The Argus at KellyGang 27/4/1880 (5)
Selectors
The payment of rent being the one condition insisted on in the lease, bankers take care that the half yearly installments are met regularly, lest the lease should be forfeited. If the leaseholder cannot raise the necessary cash, the payment is made for him by the bank. His debt is increased to a corresponding amount, and with it the interest. The selector would prefer to leave the rent unpaid, for the sake of keeping down the amount of the interest. The capital that a selector ought to have in hand at starting may be roughly indicated by means of a few figures. The cost of building a dwelling place lies between the extremes of £20 and £2J0, the smallest amount sufficing for a bark hut. It costs from £90 (log fencing to £180 (post and rail and wire) to enclose 320 acres of land-work which has to be executed within three years. Grubbing and clearing costs from £2 10s to £3 an acre or say £150 for 70 acres. It is not necessary that the licensee should prepare more than 32 acres during the currency of the licence, but the less money he has at starting the more rapidly must he get his land under crop, in order to have money coming in to meet current expenses.
At the least, then, he would require £230 or £300 for effecting improvements but he must, in addition, possess two or three horses, one or two cows, a plough, and harrow. Then, before he can expect to gather a crop he must have enough money to pay the wages of the harvest hands the threshing machine charges and the cost of carting the grain to market. There is further the considerable item of rent, amounting with fees to about £100. Many selectors appear to have begun under the impression that if they owned two horses, a plough, &c one year and a half's rent, and enough cash to keep the family supplied with food and clothing for l8 months, they were sufficiently equipped. It is persons of this class who are now living in bark huts, whose families are badly clothed, who are in debt to storekeepers, and who are depending on the uncertain prospects of 1881 for the means of clearing off liabilities amounting to two or three times their original capital. Taking the average yield during the present autumn to have been 24 bushels to the acre, the following would be the probable state of the profit and loss account per acre, -Receipts-21 bushels, at la, £1 16s. Expenditure-Ploughing and harrowing, £1, seed 4s 6d, reaping threshing, and carting to market £1 6s 2d, total £2 10s 8d; which deducted from the receipts, would leave a balance of £2 5s 4d per acre. A selector now preparing 70 acres for next year may look forward to making a net profit of about £160. Out of this, supposing he has no outstanding debts, he must pay 12 months rent and furnish himself with the means of carrying on another year's struggles.
The majority of the selectors in arrears to the extent of one year's rent or more appear to be desirous of coming under the act of 1878 which doubles the period during which the purchase money his to be paid, and therefore halves the amount of the annual payment. In the case of leaseholders there will be no difficulty in giving them the benefit of the lighter rates, without making any demand upon them for a large cash payment on account of arrears. Legislation, however, will be necessary as regards licensees, the act requiring that they shall clear off all arrears before coming under the new system. It will be simply impossible for them to pay up arrears to the amount of £64 in one sum, in order to start on the 1st July next, paying £8 every half year instead of £16, as required to do at present.
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