694 Agricultural Depression at Home and Abroad. 
public companies, private farms, ancl private individuals who 
were interested in land ” ; that “ in both town and country- 
many men who five years ago were accounted wealthy because 
of the land they owned are to-day absolutely penniless ” ; that 
“ many land companies in which the savings of multitudes were 
invested have been swept out of existence”; while “ from the 
north, the west, and the south of the colony has come one 
simultaneous cry of distress from the great pastoral industry.” 
Yet New South Wales has a higher wheat yield than any other 
colony in Australia, and used to be regarded as more prosperous 
than any other. Depression is worse in South Australia, and 
probably at least as bad in Victoria. The latter colony has 
made a great spurt in butter exportation, aided by a bounty on 
every pound sold in Europe, rising in proportion to price ; but 
now that the bounty has been withdrawn, farmers are being 
called upon to accept 2f d. a gallon for their milk, and at 
such terms the dairy export business cannot be of much advan- 
tage to them. When it started the price was 4 d. to 5 d. a 
gallon, and the reduction to 2 \d. in some cases and 2 f d. in others 
(in one case at least a factory pays 2 §d.) is quite enough depres- 
sion for the dairy interest. In New Zealand, too, the price 
paid is now commonly 2f d. a gallon, as the butter-factory 
companies have lost money in recent years. The failure of the 
wheat-growing industry has driven farmers in Australia and 
New Zealand alike into increased efforts to export dairy produce 
and meat ; but the refrigerating meat companies have lost 
heavily of late. In Victoria a proposal has been made to put a 
tax of 2s. a hundred on all sheep, in order to produce an endow- 
ment fund for the export meat trade, the argument for it being 
that, at present, flockmasters who do not export mutton benefit by 
the improvement in the colonial markets caused by the exports, 
while the men who ship the meat sometimes lose by their enter- 
prise. Thus, without bounties, it appears that neither butter 
nor meat pays to export from Victoria. 
South African prosperity depends on gold and diamonds 
rather than upon agriculture, which has never made much 
progress there, and is of so little importance that it is rarely 
mentioned in news from that quarter of the world. The quantities 
of corn grown even in Cape Colony, after a long period of settle- 
ment, are insignificant. Only 3,100,000 bushels of wheat were 
produced in 1893-94, and much less barley and oats; while 
cattle, sheep, and goats were all fewer than they were in the 
preceding year. This looks like evidence of depression. 
Of the condition of the cultivators of the soil of India there 
is no recent evidence. It has always been too low to be de- 
