HALIDAY WILLIAM ENGLAND, Farmer, Perenjori, sworn and examined:

6550. To the CHAIRMAN: I came here five years ago when the settlement was first opened up. Sixteen years ago I was a student at Roseworthy College and for three years afterwards I was employed among the students in the orchard; actually I came West as an orchard manager, then I started farming myself. I took up 1,000 acres, all of which was forest, with the exception of 87 acres of sandplain. The price I paid was 15s. 6d., but that was subsequently reduced to 12s. 6d. and my property is six and a quarter miles from the railway. I have cleared 420 acres and another 150 acres will be cleared in a couple of months. The whole thousand acres has been fenced with a three-wire fence and has been divided into three paddocks. Our water supply is a good well and a small claypan which is practically sufficient for our needs. In addition to that we have rain water. I am a married man with one child who is at school. Mrs England teaches the school and attends it every day. I have a large implement shed about 40 feet by 30 feet and the house contains two rooms, and eventually I hope to have a better machinery shed. I have another building 34 feet by 30 feet, which accommodates my six horses and covers my harvester and drill and a quantity of chaff. I have sufficient farming implements with the exception of a binder. I have a cultivator, a plough, a drill, a chaffcutter, an engine, as well as six working horses and a trap and horse. There is also a cow as well as poultry. I had as capital when I came here £550, and since I have been here my wife has taken on the teaching profession again. I owe the Agricultural Bank £450, including a stock loan. I had to go on the I.A.B. because my crops were a total failure. I believe that all that I owe to-day is about £80, that is, if the I.A.B. have paid the machinery bills when they got my money for the wheat. My experience of the Agricultural Bank has been a most pleasant one, but the reverse may be said for the I.A.B. The fact is that I always have not been in agreement with them. For instance, I asked for a catalogue for an engine the other day and I have not yet received it. I want to get entirely clear of them. They decided that they would not give me the engine I asked for until the 6d. dividend was due. In no shape or form have we ever been assisted by the departmental experts of the Government in regard to advice or any other matters relating to farming generally.

6551. To Mr CLARKSON: I have 290 acres under crop and have cut 35 acres for hay. None of it was fallow and I have not had any experience of fallow here. Practically there is none in the district, but I have fallowed 70 acres for next year. The highest average yield last year that I had was 17 bushels to the acre over 220 acres. The average for the district should be about 14. In addition I have 80 acres on shares that will go about 18 bushels of Bunyip. I should think that under ordinary circumstances two bags tot he acre, that is, six bushels, would cover the expense of putting in and taking off the crop, but when I go in for fallowing it will take at least three bags because the ploughing is much dearer that the cultivation. I generally use 45lbs. of seed and 70lbs. of super to the acre. I have an eight-furrow disc cultivating plough and a 30-tine Sunshine cultivator. I can do eight to 10 acres a day with it and cultivate about 24 acres. With my 16-disc drill I can average 18 acres a day and with my 6ft. harvester about eight acres. Bulk handling would necessarily reduce costs considering the present high price of bags. I have not gone into the matter very seriously, but I have no doubt that a wagon can be devised whereby the grain can be shot out at the bottom into the trucks. Alternatively we could have large tanks placed on a wagon which could be tipped into the elevator at the siding. I consider that the tariff is an unjust imposition and it should be at least reduced to offer fair competition to other machinery. I say this although I have an Australian make of machine myself. It is also unjust to put an embargo on cornsacks. No doubt it was put on with the intention of encouraging local manufacture, whereas as a matter of fact jute goods will never be manufactured in this country.

6552. To Mr PAYNTER: I have had no disease in my crops. I pickle my wheat and a certain quantity I have graded, and find this is a beneficial practice. I find that a certain quantity of graded wheat does not germinate and that all means wheat. I have not tried any artificial grass crops, but I have a few fruit trees and they are doing fairly well, although the grapes are not all they should be. I grow vegetables, and I took down to Geraldton cauliflowers that weighed 14lbs. without any leaves on them whatever. I have not bred pigs, but I have bought them for my own use. I have about 80 head of poultry, and have always sold eggs locally. For scrub cutting I pay my man 30s. a week and his keep. Every man should have a minimum area of 1,000 acres, which he must work properly to make a living out of this district; but first of all he needs sufficient land to be cleared to make a start. A man can easily do 300 acres himself. Co-operation would be a very fine thing if it were workable, but nothing in this direction has been done except in a small way. The man that I was in with went halves with me and was to buy manure in the first year while I was to pay for the wheat, but the other man did not pay up until six months afterwards. I think that our present land regulations could be improved upon and that for the first five years it would not hurt the Government to give a man his land free of rent. The settler comes out here to benefit himself and while he does good work he would be benefiting the State at the same time, especially as he puts his capital into it. For the first five years all his work is dead work.

6553. To Mr VENN: There is no poison in the Perenjori district, but there is poison 35 miles east of it; 25 miles west there is a small patch of York road poison covering about four or five acres. I do not know of any poison south within 20 miles of here. What land I have not cleared I have had ring-barked for four or five years. There is an abundance of grass upon the holding. Unfortunately I have not the horses to eat it. I have put down altogether six bores and have at last struck good water, and I am quite satisfied that wheat growing combined with sheep farming can be made a profitable concern. It is absolutely necessary that some scheme should be propounded whereby the settler may procure from the Government breeding ewes on easy terms, and the Government could go still further and liberalise the stock loan so as to enable the farmer to buy sheep whenever he is in need of them. He should also be enabled to buy a dairy cow or two, for a farmer's family use more milk than do people in the City, and it is certainly a bad policy to import a large