The Lyttelton Times. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12. 1905. THE HARVESTER TRUST.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 13878, 12 October 1905, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12. 1905. THE HARVESTER TRUST.

The implement manufacturers who interviewed the members of Parliament yesterday can hardly have expected any very specific promise in response to their somewhat ‘vague offers. Mr Beaven said that the manufacturers saw the necessity for being definite, and that in due course they will state 1 their requests in writing. For the present we have the suggestion of an interesting and novel form of protection, designed to make the tariff rate vary with the prices of implements, a fall of £1 in price producing automatically an increase of £4 in duty. Of course there are obvious difficulties. The manufacturer would require saving clauses to cover rises in the price of raw material or labour, and the farmer, on his side, would want a very explicit guarantee that the reduction in the price of a machine did not mean the employment of inferior material. Wo commend these considerations to tho attention of Parliament. The simplest method of meeting American competition is the direct one of raising the tariff, and if the farmer would look at the question with seeing eyes he would consent, we think, to the protection of the local industry, even at tho risk of a small rise in prices. Of course, if a guarantee can he obtained from the manufacturers that their prices will not be raised, so much the better for the farmer. The .whole problem would have been immensely easier of solution if Mr M’Bride’s amalgamation scheme had been carried to completion, because then we should have been dealing practically with one corporation, and the articles of association would have afforded the farmer absolutely all the protection against increased prices that he could require. It should be remembered that there is no proposal now to put a duty on harvesters proper. Reapers and binders are not manufactured in the colony, and it is on other classes of agricultural implements—ploughs, drills, Jiarrows, cleaners and so forth—that the proposed duty would rest.' Parliament ought to exert itself this session to save the local industry, and wo hope chat the question will be sympathetically discussed when the manufacturers’ proposals are before members in detail. Probably it would pay the manufacturers individually at this stag© to withdraw from opposition to tho International Harvester Company. If the company pursues here the methods it has adopted elsewhere, it will proceed in a perfectly frank and legitimate way to negotiate with local firms for the transference of their factories. We have never heard it suggested that the "“mpany does not pay a fair price for

the concerns which it purchases. But we may bo certain that if Parliament does not give the local' industry very substantial protection the local industry will cease to exist.