102 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Juny, 1901. 
a serious effect on the yield of sugar. It would also admit of free circulation of air 
and seat during the whole period of growth. 
The burning of trash I have been condemning for the past thirty years. Most of — 
us know that it represents fully 50 per cent. at least of what the cane plant takes from 
the soil. We are also told that fire frees nitrogen from the soil. It also has a most 
injurious effect on our generally badly cut cane stools, but, much as I think this foolish 
ractice has had to do with diminishing the fertility of our canefields, I believe the 
irriational practice of hilling up cane has done infinitely more in that direction. Let 
Si look at one of our corrugated canefields after a heavy fall of rain, and what 
will they see? Water furrows washed out to the pure impervious clay, or else 
containing a deposit of pure sand; the corrugations are one mass of fibrous roots 
exposed to sun and air from which they do not obtain any nourishment. The proper 
way to get rid of the surplus water is by underground drains. I have read that by 
this system, certain valuable constituents of plant food are carried off by the water, 
Minute experiments have shown this loss to be very small indeed. No one watching 
surplus water, almost of the consistency of mud, running off a canefield along the 
water furrows needs the aid of the chemist to tell him that the fertility of that field is 
being diminished to an alarming extent. 
Most of my agreements with my tenants are verbal. Should I.at any future time 
enter into agreement by lease, one extra clause that I shall have inserted, and which I 
shall enforce even more rigorously than the payment of rent, will be that there will be 
no corrugating of the land. 
In other canegrowing countries, where good cane cutting isalways enforced, the cane 
stools are always trimmed when cultivating and supplying the canerow. Pointing this 
out to the Homebush farmers, and urging them tointroduce what is known as a stubble 
shaver, some of them mentioned that they had noticed that the ratoons were much 
stronger where the cane row had been levelled for laying moveable trams. As long as 
fields are corrugated and the cane stools are on the crowns, with ratoons growing on the 
surface and often above it, payable ratoons crops need not be expected. That acertain — 
system of what is called ratooning has been followed for years, gives it no claim to respect, 
especially when judged by results; nor does the fact that the common plough is 
generally used and held in high esteem by most ploughmen afford sufficient reason 
why both system and implement should not give place to improved methods and — 
machinery. Fifty years ago sickle and scythe were, and had from time immemorial, — 
been universally used. To-day few farm hands can use either. I do not think a 
machine will ever be inyented which will cut even ina rough fashion a payable crop of — 
cane, but I do not think it should be a hard task for some mechanical genius to invent — 
an infinitely better implement than the plough to be used between cane rows. — 
Personally, I never put a plough into my land when once planted with cane. I haye 
often grown three good crops in succession on forest land without the aid of the plough. 
It just occurs to my mind—it should have done so earlier—that I am not writing a 
book to be read at leisure, but a paper for a Conference the time for getting through 
the business of which is much too limited; still I must crave your patience a little 
longer ; and I do so on the ground that I have a little more to say, and that this is the 
last Conference I shall attend, at least as a delegate. 
In a recent American paper I read a statement made by an American Senator to 
an assembly of farmers. He said, ‘‘ The farmer has no friends and he deserves none.” 
It was the common want of unanimity among them, and their almost chronic lethargy, 
even when their interests are imperilled, that drew from him this taunt. 
“The Farmer as a Politician” was the title of one of the papers read at the War- 
wick Conference, and itis a subject which demands much more serious thought than is 
given toit. There is almost a universal prejudice against the farmer as a legislator, 
yet, not only as a politician, but as a statesman, the intelligent farmer has no peer, for, 
even while following his calling, his mind is clear and unoccupied, and he can reason 
out his ideas; not so the bulk of our legislators, who are business men, braim-workers 
whose minds are, and always must be, solely given to their business if they are to be 
successful. To this, rather than that there are too many lawyers in Parliament, are due 
the asinine peculiarities of many of our legislative enactments. Some of our 
legislators, when dealing with agricultural interests, speak and act and legislate for 
farmers as if they followed agricultural pursuits solely for pleasure or from purel 
philanthropic motives, instead as a means of livelihood. I trust that the farmers will 
use every effort to obtain their fair share of direct representation by men of their own 
class in Parliament, that they will aspire to be something more than mere purveyors 
for the parasites, that they will take a hand in framing the laws of the State and 
shaping its destiny, and that ere long it will be self-evident that Queensland farmers 
have many true friends in Parliament. 
