THISTLEDOWN.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1780, 19 October 1895, Page 2

THISTLEDOWN.

“A man may;;jest and tell" the truth.”

- —Horace.

Some ten years ago Mr W. AT Graham,* of Hamilton, mooted the question of sugarbeet cultivation in the Waikato. Hie principals were prepared to establish, a factory in a central position and gaurantee the farmers sixteen shillings a ton for all beets not above a certain size, large roots being comparatively deficient in saecharine matter, pulp to be returned. It was then proved beyond dispute that Waikato soils over the length and breadth of the district, produced beet far richer in sugar than the average of either Continental Europe or California, Mr Brooks, of Churchill, saving over 12 per cent. Having taken considerable interest in the matter at the time I am glad to see that Mr Graham has made another effort to interest Waikato settlers in this industry. Mr Lewenberg, a gentleman from Russia, representing European capitalists interested in beet sugar, was introduced by Mr Graham to the Waikato Farmers’ Club to whom ho submitted his proposals. The new.scheme is so far more favorable to the growers than the old, that they are guaranteed <£l .. per ton for all roots large or small grown from the Company’s seed* and manure'giving in return ; a guarantee of 2500 acres for a term of five years in each case, and the grower is not to be responsible for failure of crops. I trust the present effort to create a new local industry will'be more successful than the former. It must be remembered that sugar-beet from its own properties, and the clean cultivation required, works exceedingly well in a three years rotation, that the refuse pulp is excellent food for stock, especially for dairy cows and that the refuse molasses are a valuable manure* Waikato farmers must be hard to move if they fail to take advantage of a scheme where they have so much to gain and so little to lose, Fifteen tons to the acre is an average local crop, the cost of growing which,based on Victorian experience, would not exceed eight or nine pounds, leaving a clear profit of six pounds per acre, independent of the collateral advantages. Probably the cost of clean cultivation frightened settlers ten years ago, but since then such developments have been made in machinery for this purpose that the cost has been enormously reduced. Small cockatoos could grow their two to five acres and with such implements as the Planet Junior Companies, a .boy could keep down weeds. Farming, as: distinguished from cattle and horse jobbing, has made great •advances since I first knew the Waikato-,' and I hope to live to see -sugar yet manufactured there from locally grown beet. * ./' * * * • I give yon a farther instalment of Messrs Daly and DeCourcy, and I hope the last.

Yes, Mr Daly, you’re quite right. I wouldn’t give thrawneen for the opinion of what you most righteously call Ner, Zealand goslings. We have all heard of the female gander w.ho thought her offsprings swans, pil'd -New' Zealand, in spite of Sir Walter .is full of such specimens of ansiirive -race.' The law and false prophets, alias the attorneys and bank clerks, who successfully pose as the cream of New Zealand society have given most people’ the idea that navvies and bush-whackers are only ‘ Epicuri'de grege porci.’ Please pardon the pedantry, it is very rarely indeed that I allow myself the luxury of of a quototiou from any language not ’* •' , ~ of the people. T ’ -

tub at — ri nt, spending the rest of the twenty-four hours in unreasoning slumber. A lengthened experience has enabled me to decisively say that for genuine - cracking of" hard soc Al and political-nuts you must in New Zealan ’ g > to those to whom walnuts and wine aro but a'symbol of aristocratic debauchery. You will observe the influence of my friend Do Courcy on my style, 1 was the other day reading a "speech of Sir Robert Stout’s to a" select audience, our : Parliamentary Union, to wit, ' De Courcy recl»bhed:thttt even ‘ thunder And lightning Cairn s ’.the ornament of his native town ,Was an instance of how.all lawyers’ speeches -were ruined with the. Old Bailey taint of specialpleading. We, therefore, demanded frbrn him ah illustration of successful popular oratory. The eminent Patre |Dt;ly f being in camp to recruit his energies after , the plank bed, I suggested as a subject, his nomination as member for Limerick, and Carried, my proposal on a ballot. De Courcy, after overcoming the Native mbdegty. characteristic of Ireland in general and -Belfast in particular, cleared his throat and' began, * Mr Mayor and gentle, I have the supreme honour and felicity of proposing Mr Patrick Daly as a fit and proper person -to represent the world-renowned maiden city. This will be regarded as a pledge of unity among Irishmen coming from me, the representative of that orange capital where shipwright’s adzes are the popular means of saving our Catholic countrymen the round-about route by Purgatory to Heaven. Gentlemen, I don’t •wish to be personal, but if that hireling emissary of the Saxon assassin in the corner thinks to throw me off the.tread of my ideas by his ignorant and idiotic interuptions he dosen’s know that my brothers and I slept for three years on four rifles and two hundred and forty rounds of ball cartridges, waiting the pressure- of Stephen’s ; finger : on the trigger. One, Sullivan. made me a moral force man, but the pigheaded obstinancy of the House of Lords has re-converted me to the gospel of O’Meaghor of ;the Sword. I believe God must have hardened their hearts as He did .Pharaoh’s of pld, the better to work their destruction. At any : , rate, to-morrow, I send'half-a-gninea and our spare six cartridges of dynamite to Chicago. I should go myself and blow np Balfour but I fear the English oak has been so badly scraped by Parnell and Co. that it would hardly be safe for ahy married axeman to undertake her complete ’ If that ignorant old idot- near the door, the pampered and pandering Mameluke of Deluege and O’Callaghan tyranny doesn’t cease interrupting, me ' I’ll break the. blackguards skull with my stick, as its contents are amenable to no other. Reason.’ A painter from Cork got np to second the nomination and got so outrageous in his abuse of landlords that o even Mr. Daly had to interfere and to explain that tenants were not always the -victims of a grasping landlord but sometimes claimed reduction from a pourid rental when they could pay-a fiver per acre; which acre they sublet to four labourers at four pounds each per quarter acre. At this the painter, or faith I believe|its something about windows be gets his living by. got uproarious.- Well glazed windows throw too mnch light on the subject to suit * either his understanding or his principles. The painter cursed the landlords for grind- I

ing their tenants and Daly damned the farmers for sweating the labourers till you would have thought he was Clandrickarde himself. You see he is a man with that obstinate love of fair play that he' would fight his own shadow if he thought it obscured his|antagonist’s view of his nose. De Courcy had gone to the Post office to mail his half-gqinea and our dynamite, but got a shock on receiving then a Colonel’s commission with a request for two-guineas to help to raise his regiment. • The recognition of his past prowess in ’76 in midnight drill with a blackthorn soothed his vanity, but the two-guineas stuck in his gizzard and he wisely saved both them and also the smaller, but shortlived, bantling of his patriotism. lapyx.