1 Jury, 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 13 
enlisting their sympathies was to tell them they were on the brink of ruin. Conse- 
quently I am not going to eulogise the Department of Agriculture too much, nor 
very feryidly congratulate you on the improved prospects of farming through the 
increased activity and intelligence of the guidance afforded it by the State. The 
Department has made many advances during the past two years, and as it is still 
advancing and multiplying its functions, more for the purpose of discussion than of 
enforcing my own views, I propose to bring one or two things under your notice that 
I think might be done to assist farmers, in our part of the country at any rate. The 
question may be asked—Why should there be a Department of Agriculture at all ? 
Why should farming get help and guidance more than any other industry ? I submit 
that in the most progressive countries all staple industries now receive assistance 
either from the central or local governments from what is called technical education ; 
but there are other, if not higher, reasons for promoting agriculture. Nations must 
have abundance of food, and at reasonable prices, and Governments have found—no 
matter how these Governments have been constituted—that at least good order 
depends upon it, for a starving or an ill-fed people are dangerous, and nothing breeds 
disaffection so much as positive want. It has always been held also as an axiom of 
safety that a conntry should produce within itself and sufficient for itself of the bare 
necessaries of life. The stability and extent of other industries, too, as a general 
rule, depend upon the success of agriculture. First, I think farming would be 
materially assisted by the gathering and publishing of certain statistics of the 
amount of crops, and, as definitely as possible, the average demand and_ its 
locality. I have heard that it is the intention of the Department to do this, 
as it has been pressed upon its attention. It would be an advantage to 
farmers and others to know as early as possiblé the approximate amount 
of the crop of any product for the season, the demand for the colony for a whole 
year, and the uctual consumption of the product in the previous year, month by month, 
were obtainable, otherwise the farmers are all at sea in putting their crop on the 
market, and the merchants as helpless as buyers as the farmers are as sellers. With 
regard to wheat and, perhaps, sugar, the information, though incomplete, is supplied 
in one form or another, mainly, perhaps, by the newspapers. But take other products 
—maize, for instance—the main crop of the agriculturist in the Southern part of the 
colony. Very little reliable information is ever obtainable concerning it, as is 
evidenced by the extraordinary fluctuations in its price during most seasons. I have 
seen it exported at 1s. 6d. per bushel early in the season, and imported towards the 
end of it at between 3s. faa 4s. per bushel. Surely that was a great blunder as well 
as a heavy pecuniary loss to the producers and to the colony. So precarious is the 
market that, though ‘ordinary or customary spells of dry weather really do not 
materially increase the consumption of this product, yet the fall of a point or two of 
rain in Brisbane often sends down the market with a run. I can best illustrate, 
perhaps, the apparently causeless fluctuations in the price of maize by giving a true 
case. During the last season but one it was not convenient for a farmer to sell his 
maize early in the season when 1t was 2s. 6d, per bushel, and shortly afterwards it fell; 
but he was under no alarm, as he knew the supply must be diminishing. But the 
rice continued to recede, until when, according to all reasoning, it ought to have been 
high, it fell to 11d. per bushel, and he quitted at that. As he‘was delivering, it rose 
to 1s. 3d. per bushel, and more fortunate farmers than himself, before the week was 
out, were getting 1s. 6d. per bushel. The margin was probably the difference between 
a paying and a losing crop. When there is no knowledge of the supply, the merchant 
or that despised, but most useful individual, the middleman—who steadies the 
market by always being ready to buy—cannot operate except from hand 
to mouth, A knowledge of the supply and the average demand is absolutely 
necessary for the accumulation of stocks, without which no great trade in any 
product can be created or maintained. A farmer should not be compelled to be a 
speculator and hold his produce and be continually fidgeting as to when he shall put 
it on the market. He wants his brains for other purposes. When he is ready to sell 
he should sell, and he would be able to do it without loss if approximate and fairly 
reliable statistics of the crop were in existence. Giyen sufficient data, the merchant 
and the middleman will so operate that farmers will get a fair price for their produce 
all the year round, and the times for 9d. per TeheL for maize in January, 3s. per 
bushel in April, 2s. per bushel in June, and any price in October or December will be 
atanend. J have been requested by the society I represent to bring under your 
notice the great advantage it would be to wheat-growing if more concessions were 
made in the freight for Queensland-grown wheat and for flour made from that wheat. 
Before I do so, ia wish to make a remark concerning railway freights generally. An 
African traveller relates that when he reached a Portuguese port from the interior he 
