10090. By Mr. VENN : They have five years now?—But these people have had the heart knocked right out of them. Men frequently come to me and say, "Will you take over this block, or will you take over that?" I tell them that I have quite enough on my own hands.

10091. By Mr. PAYNTER: What do you suggest that the Government should do ?— Clean the slate. There are some of the finest settlers in the world in this country, but they are overwhelmed by their indebtedness. They cannot pay and they never will pay. It is no use our pretending that they will be able to pay what they owe when we know very well that we have no hope whatever of getting it. When an ordinary business man bumps up against that kind of thing he writes it off. Your best plan is to devise means whereby the country will have a prosperous farming community, rather than a community of dissatisfied men who are always up to their neck in debt, and who should never have been in that position. I put it to you this way : suppose three men owned an island and, in spite of their individual efforts, could not make anything out of it, and someone suggested that it would grow wheat and asked what they would be charged to carry on the experiment, the reply would naturally be "Grow wheat by all means and we will then have something to tax. As it is we cannot tax the native bush." Now, seeing that the Government have not got a penny out of these farmers, why should they jump on them merely because they have taken up a thousand acres and are not able to tackle more than 50 or 60 acres in the first year ? Why should the Government expect farmers under these conditions to pay for the whole lot? That is the view that should be taken.

10092. By Mr. VENN : What is the sheep-carrying capacity of the country down your way ?—I had a run around in a car when the roads were good a little while back, and I dropped across an abandoned place which had been cleared, and on which the grass had grown in an astonishing manner. I think if the people could be fixed up in a reasonable way so that they should not be overwhelmed with debt; they would be encouraged to ringbark and clear, and put sheep on areas that are now idle. All our cleared land has been ploughed once or twice. That is all the land wants. If you break it up, it is far better for the grass. The best land we have is clay country, and you will always find stock on it. I should say that under the conditions I have described the country will carry one sheep to an acre and a-half.

10093. By Mr. CLARKSON : All the year round ?—I should think so. I never had any idea that the country would grass up as well as it has done. I have one paddock in which the couch is getting matted. People laughed at the idea of couch growing in the morrell country. It holds very well in the summer. I put it in in the dry year.

10094. Can you tell us the cost of carting your wheat per ton per mile by tractor ?—It all depends on the condition of the roads. You think you know about it and then you find that the tractor stops on the road. That was my experience the other day, and no less than 189 bags of chaff were spoilt in on trip.

10095. How long have you been carting by tractor ?—This is the second year.

10096. Would you venture to say that carting is cheaper by tractor ?—Yes, if the roads are decent, but not by the round wheel tractor. You will remember the Cumminin hill. Either one of my tractors will take 24 or 25 tons up that hill, and that weight does not include the weight of the wagons. We have loaded four railway trucks with chaff at Bruce Rock at one time; that has been done on several occasions.

10097. Do you think the use of tractor power generally would lead to a reduction of costs in farming, or would you say that tractors would never become generally used by the smaller farmer?—Tractors are in general use in the United States, but I think that when they are used they should be used to deal with big areas. Many people use tractors in the States and drive them themselves just as others drive their own horses. I might state that this year we have put in 3,070 acres of wheat, 70 acres of oats, 80 acres of rape, and there are 300 acres in the self-sown paddock. This makes a total of 3,610 acres. We did all the drilling with the horses. Most of this is new country. All that country you saw when you were there is under crop.

10098. By Mr. VENN : Do you think the rabbit pest will be serious ?—I found that they were gaining up to last year, but I hit them up with the poison called toxo, and there are not many there now. My trouble was that originally in doing what I thought was right. I did the wrong thing. When the land was taken up, I put up rabbit-proof netting, but the people always left the gates open and we trapped all the rabbits in the country in our paddocks where we had water. Toxo, however, has cleared them out.

10099. By Mr. CLARKSON : Is there any matter we have not touched on that you would like to bring under our notice ?—I consider that more care should be taken in selecting routes for agricultural railways, and also in the selection of sites for stations. The Railway Department now place a railway station on the top of every hill. They say, "See how hard it would be to start a train from the bottom of a hill or from the flat." That means, of course, that farmers have to cart their produce to the top of these hills, and the trains will take that produce down the hill. It is not a surveyor's or an engineer's knowledge that is required in this connection; it is local knowledge. Local people should be consulted. The railways are taking that stand now to some extent, but in the past the farmers' conveniences have been totally disregarded. Then in regard to spur lines, if these are all right for 10, 20, or 30 miles, they must be all right for even 200 miles. They should be linked up at the ends. While on the subject of the railways, something might be said about the method of construction and the system of day labour. I am an old railway contractor, and I consider that the construction of Government lines by day labour is most expensive. It is impossible to expect people who take up land to pay for agricultural lines when the cost of construction has been out of all reason. The department recently made comparisons between the cost of the construction of several of the agricultural railways which were built by day labour and other lines which were built by contract, but they entirely forgot to point out that in connection with the construction of the agricultural lines the sleepers were right alongside the work, while, with regard to the others, the Widgiemooltha-Norseman line for in-