It is a serious question how far the natural prejudice of the English mind against the labor of what we call “inferior races” will be found to extend to half the superior race itself. How will English laborers receive the inevitable competition of women in many of their fields? Woman is at present starved, if she works at all, and does not rest content in dependence upon some man, by the terrible lowness of wages in every employment open to her, and this low rate of wages is itself the direct result of the fewness of the occupations which society allows her. Where a man can see a thousand crafts in which he may engage, a woman will perhaps be permitted to find ten. A hundred times as many women as there is room for invade each of this small number of employments. In the Australian labor-field the prospects of women are no better than they are in Europe, and during my residence in Melbourne the Council of the Associated Trades passed a resolution to the effect that nothing could justify the employment of women in any kind of productive labor. CHAPTER IX. VICTORIAN PORTS. All allowance being made for the great number of wide roads for trade, there is still a singular absence of traffic in the Melbourne streets. Trade may be said to be transacted only upon paper in the city, while the tallow, grain, and wool, which form the basis of Australian commerce, do not pass through Melbourne, but skirt it, and go by railway to Williamstown, Sandridge, and Geelong. Geelong, once expected to rival Melbourne, and become the first port of all Australia, I found grass-grown and half deserted, with but one vessel lying at her wharf. At Williamstown a great fleet of first-class ships was moored alongside the pier. When the gold-find at Ballarat took place, Geelong rose fast as the digging port, but her citizens chose to complete the railway line to Melbourne instead of first opening that to Ballarat, and so lost all the up-country trade. Melbourne, having once obtained the lead, soon managed to control the legislature, and grants were made for the Echuca Railroad, which tapped the Murray, and brought the trade of Upper Queensland and New South Wales down to Melbourne, in the interest of the ports of Williamstown and Sandridge. Not content with ruining Geelong, the Melbourne men have set themselves to ridicule it. One of their stories goes that the Geelong streets bear such a fine crop of grass, that a free selector has applied to have them surveyed and sold to him, under the 42d clause of the New Land Act. Another story tells how a Geelongee lately died, and went to heaven. Peter, opening the door to his knock, asked, “Where from?” “Geelong.” “Where?” said Peter. “Geelong.” “There‘s no such place,” replied the Apostle. “In Victoria,” cried the colonist. “Fetch Ham‘s Australian Atlas,” called Peter; and when the map was brought and the spot shown to him, he replied, “Well, I beg your pardon, but I really never had any one here from that place before.”