THE MAN ON THE LAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 57, 31 October 1912, Page 3

THE MAN ON THE LAND.

At a recent sale at tue Burnie (Tasmania) sale yards a-, steer was knocked down to a local butcher for £27 10s. At the same sale a cow brought £22 ss. Both came from Wynyard district. Four 2-tooth wethers brought £2 each, and three lambs 33 s 6d each. Referring to the supply of horses for farm work, the Otago Witness remarks that the limited supply now ensures that ‘any horse suitable for the shafts will command a high figure. There are, says the paper in question, buyers in town for horses who cannot fill their requirements. Twenty per cent of the farmers are purchasers instead of sellers, and in the last two months an enormous increase lias taken place in the value of geldings suitable fur farm • work and the britchen. There is every indication that the breeding of good sorts will be highly , profitable for some years. According to Air Sidney Kidman, “we shall never see beef as cheap as it has been.” The “beef barons” of America are apparently of the same mind as the “Cattle King” of Australia, and in both countries the rise in beef has been due in part to the march of settlement pushing back the cattle' men. In the United States there is a tendency to accuse the “beef barons” for revenging themselves for the persecution of the Beef Trust by making the public pay more for its meat, but it is said that there is undoubtedly a genuine scarcity of cattle in the States. In Chicago alone last year 121,000 fewer head were received than in the previous year, and a few weeks ago in the publication of Government- statistics proving the short supply of cattle in the west, the price for range cattle on the hoof touched the record height of £1 13s per 1001 b, and was even then 10s lower than the price realised in Sydney later. 'ldlings arc so bad in America that flic heavy import duty of 27)- per cent Is nob preventing supplies being drawn from Canada.

HANDLING FROZEN MEA'f

On the subject of .handling frozen moat, Mr i E. W. ltd pi i, in an aging director of the Now Zealand Farmers’ Co-operative Association of Gliristciiurch, who has just returned from England, said that. Now Zealand producers on visiting London wore struck with unfavourable appearance of the meat at the London end. In New Zealand the meat is handled with scrupulous care, hut hitherto the system of handling at the other end has been anything hut satisfactory, the result being that the appearance of the meat was affected. However, overtures were made and a large number of meetings held by all those interested in the trade, with the object of seeing whether a better system could he devised hy which the meat would receive better handling. The London Port Authority have their assistance, and a large store is to be erected in one of the largest docks where consignments can be placed direct from the ship’s side, and which will obviate the sorting out and extra handling involved in the old system. It was felt that the new scheme would go a long way towards remedying the grievance:; which existed in the past. THE LAND QUESTION IN ENGLAND. The depopulation of our villages is one of the phenomena of our times which have carried alarm into every political camp (writes T. P. O’Connor). It is, of course, a phenomenon not confined to England. Many causes doubtless, contribute to produce it; greater education, greater facilities for travel, the growth of industrial centres, the love of the brighter, more amusing, more gregarious life of the towns; all these things have had their share in producing this depopulation. But these are contributory causes; the supreme cause is the land system. Go wherever you will in England, you are confronted noth this antiqated and Iniquitous land system as the root of most of the soc ial evils. Take overcrowding in the village and all its in-

sanitary conditions; can anybody say that these evils come from the want of land? Why, the land is lying all around. Not more than a, mile from the over-crowded village there are hundreds of acres in the demesne of the local squire, useless to him except as a pleasaunce, useless even more to the community from whose sustenance it is withheld. In short, the problem of rural life in England is this simple contradistinction —land hunger on the one side, and hundreds of thousands of acres of unoccupied land on the other. We have to face and to solve that problem. We have to do so in the interest of the ill-paid and ill-housed labourer. Wo have to face it in the interest of the food and the wealth i of the nation, and when the statesman who brings forward a practical scheme for solving that problem comes forward there is no danger of its not receiving the acceptance and approval of the people. 1 think it much more likely that there will arise a storm of indignation which will sweep away the feudal class from their last citadel, and that there will be an irresistible demand for giving back the people of England their share of the heritage of tho land in which they are born. The prospects for the dairy-farm-er in the Kaitawa district are very bright, says the Pahiatua Herald. The milk supply at the Kaitawa cheese factory at the present time is close on 1000 gallons a day, which is considerably in excess of that delivered during the corresponding period of last year. For October’s milk the directors have decided to advance Is per lb of but-ter-fat. The second" consignment for the Home market, consisting of 10 crates, was despatched to Wellington last week for shipment by the Arawa.