Opinions from Others.
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The Editor invites correspondence on all subjects connected with the use of commercial motors. Letters should be on one sloe of the paper only and typewritten by preference. The right of abbreviation is reserved, and no responsibility for views expressed is accepted.
The Tractor Question.
The Editor, THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR.
[1456] Sir,—We send you herewith copy of a letter sent to the Secretary of the Motor Traders Association which may be of interest to you.—Yours faithfully, p.p. WHITING (1915), LTD., P. W. G. HAWKES, Assistant Secretary.
[Cory.] Sir,—There are quite a number of motor agents and concessionnaires who are dissatisfied with the present, state of affairs in connection with the tractor business. We have formed a small committee with the intention of putting the case before some Members of Parliament with a view to making representaaions in the House of Commons to have certain—what we consider—irregularities adjusted. As, however, the Motor Traders Association was primarily formed for the protection of the interests of all motor agents, we think it is only fair before bringing the matter before the House of Commons in a public way to suggest that a thoroughly representative meeting of motor agents and all parties concerned from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales should be called, when certain facts in connection with Mr. Perry and other members of the Machinery and Implement Section could be discussed.
We make the suggestion absolutely in the coun
try's interest, as we think it is a pity if there is a society to look after the interests -of the motor trade, that these matters should have to be brought before Parliament at a time when there is plenty of other and more important business to be transacted in connection with the war. If you fall in with our views we should suggest that the meeting be called at once, and as it is no longer
. possible to conceal from the public the dissatisfaction caused in connection with the tractor business, we submit that the following recommendations should be made to the Government (1) Owing to the fact that tractors and all farming implements are urgently required the present embargo should be removed forthwith.
(2) As Mr. Perry's appointment has created so much controversy it would be in the interest of the motor trade if he were requested to resign.
Thanking you in anticipation of an early reply. —Yours faithfully, Warriors; (1915), LTD.
The Shortage oT Paper.
The Editor, THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR.
[1457] Sir,—I notice with satisfaction your advice to readers to give an order for a regular delivery of THE COMMERCIAL MoToa. This is as it should be, and will greatly assist you to keep your end up. It is also with gratification that I see you have not followed the very questionable policy of increasing the price, whilst at the same time giving readers the usual quantity and quality.
At present we are all well-night distracted to know what to do for the best—if there be any best at all ! Wise legislators, who by their province are supposed never to make mistakes, tell us by big posters to "Don't do this" and "Don't do that," and are now busily engaged in giving advice about food, the latest tit-bit being "not to waste the crumbs ! " As we are now on tandard bread, which is all crumbs, it is a
sort of Chinese puzzle as to how we are to accomplish, this desired end. With the view to the saving of paper we are advised to write on both sides. Well, here is a suggestion from the "man in the street:" Why not place collecting boxes on tramcars and motorbuses for receiving all tickets as the passenger alights 2 Goodness knows there is a lot of waste going on with reference to this, as witness the litter of used tickets on the floors of these vehicles.—Yours faithfully, ALPHA. [We have for many months past forecasted the necessity for definite
orders to newsagents, and we are glad to know that our recommendations have been generally observed.—Eoj Protest Against the Ford Permit.
The Editor, THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR. "
[1458] Sir,—The idea of a combination of British motor manufacturers to build tractors by pooling, whether by means of a fusion of interests to the common end, or on the basis of a " standard " product, the components of which are built in the various factories on a, pre-arranged plan, is, to my mind, Utopian. It strikes at the root of all good business principles, by killing the competitive element, and I for one cannot conceive the "Standard" Mammoth being cut up, into meet and just shares, in a spirit of fraternal amity, and patriotic fervour. It is a commendable aspiration with a truly Christian ring about it, but---` What fools we mortals !" Henry Ford will not be scotched in this way. I have sufficient faith in my countrymen generally, and I have an especial faith in the members of the motor industry, to believe that they will agree unanimously in claiming Britain for the British, afl things being equal, and even if they are not quite so, but near enough.
Is the British motor industry, then, so little awake, so lacking in energy and so invertebrate, as not to be able to rise to the situation, and demand that the Government will protect its .birthright and, its interests, while it is engaged in giving all its best to help this country, and is helpless to help itself I
The motor industry of Great Britain has earned the everlasting gratitude and admiration of the entire community. It has unselfishly and unflinchingly eclipsed all considerations of self and of pelf. It has imperilled its goodwill. It has shelved its dreams of ambition, and it has scrapped schemes and prograrnmeasevolved at the cost of much time and money. It has done more. It is not too much to say that the motor industry has contributed so materially to the production of munitions, that without it the couns try should have had no chance of overtaking the output of our en.aniess. This is surely an industry that must be fostered. This is certainly an industry whose interests must be safeguarded, and in regard to which any suspicion of disabling must be zealously avoided. The Government, as the representative of the people, shall not heedlessly and improvidently allow this industry to be handicapped by any foreigner, much less shall. it be allowed to do so for motives of political intrigue. I really dared to hope that the great fundamental principle of a self-supporting British Empire had been inculcated into the heart and soul, and into the fibre of everyone of us. I really dared to think that this great devastating and chaotic Armageddon had, at any rate and at last, siivept away, root and branch, all the shibboleths and sophistries of Free Trade in this country, and that a.
Protest Against the Ford Permit--con,
great self reliant, independent and tariff-protected British Empire had taken its place, nevermore to return to the bad old regime.
