Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/312

 mills, for example, would be an instant success, if the farmer were only assured of a steady market close at hand for his oil crops. Tobacco-growing would increase a hundredfold and would become a lucrative investment, if capital were judiciously expended in putting up the necessary appliances for manufacturing the leaf. Butter, cheese, and bacon factories are even now increasing, but are capable of indefinite multiplication. In the manufacture of essences and essential oils, there are splendid openings for investment, and indeed there is scarcely a product of nature used in the arts or sciences that could not be profitably grown and manufactured in these colonies were but the right men imbued with the desire to try them. As a rule the colonial farmer is a poor man. Clearing is expensive; wages, fortunately for the labouring classes, are high; and the facilities for securing land have hitherto been great, so that most settlers have been tempted into purchasing more land than they could profitably work, with such resources as have been at their command. Now, however, capital might be encouraged to bring the aids of combination, modern machinery, and skilled enterprise, to the aid of the farmer. In fruit-preserving alone, were the right methods adopted, there are fortunes lying ready to be made, beside which the profits of similar enterprises in old lands would seem petty and mean. As it is, all the available capital in the colonies is profitably invested, and any return under six per cent, is looked on as on the whole rather unsatisfactory.