The result of this educational zeal is obvious to any one, tending as it does to raise the character of the colonies at home and their good reputation abroad. The general population forms already a reading community which supports a large number of excellent bookstores in each populous centre, besides public libraries, many newspapers, and well-conducted local magazines. Concerning the newspapers of Australasia, let us bear appreciative testimony to their general excellence, to the able and even scholarly manner in which they are edited, and to the remarkable liberality evinced in the collecting of news from all parts of the globe. The mechanical appearance and general make-up of the colonial newspapers is fully equal to that of the best American and English dailies. In Auckland, New Zealand, with a population of not more than sixty thousand, including the immediate suburbs, we saw one of Hoe's large, rapid, completing presses, printing the "New Zealand Daily Herald" at the rate of fifteen thousand copies an hour, folding and delivering it automatically ready for the carriers. The whole work was done by machinery, the roll of paper being suspended above the press after the latest improved style, so that no "feeders" even were required.
One is sure to remark the large number of banking establishments in every city and considerable town throughout Australasia. We were told that there are thirty joint-stock banking companies in the country, with some eight hundred branches more or less. These companies pay an annual dividend of from ten to fourteen per cent to their stockholders. The existence of so many successful banks in so circumscribed a community is a matter not quite clearly understood by the author, though upon inquiry it was found that the style of banking business done here differed materially from that transacted in populous cities of the Old World. For instance, the banks here advance money freely upon growing crops, wool on the sheep's back, and other similar securities that would hardly be considered as legitimate collateral in America. The usual rate of interest to borrowers upon what is considered fair security, is never less than ten per cent,--twelve and fifteen per cent being most common. The speculative nature of nearly all kinds of business in the colonies impairs general confidence, and people come to be unduly sharp, requiring even heavier rates than those already named where there is any chance of getting them. They simply illustrate the axiom, that a high rate of interest signifies a high degree of risk. In the mean time the banks flourish, occupying the largest and most costly business edifices that are to be seen in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, or Adelaide.