COTTON MANIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 November 1922, Page 4

COTTON MANIA.

By Sir William Beach Tlmmas). '•('ntton-mad" is how Sir William Beach Thomas describes the vast Australian State of Oueonsland, where he finds this new industry being almost fovcrrishly developed. He gives Unviews of the enthusiasts with reserve, hut says that “the promise is certainly good.”

Q TEENS I'.AND. The first considerable well-packed bale of cotton grown in Queensland should reach England about tlio time of ibis despatch. 1 have iu.st seen the ginning and haling of the second consignment. and travelled through the country which promises to become the cotton capital of the world. Quantities of new ginn, s are about to he put up all over Atisralia under the ‘sanction of (lie Federal Government. About 8,(100 acres of cotton were groan this your. Application for seed for 75.0410 acres have already been received for the coming year; and as soon as Australia has enough pure home-grown seed of the long-fibred varieties tlio extension of the crop is exported to he enormous. f luiv seen some of the individual accounts of the farmers. One grower of n single acre got a return oi just £*>o. The Government paid a farmer who grew 100 acres a cliecpir for tl.ffl). It is perhaps no wonder that a sudden zeal for cotton growing has taken possession both of the Government and farmers of Qiicit'iisland. Ihe development is of wide and immediate importance to the migrant. The very first farmer 1 visited showed mo a patch whore he was going to grow cotton next year. When I went to see .Mr Theodore, the Rremier of Queensland, he had just one hook on the table beside him. It was a I’tigh’s Almanac for 1802 in which he had underlined a passage about the first experiment in cotton ill (Jnioenshind. A sample of the first plant had been taken to Mam hostel mid to Scotland; Imt it was oi siicu super-fme' texture that it def’-ct'd lb" spinners, and was dually ah a id India. where the natives converted it into the finest cut ton ever made. .My very first caller in Brisbane showed me a score of samples of cotton. L liter an enthusiast for close cultivation proved to me how cotton was the ideal small-holder's or family man’s nop. Children are the best pickers the record is held by a girl ol twelve—and all the work is light. No more than live months after the seed is in the ground the harvest begins, and very little later the Government pays over tlio money, the good money, to the cultivator.

A botanist pointed out to me on a map how Queensland alone (which is 5,1 times as big ns the British Isles) lias over a- million acres where cotton grows hotter than in any part of the

world, except in .soni(‘ irrigatoil ureas ol' Hgypt and the more western States of. Australia. Queensland, in short (and to some extent other States ol' Australia.), is becoming eotton-mad. The cotton boom rescnnhles a cold boom in hopeful intensity. This /.eat may be extreme. Kldorados are not all gold, but ‘lf hopes are dupes, fears may he traitors.” The promise is certainly good. The land is favourable; the climate is favourable; no serious disease has appeared; the quality ol the stuil is wonderful. It is at least probable that a new industry, ideally fitted for the small cultivator, is on the way. The plant is easy of cultivation and is a good drought-resistor. Labour for picking the seeds, which do not ripen simultaneously, is the one difficulty; and everyone seems to be agreed that if the gnowing ol the crop could be nuwht so to speak, a family affair of a number of small-holders, whose, children would share in the work, every difficulty would vanish. The necessary co-operative work is already done by the Cotton-Growers' Association, to which the Government has handed it over. It supplies free seed, in certain cases, free land, and buys the crop at a fixed race, taking all trouble off the growers’ hands when once the crop is harvested.

Queensland, ns I havo said, is immense. It is more than three times the size of France, and its total population is under 701),000. Its climate and its soil —which will grow anything growahle—warrant a population of ‘2O,

30, 40, millions. When you have seen only a few of the characteristic areas»-tlie Darling Downs compacted of rich wheat and general farms, the dairy lands nine the coast, the great sugar plantations —where alone in the world sugar i; harvested by white* labour —the general emptiness of the land seems incredible.