ON FEEDING AND PRODUCTION. 



according to merit, and a rule established that would prevent produce 

 being returned to the floor once sold, as what is once sold off co- 

 operative floors should not come on to them again. 



T Such was the beginning of the first great co-operative movement in 

 New South Wales. What might have been accomplished, and what 

 was accomplished by the dairy farmers of the South Coast and West 

 Camden districts in their honest desire to establish their own markets 

 in Sydney during 1878-88 is left to those who can calculate the suc- 

 cess of the commission agency system during that same period as 

 -^moared to the great losses sustained to the cause of co-operation 

 as a system of progression. It has often been shown that -irom the 

 greatest business failures we have seen the greatest businesses rise 

 up, at it were, Phoenix-like out of the ashes of the old ruins. The 

 present Coastal Farmers' Co-operative Company is one other example. 



After the heavy rainstorms and disastrous floods of the early seven- 

 ties, the pasture lands which had previously been exposed to atmos- 

 pheric influences through excessive cultivation, began to show signs 

 of weakness. The natural sequence of soil weakness is deterioration 

 of plant life. The plant may appear to grow and flourish as usual, 

 but when it has reached Nature's great laboratory the cow's stomach 

 it will be found wanting. The final result is that the dairy cattle do 

 not appear to the breeder's eye so vigorous as similar cattle did but 

 .a decade previously. 



Hence the dairy farmers all along the eastern seaboard from Bulii 

 to Twofold Bay, and the whole of the southern tableland, began to 

 find -fault with their cattle instead of their own management. The 

 older .school of Australians began to talk in private about the herds 

 of cows seen throughout these localities in the forties and fifties. Soon 

 these notions became popular and caught the ears of the pressman 

 and the after-dinner speaker. Certainly there were a few who were 

 never carried away very easily by claptrap, and never caught the 

 new blood cattle mania, and afterwards reaped their reward. But it 

 must be admitted that very few herds in the localities above men- 

 tioned which escaped from the injurious effects of the beef catt.e 

 mania of the decade 1870-80. True, the descendants of a few imported 

 bulls turned out very well indeed ; but, generally speaking, deteriora- 

 tion and disease -followed in their wake, which took at least another 

 decade to undo the harm done by some of those importations, espe- 

 cially along the coastal districts. 



Prior to these importations there were to be seen the finest herds 

 that could be found in any part of the world on the flats and on the 

 hills of Illawarra and the Shoalhaven Valleys. If one was to sit down 

 and enumerate these herds it would fill a very long list. They were 

 not by any means showmen. Very few troubled about showing their 

 cattle. They had good cattle nevertheless. 



The " Major'' cattle, which derive the name from that bull already 

 mentioned, purchased by Mr. Evans, sen., at an auction mart in Sydney 

 in 1862, who got most of his reputation from bulls previously on the 

 scenes in New South Wales, are now beyond cavil, just as bulls pur/- 

 chased irom his son, Mr. Evan R. Evans in years after as '' Major" 

 T)ulls got their character from bulls purchased by him from the A. A. 

 Co. and Mr. Cox 'notably the bull " Solon." 



Mr Henry Fredricks, who had a celebrated herd at this time, the 

 foundation of which had been laid from stock bred by Messrs. Henry 

 Osborne, Andrew McGill, and Duncan Beatson, purchased the first 

 young Major bull from Mr,- Evan's. This young Major bull seemed 

 to '"' nick" admirably with Mr. Fredricks' herd, and as soon as his 

 heifers appeared at the Kiama saleyards the fame of the bull "Major" 

 went forth. In fact Evans' bull was never even named " Major" until 



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