ing is on the Northern boundary. We have cleared 500 acres and fenced the whole with dog-proof fencing and six miles of internal fencing. I am a married man. My house is of four rooms sun-dried bricks. I have one child 19 years of age, but it is impossible for her to attend school as it is nine miles distant. I have only a yard for horses and a bush shed for implements. I have a full set of farming machinery, five working horses, two colts, and about 300 sheep, but the dingoes accounted for most of them. My capital is £1,200, and in addition to that the Agricultural Bank advanced £750, and I think the balance owing to the Industries Assistance Board is £600.

6656a. What is your opinion of the Agricultural Bank and its methods?—It is exceedingly slow in its operations, and we have wasted a lot of time while they have been deciding matters, but my experience of the Industries Assistance Board is that it is 50 times worse.

6657. Have the expert officials of the Department of Agriculture assisted you with advice as to the seed, clearing, and methods of farming?—No, Mr. Sutton's advice has generally been wrong.

6658. To Mr. CLARKSON: I have 320 acres under crop, 40 of which was fallow. I had no fallow in previous years, but there is very little difference in it as compared with the rest of the crop. The fallow was a hard piece of ground, it was ploughed in winter and cultivated twice. The highest average yield I have had would not exceed nine to 10 bushels. That was in the year before the drought. Last year the wheat seed they sent us was so inferior that it only yielded six bushels to the acre. I think it will go about nine bushels this year, and only for the dry spell we had it would have gone 15 easily. It costs about 29s. an acre to put in and take off the crop.

6659. Do you find the early or the late varieties give the best results?—The early, decidedly. They are the more reliable. I use 1¼ bushels to the acre. I used to use one bushel. Of super on the average I use from 65lbs. I use a Smith four-furrow plough and do an average daily of 3½ acres, but then there are other odd jobs to be done as well. The drill is a 15-disc and I would average 12 acres with that. I have a six-foot Sunshine harvester, and average 6½ to seven acres a day. I have not gone into the question of bulk handling, but so far as the tariff is concerned, I am in favour of free trade and getting things into the country cheaper.

6660. Do you think if your liabilities were funded and you were given a period of, say, 10 years in which to repay the indebtedness that you could finance yourself in the future?—I think so if I were clear and independent of the Government, but personally I would prefer to stand on my own feet.

6661. To Mr. PAYNTER: I have had rust slightly. If the wheat is clean in the drill I do not pickle it, but if there is any sign of smut I do. I do not grade it. I have grown barley and oats, and vegetables do well with me and so do fig trees. I have started pig-raising with 12 sows and we have poultry for our own use only. The rate of wages is now £2 a week and keep, although they have been as low as 30s., but the class of labour we get is rotten and not worth 10s. The actual work they do would be about three hours daily. I have only had one good man out of eight and I paid him £3 a week, but when my neighbours found he could work well they induced him to leave me and paid him higher wages which I could not afford to pay. In order to make a living out of land similar to mine a man should have at least 2,000 acres in this district, and I think he ought to be able to do 250 acres every year himself. I would like to see co-operation among farmers for the purchase of supplies and the disposal of produce, and I think it might be done, but so far there has been nothing done in this district. Locally I do not think it would be possible as we fall out here too much. Neither do I think the present land laws encourage settlement, as you cannot get a grievance remedied. The land laws seem to be badly applied.

6662. What do you think is a fair price to charge for land?—First class should be 9s. or 10s. What they call second class is really third, and it is impossible to get five bushels to the acre off it. Once sheep run over it it is no use for years, and 3s. 6d. would be the highest value of it. Some parts of the land are quite useless except for three months in the year for sheep. The surveyor refuses to recommend a reduction because his boss in the department classified it, and he is put in a delicate position if he values under him. We are outside the limit; yet we are charged a higher price than those with better facilities and higher grade land. We have to pay £4 10s. for a man to come up and no satisfaction results. We left good jobs, some of us, to come here. I came from Africa, where I used to average 22s. 6d. a day. To come here is patriotism. We work like oxen and are treated like slaves and we would like to get out if we could manage it. I have thrown five years of my life away here and my wife has lost a good deal of her womanhood. People in Perth would not believe what we have to go through. The conditions are Kaffirish; in fact a Kaffir would prefer to go back to the wilds. I have 300 sheep and an excellent rainfall, but the dingoes got 270 sheep.

6663. To Mr. VENN: A dog-proof fence is useless here. When a dingo gets inside your fence he keeps there till you have the luck to shoot him. The carrying capacity of the land is about one sheep to 30 acres and there is no poison.

6664. To the CHAIRMAN: Wokawa is 8½ miles towards Pindar on the Cue line, and there are some good patches of land, but taking the rainfall, it should not be dealt with on a wheat growing basis.

6665. To Mr. CLARKSON: It should be given to the people who will undertake to work it.

6666. By Mr. VENN: You are miles out of the wheat growing limit apparently. Why did you come here?—Well, because it meant living in Perth for a time or coming out at once to this place. Once we came here the department would not reply to our letters, and our experience is that each political party is worse than its predecessor. At the same time I think the Country party has no bowels, head or brains, or anything else.

6667. By Mr. CLARKSON: The best thing you can do is to find men with bowels and brains, and put them in?—A man with brains would not work this proposition. We look upon the whole thing as a hoax.

6668. By Mr. VENN: The Government having once ascertained that you are out of the safe limit should bring you within a regular rainfall?—That would suit us very well.