COTTON-GROWING IN AUSTRALIA.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 11877, 26 April 1904, Page 6

COTTON-GROWING IN AUSTRALIA.

There is increasing testimony to the cot-ton-growing possibilities of tropical Australia. A visiting representative of that new and vigorous organisation, the British Cotton-growing Association, who has been in Australia for some time, now reports, according to a cable message in this issue, that the conditions of Queensland are well suitAl for the immediate settlement of thousands of cotton-growers. He asserts tuat in a short time they could make a good living. His report confirms the opinion expressed by Captain H. Vere Barclay, at a meeting of the Victorian Geographical Society recently, with reference to the Northern Territory. This question of cotton-growing in Northern Australia is not now mooted for the first time, but hitherto it has always been qualified by the observation that white labour is impossible in those regions, and that, therefore, in order to carry on cottongrowing it would be necessary to sacrifice the "White Australia" policy. Captain Barclay strongly combatted the assertion that white labour ia impossible as a pure fallacy, so far as cotton-growing is concerned. He has been a member of several exploring parties, and has lived for several years both in the interior and along the coasts of Northern Australia, and he roundly declares that Northern Australia is as healthy for the white man as any other part of Australia. As regards the cottongrowing itself, Captain Barclay is explicit. ''There are hundreds of thousands of "square miles there," he says, "that are "suited to growing cotton by white "labour." Some years ago the South Australian Government established an experimental station for the growing of cotton and other Indian and Chinese tropical plants, and "one of the results of the trial "was that cotton seed was blown about "all over the country, and there are now "hundred of acres of self-sown cotton on " the flats within a few miles of the coast." This is, of course, uncultivated cotton, but it has a commercial value, and shows the possibilities of the soil. A curious and fortunate phenomenon in connection with this cotton ia that, unlike cotton in other countries, it ripens and the pod burst- in the cool and dry season, which is the most favourable for white labour. The picking of the pods, moreover, is light work. Captain Barclay suggests that cotton-picking in the Northern Territory might be carried out in the same manner aa hop-pick-ing in Kent, where large numbers of people go out from London and make good money during the "hopping" season. He thinks that it would pay the vessels, which would go to fetch away the cotton, to carry the cotton pickers to and fro. But, whilst offering this suggestion, he expresses the conviction that a large number of the people, once having become familiar with country where, as on the Barclay tablelands, "you could run a> plough for four " hundred miles in a straight line, through "soil that would grow almost anything, "including wheat," would settle there. If Captain Barclay's hopes do not lead him to tell too flattering a tale, the development of the Northern Territory as a cotton country would prove of great profit to Australia, and of equally great benefit to the spinners of Lancashire, by relieving them of their present dependence on the pranks of American speculators and gamblers. . '' < \'