1 Jury, 1901.} QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 25 
discriminating protection should be done away with. Mr. Daniel says wheat is 
carried as low as possible. It is carried from Allora to Warwick at about 1d. 
per ton per mile. If he looks at the New South Wales rates he will find it is a 
little over half-a-penny per ton per mile. Cecil Rhodes, of South Africa, makes 
it.a special merit in that large book of his, that he reduced the freight on flour, 
that is the manufactured article, on the railways in Cape Colony, to half-a-penny 
per ton per mile. If they can do it there they can do it here. Somehow or 
other the railways pay there. Weare always told we must not lower the 
freights because the railways will not pay. J should like to be pointed out a 
country where the railways with high freights pay. It is very often low 
freights that pay by doubling and trebling the amount of produce that is 
carried through them. This subject has been brought up before. At Rock- 
hampton we passed a resolution that the Government should be requested to 
reduce the rates on articles of produce to the level of those in New South 
Wales, but we never heard anything further of it. Mr. Daniel said it did not 
matter to us what the Government charged for flour. J think, however, that 
it would be best to charge the same rate for wheat as for flour, and that is 
what is done in New South Wales. When I advocated federation I thought 
if we had to compete with the other States that we would all be put upon the 
same level. As for the Warwick people sending their flour to intermediate 
towns between there and Brisbane, they simply cannot do it. In order to get 
the reduced rates, the flour has to be sent to a port, and from thence back to 
the intermediate town. I do not go with Mr. Wilson in this business about 
Roma. We do not care about the Roma market. What we want is to get to 
the people. We want cheap freights to Brisbane, to Bundaberg, and to every 
place on the route. You can send flour to Brisbane, and the freight will be 
12s. 6d. If it goes to Gatton, however, you will have to pay about 17s. 6d. 
Mr. Miscambie: We grow wheat in Roma and, like the people of Allora 
and Warwick, we cannot eat it all, even if we sat up all night to do it. We 
therefore have to find a market, and we naturally look to the West. But the 
people on the Darling Downs want to steal that market away from us, and have 
been trying to do so for the past five or six years. For some years they have 
been carrying wheat at a differential rate from Warwick to Cunnamulla. What 
T simply hold out for is cheap rates: cheap rates for the Darling Downs, if 
need be. We want no favours from anybody, but we do not want our market 
taken from us by a stroke of the pen of the Railway Commissioner. There is 
a great future for our industry in the Maranoa, and this year we will be 
sending wheat over the top of the Darling Downs. We will have to send to 
Brisbane. They will have to do likewise, and I ask them to look to the big 
population on the coast for the disposal of their surplus. I look on Brisbane 
as the gate of the country, and we want to meet our Southern competitors 
there. We do not want to meet them at the back. We can only meet them, 
however, by having cheap rates to the port, and therefore let our rates come 
down to the level of those of New South Wales and Victoria: If we cannot 
grow wheat in Queensland with fair rates, let us give it up. I, for one, do not 
think we will be beaten. I lived for twenty-five years in the wheat-growing 
areas of Victoria, and can say we have better land than Victoria. All we want 
is fairplay, and then we will have no fear of the result. 
Mr. T. pe M. Murray-Prior (Maroon) :-I would have liked to have seen 
a few more farmers speak on this subject, still, as am a representative of a 
large agricultural district, a few remarks from me on this subject may not be 
out of place. I was a strong advocate for federation, but if federation is going 
to prove beneficial to Queensland we must have cheap freights to our ports, and 
our ports must be open. We, as a body of people, have a grand country, but 
unless our legislators look at things with a business-like view we shall go down 
in federation, and I must say that | was surprised at the figures that have been 
given here to-night by Mr. Wilson showing the differences in our railway 
freights. Unless our rates are brought down to the levels of the other States 
