110 QUEENSLAND AGRICULLURAL JOURNAL. {1 Juny, 1901. 
that is worth keeping up. With regard to the climatic question, | have been 
eighteen or nineteen years in the North, and it is my opinion that any man who 
works for a number of years long hours in the canetield will injure his consti. 
tution. I do not think it would be wise policy to compel white men to do such 
work. I may safely say that the Northern planters do not want Asiatics, and ] 
think that point may be made quite clear. We only want the Polynesian. With 
regard to the temperature question: It is not the temperature readings only 
that you must take, for it is the humidity that makes the difference. On the 
Herbert River they have already had 130 inches of rain this year. Work hag 
had to be done during that time, and I do not think anybody could work in 
such a climate without doing himself an injury. 
The next paper was entitled— 
THE NECESSITY OF A STATE SUGAR REFINERY. 
[By E. Ropert, of Cairns. ] 
During the last ten years our Government, with great wisdom, gave the sugar. 
growing districts every opportunity of accepting the assistance of the State in 
establishing central mills under the Sugar Works Guarantee Act. It goes without 
saying that we cane-farmers put our shoulders to the wheel and worked energetically, 
and gave all we were worth as security for the State’s assistance; and I need not t 
you that we, full of hopes, pictured to ourselves great success. But I am sorry to say 
that before many years had passed, we realised the hard fact that it was not indeed 
altogether a bed of roses we were preparing for ourselves; or, to put the matter in the 
most favourable shape, we realised that if the bed was to be of roses, those roses had 
hard and Jong thorns, which we must either avoid or eradicate. Those thorns have 
sprung on us unawares, and are of rather recent origin, as political agitations, financial 
disturbances, and labour complications, in the shape of bounties, tariffs, bad seasons, 
grubs, and now a threat by our Federal Parliament to take away the small amount 
of reliable labour in the shape of the kanaka before such time as we may be in a 
position to be able to carry on the sugar industry, so that we could meet in time the 
threatened action of our Federal Government. 
Thanks to that great political squib of a white Australia, the Southern States have 
partly been shown our true position, and they now see that the sugar industry in the 
North needs the greatest care to save it; and now we have amalgamated, it is the 
duty of each State to study and safeguard the interests of the other, and they them. 
selves would be very black indeed in attempting to massacre the baby State in the 
building up of its great sugar industry, which I am notafraid of. You will admit with 
me, gentlemen, that the cane-farmer left nostone unturned tocombat the above difficulties 
by improving the culture, introducing new and costly manures, adopting improved 
machinery, and, lastly, by calling in the services of a great expert. 
By all these means the tonnage per acre has been increased, and yet we cane. 
farmers find that the limit for profit is very narrow, and very often even dubious. 
There must be a screw loose in the machinery. 
Gentlemen, itis more than a loose screw—it is, in fact, the absence of the super: 
structure and the cap of the edifice that makes the whole affair leaky and 
uncomfortable. This superstructure in the sugar industry is nothing less than a State 
refinery to be added to the State mills, because a refinery is part and_ parcel of a 
central mill, and it would enrich the farmer as well as the State; it would enable the 
farmers’ production to be placed in the market at cost price, so that they could reap the 
profits of their labour; it would complete the work that the mills at present are unable 
to accomplish. First of all we must take into consideration the position of the 
Government and the farmer. The Government has advanced over half a million of 
money for the establishing of central mills, and the farmers have given in return, as 
security, the deeds of their landed property to the Government for that amount of 
money. 
x ow, as the Government and the farmer are so closely connected with one another 
in the sugar industry, to a certain extent they become partners—that is to say, the 
Governmentare in duty bound to assist as much as possible, the farmers to meet their 
responsibilities when they fall due; and it is the farmers’ duty to do their utmost, an 
acquaint the Government with anything they find out through experience that would be 
to their advancement, and also to the advancement of the State. 
We have now twelve central mills. These are enough to warrant the establish- 
ment of a State refinery. 
Now we have to see how it will pan out, and to show clearly that it will be 
good for the farmer, and that it will create a big prosperity to the State. 
