AUSTRALIA 61 



with agriculture, and who in bad seasons for wheat do not 

 rely on their live-stock to pull them through. This question 

 deeply affects the two great primary industries of the country. 

 The graziers and farmers of Australia will have to bear the 

 greater part of taxation resultant from the war. In addition, 

 they have their periodical losses through droughts, and are 

 having it badly in the Eastern Division at the present time. 

 The higher prices they are getting for their fat-stock now will 

 not be all loss to the consumer. The owners of live-stock will 

 pay a correspondingly greater amount of taxation, which 

 will relieve other sections of the community to that extent. 

 The fact that fat-stock have reached such high prices must act, 

 and is acting as a powerful stimulant to stock-owners to make 

 every possible effort to increase their flocks and herds. When 

 sheep and cattle were cheaper, stock-owners sent large numbers 

 of their female stock to market ; not so now. Everyone is 

 hanging on to his female stock with a view to increasing the 

 numbers as fast as possible. This is assuredly one of the causes 

 for the high prices obtaining ; but it is only temporary. It is 

 a fixed and immutable economic law that the dearer any pro- 

 duct is the greater will be the effort to produce it. For in- 

 stance, let the price of wheat be 6/- per bushel, and the indus- 

 try will bound ahead ; but let the price be 3/- per bushel, and 

 the industry will (in the words of Lord Macaulay) droop and 

 wither like a plant in an uncongenial air. The most powerful 

 stimulant to production is gain. 



Cattle Prospects in Western Australia 



Western Australia is so big a country, and subject to so many 

 differing conditions, that any general description of the cattle 

 industry is impossible ; the only way to gain a clear under- 

 standing of the position is to take the divisions of the State 

 separately. 



When statistics were published at the end of 1917, the 

 State possessed 958,484 cattle, as compared with 863,930 at 

 the end of 1916, and 754,377 in 1907. There had then been 

 an apparent steady increase during the previous ten years, but 

 this increase was almost wholly in the Kimberley division, which 



