roomed hessian and iron house, bush stable and shed, set of implements, five working horses, 350 sheep, two cows, and six young horses. I started with a capital of £130 and the Union Bank assisted me. I have drawn about £1,700 from them, and that is the whole of my liability. I have only 40 acres of crop and it is very poor, going seven cwt. of hay to the acre. I enlarged my holding within the last 12 months. I could not carry any more sheep at the present time without more improvements. The fact is that the greater the acreage I put in the more money I lost, and I made my mind up to give up wheat growing and try and make a do on sheep. Last year I had 170 acres in, and I am ahead of that this year without any crop at all. Wheat growing is a useless occupation unless there is some system of price fixing so that the price of the farmer's wheat should be fixed, and also the commodities delivered by the importer to the farmer. Wheat is now fixed at 3s., and the merchant fixes his charges on the bags, manure, etc., so as to cut out the average, and the farmer will have to slave the whole time. Unless you can control the merchant there is no hope for the farmer. In the Old Country the Board has fixed the price of potatoes at 1½d. per pound. Then, again, freights are very excessive. Malloch Brothers state that the freight from America is £5, but the price of wire is more than double that added on, while corrugated iron has jumped enormously. Yet there are large stocks of it in all the yards down below. If the price of wheat was fixed at 3s. or 4s., the necessaries that we require to produce the crop should not be jumped up. Last year the standard of manure was lower, yet the price jumped up for 15s. a ton, so that they must be doing well out of the farmer.

8282a. By Mr PAYNTER : If you are of opinion that the manure is not up to the quality you can take a policeman with you and take a sample of it?- The last eight or nine years everything has gone up 100 per cent. The Government should encourage mixed farming by supplying sheep on a small scale; 50 selected ewes, say, and a ram are a good beginning. The Government should have qualified men touring the wheat areas and imparting instructions and delivering lectures on agricultural subjects. We have not seen Mr Sutton yet. Information should be supplied to new beginners so that they shall be put on the right track. I also think that the Worker's Home Act should be extended to the farmer or at any rate they should be supplied with a jarrah house not to exceed £200 in price. It should also be made possible that the farmer can obtain more ground lime to counteract sourness in the soil. The cost of machinery parts is out of all reason, and there should be some means adopted to deal with the trouble. if the State Implement Works were properly administered I believe it would be the saving of the farmer.

8283. By the CHAIRMAN : What class of land gave the low average?- The morel and the low flats. I intend to make cropping in the future a subsidiary matter to wheat, and what cropping that I will do will be with a view to feeding sheep. (The witness retired.) ---/--- GEORGE HENRY MILLER (Miller and Anderson), Farmer, East Narrogin, sworn and examined.

8284. By the CHAIRMAN : When did you first settle in this district?- I came here in 1908. I had a little experience in England and South Africa of farming. My partner and I hold 920 acres, 800 is first class, the balance second class. The price is 9s. It is 4¼ miles from the railway. It is ring fenced and sheep proof and subdivided into four paddocks; 360 acres are cleared and a 9ft dam of 700 cubic yards capacity. It occasionally goes dry and then we have to cart from the nearest Government well, which is six miles away. I am a married man with no family. I have a pise house with four rooms, valued at £250 by the Agricultural Bank Inspector; it cost £70 in material. I have bush stables and an iron machinery shed; they are both large. I have a set of implements, seven working horses, and two youngsters, a few pigs and fowls. We had a capital of £330, and borrowed £700 from the Agricultural Bank. We are about square with the Industries Assistance Board; 320 acres are under crop, averaging nine bushels, and we cut 50 acres for hay.

8285. By Mr. PAYNTER : How much of that was fallow?- 30 acres. This year we will have half fallow. We plough as deep as we can get the horses to pull the plough for fallow, and cultivate once or twice before seeding. We favour Yandilla King. We got seven bags to the acre one year. We use 45lbs. of seed and 56lbs. of super. This year was the highest average yield; it costs 35s. to put in and take off a crop. It is made up of ploughing 7s. 6d., root picking 1s., cultivating 3s., drilling 3s., pickling 4s., super 4s., harvest 6s., bags., sewing bags 6d., carting five miles 1s. 7d., land rent and interest on capital cost 1s. 3d. We use a three furrow stump jump mouldboard plough and an eight furrow cultivating plough. With the former we do four acres a day and with the latter 7½. We have a 17 tine cultivator which does 12 acres a day, a 15 drill that does 12, a 6ft Mitchell harvester that does seven acres. It is too expensive to drag a harvester. I would prefer a stripper, especially as we have an oil engine plant. The tariff presses very heavily on the farmer. I favour bulk handling. One year we had a little smut through careless pickling. We have half an acre of orchard which has done very well. We employ no labour, excepting for hay carting, and our average working hours are about 10 a day. To make a decent living on first class land a man should hold 1,500 acres and have 600 acres cleared. He should crop 300 acres a year with a little help at harvest time. After he puts his crop in he should plough 300 acres. Co-operation is an excellent proposition, and a branch has already been started here, while a meeting has been called to start another in the neighbourhood. The settler on going on the land should be rent free for three or four years and more care should be taken in allotting him land. If he had,, say, 800 acres that would grow wheat and was first class land, the balance he could utilise for grazing under an improved scheme. Otherwise I consider the price of the land is satisfactory enough. I was induced to come to this country through the reading of pamphlets issued by the Government at the Franco-British Exhibition in London. I was assured that the conditions were remarkably good, even to a man without capital and I must admit I was disappointed after I came here. With the war