There is an income tax. The bulk of the income is expended upon the maintenance of the public works and public service and the charges of the public debt. For a further discussion of New South Wales and its government, particularly in comparison with other Australian States, see Australian Federation.
Population. In 1901 there was a population
of 1,359,133—males, 712,456; females, 646,677—or
4.38 per square mile. In 1860 the population
was only 348,546, the gain since that time having
been much greater than for any other
Australian State. At the end of the century the
State had passed Victoria, and had become the
most populous Australian State. From 1881 to
1891 there were 164,205 more arrivals than
departures, but the excess had fallen in the followlowing
decade to only 16,167. The Chinese number
10,974, and the aborigines and half castes
7434. In 1901 Sydney, the capital, had a
population of 111,801, and with suburbs, 488,968;
Newcastle, 14,250; and Broken Hill, 27,518.
Religion. About 45 per cent. of the church population are adherents of the Church of England and about 25 per cent. Roman Catholic. The Presbyterians and the Wesleyans and other Methodists are the strongest of the smaller denominations. State aid to religion is abolished.
Education. There is a compulsory school attendance law for children between the ages of six and fourteen. Small fees are charged those able to pay. In 1900 there were 238,382 scholars enrolled in the State schools and colleges, and 60,327 in private institutions. Over half of the latter number were in Catholic schools. In 1900 the gross State expenditure for schools was £780,216, and the receipts from school fees amounted to £82,494. The State maintains a university at Sydney.
History. See Australia and article on Australian Federation.
Bibliography. Robinson, New South Wales London, 1873); Woods, Fish and Fisheries of New South Wales (ib., 1882); Nilson, The Timber Trees of New South Wales (Sydney, 1884); Hillyard, New South Wales (Baltimore, 1887); Liversidge, Minerals of New South Wales (London, 1888); Griffin, New South Wales: Her Commerce and Resources (Sydney, 1888); Coghlan, The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales (ib., 1887 et seq.); Fraser, The Aborigines of New South Wales (ib., 1892); Hutchinson, New South Wales (ib., 1896); Australasia, in the “British Empire Series” (London, 1900); and, for the history, Flanagan, History of New South Wales (London, 1862); Lang, An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales (ib., 1875); Barton, History of New South Wales (Sydney, 1889); Historical Records of New South Wales (Sydney).
NEWSPAPER. A public print issued at periodical intervals, sold at a fixed price per copy, and for a definite period to regular readers known as subscribers, and giving three classes of information: (a) relating to events, or ‘news’; (h) opinions, or ‘editorials’; and (c) wares on sale, or ‘advertisements.’ A newspaper is distinguished on one side from the magazine or monthly by the absence in the latter of any concerted effort to present a new record of recent current events. It is separated from the pamphlet or newsletter by its periodic appearance and stated publication. Special postal privileges in the United States—a rate of one cent a pound, paid in bulk, or one-eighth that for books, one-sixteenth that for merchandise, and one-thirty-second that for letters—and in other countries press laws have led to many judicial and administrative decisions which unite in defining a periodical as earmarked by recurrent publication and a subscription list made in good faith, and the newspaper as published at least once a week. The term newspaper, while legally applied to a weekly, usually indicates a daily publication issued either early in the morning or in the afternoon. When the size of a sheet of paper and of a press bed-plate was limited by conditions of manufacture to the sweep of a man's arm in paper-making or in working a hand-press, the newspaper consisted of one large folio sheet doubled, giving four pages. When the changes in paper manufacture at the close of the eighteenth century and in the bed-plate of a press at the beginning of the nineteenth century through the application of power to printing enlarged the sheets and altered their limit, the newspaper began to be folded for the weekly to a square octavo, and enlarged for the daily to a large ‘blanket’ sheet. The introduction of the cylinder press after the middle of the nineteenth century and the manufacture of paper from wood-pulp of any size desired, fed to a press from a spool, changed the daily newspaper to its present form, containing a variable number of pages—from 4 pages to above 100, but usually 12 to 16 pages in English-speaking cities of over 500,000; 8 to 12 in cities of 250.000; and 4 in cities of less than 20,000; in Europe, usually from 4 to 8 in cities of 100,000; and 4 in smaller places, printed on both sides at a single impression. Newspapers, by periodic appearance, divide sharply into weekly (usually devoted to a special field, social, political, literary, the general weekly being the exception) and daily. The special daily is the exception, the world's four largest capitals and some American lesser cities having dailies devoted exclusively to the stock market or sports. American universities of over 1000 students usually support a daily. The city daily necessarily covers four fields: (a) the events of the place in which it is published; (b) events without; (c) opinion, usually given on a separate page, known as the editorial page; (d) the quotation of stock, cereal, and other exchanges, and advertisements. To these are added combined criticism and record, in special articles and correspondence on special fields, as politics, sports, theatre, letters, education, etc. Usually the earlier pages of a newspaper open with news from without and pass to local news. The markets and the larger share of the advertisements are usually on later pages. The editorial page, or expression of opinion, is generally between. When the two sides of a 4 or 8-page sheet had to be printed successively (until the invention of the web-perfecting press), this division was necessary. Still preserved from custom, an arrangement is now growing up in the United States in which important news, likely to attract buyers, gravitates to the front, and other fields to the rear pages, an arrangement long prevalent in the French boulevard press. As politics is the one subject of universal interest for men, newspapers in all countries tend to ally themselves with one of two political parties, where
