Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-09-13
WE COME OUT AHEAD.
America Sells to Australia and
Doesn't Buy a Single Thing.
CLOTHESPINS ARE THE STAPLE.
Kerosene. Cars, Canned Salmon and Lumber
Make Up the Trade.
ALL THE COAL OIL GOES IN TIN CANS
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH,

|
Barren at first sight is the great Southern
Continent of Australia, and closer view ant
longer acquaintance but more clearly dis
play the barrenness which exists side by sid
with abundant wealth of the sort that makes
no display of green forests and fertile plains
It is in this barrenness which accounts fo
the notice which appears in the shipping
columns of the colonial papers with almos
the exactitude of stereotype: Entered in
ship Soaring Eagle, from New York, with
cargo as per manifest, mostly clothespins.
A clothespin is small matter, an armles'
biped, bifurcated and wooden similitudt
of humanity, thing to hold clothes ano
therein still approaching the human like
ness which its form suggests, thing tc
straddle lines, and that, too, is an occupa
ton not unknown to human kind, thing
to be weather-beaten in faithful service, tc
be neglected and cast aside; a cheap bit o.
timber. No one knows the extent of the
clothespin industry. Nothing short of q
Federal census can avail to disclose g
clothespin factory; its prices are not quoted
in financial columns, no one reads its highest
and its closing quotations, it simply goes on
being sold at the corner grocery for trif1e
the dozen, it dances its few stormy Mondays
on the laden line and disappears.
OUR GREATEST TRADE
Yet poor despised clothespin is staple
article of our trade with the Australian
colonies The clothespin of America, fab
ricated in mystery and living in the world
of trivialities below even the reach of oul
vivacious press, is exported to the land Of
the Southern Cross and there figures in the
newspapers as ''cargo as per manifest, mostly
clothesplns."
Australia would be clothespinless were il
not for the enterprise of our merchants o1
mystery who lurk in retired corners and
have transactions away from the prying
crowd which involve the purchase and sale
of the merry Monday dancers of domestic
back yards. What those transactions are
never comes to light, perhaps there are
bears and perhaps bulls, perhaps some go
long and perhaps some hazardously short
the market, there may even be clothespin
puts and calls. Modestly, emerging from
the secrecy of his birth and the mystery OF
those who deal in him, the clothespin goes
to the colonies by the million. and never
seems to satisfy the demand for him; for
Australia cannot make clothespin.
NJ LUMBER
This humble instrument stands as the type
of large class of manufacturers of wood for
which Australia provides market, which
is as brisk and active in protected Victoria
as in tree trade New South Wales. The
mountain ranges of the land are clothed
with dense forests, some of its trees overtop
the sequolas of California, which look down
upon all other trees; thousands of miles are
covered with unbroken groves; it produces
the only timber which will resist the marine
worm and the destructive white ant but it
cannot produce a timber which will be
available for the production of clothespins
OF barrels and pals, of cheap furniture, and
the Thousand and one other articles made of
our soft wood.
1t is land of the eucalypts, and the use
of the eucalyptus has vet to be determined; !;
like the mosquito it exists without percepti-
BILE moral end. Some have theorized the
tree would serve to dispel malaria from
fever-trodden districts and planted it about
the Roman Compagna and here and there in
this country, and the tree fourishes as fairly
as the ague it is designed to extirpate.
When dried it presents a problem of
crookedness too great for saw or plane to
solve, ard therefore is almost worthless for
building timber. Even as 6rewood it has
scarcely any value.
PENNSYLVANIA COAL OIL.
The mineral wealth of the land, and it is
a rich country indeed shows no discovery
of petroleum in its extensive coal measures
There is gold and silver, there is copper and
tin and coal and iron, and some of these are
richer deposits than our miners have even
dreamed OF; there is even kerosene shale,
but the first barrel of colonial petroleum has
yaf IN cpnnt frnDn he tnopy ,bo ;ob
have been sunk to seek it and still remain
dry memorials of failures. The Ministry of
Mines, of New South Wales, in annual re-
ports OF great scientific interest. still holds
out hopes of the discovery of petroleum, and
urges that the search be kept up, but the
men who have already sunk their SYDNEY
sovereigns in the iruitless digging of empty
holes have lost confidence and have turned
to other things.
The domestic light of the colonies, which
its own soil denies, is spouting now in Penn
sylvania, and that must remain the source
to be drawn upon in larger and larger
quantities every year, until New South
Wales itself strikes oil, and OF that there
seems little chance, despite the hopeful at
titude OF the head ofits official mineralogicaI
bureau. The trade is closely hemmed by the
custom of the market and the judicious re-
strictons of the Government Inspectors.
who are there clothed with far more sum-
mary powers than would be tolerated here.
yet their powers are wisely intrusted to
them, and vigorously exercised for the pub
lie good.
ALL GOES IN CANS.
The custom of the market governs the
form and size of the packages of petroleum
imported, the Government inspection takes
cognizance only of the imfammability of
the oil and its storage in quantity, whether
in Government wharfs or private ware
houses. Of every million gallons of kero-
sene which is shipped from the ports OF our
Eastern seaboard to Australian ports it is
safe to say that not 1000 gallons goes in
barrels. The people do not care to handle
packages of that sort for some reason or
other, perhaps because the barrels are odor-
ously useless for other purposes, and the
freight charge utterly prevents the return of
emptles, as is the universal practice in
European ports.
In place of the familiar blue barrel we
find throughout the colonies the five-gallon
tin, and all shipments are reckoned by cases
OF two such tins boxed in wood. The tins
are put to use when empty of kerosene by
heating to secure the solder and the tin
plate, which is applied to many purposes,
and in protected colonies the sale OF this tin,
which has entered free of duty, as an orig
inal package seriously affects the sale of tin
plate which, as such, has been taxed at the
Customs House.
A PIER OF TIN CANS.
In one case the tins were boldly applied to
the solution of difficult problem of bridge
a oh frrra