of schooling- going age . I have two children and Mr Joseph has one. We have a ten-stall stable and a bush implement shed , and a chaff house attached to the stable, also a full set of implements. We have 11 good team horses and two light horses , five breeding sows and a boar, 50 head of poultry, and 50 turkeys. We have put £900 into the venture, and we borrowed £1,100 from the Agricultural Bank and about £1,000 from the Industries Assistance Board. We owe about £650 to outside creditors.

7118. To Mr CLARKSON : We have 500 acres of crop , of which 250 acres are fallow. Fallow gives four to five bushels more than the other. We sow60 lbs. of seed to the acre , and 75lbs. of super. Federation gave fare returns until the rust year ; then we threw it out , and Yandilla King gave good returns this year. Comeback and Fairbank for early wheats are my choice. The highest average for the whole are that we have had was about seven bushels in 1913 over 260 acres. That was our first real crop. The highest that any part of the crop went was 14 bushels ; that was Federation. That year there was no fallow. I do not think it is any good after the middle of June. Last year I averaged about four bushels, owing to the rust. There were 600 acres in, and 150 acres were knocked down by the January storm. This year I estimate the Crop at 9 to 10 bushels. The last 40 acres that were sown will not yield a grain , as it was sown in July, which is too late. We must get five bushels before we get anything for ourselves. We use a Shearer 10-furrow disc plough, and seven horses, which does seven to eight acres a day. We use a 15-disc drill and do 12 acres on an average through the season. We have a five-foot Sunshine harvester and a Union stripper. If we get a good stripping day we should do six acres. It is fairly level country, and we could use bigger machinery, which would have the effect of pulling our costs down. Bulk handling would also reduce costs. Stripping machinery is no good, because there are many days when a man cannot work with it. It is a month since we started stripping , but the weather has been no good. During that time we have been nine days quite idle. I would go back to the reaper binder and thresher, and utilise the straw for stock feeding, and if that was done you could take the crop in a tank to the siding. The tariff affects us most seriously. We have to pay a heavy tariff upon farming machinery. All our implements should be free of duty. It is a scandal that we have to pay a ten per cent. ad valorem duty. The higher the prices the more duty we have to pay.

7119. To Mr PAYNTER : Last year was a terrible one. Mr Mills estimated several of our pad docks would go 18 bushels at the beginning of October, then the rust came along and six bushels was the highest we got. We pickle our wheat and put it through a winnower a second time. I have tried sorghum and amber cane, and with thorough cultivation and anything like summer rains amber cane could be very successfully grown. At the present time, there is a grass growing in the two acre paddock near the house which I think is Johnston grass and I am sure that can be grown successfully. It is 2 ft. 6in high and is of prolife growth. I have not had too much success with vegetables. The first year we got a decent wheat crop. We got a fair vegetable crop and then it became so wet that they were drowned. Grapes, Oranges and fig trees grow well. We have only started pig raising. We commenced last year with the inferior wheat. Eventually we will go in for them extensively if we get a satisfactory market. At the present time it is good , but if we all go in for pigs we will soon glut the Geraldton market. We want cold storage there or a bacon factory or both. Poultry raising is profitable and wheat is worth 7s. a bushels to feed to them. We have done all our own work. I do not think 2,000 acres of land like ours is any too much for one man. A man should be able to crop with a little help at harvest time and seeding time. 300 acres himself . Co-operation is one of our only hopes of reducing costs and I think that farmers are now being brought together rapidly. I ma an agent for the Co-operative company and they are coming together and will come together in time. One or two of the old rut men you may not get , but the new settler will come into it. I cannot complain about the rents because there is secret history about the classification , but the price of the land around me is far too high. The value of land is what it will produce in its natural state, and until it is improved, it is worthless.

7120. To Mr CLARKSON: The highest price that should be paid for first class land should be 15s. and nothing to pay for the first five years because you cannot get anything out of it for five years.

7121. To Mr PAYNTER : The whole of our land if it was fenced would carry 1,000 sheep in its present state. We have no sheep at present. There is one experienced old hand here who says that 2,000 sheep is its carrying capacity.

7122. To Mr CLARKSON: We struck a rotten period when we started and we hope to go in for sheep from the returns we were to get for wheat but we never had a returns we were to get for wheat but we never had a return yet. We have sunk capital in machinery and have sown wheat crops and lost them. I should like come Government assistance to get sheep. It is our only hope of getting out to the mire.

7123. If your present liabilities were funded and you were given a period for repayment, do you think you would make a success of it ?—I think we would have a chance of going in for sheep then. I would prefer it to working under a board. We could clear ourselves and it would give us more heart to do our work, but the Board have been very good and have given us what we have asked fro, but we are losing money all the time and we want something that we can make some money out of. When we first took up our land there was no sign of any rabbits. One day my father said he had seen a trace of them. Within four years you could see them wholesale and they are burrowing. We have dug them out of their burrows and they are beginning to get on to the crops. One Paddock of oats was eaten round by rabbits. There are no dingoes there. Another matter I would like to draw attention to is that of stud stock. There are not sufficient entries or male stud stock in the district. There are any amount of scrubbers that should be done away with and in the meantime the stock are deteriorating. The entries should be registered and all others prohibited. Our State farm should be more useful to us that it is. They should have first class animals there available at reasonable fees. Our experiences with pigs last year was that our inferior wheat was worth 6s. 7d. a bushel for 50 bushels which we fed to pigs.

7124. By fattening store pigs or breeding them ?—By both. I got the figures out this way. There