AUSTRALIAN COTTON.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3508, 10 June 1920, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN COTTON.

I Queensland, the Bananaland of the !Austl-aliun, is getting ready to furnish a large increase to the Empii-e’s raw cotton supply, says a Daily Mail cor~ respondent._ . That tropical Au.-tr:ili-an State did its bit in the cotton line way back in the .-\niel'ican war time when it got. a big price for its raw material in the ‘depleted_ English market. But after }that ]_>‘.'iC€s dwindled, the lure of gold ‘attracted the Quenslander, and cotton fell into the background. I At intervals attempts have been made to bring cotton into the limelight ‘again, but, right up to 1914 its price Ewazs never so high as to make it 2'. I serious competitor of Wheat and maize, ,beef and wool, for the suffrages of the Queensland farmer. Then, too, it has been widely asserted and believed that cotton requires coloured labour, and ‘Australia grows even its sugar with White labour. ’ But a new move is likely. A Queensland agricultural expert reports that cotton is just the crop for a resettled soldieifs hmnestead, that he can. with ;_his family grow up to 20 acres of cotEton, and that. even if the cost of pickging goes’ as high as 1d :1 lb cotton will {be a paying crop. g The Queensland Government has ‘built. a. mill to deal with the crop as it Dias picked, collects the cotton in the pod, mills it, and markets the whole crop for the growers. The profits after ,expenses of_ milling and marketing '.have been paid are distributed pro ‘rata among the gr.owers——a sort. of co? ,operation.