288 



On the subject of stripping, in the Australasian Farmer : 

 Cheapness is the principal recommendation of the stripping 

 system. Amongst the first settlers in the Wimmera district were a 

 considerable number of Germans from South Australia, who came 

 to the colony with their stripping machines, and an intimate know- 

 ledge of the South Australian system of making wheat-growing pay. 

 The other selectors, who came from the southern parts of Victoria, 

 soon learned to appreciate the stripper, and the result was that 

 cheap production, and an almost complete independence of the 

 labor market, were established from the first in the Wimmera 

 district. Thus, having been able from the outset to harvest the 

 crops at a very low cost, and having been saved from the 

 extortionate wages which had to be paid in other districts, the 

 Wimmera farmers had an advantage which has contributed in no 

 small degree to what measure of success they have attained. Some 

 idea of the cheapness of stripping may be formed from the fact 

 that the work is done by contract for from four shillings to six shill- 

 ings per acre. Taking six shillings per acre as the contract price 

 for stripping an average crop, and remembering that a farmer will 

 be able to harvest his own crop at something below the contract 

 rate, it is not difficult to see that no other machine has any chance 

 of competing in price with the stripper. The farmer engages to 

 supply food to the men and horses working the stripper, and this, 

 with the charge per acre, brings his crop, in the shape of wheat and 

 chaff, to the winnower. By supplying a winnowing machine, and 

 finding food for the men, he gets his wheat cleaned and put into 

 bags at sixpence per sack, so that the whole harvesting process, up 

 to carting the bags to the station, is done cheaply and quickly. 

 When it is considered that, eveji with the reaper and binder, after 

 supplying string and going through the processes of reaping, stook- 

 ing, and stacking, the item of threshing has still to be paid, it will 

 be admitted, that for cheapness, the stripper is unrivalled. 



Hitherto the demand for chaff has been so great in Western 

 Australia that since the discovery of the goldiields little or no wheat- 



