112 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1899. 
no one, as the labourer can accept or refuse the term just as he chooses, would very 
materially lessen the cost of introduction, which is most excessive, and to many 
prohibitory. I would also suggest that larger discretionary powers be given to 
the chief inspectors for the various districts, so as to allow them to decide all 
tases on their merits. The grounds upon which I. base my suggestions are: 
That for the first twelve months the S:S. {slander is of very little use and requires 
great care and consideration. That no cane farmer dare enter upon cane 
cultivation without making provision for labour. That all agreements to grow or crush 
cane are made for five years and upwards, and last, but not least, on the grounds that 
‘the price paid to the farmer for his cane depends upon the price obtained for sugar, 
which in no way depends upon the cost of production, but isregulated according to the 
price at which brokers and refiners can land sugar from China, Java, or the 
auritius, where labour is plentiful and wages nominal, or the cheaply produced, 
bounty-fed, Pee neitedt beet sugar from Germany. It may be said that five 
years is a long period. JI do not think so, and I can speak from experience, as before 
I had arrived at the age at which a S.S. Islander would be permitted to come to 
Queensland I had entered into an agreement to serve Her Majesty for twelve years 
and four months, and fourteen years and four months if required, for less than half the 
pay and half the rations a kanaka gets. It will be said that to carry out my very 
reasonable suggestions it will be necessary to bring the Pacific Islanders Act before 
Parliament, and that the Labour members would seize the opportunity to deprive us 
of the labour altogether. This would be asking for bread and getting a knock-down 
blow with a stone with a vengeance. To my mind it seems a most unnatural and 
deplorable state of affairs that the miners and bush workers who depend so much on 
the producers and have so much in common with them, whom Nature intended and 
circumstances demanded should be our allies, should be so bitterly opposed to us for 
no other reason than that we require a little special legislation of which they have no 
need. This unfortunate state of affairs will not only continue, but will become more 
intense unless we take steps to dispel it. I trust something will be done in this 
direction at an early date. Opinions must not be hastily formed on isolated cases. I 
could take off my cane crop this year without the aid of alien or other labour, but I 
should be a scoundrel were I to use my peculiar circumstances as a plea for the 
discontinuance of that labour. I would also remind you that the planters’ troubles 
were greatly intensified some years ago by the attempt to force upon them certain 
conditions, because they had been found possible by one individual who enjoyed 
peculiar advantages both of climate and situation compared with his compeers in the 
North. Dairying requires labour, and with the present insufficiency for pron 
cultivation and harvesting our cane, where is it to come from? It requires more labour 
in this district than in the South, for where the Southern farmer gets from 4 to 10 lb. 
of butter per week we get from 1 to 2 lb. only. It is one thing to milk one cow for 
20 lb. of butter per week and to have to milk ten for the same quantity. Again, I 
may be peer to say that the first suggestion made for holding these conferences 
was made by myself. I desired to see a closer relationship between the farmers of the 
North and South, and to see them all working together earnestly and vigorously in 
the interests of the producers generally. I had the honour to be the first cane 
farmer to address what a leading Southern paper described as the most important and 
representative gathering of farmers ever heldin Queensland. Many little explanations 
had then to be made, but I am satisfied that in a great measure my desire has been 
achieved. Whether any direct good has Receded to the sugar industry from these 
gatherings is not for me to declare, but this much I can and must say : That to-day both 
the cane farmers and the sugar industry have many warm, sympathetic, and staunch 
friends in the South which neither had two years ago. In arose of this statement I 
need only point you to the eloquent and earnest appeal made by Mr. Deacon, of Allora, 
to the delegates at the Rockhampton Conference to support a resolution moved by 
myself, asking for the imposition of countervailing duties on beet sugar, which resulted 
in every delegate with one exception (who would not vote against it), voting for it. 
The very fact that he is here again to-day with us shows most conclusively that his 
association approved of his action on that occasion. 
I am sanguine that much good would result if delegates from the miners and bush 
unions met the producers to discuss matters of mutual concern and debate any or all 
of the causes which have tended to separate us in the past. Some of you may fancy 
from what I have said, and the feeling manner in which I have said it, that J have 
much to lose and much to dread. Such, I am happy to say, is not the case. My 
concern is as much for the interests of Queensland as for those of the sugar industry. 
When I see danger ahead I act promptly and decisively. Directly the Pacific 
Islanders Act of 1884 came into force, I ceased to plant cane, planting none for nine 
