14 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Jury, 1902. 
the whole of his crop is taken into the bins upstairs. Any of you who is 
interested in the question of elevators can see the idea in operation at Mr. 
O’Brien’s mill, in this town. You will see what a simple thing an elevator 
is. It is simplicity itself, and in fact it is like using a Californian Pure to 
pump up water. There are many objections offered to the adoption of these 
elevators in Australia. It is said that the idea is premature; that we have no 
export trade. But what is the fact in other countries? All the grain that 
is grown in the United States and Canada is handled in elevators, and 
70,000,000 people consume an immense quantity of grain. If there was 
no export trade from America in maize, wheat, or barley, the elevator 
system would go on just the same. Some time ago in New South Wales 
there were three elevators in use by private individuals. There is one 
attached to a private mill in Sydney with a capacity for 75,000 bushels. 
Gillespie Brothers, again, have an elevator with a capacity of 70,000 bushels. 
A system of elevators for this country would entail the erection of one elevator 
of 1,000,000 bushels at, say, Toowoomba, and then every wayside station on the 
railway lines leading to Toowoomba, in the districts where there is a consider- 
able quantity of grain-growing, should be supplied with elevators with 
capacities of from 30,000 to 40,000 bushels. The American cost of a million- 
bushel elevator is £5,000—that is, the original cost of such an elevator is about 
15d. per bushel. £1,000 is an estimate for a 30,000-bushel elevator, and I do 
not think I am far wrong when I say that £100,000 would fit the grain-growin 
districts of Queensland with a complete system of elevators. A cost o 
£20,000 is incurred every year to the farmers of Queensland for bags and the 
handling resultant from the use of bags, and that £20,000 is one-fifth of the 
total cost of establishing such a complete system as indicated. I had the 
privilege of addressing the first of these Agricultural Conferences, and when I 
addressed the delegates then present I told them that the Government of the 
day was prepared to initiate a system of grain elevators for the grain-growing 
districts, but that the Railway Commissioner wanted some assurance from the 
farmers themselves that their construction was desired. ‘The one thing that 
has been missing since then is the consideration of the subject by the farmers 
and the making of the request. I do not know how long that apathy is to last, 
and my object now is to urge the matter upon your attention. I could not get 
a better audience than the present, and it may be that I shall not have such 
another opportunity of broaching the subject. I can only say now that, apart 
from the direct interest to the existing farmers in the grain-growing districts, 
I look to the introduction of this system not merely to give Paice generally 
a greater power and control over their own produce, and I look to it as likely 
to lead to a great extension of the grain-growing industry, both because it will 
make that industry more profitable and because it will permit of more time 
being devoted to other work on the farm. Although it is rather late, I should 
like to read a short introduction on this subject by Dr. N. A. Cobb, of the 
New South Wales Agricultural Department. No man has done so much in 
Australia for profitable and scientific wheat culture than Dr. Cobb, and if his 
views were adopted with regard to grain elevators I am expressing myself but 
poorly when I say that enormous benefit would accrue to the wheat-growers of 
Queensland :— 
When I see a farmer go to his nearest market town, several miles distant, pay 
5d. each for bags by the wagon-load, take them home and put them away in a 
dry place until wanted, then once more carry them out into the field, fill them with 
grain, sew them up, and, if he is a careful man, label each bag separately, lift the 
bags of wheat on to a high dray, take them to his barn, unload ‘pene stack them, and 
Jater on lift them down again. rip them open, clean the grain by machinery, bag it up 
again, label the bags again and stack them once more until such time as the market 
price suits him; when I see him, having made a sale, unstacking them once more 
several weeks later, sewing up the holes the mice have gnawed meanwhile, lifting 
‘them again on io his high dray, and off again, one by one, at the railway shed; when 
I see the grain leaking out through bursted, torn, and gnawed ‘bags all the way from 
the railway shed to the seaboard ; when I see bags of precious grain, representing the 
