So far as one can judge of country the huge size of Australia the weather has been highly favourable and prospects are good for the rest of the year, and early next year. Rain seems' to be daily re-orted over the great pastoral interior, while in the wheat areas the: farmers are jubilant from South Australia, even to Queensland, wh by no means a wheat State, its production being somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3,000,000 bushels a good season. "The cotton outlook is improving, though not rapidly ax wax hoped. There is little question that the Queensland Labour Government by laying down hard and fast laws hampered the development of the industry. would have been better to have allowed the farmers to find their Jown way, instead of insisting upon their working under bureaucratic instructions.
The sugar harvest is devel slong unexpected lines of prosperity. There will now be come 70,000 tons lof sugar to export, and as. matters stand it seems impossible that this can be done except at considerable loss. The Sugar Control Board holding back 30/- a ton from the mills to make good any losses on selling abroad. This gives a fund jof half a million sterling, which should cover any deficit. But the chief value in this method of meetting the losses is that it gradually brings the raw sugar mills to realize that they must put up with a lower [price for their product, and there fore the farmer must accustom himself to something less for his cane. As most of the sugar mills are cooperative concerns this method of gradually adjusting the industry to a lower range of prices seems like-lly to succeed without much friction, The prospects of starting a umber" making factory in the sugar districts seem good, and the investigations made by the American \Celotex factory promoters are understood to have given eticouraging Iresults, Jam exports are again morea: but unhappily most of the factories ere proprietary, instead of co-opera tive, with the result thet the managements have little difficulty in persuading the fruit-growers that there are a thousand and one reasons why they should be paid a state tion wage for their fruit. A fow cays ago Captain C.T.M. Husband, lof the Royal Engineers, on leave from the Malayan States, fired some Thorne truths, @ la E.S. Little, into jour jam exporters. He described how ho went with a friend into a business place in Singapore to get jerome Australian jams, He was shown other country's goods, nicely Jgot up and well displayed; but he wanted Australian tins of jam. "He twas taken to a back room, wherd they were piled in a disordered help. At his own price he procured two teases, in which some of the tins hod been burst in transit, owing to faulty packing, emeering the others with a sticky mess. Many of the labels were falling off". He added that despite these faults they were tive best jams he had tasted.
There is nothing like harping upon the faults of our exporters, if we hope to establish trade. "Some at east of them pay attention to thes criticisms, which, it may be said, fare duly circulated all through Australia.
Amongst other recent developments has been the completion of the silos jon the Atherton tableland, a vast tarea between 2,000 and 3,000 above sea level, and lying west of [Cairns, one of our most tropical districts slightly north of the 17th par alld of latitude, For years maize hat been perfunctorily grown on this tableland, but it was too prolific and too moist. In a good season the farmers swamped their own. fmavkets, and the maize would not keep. "Now silos and driers. are fused, A Maize Poo! Board controls she édmifercial side of the business, has made the fan Jof £3-10-0 a ton on ud seems likely judiciously to sell at about double that sum, As there are 14,000 tons in sight, and only 130 Farmers, where before there were nearly 200 it is believed that maize about to be added to our industries in the strictly tropical districts. is only right to say that the financing: iitthe silos and. deying. machinery twas done by the Queensland Labour Government, which has been gonjuinely anxious to push industry alwadl, but, like all government of its politient complexion, is. too one xious to have a finger-—an official Jone—in every pie,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.