106 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL gourNaL. [1 Jury, 190], 
of its branches. Some of these branches number seventy members, and are to be fouy q 
working in nearly every little farming centre. They meet once a month, and on | 
membership basis are represented on a central council meeting in Mackay every ty 
months; in fact, a miniature Chamber of Agriculture. Through this body, good woy 
has already been done—such as improvement in the labour conditions, steps for thy 
eradication of insect pests, the promoting of instructive meetings between the expert: 
of the Department, and last year a Conference, convened without any assistanog 
from the State, on which most of the sugar districts in Queensland were represented —__ 
either by proxy or personally (Mr. Cran coming from Bundaberg) was held. At ;! 
the constitution for the proposed sugar union was drafted. A recommendation was 
made that afterwards bore fruit in the appointment of Dr. Maxwell, and for the firg4 { 
time steps were taken to officially record a combined opinion on the labour questioy | } 
Although it may seem irrelevant to mention such things in a paper on the sugaz 
industry, in other matters besides those exclusively pertaining to it the farmers haye 
benefited by its work. A method for the co-operative purchase of their supplies has 
been arranged that on an ayerage has effected a considerable saving to every farmer 
in the district. I am very pleased to hear that the Logan Association have succesg- — 
fully arranged co-operative methods for the disposal of their products. Our shows — 
have been kept under the management of the farmers, and with some success as is 
shown by the fact that, with a prize list of over £300 per annum in value, the 
amount resulting from two shows now lying to the credit of our show account js 
some £350. In this matter the townspeople rae cordially assisted. We even had 
the audacity to take part as a body in politics in ’93, Mr. Chataway, on his advent te 
public life, being our endorsed candidate. 
But, coming back io the subject-matter of my paper, whatever isolated action on 
behalf of the industry may have done in the past with our interests centreing in Bris- 
bane, itis but a natural consequence of federation that, with the partial transfer of their 
control to the extreme south-eastern corner of the continent, some more powerful body 
for the furtherance of our interests is requisite. The constitution of such a body was 
drafted at the sugar conference held in Mackay last year, previously alluded to, 
Under it, without in any way forfeiting their freedom or prejudicing their case in such 
matters as the price of cane, &c., the grower can meet the miller and work with him 
unitedly on the many subjects on which their interests are one, such as tariff duties 
and soon. Statistics relative to the industry can be collected, and, if our request for 
the appointment of a Royal commission is granted, such a body as proposed will be of 
great service. At any rate, it must be obvious to both sections that on these and the 
many other questions in which their aims are one, each will be an access of strength 
to the other. The whole thing is based on that principle of unity which is 
acknowledged by all to be the first stepping-stone towards our advancement. 
DISCUSSION. 
Mr. F. W. Perk (Loganholme) : Last year, at Warwick, the sugar men had 
a chance of dealing with wheat and pigs, and now we have in Bundaberg here 
a chance of dealing with sugar. I generally like to speak pretty straight, and 
Lwould now like to place before you a few figures, which I collected this 
afternoon from the Hon. Angus Gibson, which should be noted, as they contain 
a subject of vast importance to us Southern men. It was information I was 
there to gather, but unfortunately, there being so much else to see, it was 
information that could not be participated in by everybody. But I amin a 
position to be able to record figures given to me, and I shall now take pleasure 
in presenting a few of them. In the eliciting of facts, which we come here to 
collect, I found out to-day, at Bingera, that on the plantation owned by Messrs. 
Gibson and Howes there were employed 3850 “boys”; that those boys 
are subsidiary to the employment of 140 whites; that there are 35 families 
residing on the estate ; that that estate not only provides work, but provides 
education and religious instruction. They have a Sunday school on that estate, 
although we are often told the kanaka is degraded and looked upon as a slave. 
In that Sunday school not less than 70 attend regularly. They have a 
hospital on that estate in which anyone who is sick is carefully attended to, the 
same treatment being meted out to both blacks and whites. On Bingera not less 
than 100 horses are employed, and those 100 horses consume maize grown iD 
the South of Queensland. The amount of maize used per week is not less 
than 42 bags. We were likewise taken to the bakery and cooks’ shops, 
and I found that not less than 8 tons of sweet potatoes were 
