with freights on a bag of flour or a binder part will not give us any relief.

9340. By Mr CLARKSON: Do you think that by increasing the tax on the unimproved value of the land will induce settlement?—Let me give you an instance of what is happening at the present time. I will quote the case of a man named jones at Kununoppin, who has put a couple of thousand pounds into his land proposition and has had to get off it. That man has 1,000 acres of land, and its unimproved value is 10s. per acre. That is a big value to put on land out there—£500 would be the unimproved value. You say that for the first five years this value will not rest on you at all. After five years that man's freight on wheat alone was £150, and then there was freight on super, and on all the goods he required. You can put the whole of the freights down at £250. I would reduce that man's freight by half, making it £125, by imposing a tax of 4d. on the unimproved value of the land. As his land is worth £500 he would have to pay £8 3s. 4d., and added to the £125 freight his total would be £133 3s 4d., instead of having to pay £250. Now take another man who is say at York, and who has 5,000 acres worth £2 an acre. The railway has made that value, and the owner of that property is only running sheep. He pays no freights and fares on the railway. Is it right that he should not contribute something towards the interest and sinking fund of the railways?

9341. That is an extreme case?—You must take extreme cases. I could point to such a case on the Midland line, of Hugh Hamersley. He only sends along a few trucks of sheep per annum, and never uses the railway for the carriage of wheat or manures. By imposing a tax of 4d. in the pound on the unimproved value of all the land, we help the man on the land and make everyone contribute as he should to the cost of the railways. In New Zealand they do it, but not on the unimproved land values basis. They collect interest and sinking funds from general revenue. You never know how it is done, but we always find that in those cases where we do not know how a thing is done the farmer is made to pay. If Perth paid its portion under the proposal I have made, the producer would derive a considerable benefit. The imposition of the tax I have suggested will enable the producer to do their trading in their own districts, and it will not be possible for the Perth people to undersell.

9342. By the CHAIMAN: Then in the centres of population, the traders will not be able to maintain large department stores?—They will always be able to maintain their stores, because they buy in bigger quantities than the man in the country. They will have to do with a smaller ratio of profit. In New Zealand you will find fairly large centres all along the coastline, but one centre does not eat up another. Adopt the proposal I have suggested, and you reduce your railway fares, because the man in Perth will have to pay the same amount per pond on the unimproved value of his land as the man in the country, and the man in the country will get an advantage which he does not posses at the present time, an advantage which will be reflected all round.

9343. by Mr CLARKSON: Most of these stores are supplied through big wholesale houses; will not those wholesale houses, having to pay the tax you suggest, increase the cost of goods to the country storekeeper?—The tax a wholesale house will have to pay may amount to £25, £50, or even £100, and if it distributes that sum amongst all its customers, it will not amount to very much. There are vacant lands totalling over 75,000 acres, between Fremantle and Midland Junction, and those lands are held extensively by people who are not in this country, and who have not been here for many years, while a proportion is held by speculators from whom you cannot purchase except by paying an exorbitant price. These are the people who will have to pay under my proposal. To day the further a man is away the more that man pays, and the poorer his land is the harder it is for him to make a living.

9344. By the CHAIMAN: Do you think it would be a step in the right direction to endeavour to get a sort of appeal court established in connection with the railways, a court which would deal with all cases of complaint, and on which the railway could be represented as well as the person appealing, and before which the matter could be thrashed out, instead of, as at the present time, being decided by the department from documents in their possession?—I think that anything you could do in that way would certainly be a vast improvement; I would certainly advocate any course which would assist in throwing light on matters arising through carelessness, and which would benefit the community. (The witness retired.) ________________

JOHN HOLDCROFT, Warehouse Manager for Messrs, Harris, Scarfe, sworn and examined:

9345. By the CHAIRMAN: You have a fairly extensive acquaintance with the system in your warehouse of forwarding goods to the country?—We are continually sending a fairly large number of small packages to the country throughout the season. Of late years we have not catered very much for that might be called the larger trade. We are simply using the agencies which we have had in the past in supplying small parts to keep in order machines that we have distributed. We have also curtailed our trade in the matter of truck loads, because of the serious opposition which now exists in the machinery markets.

9345. Do you think it is cheaper to send stuff by truck loads than to do so in smaller consignments?—Undoubtedly, the rates for truck loads are cheaper than in the case of small consignments. It would be difficult to suggest any way in which buyers in the country could join together so as to get their stuff sent along to them in a truck load instead of it small lots.

9347. Do you know of any complaints in regard to the rate on small goods being too high?—My clerk informs me that there are very few complaints and that everything is working as agreeably as we can possibly get it. I should be surprised to learn that here is an outcry against the charges made on small consignments. We consider that we have been fairly treated by the railway authorities. We have had no difficulties ourselves, and there have been very few complaints.