The above reminds me of a new development in Australia, which I believe will be far-reaching. If a personal note may be introduced your correspondent has for many years—almost since the invention of internal combustion engines—argued that the scone-sugar mills should make power alcohol, and the farmers should abandon horses, hurricane lamps and coloured labour and take to alcohol-driven field implements. This of course had as its main argument the fact that the sugar mills produced molasses, for which there was market, and og the running of them into creeks and rivers destroyed the fish it actually cost them, money to get rid of their molasses.
To-day a company is being floated, with half a million of capital, to convert molasses into power alcohol. It has agreement with a number of raw sugar mills, al] in the one district, and proposes to pay 20/- per ton for the molasses. The fact that this will add a trifle on to the value of the farmer's sugar cane is a small matter compared with the fact that it spells the abolition of the horse, the stable, the harness-maker, the chaffcutter, and the local wheelwright. The farmer will now employ machines, and he will draw his driving power from the central distillery in his own district. He will be able to collect his tank-load of power alcohol of a Sunday, just as 40 years algo he had to draw his water casks filled at the adjacent creek or water-hole. Yet another milestone in the work of proving it possible for white men to work in the tropics at a profitable wage
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.