FARM PLAGUES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 138, 13 June 1934, Page 10

FARM PLAGUES.

FIVE DRY SEASONS. MICE, RABBITS—AND BAILIFFS STORY TOLD COMMISSION. (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 7. Tho Wheat Commission has been sitting at Lake Cargelliao, a little township in tho south of tho State, and it-put in a very depressing day listening to the local farmers' talo of woe. The commission sat in tho tiny little courthouse, and- so great was tho interest aroused by tho advent of the magnates from Canberra and Sydney that the room was crowded out, and four spectators, on the invitation of the chairman, sat in the prisoner's dock. Tho spokesman for tho settlers told r. story that must have impressed even the most hardened of the commissioners, accustomed though they are to complaints and lamentations from "the man on tho land." He and his neighbours had lived through five dry seasons, followed by a mice plague, a rabbit plague and a grasshopper plague in rapid succession. Of course, all this time there had been a money famine, and now, said tho farmer plaintively, a plague of bailiffs had swooped down upon them and threatened to eject them all. Ninety per cent of the farms in tho district arc mortgaged and though the Crown has made some concessions, it hns not been possible to arrange any readjustment of debts and values between tho tenant and tho private mortgagee. Want Moratorium Extended. Nino settlers have left the district, eight have given up the fight and abandoned their holdings, and of the remaining 70, two have improved their position, four are stationary and the rest are "going back." No wonder that the farmers pleaded pathetically with the commission to use its influence for an extension of tho moratorium and some guarantee that tho mortgagees would not foreclose. In too many cases the primary producer is apt to talk as if he monopolises the woes and misfortunes of the whole earth. But when things are as bad as they evidently have been at Cargelliao for a long time past, the man on the land certainly needs all the sympathy that Dr. Earle Page demands and all the help that Mr. Stevens and Mr. Lyons can give.