certain number of sheds should be put up on this land, carried the line right through to it, and we would have undertaken to have taken care of it. It has to come in here sooner or later. They would have been no worse off than they are to-day at Tambellup. We would have given them a lease of the land and the right to run a line to it. I was also prepared to make them an offer for the plant after the termination of the war or the end of the Pool, giving me, of course, two or three years in which to meet the capital expenditure. Therefore they would not have sustained any loss. That offer is still open. Our capacity here is 5,000 bags a week. If we run for 40 weeks there is 200,000 bags which will have to come in.

5753. You advise that depots should be at sidings?—Yes, strongly.

5754. This would save the cost of handling and railage?—Yes, and, furthermore, when we get back to normal conditions what will be done with the Tambellup sheds and the Spencer's Brook sheds?

5755. They will have only a break-down value?—The others would still be of value at the sidings. It would be possible to keep wheat covered in them until taken to the ship.

5756. With regard to your silos, did you build them as a protection against weevil or for cheaper handling?—The protection against weevil never entered into the matter.

5757. You did not anticipate trouble with weevil?—We never had trouble with weevil except under circumstances which we know could have been prevented.

5758. There is a proposal that the State should build a number of bins of a capacity of 40,000 bushels. These bins are expected to hold a third or a fourth of the State's harvest, and it is suggested that they should be used when erected for storage purposes. Do you think they would assist in any way to rid the State of weevil?—I am doubtful, because weevil has spread throughout the length and breadth of the State. I consider that the State should approach the question of bulk handling with the greatest caution. The farmers talk about the saving which would be effected by the bulk handling system, but we must remember that we are going through abnormal times. The price of bags is very high, but when the war is over you will find the price of jute back again, and there will be a great deal of it on the market. How will the farmer get on who says "I will do away with my bags." There will be only a third of the State's harvest dealt with in bulk. Which farmers will be selected to get the benefit from that? Some farmers will still have to use bags. Furthermore, the farmer will not be in the position to be able to sit down on his wheat. If he is, he will have to provide for bulk storage or for a depot on his own place. The system of harvesting in Australia is different from that in Canada. It is all done by a thrasher there, but here the farmer has to get his wheat way at the earliest opportunity. The farmers here have not got enough data to be able to estimate what it will cost. If the wheat has to be sent to the siding straight away it will necessary to have extra plant. Then a sinking fund will have to be paid by a rate which will have to be struck on the wheat going through the silo. The extra cost farmers will be put to on their farms must be considered, and also the possibility of not being able to get relief through the bulk handling system in consequence of the provision for the third of the harvest being taken up, in which event provision will have to be made on the farms by the farmers themselves for holding the wheat. Under all the circumstances and remembering the strained condition of the finances, I doubt whether it is worth while embarking on the expenditure. I would say, don't touch it.

5759. You are of the opinion that if the Government provide a bulk storage scheme, it will be necessary for them also to provide sufficient storage for the harvest at the sidings, or the farmer must provide proper silos for himself?—Yes. I will give the history connected with the building of my silos. Two years before the war I got into touch with milling engineers at home and here with regard to the cost of erecting silos. I really booked up an order with Robinson's, of Sydney, to build these silos for me. There were three reasons which caused me to arrive at the decisions I came to. I would have had to build to provide storage room for wheat. There was a lot of wheat grown, and which was taken to sidings like Moojebing, Ewlyamartup, and other sidings adjacent to Katanning. If the wheat was carted to, say, Moojebing, I had to pay agency charges of 1d. per bushel and I had to pay a minimum charge of 2s. 6d. a ton for railing it to Katanning. Then I had to handle it again when taking it out of the truck; whereas if I gave the farmer an inducement in the way of splitting the difference with him so far as costs were concerned, I would have influenced him to cart the wheat here direct, he would have shot it off the tail of his wagon, and I would not have had to handle it at all. There would have been no small scale weighing at all. The saving thus effected would have paid three-fourths of the interest and depreciation on my capital outlay. The war broke out and the old system of trading was taken away. I have lost that to-day. One of the greatest factors I had to take into consideration was that we have to advertise the product which we turn out. We wanted to get a grade of flour that we could say would be the same from January to September. We could not do that by shooting wheat into a hopper in the mill, because the wheat would vary, coming from the different sidings. Dumbleyung and Katanning wheat would be mixed in this way and there would have been nothing for it but to pick out wheat from each stack. What we do now is to grade our wheat into four tanks. The hard wheats we put into the fifth tank, and according to the intrinsic value of the various wheats, so we pick 15, 20, or 25 lbs. automatically out of each silo to make up the 60lbs. When we come to the end of these stacks we know what stacks we have in the country and we start to fill up the bins again and to keep the same grade of flour right. That again, is why we wanted to build the skillions.

5760. By Hon. J. F. ALLEN: You found it necessary to have more than one bin for that purpose?—Certainly. It would not have been practicable to have only one tank. We floored the big shed outside which you saw. There is a channel underneath it to take the wheat automatically to the silos. We were then getting a bulk handling system here of a capacity of 90,000 bags, milling wheat for three months, whilst the wheat would be coming form the farms at the rate of 60,000 bags. So that we were capable of dealing altogether with 150,000 bags. A further advantage to us was that we could take the bags straight off at the earlier stage and so have more bags for flour. Another point is that we divide our capital cost and interest charges by seven, by filling those silos seven times in the year. Under a State bulk handling scheme you would probably have filled them only once. Therefore the interest charges, depreciation, etc., would be on one handling of the wheat. We have worked it out by filling the silos four times. Under the present circumstances, with the increased plant, it would be seven times, so we must divide the wheat that goes into the silos by seven. That will bring the charges down to a very small amount. You will see that a State scheme of bulk handling will have to be approached very carefully.

5761. By the CHAIRMAN: The proposal is to erect bins of a storage capacity of 40,000 bushels. If that is done it will be impossible to grade the wheat in the manner you have described?—Yes. You would have to take the wheat from the various depots and say, "I will put in this class of wheat at Brookton, another class from Pingelly, and another class from Wagin." That would be impossible. It would not be fair to expect a miller to go out and buy that lot of wheat. It is the strongest flour that you get, it is the uniformity the balanced flour that you must have, and you must have different qualities of wheat to get that. If a man can put his hand on Marshall 3 or Dart's Imperial, he does not want anything else. But every farmer is experimenting with different wheats.

5762. We saw some samples of 1915-16 wheat in bottles at the Perth mill which was in good order, whilst other samples had gone black. Do you think that dif