COTTON IN QUEENSLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 298, 9 May 1913, Page 8

COTTON IN QUEENSLAND.

ENORMOUS POSSIBILITIES. AUSTRALIA'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY . Sydney, April 16. Every country in Europe is scouring the earth for places in which to grow cotton. The British Government has just guaranteed three millions for experiments in the Soudan, so serious is the possibility of a cotton shortage regarded, and in Germany, the great manufacturing empire of Europe, a similar anxiety for supplies is felt. Other countries have to deal with exactly the same position. The world's demand for cotton is quite in excess of the supply. Mr. Tom Garnett, of Clitheroe, near Manchester, the member of the Dominions Commission now" in Australia, who is expert in matters appertaining to the Lancashire cotton industry, had these facts in mind when visiting Queensland, and he has come away convinced that the prosperity of Queensland could be very materially increased if the State could only be persuaded to take up cot-ten-growing with the same wholehearted seriousness that she has taken up.f; Qther branches of primary culture. And he'agrees that what applies''to Queensland should also apply to many portions of New South Wales. Fortunes are waiting the men who can grow cotton.

Discussing the subject with a representative of The Daily Telegraph, Mr. Garnett expressed himself as having been very greatly impressed with the fertility of Queensland's soil. "If Queensland may be taken as a fair sample of what is possible in the rest of Australia," said Mr. Garnett, "I don't know what more the country wants. You have the sun, you have the soil. Not many countries have both."'• And, ; turning, to the subject, of cotton-growing, Mr. Garnett pointed but that in Texas, probably the chief cottongrowing country of the world, cotton was not grown on large estates. It was essentially a crop for the man with a small area at his command, and from that point of view alone' was doubly worthy of consideration in Australia.

f< Would there be a good market for cotton grown on a large scale in Australia?" the interviewer asked.

"There is a splencVd market for every bit of cotton that can be produced anywhere," replied Mr. Garnett; "and," he wont on, "speaking purely as an individual onlooker, quite apart from my position as a member of the Commission, the point brought home to me most vividly during my stay in that part of Australia is that there is a source of wealth' available which, in proper lands, ought almost to rival the tremendous wealth-producing capacity of the merino."

In other respects Queensland appealed to Mr. Garnett as a country possessed of great latent prosperity, the cross-cut-ting system of railways he admired as being the outcome of wise fore-thought on somebody's part, and he had also a good word for the Queensland seaport system. '"What the commercial man wants in every case," he said, "is l to get his produce on to the water at the quickest possible moment. Water carriage is so much cheaper than any other form of carriage; the man without it is at a distinct disadvantage as compared with 'the man who lias it. Queensland has a well-arranged coastline, a matter of great importance to the commerce of any country, and I can only speak of the State enthusiastically. I have seen no other portion of Australia, so that I am ignorant of what possibilities there are elsewhere. There may be possibilities, 1 as good as those in Queensland elsewhere, or there may be better." Another point appealed to Mr. Garnett. perhaps, the most forcibly of any—the sparsity of population. It was difficult to imagine, he said, that a country in wbich the whole of Great Britain could be placed, he did not know how many times, could be occupied by. such a small number of people.