CORRESPONDENCE.

Southland Times, Issue 22816, 15 February 1936, Page 13

CORRESPONDENCE.

SOUTHLAND PIONEERS OF SELF-BINDERS (To the Agricultural Editor) Dear Sir, — In “The Wanderer’s” excellent account of the pioneering activities of the late James Mackintosh, I have noted the reference to his work in cropping with the then lately introduced selfbinders. Perhaps I may be permitted to add some information on the same matter. Like most other great inventions which have proved an advancement on existing methods, the work was not wholly the effort of one brain and hand, but of many. By the year 1831, Cyrus Hall McCormick had invented the reel and oscillating knife just as we use it to-day. In 1867 the Marsh Brothers had placed rollers and bands with metal projections on them to elevate the grain and had the whole borne and driven from the great wheel just as we to-day have it. There was a platform on which stood two binder-men facing each other. The grain was taken from the elevators by them alternately and bound with its own stuff. When each man threw off his bound sheaf, he pulled stuff for the next band from the cast sheaf and used it to tie the next one. Then during the 70’s was invented the packers and knotter and a great arm came round and threw the sheaf out.

The Marsh Brothers were greatly assisted by Appleby and some others who used aprons as we have them instead of the fabric and rubber bands, which used at times to let the machine get into an awful mess with choked grain. These men were now turning out their machines by the thousands. Appleby’s fortune finally amounted to over £8,000,000. These first machines were wire-binders using wire off 71b spools, which I well remember about 1880. The twine binder, using at first hemp and lint flax- twine, followed, using improvements by Gammon, Bishop, Easter and others. Among the early machines used in New Zealand were the Woods, Appleby, Johnston, Hornsby, McCormick, Jones, Deering, Buckeye, Osborne, Massey, Adriance Harris and Alliance. Several of these machines were combined and to-day our most popular machines are the Massey-Harris and McCormick-Deer-ing.

And now, coming to the introduction to New Zealand—in 1877 Wood, Shand and Co., of Christchurch, and Cowper and Wilson, of Invercargill, were appointed the first New Zealand agents to introduce the self-binders to the Dominion. The first machine was Walter A. Woods. It was sent over to the Christchurch show but arrived too late, so was transhipped by the Ringaroowa to Invercargill. My late father sold it to the late Paddy McCaughan. It arrived in 11 packages without any instructions several days before the show. My father had a well-known mechanic, R. W. Jones, whose son Bob, a schoolmate of mine, vas the first man to risk his neck at Invercargill in a balloon ascent—he escaped before it collapsed, a few feet from th ground. Well R. W. Jones and my father erected that machine, but the Show Association would not give them room on the grounds to display it. They knocked some boards off the fence and showed it next door and the farmers flocked to see it.

On the morning of show day a Yankee agent, Mr Perkins, rushed into father’s shop shouting for the boss and then inquired for mechanics to help him to erect the machine. He was surprised to find it had gone to the show on its own wheels—there was no transport then—and was more astonished to find he had only to reverse four small stay rods and adjust the tension on the 4 wine. The first crop cut by this wire-binding machine was six acres of oats for the late Thomas Perkins, who lived on the land above Waihopai Bridge and just south of the three sisters’ cottages, one of which

with its cut-away roof still stands tl.ere. The machine then was taken by P. McCaughan to Mandeville where that man had cu- with it a large field of oats. The labourers held a meeting at Gore to protest against its advent. Some wanted to smash it up. The next year saw the Hornsby, and English machine, Massey and others coming in. The wire used for binding killed many horses, bits of it getting into their intestines. The twine binder came in in 1880. The first ships to bring binders to New Zealand were the Albion and the Onward. The first users of self-binders in Southland were Robert Dodd, McGibbon (Gore), as agent, J. R. Mitchell, G. Froggatt (Invercargill), as agent, Allan Galt, Henry Wilson (Wilson’s Crossing), Morrison, Thomson and Son (Winton), James Mackintosh, Robert Millar, A. Gerrard, Peter Thomson, Carmichael, McGowan, Thos. Ayson, Sutton, Shand, Shaw and Swale. The first price was £BO, wire 9d a pound, twine 7d a pound. How many farmers and others remember the wire on spools, the long delivery-arm, the wire cutters for hand use, which cut the band and held it to pull it out when chaff-cutting? A well-known Invercargill man of the 80’s was a coach-builder, W. H. Mathieson, who sold for a few years the Buckeye Harvester and became known as “Buckeye” Mathieson. _By 1880 there were more than 40 machines at work in Southland alone. I happen to have my late father’s account books recording binder sales and have largely copied these notes from them. Mr James Macalister rode many a mile night and day to keep these early machines in order.—Yours, etc. H. R. WILSON, South Hillend R.D.