ars and years. Moreover their businesses have not
materially suffered. In some cases, indeed, there has been improvement.
But 'profits' evidently supersede humanity; the interests of gold are
greater than the welfare of human flesh and blood and even the call of
country. It seems hard, Jefson, that you should be risking your life and
other brave fellows shedding their blood, for such men who have neither
commercial instinct nor human feeling. I fully expected some of those
firms to start their jobs as an incentive to others. We only want
someone to start and do something big to galvanise the smaller investors
into action. It's not capital they lack, but confidence.

"I often wonder why the men who have had the acumen to amass money have
not the common sense to realise that unemployed capital is a
rapidly-accruing debt. Sovereigns by themselves are not wealth. It is
their purchasing capacity and their equivalent in the requirements of
life that represent fortunes. Investment, not idle capital, is wealth.

"Australia is being held back a great deal by the operation of State
Enterprise. It has always been extravagant, inefficient and slow; but
the effects are being more keenly felt at this time. At Cockatoo Island,
the Federal Shipbuilding Yard, a cruiser was built that could not be
launched. (I don't want you to mention this because we feel mighty
humiliated.) Someone blundered. Who that someone was I do not suppose we
shall ever know. That is the worst of being an employer of politicians.
They run your business when they like, how they like, and with whom they
like. You only come in on the pay day. However, the difficulty is being
got over by the construction of a coffer-dam--at a cost of L30,000. We
have been confidently assured by the men running our business that
everything will be all right in the long run. Perhaps that assurance is
intended as a guarantee that we shall get a long run for our money.
Anyhow, at time of writing the coffer-dam is being constructed.

"In N.S.W. the position of the Public Works Department must be much the
same as the Sultan of Turkey's--no money, no friends. And no wonder! It
drained the State of all spare cash for the edification of its day-labor
joss, and is about to pawn the State to foreign money lenders for more.
Being now on its absolute uppers, the Public Works Department is handing
over work to a private syndicate to be carried out on a percentage
basis. The longer the work takes