alty insurance companies are said to be
weary of being diverted from their regular business to become a mere
fighting force in the Courts to prevent the injured or the dependents
from getting any compensation. The long-suffering public is becoming
aware that the taxpayers are compelled to bear the burden of supporting
the pitifully great multitude of incapacitated or rendered dependent
because of industrial accident or occupational diseases. Employers
insure their liability, and the poor man has to fight an insurance
company, and at present reform is blocked on the plea that it is
unconstitutional. There are difficulties even in Australia, and to
enquire into such difficulties would be good work for women lawyers.

CHAPTER XIV.

SPECULATION, CHARITY, AND A BOOK.

In the meantime my family history went on. My nephew was sent to the
Northern Territory to take over the branch of the English and Scottish
Bank at Palmerston, and he took his sister from school to go with him
and stay three months in the tropics. He was only 21 at the time. Four
years after he went to inspect the branch, and took his sister with him
again. I think she loved Port Darwin more than he did, and she always
stood up for the climate. South Australia did a great work in building,
unaided by any other Australian State, the telegraph line from Port
Darwin to Adelaide, and at one time it was believed that rich
goldfields were to be opened in this great empty land, which the
British Government had handed over to South Australia, because Stuart
had been the first to cross the island continent, and the handful of
South Australian colonists bad connected telegraphically the north and
the south. The telegraph building had been contracted for by Darwent
and Dalwood, and my brother, through the South Australian Bank, was
helping to finance them. That was in 1876-7. This was the first, but
not the last by any means, of enterprises which contractors were not
able to carry out in this State, either from taking a big enterprise at
too low a rate or from lack of financial backing. The Government, as in
the recent cases of the Pinnaroo Railway and the Outer Harbour, had to
complete the halfdone work as the direct employer of labour and the
direct purchaser of materials. A great furore for goldmining in the
Northern Territory arose, and people in England bought city allotments
in Palmerston, which was expected to become the queen city of North
Australia, Po