The St. Johns herald., 1892-04-28
WHERE HORSES ARE CHEAP.
Queensland Farmers Pay for Having Them
 Killed.

~
 Killed.
 No one can buy a horse in this city, says the Washington Star, which is fit for any purpose. for less than one hun dred dollars. A broken-down car horse is worth nearly this amount. A horse for a grocer's cart in New York, Chi cago, or San Francisco will cost from one hundred and fifty two hundred dollars. In Queensland, Australia how ever, the horse market is away down. A sound, well broken animal can be bought for five dollars. Farmers in the interior cannot afford to send horses to Brisbane for sale, because ordinary stock will not bring more than one dol lar and seventy-fve cents a head. They shoot them instead! And. what is still more startling. they pay at the rate of siXty-two cents a head for having them shot!
 All of these statements are strictly correct. The colony of Queensland is now seriously discussing the advisabili- ty of passing Q law imposing tax on all stallions and authorizing the ap- pointment of inspectors to see that all unlicensed animals are killed. All over Queensland they are going to keep down horses as we keep down the superabundance of dogs in the city of Washington.
 Horse breeding in Australia was for many years remunerative business. A great demand was created by the taking up and occupying of new coun- try, from the opening up of the new gold fields and for the prosecution of the sugar industry.
 Everyone who had land began breed ing horses. Now the demand has the mining is stationary and the owners of what was formerly new country are sellers instead of buyers. The conse- quence is that the whole country is overrun with unstable horses. They cannot be eaten like sheep and cattle, and a boiling-down factory for the manufacture of glue and other products failed after consuming fifty thousand animals.
 Now, in a semi wild state, they over run the entire interior of the colony. The best of them bring at auction not more than thirteen dollars or fourteen dollars dozen. Property holders in New South Wales have relieved them selves of the burden on their grazing lands by shooting them. On the Bar won river, within two years, between sixty thousand and seventy thousand head were destroyed, at cost to their nominal owners of twenty-five shillings six pence head Queensland has now the same trouble to fight. A law en- titled "The Marsupials Destruction Act'' is now in force, directed against the kangaroos, to check the increase of these noXlous animals. But kangaroo's skin is worth three dollars and seventy five cents in the open market at Bris- bane.
 How much more need is there, then, for destruction act when horses are larger animals, eat more, are more numerous than kangaroos and are nearly worthless! This is the question which is agitating the property holders of Queensland at the present time, as is learned from the recent bulletins of the department of agriculture of that colony: Will it pay Australians to ship these horses to the United States? The passage to San Francisco will take twenty days. The Pacific ocean at certain times is almost smooth. One of the Australian steamships will probably carry from seven hundred to one thou sand horses at trip. The import duty on horses and mules at present is thirty dollars head. It resolves itself into question of water carriage.