Aug 1, 1900 ] 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTUlilST. 
95 
A FARMER'S EVERY-DAY LIFE. 
Nu. IX. 
( B}i CosDiopol'de. ) 
For some year? now the burniug question 
amongst agriculturists has been 
'■ THE LABOUR BILL," 
which goes on increasing yearly in the same 
ratio that prices decrease for farming pro- 
cUicts. —which is another way of saying that 
a i.u mer is, in a manner of speaking, obliged 
to burn the candle of his capital at both 
ends. It is not that farmers grudge givnng 
good Avages to their servants, far from it, 
indeed they would gladly give them double 
the amount if the prices they obtain for 
their stock and grain would go up, so as 
to justify them in so doing. Residents in 
the cities complain that the agriculturists are 
all leaving the country and migrating to the 
towns, where they do the work at half the 
wages which formerly obtained there, but 
these grumblers don't- or wont— see that thev 
themselves are to blame for the present 
state of affairs. If they would eschew from 
buying frozen tuberculous beef, fi-om 
Australia, margarine butter, from the horae 
ranches of America, weevilly oats from 
Russia and the slops and refuse of other 
countries which are shot into our markets, 
as if Britain was the great dumping ground 
of the world, then farmers would be en- 
couraged to cultivate more land at home than 
they do, would find employment for those 
men whose presence is objected to, in the 
cities, and thus there a\ ould be retained, in 
our own countrv, millions of money- which, 
at present, goes to provide our enemies with 
the means of keeping up armies and navies 
for our undoing. I fear, however, that the 
dwellers in towns will not do anything of the 
sort ; they prefer eating the cheap but nasty 
food of our enemies, even although they see 
their children, when fed on this oifal, grow- 
ing up a degenerate race, because it leaves 
themselves all the more money to spend in 
drink and amusements. It is a giievous thing 
to see men and women, who have been 
accustomed to farm work and the fresh air 
of heaven all their lives, driven to the 
to wns for employment which they are 
not accustomed to, and to eat food 
which soon takes the colour of health 
from their children's cheeks, and causes 
themselves to seek, in drink, the forgetfulness 
of their own miserable existence of semi- 
poverty and of the poisonous atmosphere ot 
their cheap lodgings in town. When I came 
to this farm the labour question was raging, 
and to reduce his labour bill, was the aim 
and object of every intelligent farmer. At 
that time no one in this district, had endea- 
voured to 
REDUCE EXPENDITURE BY CULTIVATING 
LESS LAND, 
so I, as usual, proceeded to do what my 
neighbours were not doing and at once laid 
down so much land in permanent grass, that 
I reduced the staii of labours, usual for a 
farm of this size, from 10 men to three, and 
from four pairs of h.oi, i-s to one pair. Of course 
my policy, at once, became the talk of the 
district— -and contemptuous sort of talk at 
that- and several practical farniers spoke to 
me, in a friendly spirit, warning ne ;vgainsb 
the errors of my ways, and telling me that 
from their own personal knov.'ledge of my 
farm, it would never lie down in permanent 
pasture. Tliat the last four or five tena-ats 
had all tried it, and that the gr;!ss had died 
out during the third year, coinpeliing them 
to fall b;ick on cropping. Whilst thanking 
them for their good advice, whicli I know 
was well meant and in all good faitli, with 
the pig-headedness of the Scot, I went on my 
own way, and succeeded in laying down 
permanent pasture of excellent quality, 
winch every year is improving, till at the 
present time, some that i have, which is 10 
and 12 ye;irs old, now carries just three 
times the stock per acre to what it did when 
I took the farm. Bub perhiips my greatest 
triumph has fallen to my lot this year, v.'h.en 
owing to a cold, hard and backward spring, 
the grass in the district can scarcely provide 
a bite for the cattle. In my case the old 
grass Vi'ith its close sole, retains every drop 
of dew that falls which has helped 0!i the 
grass, and the stock in my parts are wading 
in luxuriant feed, while those same practical 
farmers, who warned me against attempting 
to grow permanent pasture on my farm, 
have sent me 130 of their cattle to graze in 
my parks, paying me 2s a head per week, and 
this because their own barren pastures were 
starving thQ stock. 
ANOTHER GREAT ADVANTAGE 
which is derived from the laying down of 
permanent pasture, beside "reducing the 
laboiu- liill is found in the long rest which 
the land gets during the time it lies in grass, 
for; when put into crop again after a dozen 
years of grazing, the cro]} is generally found 
to be a double one, Avhilst the turnips which 
follow are not only a heavier crop, but are 
of better quality and free Irom all disease. 
The month of June sees the last of the 
sheep-shearing in our district, a work that I 
am particularly fond of, reminding me as it 
does of those early days, forty ye;us ago, 
when I learned the noble art in the back 
blocks of New Zealand and afterwards burst 
forth in Australia as a perfect "ringer" of 
the shed ; and how pleasant are those 
thoughts, for surely one may be said to live 
twice who can enjoy the recollection of his 
former life ! Fjxrmers twenty years my 
junior, when they see me on tlie shearing- 
floor, geing round a sheep with the old 
"rinsi-er's" stroke of my youth, confess that 
they cannot Imckle to such a job : that only 
a man with a first-class guttapercha liack, 
with a hinge in the middle of it, need attempt 
that, haidest job a farmer can set him- 
self to do. But to me it is work and pleasure 
combined and I hope I may long bo able to 
hold my own vv^ith the shears. It may not 
be generally known that up to this " time 
I have been, I believe, the only exporter of 
WOOL FROM CEYLON, 
It happened so long ago as in 187.5, when a 
flock of fifty sheep arrived in Coloiiiho from 
Australia and owing to tlie heat experienced 
during the voyage their lieeces were all 
hanging about them in tatters and they 
looked a disreputable lot indeed. I volun- 
