340 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 May, 1898. 
9d. per bushel advantage at the same time being obtained by the Victorian 
miller at the expense of the farmer upon the wheat amounts to another 
£196,875, or a total of £406,875. This, on the face of it, all will admit 
(except, of course, the comparatively few who secure these profits at the . 
expense of the large body of producers and customers alike), disclose a state 
of things that does not appear to square with equitable commercial condi- 
tions. Further, it points to a specially important fact that the farmer, in his 
consideration of the co-operative question, will have to take particularly into 
~ account—that is, that the miller is not merely a converter of wheat into flour, 
but in addition, is always a wheat speculator as well. Wheat gives only one 
crop a year, but the average farmer under present disorganised conditions has 
to get rid of an article within a month or two after harvest that takes him all 
the year to produce. Here and there are to.be found exceptional instances in 
which farmers are able to hold their wheat, but in the absence of organised 
effort on the part of the camhined farmers as a whole, a large majority must 
obtain cash immediately after harvest, either by selling out entirely whatever 
the market price of that particular urgent time may be, or by obtaining an 
advance upon storage. Then, as the millers either directly, or in combination 
with agencies that seem to be more in sympathy with them than the producers, 
are the principal storers of wheat, the outcome is easily conceived. The “ free 
storage’ and other devices so frequently described in he Leader have clearly 
enough shown how wheat, once it leaves the grower’s own control, is used 
simply as a means of bearing the market down against the producer, and to the 
advantage of antagonistic rings. One of the greatest points, thercfore, to be 
gained by the establishment of co-operative flour-mills by the wheat-growers 
themselves, consists in the fact that thereby they could evade the injury inflicted 
upon them by this speculative feature of the proprietary millers’ business, and 
turn that featureround into a means of help. ‘That is to say, the milling trade, 
as a present conducted, means bearing down the price to the producer, and 
keeping up the price of flour to the consumer. Clearly, then, the members of 
_a farmers’ co-operative flour-milling association, even if they had at first to 
accept wheat prices at market rates borne down by the proprietary millers, 
would not be any worse off in that respect than they are at present; while, on 
the other hand, having the gristing of their wheat in their own hands, they 
would then have the combined help of powerful agencies which are at present, 
commercially speaking, in opposition converted into workers for them in 
getting them a better price for their wheat in the shape of flour. The crucial 
question that comes in here, however, is 
ARE FARMERS’ CO-OPERATIVE FLOUR-MILLS PRACTICABLE ? 
In order to gather information in connection with this point the writer 
last week made a visit to Wagga Wagga, in Riverina, owing to having been 
informed that “there can be seen a successful example of a co-operative flour- 
mill run by the farmers themselves.’ ‘That the mill in question is a first-class 
institution of its kind was found to be quite true, and that it is managed most 
ably, and upon the latest up-to-date principles with respect to the most recent 
inventions in machinery, and also with regard to capable handling generally, will 
be readily understood when it is stated that it is in charge of Mr. A, Cumming, 
one of Messrs. Fry and Co.’s best experts from Victoria. It is called the 
Murrumbidgee Co-operative Milling Company, Limited, and was established 
about nine years ago upon a capital of £80,000, in 30,000 shares of £1 each, 
for the purposes, as set forth in the articles of association, “to purchase land, 
erect thereon and in their neighbourhood buildings, milling-plant, and railway 
connections; purchase and sell wheat, flour, bran, and pollard, &c.; and 
advance or lend money to farmers and others upon liens on crops or other 
security.” A feature of this mill, in addition to its first-class appliances and 
management, which have secured for it a leading name in connection with 
superiority in the quality of the flour produced, is its extensive wheat storage 
accommodation, all communicating directly with the railway system of Riverina, 
