In spite of a few successes of this sort—one due
almost entirely to the handiwork of a woman whose husband had another job—the general conclusion of the last eight years' accumulated experience is that the holdings were too small. Exactly the same discovery was made simultaneously and rectified in Western Australia. Some of the later holdings run to forty acres. If a man has no other work he needs room for a paddock and some acres of a grain crop, enabling him to keep stock and reduce the sum of intensive labour. Most of the men with the rather bigger holdings are able to employ one man for a good part of the year, though their rents are very high—not less than 24 an acre ; and it is a curious psychological fact that a labourer as a rule demands higher wages from a small-holder than from a large farmer. Perhaps he has to work harder, under more constant supervision. * * * *
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