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year. The purchase prices of these standard houses built by the Commission will range from $4500 to $9700, according to type and size, but the price will not include purchase of the land. The ownership of all land within the city site, and of more than three fourths of the total 900 square miles of Federal territory of which the city forms part, is invested in the Government, and it has been decided by Parliament that not a foot of it shall be alienated. The Federal Capital Commission has power to grant leases for ninety years, at a rent of 5 per cent of the unimproved value of the land.

All the houses built by the Commission will be single-story, as is the general rule throughout Australia, and they will contain many labor-saving devices. In this direction, as in many others, Australia has in recent years been departing from inherited English practice, and has been copying American customs. Hot water will not be laid on throughout the house, as is the custom in America, for no central heating apparatus will be installed. Australia's winter is very mild and lasts for only two months. The English system of open fires is followed, but as the sun shines brightly even on most of the winter days, it is only in the winter evenings that fires are required as a rule.

The site for Canberra was selected mainly because its contour and topographical features lend themselves to the construction of a model city. And in 1911 the Commonwealth Government instituted a world-wide competition for designs for the new capital. Three prizes of $8750, $3750, and $2500 were offered. The competition was widely advertised in Europe and America in order to attract the attention of architects and town planners in the chief countries of the world. Competitors were

requested to give special consideration to the allocation of appropriate areas, suitably situated, for public buildings and offices, and for commercial, residential, and industrial purposes. Experts from many countries sent in designs, and the first prize was awarded to an American architect, Mr. Walter Burley Griffin of Chicago. The second prize went to M. Eliel Saarinen of Helsingfors, Finland, and the third to M. D. Alf. Agache of Paris.

Mr. Griffin's design, which has been somewhat modified by the Federal Capital Commission, provides for several artificial lakes, supplied with water by the Molonga River, which flows through the site. On the north side of the river will be the civic quarter, with the town hall occupying the most commanding position. On the south side will be the Government quarter, with the Parliamentary buildings on Capitol Hill, the most elevated area of land within the site. The town hall and the Parliamentary buildings will be about two miles apart. A large central park will surround the Parliamentary buildings, and outside the park, on a succession of terraces reaching down to an artificial lake, other public buildings will be erected.

All the main roads will radiate from Capitol Hill as the most commanding point of the city. In this respect and in certain others Canberra will correspond to the design of Washington, which has its main thoroughfares radiating from the Capitol. The chief streets will be 200 feet wide, so as to give ample room for a strip of garden down the centre and the sides. Many town planners regard such enormously wide streets as an artistic mistake, and prefer irregular streets of moderate width, which follow the contour of the land. At Canberra the streets will be laid out on a rectangular plan. Outside the city area of twelve square

miles, a belt of country- over 150 square miles will be reserved for parks and public purposes. One of the essentials of a garden city is that it be surrounded by a belt of open country or agricultural land, but few garden cities could afford 150 square miles.

There will be numerous parks, public gardens, and open spaces within the city; around every public building there will be a garden. All the streets will be lined with trees. Special efforts will be made to beautify with trees, garden plots, and fountains the corners where main streets intersect. Every plot of ground on which a house is built will have room for a flower garden in front and a kitchen garden at the back. Trimmed hedges instead of fences will separate the house plots from the streets. The Commission will not allow a fence to be erected at the frontage of any dwelling site. Each block of houses will have a communal garden, where the children will be able to play and the adults to sit amid beautiful surroundings when they are at leisure. The needs of young children are being catered for by large playing grounds in the suburbs, fitted with swings and Maypoles. Sports grounds for football, cricket, tennis, and golf are being prepared, and swimming baths will be built at several places along the river bank. All this work is being done by the Commission, as the trustees of a city owned by the people of Australia.

II

It might be thought that there would be eager competition to live in such an ideal city, but on the contrary the civil servants who are to be transferred are protesting loudly. In Canberra there are no theatres and no daily newspapers; there are no trams and few shops. The educational facilities provided at present are only for

young children, and therefore civil servants whose boys and girls are attending the higher schools in Melbourne, or the university, must leave them behind to finish their education. This means an expense which not many can afford. In the new city there will be very few business or professional openings for their children when they have to begin to earn their own living, and therefore they will have to be sent away to the large cities, such as Sydney and Melbourne. This will mean a severance of family ties at a time when young men and women are in need of parental supervision and guidance, and it will involve the parents in expense, as the salaries earned by the young people will not be sufficient to keep them until they have been at work several years.

