ANTI-TRUST BILL.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 3, 2 January 1906, Page 49

ANTI-TRUST BILL.

It has been the privilege of this newspapei to inaugurate the only consistent and unequivocal attack on the International Harvester Company's doings in New Zealand When taking up this course it was fully realised that the question was acute enough to admit of the arousing of the criticism which usually supervenes on the presentment of undue partisanship. However, to those who hold that our prejudices are misplaced — and there aie, we believe, few — it has still to be averred that the matter of the Combine in New Zealand admits, so far as Progress is concerned, of one side only, viz — It must go. There is no prophecy in such a statement , indications on every hand point to it. We regret that the passive demeanour of a large section of the colony's press is largely responsible for the postponement. Instead of dealing summarily with the Combine, our representatives in Parliament have been led to believe, through the press, that the farmer must not be interfered with ; consequently, we have had to submit to the humiliation of countenancing the Trust's operations in our midst for another year, and, further, of being surpassed by the Commonwealth in an attempt at progressive legislation having for its object the annihilation of the very trouble which we have so far been unable even to regulate. Sir William Lyne recently moved m the Federal Parliament the second reading of the Anti-Trust Bill. This measure provides for the complete extermination of the Combine, so far as Australia is concerned, by defining " unfair competition " as follows .—. — " If the competition would probably or does result m greatly disorganising an Australian industry or throwing workers out of employment ; if imported goods have been purchased abroad at prices greatly below their ordinary cost of production where produced or the market price where purchased ; if the goods are being sold m Australia at a price less than gives the importer or seller a fair profit upon a fair foreign market value or cost of production, together with all charges after shipment from whence the the goods are exported directly to Australia ; if the importer or seller directly or indirectly gives agents or intermediaries a disproportionately large remuneration for selling or recommending the goods." A provision is also made that " any person who attempts or combines to monopolise any part of the trade amongst the several States, or with other countries, with the desire of controlling to the detriment of the public supply or price of any merchandise or commodity, becomes liable to a penalty of /500 or twelve month's imprisonment. Any one aiding and abetting a contravention of the Act is held equally guilty and equally punishable with the contraveners. The Board of Investigation is invested with powers equivalent to those of a Royal Commission." Are such clauses too drastic for dealing with the concern which has a predilection for the now worldknown practices dealt with in previous issues of Progress ; a concern that is at the present moment reducing the price of its harvesters to the extent of losing, by its own showing, £12 10s. od. on every machine sold in Melbourne in order to keep its business together, and which flagrant breach of fair trading is causing the discharge of hundreds of men in the Australian implement trade ? We think not. Unless the International Harvester

Company can be made to compete on the same plane as the home manufacturers, by paying identical prices for raw material and labour, the outlook is certain to be a very serious one for the bravely struggling industries of our young colonies. We therefore look forward to the passing ,of Sir William Lyne's Bill next session as the initial step in the control, if not annihilation, of Rockefeller's Harvester Trust in Australia.