TUESDAY , 15th OCTOBER, 1918. (At Perth)

Present: Hon. W. C. Angwin , M. L. A. (Chairman), Hon. J. F. Allen, M.L.C. — — — Hon. R.G Ardagh , M. L. C. S. M. Brown , Esq., M.L.A — — — T.H. Harrison , Esq., M.L.A.

THOMAS OCKERBY , Miller , sworn and examined:

7486. By the CHAIRMAN : This Commission has been appointed for the purpose of inquiring into the wheat Marketing Scheme. Would you prefer to make a statement or to be examined first? — I have made a few notes , but it seems a pretty hopeless task to go through nearly three years of work. I will , however,make a statement. I presume it is not my financial position that the Commission desire to know , but they wish to have my profit and loss accounts. These I have brought (accounts handed in) . I have not been able to discover any war profit and loss accounts. These I have brought (accounts handed in). I have not been able to discover any war profits , and neither has the Federal Commissioner. It is not the wonderful business that the general public seem to think. I have also prepared a return showing the cost of the Cottesloe mill. This is the larger of my two mills. The figures are for the six months ended 30th April, when my half-yearly balance was made up. All the times are totalled , giving the total expenditure for the six months and the total products. All that is necessary , therefore , is to put one set of accounts against the other.( Document handed in.) This does not include jute or overhead expenses;it is the purely wages cost and power cost, as if the mill were run automatically. No office expenses are allowed for in that. For the cost of the bags cost us 7s. per dozen , and it takes 41 of them to make a ton. New corn sacks at present can be bought from the scheme at 10s. 4½d. per dozen; though we , as old importers , have the privilege to import corn sacks through the commonwealth Distribution Scheme, and they cost us 10s 1½d. per dozen, equivalent to about 10d. each. Therefore I considered that to take my milling cost at Cottesloe at 30s. per ton would just about cut out the bare cost of milling , without any overhead expenses.I make merely an ordinary trade profit. The figures in the return I have handed in have been audited by Mr. M. E. Pye, and his certificates in respect of them can be obtained at any time. I should like to make a statement on my relations with the scheme . I have a great deal of correspondence here on that subject. My relations with the Scheme , I am sorry to say , have not been very happy. For some reason I have been regarded as the stormy petrel of the fraternity of millers; and , except as regards this year , there has been nothing but trouble between the Scheme and myself. That trouble had not been sought by me. I am somewhat to blame , I suppose ; I am not the easiest man in the world to get on with. Every self-made man resents interference from people whom he regards as not understanding his business. After the first 12 months of the Scheme I was deprived of the position of acquiring agent for the Scheme. All the other wheat shippers and millers were installed; but not my firm. I could not get at the reason for my firm's exclusion. There was a large file built up m, which was laid on the table of the House for the inspection of members; but I never could find out the charges against me. There was any amount of acrimonious correspondence between the Scheme and myself; but I think it was due more particularly to the peculiar attitude which the secretary of the Wheat Scheme took up ; being a civil servant, he did not take up the attitude of the ordinary business man. Unfortunately , the ordinary civil servant regards the average business man as a rogue. If the Scheme had approached me a little differently , my firm could have got on with them just as well as we got on with the Royal Commission on grain and foodstuffs. When the Government decided to import a large quantity of Indian wheat, my firm and the Perth Mill milled the whole of that wheat. We had no trouble what ever with that Royal Commission , of which the members were Mr. Simpson , Mr. Rae , and Mr> Bath. If they had anything to say against us they carpeted us straight away, and we had it out man to man; but the scheme system was to do it all at long range, by correspondence ; and the receiver of a letter frequently reads into it something that the writer never intended. That went on until there was pretty well a deadlock. 7487. But the Scheme stopped all the millers from acquiring wheat? — Yes, eventually. But the first year we alone were stopped. And we were not only millers, but also shippers. We were pioneers in the shipping at merchants' risk. We shipped at our own risk. The Producers Union and Dalgetys simply shipped wheat on consignment , which was not very much good good to the farmer ; the wheat might hit a good market , or a bad one. My firm bought straight out from the farmer on market prices , and we shipped the wheat on our own account. Being a local firm , we should have had some encouragement. During the first year we acquired almost as much wheat as any other firm in the wheat trade. The figures are in the report. There was something over two million bushels acquired by my firm , and the only firm which beat us was Dreyfus & Co., who acquired a little over 3,000,000 bushels. 7488. While you are on that point , let me ask you why there was no surplus from the millers? — The return I have put in shows that every wheat agent showed a surplus , and that every miller simply came out square. The inference is that the millers pocketed the difference. 7489. It does look something like that ? — I notice a statement to that effect appears in the interim report issued by the Royal Commission. In reply , I can only refer to what concerned my own firm. At the earliest possible opportunity we shifted our stacks into our mills and ground up the wheat. The other agents left their wheat in the stacks for months. Those stacks were more or less badly roofed , as you will have noticed by the reports on the file , and they accumulated a lot of moisture , and when they were eventually delivered in to the mills they were brought down without covers , as the Railway Department could not supply sheets, and that wheat was weighed against the millers'. Some of that wheat was so saturated that it could not be taken into the mills. But the millers wheat was never exposed to the weather. Inter alia , one of the biggest troubles I got into with the Scheme arose because I brought the wheat into the mill and ground it up. At Cottesloe we grind a little over 1,000,000 bushels in the season. Apart from what we shipped , therefore , it would not take very long to get through our stock of wheat. We left no stacks in the country,except that at Moora, which turned out short. On that subject I have a letter from the Scheme , dated 9th May , 1917, reading as follows:- The Inspector of Agencies states that the figures for your Moora agency 1915/16 are as follows:-

                                            Bushels.     lbs.

Wheat acquired — — — 83,985 50 Certificates issued — — — 83,985 31 Total turn-out — — — — 81,173 58

This makes a total shortage on out-turn of 2,811 bushels 33lbs., for which amount your firm will be held responsible. We had to pay for that. The Moora stack was the only country stack of any size that we had. That stack we took over from the Farmers Mercantile Union , who were never appointed acquiring agents , but who, in anticipation of being so appointed, issued instructions to their various country agents to acquire a lot of wheat. However , Mr. W. D. Johnson refused to appoint them. They came into collision with him over some statement made in the Press offering a rebate to the farmers and they were not appointed . Consequently, they were left