will go more than 14 bushels this year. September played up with it. Mid-season wheat is the best for here with a portion of the crop put in with an early growing wheat. My early wheat is Bunyip this year and is going 20 bushels. Darch's Imperial only averaged nine bushels this year. I use 50lbs. of seed to the acre and in one place 80lbs., according to the land. The increase made as much as six bushels difference. It is the same seed and put in at the same time. The one crop goes 10 and the other 16 or 17 bushels. Last year I put in no super. on some of the land and got nothing. I could make 300 acres of crop pay on 14 bushels to the acre. To pay actual expenses of putting in and taking off would be from eight to nine bushels. I used to buy wheat for Darling for two seasons and a lot of my purchase would represent a 20-bushel yield. I have a 10-furrow disc plough myself and I think bulk handling would pay if we could use the same bags over and over again. I am a free trader and, therefore, believe that everything should come in free and most certainly farmers' machinery. The farmer has no protection as regards his grain and has to compete with the world and yet he has to pay heavy duty on his necessary machinery.

7467. To Mr. PAYNTER: Last year I suffered a little from rust, but I cut my crop for hay and thus saved it. The land costs too much to experiment with for a start. Last year I paid wages 35s. a week and this year it is 40s. a week and keep. Last year the man I had was not worth 10s. a week. They work on an average about eight or nine hours a day. No man should hold less than 1,000 to 1,500 acres in this district and none of the land is any good until it is cleared, yet all the time the farmer has to pay rent on the whole area, although through being unable to clear some of it, it must remain for a long time quite useless to him. If a man could get an advance to clear six or seven hundred acres and ring the remainder, he could start off from the jump and get an average good crop early. Where the land is poor, like mine, he should be able to take up more of it. I cannot crop more than 60 per cent. of my land. The Government will not reduce the price of land, or extend the terms of payment. That is not satisfactory, because I am paying 16s. for land that is not worth 2s. 6d. It is simply worthless rocky hills. I bought it from a man who had already taken it up. A man should be able to do 300 to 350 acres himself annually, and co-operation would be an advantage. This was started when the Farmers and Settlers' Association started and was known as the Farmers and Settlers' Progress Association. They were going to deal with one particular firm, but the scheme fell through owing to its being turned into a political association, and so many of us pulled out. The land laws are reasonable, but, in my case, I have had to make three applications for three different loans for £685. Each of thee loans cost me time and trouble and I had in each instance to pay a separate sum for the mortgage, but speaking generally, I think the land laws are satisfactory. If a man takes up a large quantity of land and finds some of it worthless, some official should be appointed to value it. I know land which was sold for 10s. an acre that I would give £2 an acre for, so there seems to be no system about it. I am seven miles further out than that, and yet my land is not worth anything, although I pay a higher price for it. I am not complaining, but something should be done with the land that we cannot make any use of.

7468. By Mr. CLARKSON: If the amount you owe the Industries Assistance Board was funded and you had 10 years for repayment, do you think you would be able to stand on your own feet?—Yes, if the Board would hand me 45 per cent. or 50 per cent. of my wheat and take the balance I could finance myself right through. If the Government supplies ewes to the right men it would be an excellent policy. I have not sufficient land to carry more than 100 breeding ewes, but it would give me meat and keep my ground clean, and give me a little wool and the increase for sale. I have started pigs. I have seven now, bought with the little money that I got from the Board. I have asked repeatedly for £16 for wire netting to fence them in with. The ground I sold last year, if I had had pigs on it, I could have made worth 5s. 6d a bushel. The land inspector here is Mr. Wilson. The Board has given me practically all that I wanted, but it has been a struggle to get it. I have no wagon, but I have 60 or 70 bags of wheat in the paddock and no means of getting them in. I want to show you a pinion weighing 1¾lbs., which is not worth more than 3s. 6d. at the outside. I required one and sent down below for it. They charged me 9s. 6d. Here is another article worth not more than 1d., a key for which they charged 1s. 3d., and none of them fit. I bought them from H. J. Wigmore & Co. I would suggest that some inquiries should be made as to why farmers should be charged such ridiculously high prices.

(The witness retired.)

EVANDER WILLIAM FRANKLIN, Farmer, Three Springs, sworn and examined:

7469. To the CHAIRMAN: I have been farming for eight years here. In fact, since the land was thrown open. I was a farm hand for seven or eight years in South Australia and New Zealand; at Bruce, Baroota and Ardenvale in South Australia. I hold 770 acres of Government land in two blocks priced respectively at 10s. and 14s. There were 300 acres first class and the balance sand plain. I am distant three miles from the railway. I have 300 acres cleared. It is all fenced with a boundary fence and subdivided into five paddocks. The water supply is one small dam of 800 yards 6ft. deep. My well went salt recently. The dam cost 1s. 3d. a yard. It is not covered in. It will not last through the summer. I shall have to cart water this year. I am a married man with two children of my own, as well as a motherless child partly dependent on me. They are too young to go to school. I have an iron and bush timber house lined with hessian, an iron roof stable with timbered sides and two straw-thatched sheds, a set of implements, six working horses, one cow, a few pigs. I and two of my brothers starting farming with £70 and borrowed from the Agricultural Bank an amount which has since been transferred to the National Bank, £670. I owe £300 to a brother free of interest.

7470. To Mr. CLARKSON: I have 270 acres cropped, no fallow. I believe in fallow but have not had any since 1914. Since then I have been putting