1 Jan., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 9 
prominent this year, continues, then farmers will have to restrict the acreage 
they cultivate, for the simple reason that a large area means probably a con- 
siderable percentage of cane being left on the ground. ‘The lesson this year 
will be a severe one. Not that the acreage left uncut will probably be very 
much greater than in some previous years, but the crops being very much 
heavier the amount of cane left uncut will be amore serious item than hitherto. 
As we approach the termination of the season it is daily becoming more evident 
that the whole of the crops cannot be taken off, unless indeed we have suitable 
weather at least to the middle of January, and it is hardly reasonable to 
expect this. Our crushing season is ordinarily considered to last, according 
to locality, from May to January, and this would be ample to take off the 
present full crop, if there was sufficient labour to enable the farmers to supply 
the eane, and the mills to carry on work, uninterruptedly day and night. As 
it is, several mills we are aware of have been unable to maintain steady day and 
night work, and anything short of this is not payable in the present day of low 
prices and small economies. It surely requires no demonstration to show that 
we cannot now afford the losses which follow upon delays in the mills, and the 
general disorganisation once a day of single-shift work. But the mills cannot 
work without labour, nor can they work without full supplies of cane, and the 
farmer cannot give the latter if he has not the labour to cut the cane, load it 
on to drays, tramways, or railways, and cart it to the mills. Yet this is the 
present position. Every human being of whatever colour is being pressed into 
the work of harvesting; yet still there are not enough. It cannot be said to 
be a question of wages, for wages are not the essence of the difficulty. 
Farmers call for tenders, and though the tenderers can state any price they 
choose, and the farmer would perforce pay such prices, the men are not forth- 
coming to offer to do the work at their own prices. This is a clear and. 
indisputable fact, and politicians who rave on the subject of their being 
plenty of European labour for the sugar industry must make the best of it. 
There is not enough labour—that is the point. It must be admitted that the 
sugar industry does not employ a very large quantity of casual labour 
duritig the ordinary season—that is, the first six months of the year ; but during 
the balance of the year it will take ou every man who will work, and at good 
wages too. Yet these men are not forthcoming. We put on one side 
all the reports that such men as are available have been causing trouble 
through laziness and insobriety. Such, unfortunately, always seems to be the 
case where labour is scarce, and it is probably natural. When labour is 
difficult to get, the employer mast take any man who ig willing to engage, and 
the result is that until he has taken on the most useless of men he does not 
realise that the labour market is depleted. “Yet-so it is,and he has on his hands 
a few good, steady workers, but many absolutely worthless. If the sugar 
industry is to maintain its own, much more expand, some remedy must be 
found for this state of affairs. Hitherto we have appealed in vain to the 
Government and the country. A. section of our politicians do not want, 
AE any labour to come into the country which will compete with 
that already here. It is a dog-in-the-manger policy. There is more work 
than local’ men can do, yet they object to others taking what they 
themselves cannot compass. New Guinea labourers, brought over for the 
crushing season only, and then deported home again, would meet the difficulty 
to a large extent, and at anyrate prevent the importation of Japanese, 
which is admitted on all sides to be justified only by the absolute necessity 
of the case. But if the country will not come to the assistance of the sugar- 
growers, then it seems to us there is one course open, a course which will 
certainly not win for us the thanks of the mother colony of New South Wales, 
but which may at any rate relieve the necessities under which we labour. 
Cane-cutters on the New South Wales rivers largely come from Sydney. They 
go up on to the rivers annually and cut cane, making a regular harvest season 
of the outing, and then returning to the metropolis. Queenslanders will have 
to take a leat out of the book of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. That 
