THE COMMONWEALTH 355 



have greatly improved the farmer's lot in his attempt to provide 

 his share of the world's wheat supply. Infinitesimal as the con- 

 tribution is in relation to consumption, and primitive as have been 

 his methods, he has yet exported to the value of 17,000,000 

 sterling during the last twenty years of the century. 



Up to the last year of Victoria's colonial existence there had 

 been sold, or was in course of sale by instalments, 23,300,000 acres 

 of land, out of a total area of 56,000,000 acres. Of the alienated 

 territory less than 7,000,000 acres had been sold by auction, 

 including all the "special surveys" and large pre-emptions of the 

 early years, and all the subdivisional city and suburban sales. 

 Thus, in round figures, 16,300,000 acres had been taken up by 

 selectors under successive Land Acts at 1 per acre, much of it 

 payable at Is. per acre per annum for twenty years without 

 interest. It is not easy to estimate the number of these favoured 

 selectors who were unable to resist taking the large profit the 

 Government had placed within their reach, but if one-half of the 

 selectors under the Duffy Land Act fell before temptation, they 

 would only represent one-fifth of the whole area selected up to 

 date. Deducting one-fifth, then, would leave over 13,000,000 acres 

 in the hands of the class whom the Government desired to favour. 

 Coghlan's statistics record that in 1900 the total area under cultiva- 

 tion in Victoria was only 3,159,000 acres, of which 2,500,000 acres 

 were under grain. A certain proportion of this cultivation was 

 undoubtedly on some of the freehold properties acquired at auction 

 or otherwise in the early days ; but if the selectors are credited with 

 it all, it discloses the fact that the men for whom the country made 

 such sacrifices are on the average cultivating less than eighty acres 

 out of every 320 granted to them. There is little doubt that this 

 is due firstly to want of capital, and secondly to scarcity of suitable 

 labour. Fully three-fourths of these holdings are burdened by 

 heavy mortgages, and it is within the mark to say that the produce 

 of quite one-half of them, after paying rates, taxes and interest 

 charges, yields a living to the nominal holder altogether inadequate 

 to the toil and privation undergone. 



The prosperous future of this class depends entirely upon a 

 factor that has been notoriously absent in Victoria for many years 



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