I go to Australia or New Zealand, and find myself the guest of a squatter on his remote station. The sheep in his flocks number perhaps a hundred thousand. He shows me his station houses, his shearing sheds, his wool sheds, his vast paddocks enclosed with hundreds of miles of wire fencing, all his extensive plant, his horses, his shepherds, his band of shearers. He has to fight against drought; swarms of rabbits may threaten him with ruin; his year's clip of wool may, as the result of past disasters, be mortgaged to the Banks. But if the telegraph tells him that wool is rising in the London market, that the {36} factories at Leeds and Halifax and Huddersfield are running at their utmost capacity, that Yorkshire is prosperous, he is cheerful and faces his difficulties with a hopeful mind. A good year's sales will repay him for his risks and recoup him for the losses of the past. Cut this man off from access to the home markets for a few months, block the ports from which he ships his wool, or break the line of his communication, and his industry is paralysed, his workmen without pay; the bank which backs him and stakes much on the prosperity of him and his like may close its doors. Here manifestly is a man who, with his organized army of industry, from the shepherd who tends the sheep to the lumper who handles the bales at the docks, has interests which extend further than his immediate neighbourhood. I go on board one of the great liners which run between Australia and England, and which may be taken to represent the third great form of British industry. Down in her hold, forming the chief part of her cargo, are several thousand bales of wool. When she returns the wool will be replaced by manufactured goods. The profits of the company which owns and manages her depend upon the prosperity of the great manufacturing communities at home and the great producing areas abroad; upon the pressure of outward and homeward trade. Upon the absolute safety from hostile attack of this vessel and her like in passing over many thousand miles of sea depends once more the industrial security of the vast multitudes of human {37} beings for whom and between whom she carries on exchange. Can community of interest and mutual dependence be more complete than this? Of the man who produces the raw material, the man who works it up, and the man who carries between them, can we say where the interest of the one begins and the other ends? Yet what has been said of one raw material of production and manufacture may be said of a hundred. What has been said of wool may be said of wheat, for artizans must be fed while they work, and more and more English people at home will have to depend on English people abroad for their supplies of wheat. It may be said of meat, which every year, in increasing quantity, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia send to the mother-land.