Borrowing and business in Australia

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 183051623X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-222122

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Wood, Gordon L. http://d-nb.info/gnd/1239193688

Title:: Borrowing and business in Australia

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Oxford university press, H. Milford

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: xv, 267 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. Prosperty and crisis after the gold discoveries

Collection:: Economics Books

40 THE QUEENSLAND INCIDENT OF 1866 of settlement was being taken, and to indicate the basis for the prosperity of later years. While Victoria had one-seventh of her settled area under the plough and South Australia one-fourth, the fraction for New South Wales was less than one-thirtieth. In an agricultural sense the two former states thus became very important, while the more pastoral mother-state was steadily losing ground. But, in the national economy, wool-growing was again assuming that position of dominance from which it had been temporarily ousted by gold-mining ; and that dominance it was to retain unchallenged in the following decades. The mining industry was also making a big bid for prominence. Coal was playing an increasingly important part in New South Wales, where the annual export after 1866 exceeded half a million tons. The importance of copper mining to South Australia cannot be over-estimated at this period ; and Tasmania, was shortly to reap a rich harvest of prosperity as a result of the mineral discoveries in the island. By 1870 Melbourne was firmly established in her control of Australian finance. The factors which gave her this imposing position were very exceptional, and impossible of repetition, She had by this time a population of 207,000, while Sydney had barely reached 138,000. This increment of people was un- doubtedly due, in the first instance, to the attraction of the gold-fields; and it was, later, Victoria’s industrial development which retained them. For many years, too, Victorian banks had been assimilating the vast funds poured in by the miners. Fields for the investment of this money were eagerly exploited, and as a result the influence of Victorian finance was felt all over Australasia. The Riverina became, in effect, a Victorian province since the capital for its development was supplied by Melbourne banks. The financial impulse generated in Melbourne was felt from Malaya to New Zealand. Nor did the decline of gold-mining lessen this dominance. The steady progress in in- vestment and development brought rich rewards to Victorian capital; and it was owing to the continuance of these returns that the decline in gold production did not in the least imperil Melbourne’s position as the financial centre of the con- tinent. In the light of after events this fact assumes a peculiar and emphatic importance. It is quite certain that had there been no gold-rush and no consequent industrial developments

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