SHEEP FARMING.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14513, 20 December 1912, Page 8

SHEEP FARMING.

CANADIAN EXPERT OPINION,

THE NEEDS FOR HOMES FOR

WORKERS.

Air "W. T. Rich, special commissioner (wool section) of the" Live Stock Branch of the Department of Agriculture, Dominion of Canada, returned to Christchurch last night after threo weeks spent at Glenmark Station, Waipara. He tokl a "Press" reporter that lie had gono there not as a special commissioner but as an ordinary individual who was eager to see the working of shearing sheds, and the conditions of station and farm work generally in Canterbury. What had impressed him most was the possibilities of the system by which more men than one had the use of a shearing shed and the services of the shearers. It was a system which wouid mean a great deal to Canada, where the holdings were small and most of them devoted to mixed farming. At present the shearing was dono too often under haphazard conditions, any place available- being made to do, and the work itself being dono perhaps by blade, perhaps by blade assisted by machine.

Mr Rich paid a tribute to our shearers. Tliey are better, quicker, and more skilful workers than those of America. Taken as men, they are in all ways of a finer stamp, and both the quantity and quality of the result of their labour is better. # They get more done, and they do it in a workmanlike manner.

"Tho system of the swag and the wharo is doomed," lie declared. "If you want men of the good English stamp you must give them a homo, for love of homo is the strongest point in the character of the Englishman. v Amongst the agricultural workers at Home, if they are of good type, you will find that however humble their home may be, they will have done what they could to make it presentable. Each bedroom will be ornamented in its humble way. I have heard doctors who have had to attend such men complain that in the tiny chamber they have had to remove ornaments to make room. Now, the whare provides no sort of home, even for the single man. He cannpt make it his own. I do not refer to tho drinking bucolic who is willing to iig anywhere. If you want tho good Englishman you must give him a homo, whether ho is single or married.

"That is ono of the lessons that has been learnt in the older States of Canada, where the farmers are rapidly coining to putting up hou&es for their men. In tho Dominion it is mostly a matter of putting up houses on tho bigger farms and living with the family on iho smaller places. Tho latter system fails rather, perhaps because iv such cases tho man is engaged usually for six months. There is no work for h|m in tho winter and ho goes to the towns. His wages would keep him it he wore careful, but often he takes Bomo position at a good wage, learns the luro of town pleasures, and is lost to the country. I hear that in New Zealand tho matter of dwellings for workers in the country is becoming prominent, and I believe that in it lies tho success of the settlement of tho land. .

Intensive farming is another matter in which Mr Rich thinks we might mako great progress. Yv"o might have more dairying, more fruitgrowing. There might be more poultry farming, too. Ho adnuts that ho does not know tho last business, but ho has noticed that the price of poultry here is so abominably high that it is lost as an article or food for the average man, and far less available as an export. All of which should oo altered. If the people of Great Britain will buy our rabbits most certainly they will try our poultry when wo can produce it at a competitivj price. ; Land hero - is no moro expensive, adding costs of v.wi: iagp, rlwn it is in some Jiuropum countries which meet tlie British market. ■

Apart fro.n these matters Mr Rich .••-poke of the possibilities of "fur" growing with our sheep. In a dozen countries ho has studied it, and while-we might not bo at>le for climatic reasons lo produco Astiakan —Persian lamb — we {.houid bo a bio to grow karakul. In those lines, inten&ive rarming of tho sorts suggested, we should go far. One otaci- thing ho thought would benefit us greatly would bo carcase competitions of tho kind suggested by Mr Seth Smith.