Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1905-10-13
Another Artificial Capital.

tralia is to follow the example or the
United States and have as its capital
a city created expressly for that pur-
pose. Just as the founders of the
great American republic. refusing to
recognize the claims OF the various
large cities of that time, selected as the
seat of national government an unoc-
cupied and desolate tract on the banks
of the Potomac and proceeded to build
the capital literally from the ground
up, so the Australians. wishing to have
capital free from sectional influences,
have selected a site not far from the
petty village of Dalgety, on the Snowy
river. Dalgety might have slumbered
in pastoral obscurity for the next hun
bred years but for the assumed neces-
sity of Australia to have capital in a
place which nature had designed tor
village. It is 80 miles from the near
est railroad station, and even when
that distance IS spanned by the iron
way, still further connections must be
built TO link il with the main Vic
torian system. Mr.. Henry Stead in
the independent estimates that cost OF
the railroad construction entailed will
be about IS, 300. 900, and that water sup
ply, public buildings and land pur-
chase will carry the total of the ex-
penditures for the new capital up to
1923, 900. 0dO. After the city is built it
will be purely artificial capital, just
as Washington is, but it will have a
very much smaller population, the as
sumption being that it will not exceed
$4,000.
A writer in the Boston Transcript
points out that an artificial capital, one
created by fiat as a result of COM
promise between rival sections or de-
creed by assumed political necessity is
an experiment under the best cir
cumstances. and usually falls short OF
being a metropolis, and mentions 81
Petersburg as well as Washington as
Oil chAIlplc. " IVA A0 S'''f's
seat of the Federal government; moth
ing more. 1t has disappointed the eX-
pectations of its founders that 1t would
become an emporium, busy mart,
port a city that should be an illustra-
ton in itself of all the activities of a
great and busy country. Beauty it
has. but business it has not. In popu-
lation it is far below many cities that
we are wont to think of as in our Sec
Petersburg on the other hand has far
outstrippei the old capital in popula-
ton. having 1,313.300 inhabitants to
Moscow's 1.O92, 1860 by the latest census.
ST. Petersburg is really a great port.
commanding heavy Seaborne trade.
but in fact 1t only divides the honors
of the capital with Moscow. The lat
ter has the greater hold on the affec-
lions and traditions of Russia. 1t has
a prestige which Peter the Great could
not undermine. 1t is the capital of the
Russian heart. Napoleon was right
when he held that Moscow was the
capital to be struck by an invader of
Russia.
Australia has one advantage which
neither the United States nor Russia
enjoyed when they created their arti-
fetal capitals. Its area is fixed and
determined. The capital will always
bear some geographical relation to
every Australian region that it will
have in the beginning. In this coun-
try the capital is conveniently situated
to only a very small section. The
United States has expanded into
regions that the founders Of Washing
ton thought would be wilderness for
many generations to come. Similarly
Russia has grown SO far and so fast
that st. Petersburg is in corner very
remote to provinces that are populous
and progressive in regions that were
not even Russian when Peter the Great
began to drive the piles for the founda-
tions of his capital.
-s-S