194 NEW SOUTH WALES, 



industry of any family wliicli may be recommended to liim, will admit 

 them to a farm and homestead with every necessary convenience, &c., 

 and a herd of cows, with any further and reasonable help to stimulate 

 the production of milk. The area of land and the number of cows 

 may be as large as the applicant is capable of managing ; and in return 

 the farmer agrees to deliver the u-hole of his milk at the factory or 

 depot near by at a proportionate and fixed price. Many families have 

 thus raised themselves from nothing to comparative affluence on this 

 estate. 



The foregoing is one form of the proprietary factory in contradis- 

 tinction to the usual co-operation. There are others where a factory, 

 being" placed in a farming district by an investing company, the milk 

 is bought from the farmers supplying at a price fixed by the company 

 and the profits arising from manufacture, advancing markets, or 

 exportation, are retained by the company. The benefits of this system 

 are not recognised by those producers who have enjoyed successful 

 co-operation. 



One of the greatest difficulties connected with the dairying industry 

 is the question of milking; paid servants seldom have the same kindli- 

 ness and care with the milch cows as the members of the family 

 owning them. Many a man having to depend on paid help has had to 

 abandon the occupation, and until the advent of an efficient milking 

 machine^ which is always coming but never here, the same difficulty 

 will remain. It is the custom of some large dairymen to let out their 

 milking to families by contract, payment being made at a stated sum 

 per year, the owner seeing that the number of cows milking is kept 

 up. Others again contract to pay so much per gallon for all milk 

 obtained from the cattle, in which case it is usual for the family, 

 daring the milking, also to do certain work on the farm, for the 

 purpose of increasing the milk production, such as cleaning and 

 fencing in of pasture lands, the cultivation of fodder crops, soiling or 

 hand-feeding of the milch cattle, &c., &c. 



Cleared lands, let for the purposes of this industr}^ in the older and 

 more favoured portions of the Colony, may be estimated to realise an 

 average of 30s. per acre as yearly rent ; while some obtain much 

 more, and others a trifle less. Their values are largely dependent on 

 their access to a factory or creamery, proximity to a market, or social 

 benefits. But further afield in all the settled districts there are thou- 

 sands of acres equally suitable in themselves as regards soil and 

 climate, and having other advantages, which may be rented at merely 

 a proportion of the above, or obtained on reasonable and profitable 

 terms. Then again our land laws now allow almost any man who desires 

 it to obtain an area of good land on such nominal payments as have never 

 been known in this liberal land before. Many of these areas are 

 clothed with such rich and luxuriant pasture that nature offers a 

 premium in immediate returns to those who will accept her gifts and 

 use them. And how little our settlers do, either from ignorance or 

 apathy, to preserve and improve their pastures, either natural or arti- 

 ficial j or still less supplement them, by growing fodder for winter 

 use. This is particularly noticeable with tlaose men who have taken 

 refuge in dairying to escape from ill success in other branches of 

 agriculture. 



