X. PRESIDENTIAL, ADDRESS. 



alcohol could be sold at Is. per gallon, possibly lower, and 

 at that price it would probably replace kerosene and largely 

 replace petrol. 



I w^ould note here that profitable undertakings^ 

 considered from the national and from the trading com- 

 pany standpoint do not necessarily mean the same 

 thing. A trading company with income and expenditure 

 balancing is a financial failure — -a nation with income 

 and expenditure balancing is a financial success. The 

 production of alcohol from molasses, to replace petrol, 

 if it only paid expenses from a trading standpoint might not 

 be profitable — -from the national standpoint there would 

 be one saving among others, of £51,000 which would 

 otherwise have gone to America. In other instances 

 which I note, I obviously do not intend to suggest that the 

 value of the material at present wasted would be all profit 

 to the trader — -but that that value is a value lost to the 

 nation. Whether from the standpoint of National 

 Economics, it would pay to keep an industry going which 

 only paid expenses, is a question which it is not necessary 

 at present to discuss — in most of the instances I have given, 

 the wastes are already being made sources of trading profit 

 elsewhere. 



The enormous quantity of meg ass which is burned 

 in the sugar mills is often looked on as waste, and many 

 suggestions have been made as to its better utilisation 

 as in making paper, paper pulp, etc. I Understand that 

 no use has yet been found for this material which will give 

 a greater return than its use as fuel, so at present it can- 

 not be looked on as wholly a wasted product. 



In agricultural products, other than sugar, there is 

 also a lavish waste of wealth. After good seasons, hundreds 

 of thousands, probably millions, of tons of grass are burned 

 off which might have been stored for fodder, either dry in 

 stacks or as ensilage in silos. 



I remember a former Under Secretary for Agriculture 

 telling me that in one district shortly after the great 

 drought which ended in 1902, he saw several farmers throw 

 into the roadways alongside, lucerne which they had cut — - 

 it was so low in price just then that it would not pay to 

 send to market. And yet a few months later lucerne had 