The civil servants complain that the cost of living will be 20 per cent higher in Canberra than in Melbourne, and they are demanding that the Government shall make up this difference in the form of a bonus on their salaries. It is the general experience that all manufactured goods are dearer in country towns than in the big cities, though meat and vegetables are cheaper in the country. The civil servants also complain that the prices of the houses they are asked to buy are much higher than the prices of similar houses in Melbourne. It is officially admitted that the prices of the Commission's houses are higher, but this is due to the fact that the costs of construction are higher, as labor and materials cost more in the country. Another grievance in connection with housing was ventilated by the civil servants, but this has been removed by the Government. It was said that when hundreds of them had to leave Melbourne simultaneously for Canberra they would not be able to sell their homes except at a considerable loss, as the placing of

several hundred houses on the market simultaneously would bring down the value of such property. The Government has decided to take over, at a reasonable valuation, the houses owned by civil servants who are transferred. These properties will be disposed of gradually, so as not to glut the market.

The civil servants have another grievance in the fact that, as Canberra grows and property becomes more valuable, they will not derive any benefit from the increased value of the land on which their houses are built. The benefit of all increases in land values will be reaped by the Commission as trustees of the nation, because none of the land will be sold to private owners. As already stated, it will be let on lease, and the leaseholders must pay as rent 5 per cent of the unimproved value. Purchasers of ninetyyear leases will not have their rents increased during the first twenty years of occupation, but then and after the land will be revalued for rental purposes every ten years.

The wives of civil servants are loud in their complaints. They will be separated from friends and relations, and will have to begin life again in a small community. The shops in the new city will be so few and their stocks so small that shopping will be robbed of all its joys. There will be no plays to see in the evenings, for Canberra as yet is too small to support a the atre. The main source of entertainment will be one movie theatre. The Commission has laid down an electric plant for power, heating, and lighting; so far, however, it has not installed a coal-gas supply. The houses are equipped with fire stoves, but those householders who want electric stoves must provide them. In the great majority of houses in Australia the cooking is done on gas stoves, and those housewives who have to make their VOL. 139. - NO. 4

homes in Canberra hate the idea of going back to fire stoves, or adopting the new fashion of electric stoves.

The Commission is endeavoring to placate the dissatisfied civil servants and their wives. It has been arranged that their household furniture shall be conveyed free of charge. It will be packed and unpacked without cost to the owners. A civil servant has only to give the Commission written instructions as to how he wants his furniture arranged in the various rooms, and he will find, when he enters his new home, that the carpets have been laid, the beds set up, the pictures hung on the walls, the crockery, pots, and pans put in their places, and a bowl of flowers arranged on the hall table. During the interval while his furniture is being transferred from Melbourne to Canberra, he and his wife and family will be the guests of the Commission at one of the hotels.

An honorary committee of residents will be appointed in each suburb to arrange programmes of outdoor and indoor amusements. A recreation hall is being built in each suburb, and it will be the duty of the committee to arrange amateur theatrical performances and concerts. Lending libraries and welfare centres are being established. An appeal has been issued by the Commission to prospective residents of the Federal Capital to cultivate 'the community spirit,' so that everyone will contribute to the task of making life in the new city bright and happy.

The legislators who are to shift the scene of their labors from Melbourne to Canberra view the prospect philosophically, for they will not have to transfer their homes. They will not have to endure the discomforts and limitations of the new city for more than six months of the year, and some of them will be able to reach their homes for week-ends. There are only

111 Members of the Commonwealth Parliament-75 in the House of Representatives and 36 in the Senate. For most of them the journey to Canberra will be longer and more inconvenient than the journey to Melbourne has been. The distance by rail from Melbourne to Canberra is 500 miles, with a break in the middle, owing to the difference in the railway gauges of the two States of Victoria and New South Wales. Canberra is not on the main railway line which connects Melbourne and Sydney, and it has been proposed to build a branch line from Canberra to the nearest point of the main railway at Yass, but the Federal Public Works Committee reported against it. The cost would exceed $3,750,000 and the revenue would be small. Much of the passenger traffic would consist of Members of Parliament, who travel free, and civil servants whose fares when on official duty would be debited against the Government.

