1 Ava., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 161 
return for their milk that they would have got if they had supplied to a private 
factory. Six months previous to my visit the net profit had been £800, and 
when the company started it had only £70. In Mackay we have not got very 
far, but by combining we are able to reduce the cost of our supplies by from 10 
to 15 per cent., and I suppose the smallest farmer in our district has benefited 
to the tune of at least £10 a year through combination in purchasing. In this 
matter of co-operative purchases, the great question in England now is whether 
the combination should have a regular store, or whether they should be just a 
buying company simply, and I think that for the majority of hetetes associations 
the latter system is best. In conclusion, I have only to refer to the Manchester 
and Rochdale companies to show how successful co-operation can be. 
The Hon. J. V. Caraway: The schemes offered by Dr. Thomatis, by Mr. 
Peek, and by most of the speakers are in very many senses similar. It is true 
that the one proposes that the State shall help to provide the capital, or rather 
the capital shall find itself, and the State shall guarantee it. But it is exactly 
the same. Jf you put your name to the baék of a promissory-note and that 
note is not met when it becomes due, it is the same as finding’ the money. If 
the State puts its name to the back of a lot of paper money and says it will be 
met by cold, it is exactly the same as finding the cash. But the two schemes 
were really founded on the systems that have been largely adopted in Europe, 
with some variations in Germany, in Italy, andin Austria. Dr. Thomatis differs. 
very largely from his former colleague, Senr. Luzzati, who started a bank with 
£28. This gentleman did exactly the same thing that Dr. Thomatis has rather 
made a joke of. He went to another bank and borrowed more money, and his 
institution now turns over £20,000,000 annually. They did not issue paper money, 
but lent cash which they had borrowed on their co-operative credit. They put their 
eredit together with unlimited liability, and they borrowed from other banks on 
that credit. Their next operation was to opena savings bank, and their credit was 
such that people rushed them with money. Money was deposited at 4 per cent. 
and lent out at 5 and 6. They were able to work their bank cheaply and borrow 
cheaply because of their credit. They were able to lend cheaply because they had 
no working expenses, because their directors and inspectors worked for nothing. 
That is the general scheme of the whole of those banks. I would 
like to refer to the statement made by Mr. Deacon that money-lenders 
did not look upon farms as the best of security. As a matter of 
fact, anyone who has any connection with financial institutions knows 
that exactly the very opposite is the case. During the crisis of 1893, the 
financial institutions noticed that there was no kind of security which fell so 
little and which varied so little as land in agricultural occupation. Mr. 
Deacon, I must add, is a man of large experience, and is looked upon in the 
Southern end of the colony as an authority second only to Mr. Kates, on the 
financial condition of the farmers there. During 1893 there was no property 
which was less shaken by the convulsions of those days than agricultural land 
in profitable occupation, whilst those who had advanced on town allotments, 
&c., had them thrown on their hands wholesale. While properties in the 
neighbourhoood of Brisbane were surrendered to the mortgagee, and are in many 
cases still unoccupied or burned down, farming lands on the Downs were hardly 
affected at all. At the present day there is no man who can so readily borrow 
money as the Downs farmer, and at so low arate of interest. I know of several 
institutions which have been lending money at 5 per cent. on farms. In this 
district 6 per cent. has to be paid on farm mortgages, but on the Downs they 
pay 5; and the manager of one of the largest life insurance institutions in the 
colony told me the other day they would have to reduce their rate of 
interest, owing to the competition, to 4 per cent. The main argument in 
support of loans from the Government is that the Government will not insist 
on the payment of either principal or interest, or, in other words, that the 
Government will not advance money on a business basis: that the Government 
will practically say to the borrower, “If you do not want to repay the loan you 
need not.” We all know that this is a wrong basis to take up, and that if the 
Government suffers, we all as a community do likewise. 
