JAMES DREGHORN, Farmer, Morawa, sworn and examined:

6610. To the CHAIRMAN: I have been here 5½ years and hold 1,000 acres. I have 12 miles cartage west of the railway. I have 400 acres cleared; the whole is fenced and subdivided into three paddocks. My water supply is a good well. Within the last two months the Government have put a well on the corner of my property. My country is of a mixed character. I have a very serious grievance against the classification, which only indicates how the work is scamped by contract surveyors. Some of the land has been marked blue, which is the colour given to first class land. Actually the land marked blue is ti-tree, scrub and poor mallee land.

6611. I am sorry to hear that, as in other districts everyone who has referred to the classification has told us that it was invariably correct?—I was in the Public Works Department for 14 years. I have no children of school going age. I have a shed, stables and plant, five working horses, two cows and a calf. I had £1,500 capital when I started. Since I started farming I returned for a time to Perth, where I was employed under the Workers' Homes Board. I earned £600 while with them, and taking into consideration all the cost of my home in Perth I should say that I had spent altogether £1,800 here. I received £410 from the Agricultural Bank and since August last I have gone on the I.A.B. for sustenance. I think I owe very little to the Board.

6612. To Mr. CLARKSON: I have 264 acres in crop and 100 acres was fallow, which looks a little better than the other part of the crop, possibly a bag better. I sow 45lbs. of Bunyip to the acre and 60 to 75lbs. of super., the latter in the poorer ground. My highest yield has been five bags over the whole area in 1913. I estimate this year's output at four bags. There is a quantity of inferior land in my block which is marked on the plan first-class. I should say that it would take about four bags to pay the expenses of putting in and taking off the crop. I do not think that to the average farmer bulk handling would make a wonderful difference, but the farmer should be relieved of the duty on his machinery. There are the higher rates of wages to be considered and the cost of living which already seriously handicap him. The machinery should be cheap, as near to cost price as possible, and should not be a burden on any other part of the community.

6613. To Mr. PAYNTER: Last year I had rust. I pickle my wheat, and graded it one year with a grader. While I am pickling I strain everything out of it that is not wheat. I use a Deering plough. I have tried fodder crops, but they were not a success. I have experimented with several different clovers, and perhaps one of them might be a success. I have some Japanese millet, which is not a great success, nor were the fruit trees which I planted. My son, who worked with me on the farm, is now in the A.I.F., and I have not paid wages heretofore. My own working hours are six to eight a day. I do not think any man should have less than 1,000 acres of land, but the maximum quantity that he should be able to cultivate would depend on his horse-power and machinery. If that and other factors were favourable he should do about 250 acres a year. If the farmers could only be got together in a co-operative system, and could formulate a workable scheme for the purchase of supplies and the marketing of their produce, it would be a very satisfactory event. So far as the present land laws are concerned, I reckon that the land we have got is not worth 1d. an acre. There was never a greater blunder made than when the Government raised the price of the land. To-day land values are less than ever they were. We brought stock with us thinking there would be plenty of feed in the bush to keep a horse and cow, but all the settlers lost horses for want of feed. I lost one horse and two cows. The cows died from impaction of the stomach. There is no grass country until the land has first been cultivated. You would have to cart water and feed. I have to carry hay to them twice a day. A paddock of 550 acres cannot keep my cow alive. However, the support given through the I.A.B. has been very generous, although I myself have an abhorrence of that kind of thing. All the farmers should have their land given them for nothing, and they should be free of the land tax for at least five years. They should be able to secure their titles in 10 years after certain satisfactory improvements have been effected. After all, there is always a land tax for the Government to fall back upon. The payment of rent by a farmer until he is thoroughly well established is a mere farce, because the land is valueless until labour and money have been expended upon it in its improvement. The great desideratum is to have a contented husbandry on the land. I think the farmers here, speaking generally, can make a do of it. In my own case I am being charged for good land that I do not possess. Then the vagaries of the rainfall are most remarkable. Six seasons have passed since we came here, and of those three were failures, but I had plenty of money, so it did not matter so much at the time. I have kept the rainfall from 1911 to date, and here it is. In 1911 the rainfall was about four and a half to five inches. The crops were a failure. In 1912, from August to December, 501 points. The crops were a partial success. In 1913 the rainfall was 14.18. From June to October we had 12.82 inches. In 1914, from June to October, we had 12.82 inches. In 1914 from June to October, we had 6.13, and a total of 8.2 for the year. In 1915, from June to October, 12.65 fell, the total for the year being 21.34. In 1916, from June to October, the rainfall was 10.59, which to date the total rainfall was 16.59. Apart from my complaint as to the classification of my land I may say that we have very heavy rail freights to pay, and these and other burdens have blown out our capital. The Government should take one district at a time and survey it and carry out the railway construction first of all. The fact of the matter is there is too much duplication of work, at any rate in the Lands Department.

(The witness retired.)

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PETER DANIEL HADDOCK, Farmer, Merkanooka, sworn and examined:

6614. To the CHAIRMAN: I came here in 1911, and was brought up on a farm in New Zealand. Our partnership is Haddock and Bradley, and we have 2,000 acres of good agricultural land 13 miles from a siding. There are 450 acres cleared. It is all fenced with six wires. We have two wells, one of stock water; the other is good water; and we have also a small dam. I have a camp, but no stable or machinery shed. I have a full working plant. 13