34 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Joxny, 1898.. 
smal]. In the matter of cheap money, he disagreed with Mr. Peek altogether,. 
as he considered that, though cheap money would mean cheap production, it 
would not necessarily mean a lessening of the price of the product. The more 
money there was about, the greater the purchasing power of the people. Cheap: 
money was already procurable in many European countries, notably Italy, 
through the medium of farmers’ banks, and, so far as he could gather, these 
banks were doing inestimable good. 
__ Mr. Wa. Deacon (Allora) said in regard to the discussion on roads two 
points had been missed, and these were the local authority in one generation 
ad to make roads for all generations, and in the next place they were 
retrenched three years ago by the Government. Civil servants retrenched at 
the same time had had their reduced emoluments restored, but not so the local 
authorities. The boards used to get £1 for £1, at one time £2 per £1—by no. 
means too much—but now they were down to 4s. in the £1. He thought the 
endowment should be restored to something like its old dimensions. In other 
countries, instead of retrenchment, increase in endowment was the order of 
the day. In fact,in England, one-thirteenth of the whole revenue was going in 
endowment to local authorities. This endowment (some £8,000,000) was 
obtained from Customs, Stamps, Excise, &c., and was guaranteed to the local 
authorities. The only extra special item local bodies had to bear in England 
was the police. 
Mr. T. E. Courson (Rosewood) lived near to the Walloon district, and 
could bear out what Mr. Peek had said about the difficulty farmers experienced’ 
there in getting their produce to market during wet weather. In the Rose- 
wood Scrub the farms were very small—few of them exceeding 100 acres—and 
this meant a network of roads in the district. In the scrub, again, good road- 
making material was very searce, the total result being that road maintenance 
was a big source of expenditure there. On the other hand, out from the 
scrub, in the forest country, road-making was less costly. Taking these facts 
into consideration, he thought the Government should provide for a system of 
differential endowments to local authorities. With regard to bridges, he men- 
tioned the case of a bridge in a division adjoining his own, and which was 
used mainly by people trom the Rosewood Division. It was a bridge on the 
main stock route, and was used by all the cattle from the West. At present 
it was broken down, and as the people in whose division it was never used it 
nothing was being done to it. Even if the Rosewood Board did attend to it, 
the repairs would absorb a year’s rates. Such bridges should be under the 
control of the central Government. He differed from Mr. Peek in the matter 
of cheap money, and supposed that gentleman had never been forced to pay 
through the nose 10 per cent. for an advance. He knew one man who had had 
the pluck to take up a farm nine years ago on the side of a mountain, and who 
at the present day had to collect his maize crop with a basket. He had not 
_ repaid a penny of the principal of the loan he had obtained at the start, but 
had paid 8 per cent. interest every year, crippling himself in the doing so. 
There were many men who took up land in different parts of Queensland, and 
whose only crime was poverty. He thought it would be to the interest of the 
colony if the Government assisted those men with money at cheap rates of 
interest. 
Mr. E. Swayne (Mackay), in giving examples of the value of cheap money 
to farmers, mentioned the Drainage Act of Great Britain, passed fifty years. 
ago, and which had been the means of putting a great deal of otherwise waste. 
land under cultivation. The marked increase in the area under sugar in 
Queensland this year was mainly due, too, to the operation of the Sugar 
Works Guarantee Act. 
Mr. W. R. Twinr (Wallumbilla) referred to the marsupial pest as one of 
the difficulties farmers had to contend against in Queensland. Here, too, was: 
a case in which cheap money, to enable them to buy wire netting, would be of 
the greatest benefit to farmers, as it would permit them to set about enclosing 
at once without having to depend on any arrangements that might be made 
