HUGE COMBINE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3573, 24 February 1914, Page 3

HUGE COMBINE.

HUNDRED MILLION TRUST.

A combine of combines, with a joint capitalisation of £100,000,000, is the amazing project now being discussed in the building material trades, according to the statement of a wellknown firm of builders’ merchants to a London ‘‘Daily News” re2>resentative. The industry is honeycombed with trusts or associations of manufacturers There are more than thirty, and among the things they control are: Window glass. Kitchen boilers Baths. Cast-iron pipes. Lead. Cement. Wallpaper.' 'Tiles. Stoves. Nails. Cisterns. Bricks.

As Mr Donald, a director of Messrs Rownson, Drew, and Clydesdale, Limited, of Upper Thames Street, E. C., put it to the “Daily News” inquirer, “You cannot turn on your tap without paying tribute to some combine.; and. you cannot light your gas without passing it through a ‘combine’ pipe.”

YOUR HOUSE COSTS YOU MORE

Largely as a result of this state of affairs a house costs from 20 to 30 per cent more to build to-day than it did a few years ago. It is apparently now proposed to make a super-Trust of all these trusts. The idea, so Mr Donald stated, was broached at a meeting of the National Light Castings Association of York, about nine weeks ago; and a committee was appointed *-o consider the question. The National Light Casting Association is one of the largest of the associations in the trade, and it has a very clear idea of what it wants. The first rule of this body runs as follows: “The object the association has in view is that of raising and keeping up the price to the buyer of goods and articles made and supplied by its members.”

One of the objects of the proposed new Federation, it is said, is to prevent a merchant who will not sign the agreement of any one of the combines from obtaining goods from any members of the other combines.

For example, a man who refuses to come to terms on the question of stoves may find his supply of kitchen boilers cut off by an allied combine. This method, Mr Donald alleges, is already in operation.

A SHIP OF BATHS FROM ABROAD.

“Recently,” lie said, “we wanted 20000 baths. At once we found ourselves up against the bath trust. They had fixed a price which we thought too high. Thereupon we went abroad in conjunction with a number of other firms, filled a ship with baths and brought them up the Thames. This brought the price of the article clown by 40 per cent, in England.

“But the National Light Casting Association promptly met and resolved to cut off from us the supplies of the various articles which their members make. And if this boycott principle prevails, all the other combines will follow suit.”

Fortunately there are about a dozen manufaetureres outside this particular Association. Some of the articles needed by the firm can be got from those sources. For those that cannot there remains the sovereign specific of buying in the foreign market. That, fortunately, is secured by Free Trade.