruce is nearly right, but there are huge areas yet to devoted to sheep, even if the small settler encroaches upon present sheep domains. To say nothing of ithe Barkley Tablelands, which are under the direct control of the Commonwealth Government, and could carry several millions of sheep, there is the Nullarbor Plain through which the Federal East-West railway runs for several hundred miles. Th Commissioner for Railways mention. jed in his report the other day that fan experiment with 4,000 sheep had been highly successful, while some Victorian farmer-graziers had acthe purpose of subdivision and raising sheep. Now the area of these plains is something like 40,000,- 000 square acres, a railway runs right through them, water can be obtained at a very reasonable depth, and the prospects of their close settlement under sheep are excellent. But Australia started her real life with gold ushes, and the-constant gamble with fortune. The result} seems to be that you can get capital to plunge into Malayan tin mine [South Sea copra, or even' wreck: salvage companies, but the legit-mate work of development is to the Avstralian like backing the favourite hardly worth while.
Trouble on the Water Front For many long days there has Leen an attempt in Sydney to create trouble on the water-front. The: fons et ango of the matter lies back jin 1917, when the waterside workers in Sydney, probably prompted by fexemy agents, stuck up transports. land threatened a cessation of all work. W. M. Hughes was then Prime Minister. "He had. been [secretary of the Waterside Workers? Federation, and the trouble was very promptly dealt with, A Bureau was. formed through which the shipping. [companies could obtain labour for quite independent of ithe Wat ide Federation, That Bureau has existed ever since, and: has become the rallying point of returned soldiers who are naturally wharf-labourers but decline to the unions.
"To abolish this Bureau, or to cxtract the thorn in its side, the Sy-Jdney Federation proposed to declare overtime strike. It seemed silly proposition, as it meant that just when men' could earn double fand even treble wages they were to earn nothing, while the railways would largely get the trade. The Melbourne. men, to the number of some 2.000 to 3,000 met and dis-Jeassed the matter, and unanimously decided that however might sympathize with their friends, the latter must think of some ther way of getting rid of the Bureau. Meanwhile the 3cl~ bourne men would continue work. The astounding news is now to hand. that the Waterside Federation has. expelled all the Melbourne men from the Labour movement, and hax, in brief, declared—between two three thousand men "black". It is too soon yet to judge as to the like-course of events, but there is every appearance of the strike, now in operation in Sydney and other ports, filing out.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.