In my college days we used to be told at our psychology lectures of the blind Tyra who fumbled and tumbled about the world to acquire impressions and to gain experience. It was left to the raw art students to assume as a. matter of course that the knowledge gamed through these experiences would • protect and safeguard the blind Tyro from the difficulties and dangers he was in when his mind was a tabula rasa, and without the advantages derived from his experiences.
If this Government allows Mr. Henry Ford and his
• satellites in this country to dump their parts here without a tariff at least equal to that demanded by America on British goods at a time when the Britisher is stretching .himself to the utmost in patriotic endeavour and is not in a position to protect himself, I shall regard it as not only the inferior.of a class of art students in worldly wisdom and business acumen, but I shall regard it as even the inferior of theOpoor blind Tyro, who did have the sense to benefit from past experience and to avoid injuring himself in the same way over and over again.
Further than that, I shall want to know, the motive for permitting and encouraging this Ford invasion, and—weil, to put it in vulgar Parlanee, I shall want to know " What the game is," and for whose benefit if is being played. _ I have heard it stated as a justification for this infamy that the Ford tractors will be available for the agricultural emergency connected with the present food shortage.
This is subtle, but it is disingenuous, and not true. All the information at my disposal points to the summer or autumn of 1918 as being the earliest when Mr. Ford will be able to lend us his aid and be our kind benefactor. Now, with proper Government facilities and a bit of wholehearted treatment and encouragement, my own firm alone will undertake to arrange itself to produce, with a night-shift, the better part of 500 tractors before Mr. Ford has started, and 5000 tractors could easily be .produeed here without any great disturbance to munition production, if our.Government will but bestir iteelf and be true to itself. Ipso facto, any real agricultural 'emergency would vanish.
My own enthusiasm has been "damned with faint praise" and official indifference. I really thought that this country was in need of tractors, and was in peril of famine if all the land Of fair England was not ploughed up and sown. I started to get ready, and then this sinister ogre appeared.
Tales of our market being flooded with a recordemashing low-priced Ford tractor soon got about. Tales of an enormous factory in Ireland, with' special facilities granted by our Government to import units (presumably without tariff), and assemble them "here, -got about, so that it is not too much to say that a considerable portion of the motor industry of this country at once got " Ford fright." At the very time that Mr. Ford was getting his permit, and when special facilities were also being spoken of, the British manufacturer was actually confronted by the fact that labour and material required by him to build tractors were ranked in Class 13, by the Ministry oklVlunitions, which really meant that he could not proceed at all.
This is the position, moreover, at this very moment ! What are we to think ?
Enterprise, both from the manufacturing and financial points of view, has been arrested, and one wonders whether England the fair arrd the free has not been transformed by some wicked fairy into Russia under the Romanoffs. Now ; what is to be done 056
We may hold meetings in the trade circles concerned, and protest and fume and talk much. We may air our views in trade publications, and paint poor Harry and his people as black villains indeed. We may have questions asked in the House of Commons, which is perhaps the most futile procedure of all, Thus we shall lull ourselves into a comfortable torpidity by comfortable methods, but unless we rise up as a body and translate fine words into fine actions, fan into a blaze of energy and vigour our sense of the base ingratitude and injustice to the British motor industry of even suggesting a permit for a foreign invasion of these shores by the Ford octopus in war time and under such circumstances, we may wipe our brows after the war is over and find the matter yea fait accompli.
. If we wait and see we shall see that we should not have waited.
I would suggest that a strong committee of the motor industry should be appointed at once, and that a deputation should wait on the Ministry of Munitions, or even on the Prime iVlinistev, to demand that • any such peimit shall be unreservedly withdrawn at once. • • • The motor industrycan achieve this if it has the will to do so, and I venture to say that if Great Britain is again to be an open market for the surplus trading of the • world, and the common dumping ground, despite the very plain lessons of this war, all our efforts and all our sacrifices shall hatie been in vain, and a resumption of degeneracy and decadence directly attributableto Government; ineptitude and incompetence must inevitably be looked for,—Yours For PALLADIUM AUTOCARS, LTD.,
• J. Ross llileciMenoN, Managing Director.
Suggested Features for Agritnotors.
The Editor., TFIE COMMERCIAL MOTOR.
[1459] Sir,—While following with great interest the many items of news re the development of tractors for agricultural purpeses, I feel that there is a great demand for a more general-purpose machine such as has not yet been put. on the market.
propose :to outline a few of the features which consider necessary, and which I expect will form a • large part of the 'post-war models, My reason for bringing this matter up at the moment is that if the -British manulacterers are to get ahead of the market they must take hold now.
Firstly, of course, the tractor must be suitable for • 'ploughing, etcl, ' with the minimum of extras for ordinary plain soil. •• Weight bare ought not to exceed 50 cwt. • It ought to be made suitable for pulling a plough or having one fixed under chassis with suitable elevating gear. Interchangeable with driving wheels, a caterpillar attachment should be supplied as an extra so that for particularly bad land this could be fixed.
Roadster wheels, heavy tract-or type, to be sold as an extra. It should comfortably draw a 5-ton load.
In place of the frame plough a drum and gear for cable ploughing could easily be arranged, the wheels baying deep flanges to resist lateral pull. When ploughing as an ordinary tractor with either type of plough, all wheels ought to be on hard ground. The governed engine should be 21-40 h.p. slow speed, able to burn cheap residue oil. The chassis must be simply sprung and of light, though stiff, construction, with rnall gears and working parts enclosed:
Speeds, first and -third indirect, second (ploughing speed) and top direct.
Two reverse gears should be fitted. It ought to turn in one-and-a-half times its own length.
Price of the bare tractor should not exceed £250.—
Yours faithfully, • A.J.M.K. Acidlestone, Surrey.