The Federal Capital Commission is building four residential hotels, four boarding houses, and five hundred dwelling houses. For a time the Commission will itself run these hotels and boarding houses, but it will later on transfer the management to private enterprise. The Commission's municipal socialism extends not only to the ownership and management of water supply, electricity supply, and a motor-bus service, but also to the ownership and management of a laundry and bakery business; but its activities in these directions are not to be regarded as experiments in municipal socialism so much as necessities evoked by exceptional conditions in starting a new city. Compared with American hotels, the tariffs at the Commission's hotels at Canberra will be modest. The minimum tariff at the principal hotel where Members

of Parliament will stay during the Parliamentary session will be five dollars a day, including meals. Two of the other hotels will charge three dollars, and the fourth will provide board and lodging for single men at ten dollars a week, for married couples at sixteen dollars, and for single women at seven dollars a week.

At present Canberra is 'dry.' It is the only city in Australia where prohibition prevails, although, as the result of local option polls, the hotels in a few municipal areas in Melbourne and other cities have been closed for some years past. But the closing of such hotels does not mean absolute prohibition in these areas. Bottled liquors of all kinds can still be obtained from grocers licensed to sell them. There is a prohibition organization in Australia which has gained in strength since prohibition came into legal operation in the United States, but it has not much political influence. During the war the trading hours of hotels in Australia were reduced, the closing hour being fixed at 6 P.M. Previously hotels were open until 11 P.M. or midnight. The reduction of hours has met with such general approval that the liquor trade does not contemplate any attempt to obtain an extension.

But there is very little support among the people of Australia for prohibition, and it is doubtful if the new Federal Capital will remain dry for any length of time. It was made dry originally when building operations were begun, to prevent drunkenness among the two to three thousand workmen.

The majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament are not prohibitionists or teetotalers. A committee of the two Houses, which discussed the question of liquor at Canberra, passed a resolution in favor of the retention of the Parliamentary

refreshment bar when Parliament is transferred to Canberra. to Canberra. But the House of Representatives felt that it would be invidious for Members of Parliament to be able to obtain liquor while residents of the Federal city were unable to do so. It was therefore planned by Parliament to give residents of Canberra the opportunity of deciding by a local option poll whether liquor shall be sold in the Federal Capital as elsewhere in Australia. The question of opening a refreshment bar will be deferred until the local option poll is taken. Much will be heard during the campaign concerning the great benefits and deplorable disasters which prohibition has brought about in the United States. The campaign will be restricted to a very limited area, to a population of about 5000, but the issue whether the Federal Capital of Australia is to be wet or dry is of some importance to both sides.

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III

The story of how Canberra came to be built is of interest, because it provides one of several instances of the way in which the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia has copied the Constitution of the United States. The Australian Constitution, as originally drafted, contained no provision for building a Federal Capital. There was jealousy between the two most important States, New South Wales and Victoria, as to which of them should have the capital within its borders. There was a movement to make Sydney, the largest city in Australia and the capital of New South Wales, which is the oldest of the six Australian States, the Federal Capital, but this was vigorously opposed by some of the other States, especially by Victoria. The men who drafted the Constitution thought it best to postpone

this controversial question until after the popular vote on the acceptance of the Constitution had been taken; but the vote in New South Wales in favor of the Constitution, though greater than the vote against it, fell short of the total fixed by the Parliament of that State as a condition of acceptance, and therefore another convention of representatives of the six States was held to amend the Constitution so as to make it acceptable to New South Wales. One of the chief amendments was the inclusion of a clause similar to Article I, Section 8 of the American Constitution, which deals with the seat of Government. It was laid down in the amended Constitution that the seat of Government should be in Federal territory, situated in New South Wales. This was a sop to that State; but, in order to appease other States which were opposed to Sydney's being the Federal Capital, the clause provided that the Federal territory should be at least 100 miles from Sydney; and as a sop to Victoria it was provided that the Commonwealth Parliament should meet in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, until the Federal Capital should be built.

It was generally expected, when the Commonwealth Parliament came into existence in 1901, that not more than ten years would elapse before Parliament would sit in the new capital. But when Parliament began to function it had more urgent matters to attend to than building the capital, and for twenty-six years Melbourne has remained the temporary seat of Government. Members of successive Parliaments - with the exception of representatives of constituencies in New South Wales were in no hurry to give up the comforts of Melbourne and transfer the scene of their labors to a new city in the bush. The war was

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