DEFENCES AGAINST LOW PRICES OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
723 
in business with out-of-date methods and machinery, or with property 
held to a false standard of values, and the loss sustained in readjusting 
these to modern requirements, that give us much of the “ hard times” 
and “ depression” so generally complained of. The pastoral industry 
supplies thousands of illustrations of the utter failure of present 
attempts to earn dividends upon capital values based upon the current 
prices of station supplies and products a few years ago. A squatter 
of large means commenced business ten years ago upon an extensive 
freehold property in Central Queensland. In the outset be found it 
necessary to make certain expensive improvements ; buildings had to 
to he erected and darns made, and the incursions of marsupials forced 
him to the heavy expense of netting the estate. This wire-netting, 
bought in London, cost at the time £70 per mile; it might to-day be 
replaced at about £20 per mile. So long as the seasons continued 
favourable and wool fetched Is. per lb. all went well ; but two 
bad years, followed by a heavy drop in the price of wool, completed 
the ruin of the squatter. The present owners are at this time engaged 
in what must seem to them a desperate effort to earn 7 per cent, 
upon this over- valued run, with its fencing costing £120 per mile, and 
other improvements on a similar scale of values. Seduce the valuation 
of this estate by “ writing off ” to that of similar properties held by 
our competitors at the Cape or on the River Plate, and the Queensland 
property will pay handsomely even at the present prices of wool and 
meat. Our natural defences here are beyond all question secure; the 
only doubt relates to the artificial lumber which encumbers them. 
The business of cane cultivation, and the manufacture of sugar 
in Queensland, is a modern instance of the upbuilding of a great and 
flourishing industry after complete wreck and collapse. Sugar 
production is, perhaps, to-day the most popular branch of Austral- 
asian agriculture. Although the market value of sugar is the lowest 
known in history, its production is confessedly profitable alike to 
the grower and manufacturer. It is hard to believe that five 
years ago the whole Queensland coast as far north as Cooktown 
was dotted with insolvent sugar estates. It is difficult to conceive 
of a more generally discredited calling than was sugar-growing at 
that time. The attempt had been made to grow cane upon greatly 
over-valued lands, to manufacture sugar with out-of-date machinery, 
and to combine in one interest cane-growing and sugar-making. The 
result was, with few exceptions, disastrous. It required only the 
threatened loss of island labour to bring the industry to a state verging 
upon collapse. Mills were offered at the buyer’s price, and the best 
sugar lands changed owners at figures that scarcely matched the cost 
of the improvements upon them. Out of all this wreck and rum the 
present successful sugar industry has grown. Modern machinery has 
made the profits of manufacture so large that the mill-owner has been 
enabled to pay the cane-grower prices far beyond those known in the 
old times when the trail of the boom was over it all. Here again 
Queensland’s unfettered resources intelligently handled have proved 
an ample defence against the encroachments of low prices. Any thing 
or system that tends to prevent this natural process, by which an old 
and vulnerable position is abandoned for a newer and stronger one, 
retards progress, and thus militates against the best interests of the 
community. One of the strongest arguments that can be urged 
