ROMANCE OF MANUFACTURE. - SOUTH AUSTRALIAN EXAMPLES. TARIFF COMMISSION GLEANINGS - The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931) - 19 Apr 1906 (original) (raw)

Loading article contents, please wait...

Thu 19 Apr 1906 - The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931)
Page 5 - ROMANCE OF MANUFACTURE.

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN EXAMPLES.

TARIFF COMMISSION GLEANINGS

It is many a long day since the Goths,

who were Freetraders in wheat, used to

feed themselves at the expense of the

Gauls, who were so far, as was possible

in those stormy days, Protectionists.

Yet an abyss of time which has intervened

between then and now is bridged

by at least one idea, and in this year

of the reign of Deakin I. Australia is

compelled to acknowledge that she has

borrowed from and is indebted to

those old Goths for the suggestion which

has crystallised into that jewel of agricultural

implements, the stripper - harvester.

With the appropriate motto of "Advance

Australia," the Sunny South has

borrowed much, but she has always so

far, repaid. Td the Goths, therefore

though little it recks them now - she

cheerfully acknowledges her agricultural

indebtedness. Countless thousands

of acres of swaying golden wheat

are annually attained by the summer

breezes to a gentle requiem, and by the

summer winds to a joyous hymn of

praise, of both of which the Goths are

Thus it came about. The Gauls had

wheat, and the Goths had enterprise and

ingenuity. Then, as now, enterprise

and ingenuity frequently yielded the

most bushels to the acre. The Goths

used to descend on the wheat crops of

the Gauls, and, rushing through the

crops with some spikes, used -a beater

for a thresher, and so harvested their

dinner. It was crude harvesting, ' certainly,

but, seeing? that it was unat-

tended by the labor and expense of

sowing and tilling,. Crown rents, and

bank mortgages, it must have been reasonably

It is a far cry from the 60th to the

Manchester street sweeper, and the two

at first glance seem to have very little

in common, yet that is not so. The street

sweepers machine is the complement of

the spikes and beater of the Goth, and

the result is-the combined stripper har-

In the yard space of the world the British

Bulldog is credited with the sturdily

aggressive declaration, "What I've got

I'll hold. What I haven't got I'm after."

In commerce and in industrial develop-

- first the patented declaration has been

pleased by the American Eagle. America

claims the stripper harvester through D.

A., Church, of the United States, 1841.

Experts who have been examined before

the > Royal Commission on the tariff

scornfully repudiate the American claim

Churches machine, it appears, was a

"header" (really a mower), taking the

heads of the crop alone-and give the

credit to William Ridley, a pioneer South

Australian miller, who arrived in the

colony in 1837, returned, to England in

1853, and died in 1887, at the full harvest

inventor of the Stripper Harvester.

Mr. David Shearer, of the firm of J.

and D. Shearer, agricultural implement

makers, of Mannum, South Australia,

and Mr. John Augustus Bagshaw, of J.

S.'Bags-haw & Sons, Limited, agricultural

engineers, Pioneer works, Elizabeth-street,

Adelaide, gave the Tariff Commission the

data upon which the claim of Mr. Ridley

to the credit of the invention of the strip

per harvester is based t Mr. Bagshaw, in

his evidence, wa^ralayincing. He spoke

as the son of his father, who, coming to

South Australia in 1838, a year later than

Mr. Ridley, became associated with Mr.

Ridley in the working out of his ideas, of

a stripper harvester. Mr. Bagshaw, the

younger, says-The. Ridley was not a

mechanic, but a man with many ideas for

making machinery for the betterment or of

his fellow-creatures. My father was a

mechanic and a pattern-maker, and helped

in the practical evolution of Mr. Ridley's

ideas. The old Goths, with their crude appliances,

and the Manchester street sweeper

machine were laid under contribution, and

with improvements which grew out of

those suggestions the stripperrharvester of

to-day was born. There can be no doubt

that the stripper harvester is Australian,

Equally confident of the claims of Mr.

Ridley is Mr. Shearer. Quoting from

"The Story of John Ridley, a Pioneer of

South Australia, and inventor of the

Strippers book written in 1901 by Mr.

Ridley's daughter, Ann E. Ridley, Mr.

Shearer showed that the American machine

was post-dated on the Australian.

Father Taylor, a well-known missionary,

saw the Ridley machine, with patent improvements

by Mr. Adamson, also a South

Australian, and he sent two of the machines

to his sons in California. Those were the

first in America, and they were, it is

claimed, the inspiration of the machines

which followed in the United States. Mr.

Ridley did not patent his machine, but

with his characteristic large-heartedness,

presented it to the people of South Australia.

Mr. Ridley did not hesitate to acknowledge

that he got his first idea for his

machine from Louder's "Encyclopaedia of

Agriculture," in which, under Roman Invention

the harvester of the ancient

Gauls was described as "a kind of comb,

with slaves to thresh off the edge on the

box." The device of the Goths supplemented

The stump-jump plough is not an aristocrat

in point of birth; it has, in fact, only

the stump of a genealogical tree. But

it is intensely democratic, and, with a fine

scorn for pedigrees, even jumps the stump.

It owes nothing to Both or Gaul, and less

still to the Manchester street sweeper. It

is an Australia native, and a foundling at

that. Like Topsy, "it was never born

it was a "Come-by-Chance," and simply

grew. The Tariff Commission endeavored

to drag its origin from obscurity, and if the

recollection of Mr. John Felix Martin, of

James Martin & Co., engineers, of Adelaide,

is to be relied upon the Commission not

only succeeded, but added, an interesting

page to the romantic tale of agricultural

implement invention. Mr. Martin says, in

his evidence before the Commission "The

stump-jumping plough was invented by a

man named Mullins, a scrub farmer, at

Wasleys, South Australia. He was called

"Dirty Mullins,' because of his system of

1 Birth of the Stump-Jumper.

"'Mullins! used an old Y.O.H. plough. He

cut off the foot of an old Scotch plough

which used to work without a wheel, and

made of it a stump-jump plough. His

method of ploughing was called 'Mullin

using.' Then a man named Scott made

considerable improvements, as did a man

named Smith. Manufacturers have employed

men to improve the plough, but the

latter has not paid a penny for the improvements,

because neither the original

nor any of the improvements has been pa-

Mr. Shearer, already referred to, credits

Mullins with the stump-jumper, and adds

that Mr. C. H. Smith, of Ardrossan,

South Australia, and Mr. Scott, of Alma

Plains, were chief among those who improved

the homely appliance of the original

Mullins, to whom chance, if not

necessity, or both stood maternal relative

of invention. Mr. Shearer explains

the early history of the '"jumper"':

"At first d farmer bent back the counter

of his plough, and tried to plough with

a big swing implement, letting it jump over

stumps that were well cared for, and

trimmed very nicely. Afterwards the bodies

were made to rise. A jumper-beam was

set on a hinge. The body was attached

it, with the mould board and share in i

usual positions. The plough jumped ii

frame on a large." Naively the with

adds: - "The plough used to strike a

stump and slip over, but to save the f

mer's life and limb be had to get the pa

made in a frame. The hinges used sor

times to hit him and send him a considerable

distance from the scene of his plan;

ing. The idea was the idea of the farmer

as were the broken ribs; the develop-

was the development of the mechanics."

A Colony's Birthright Sold.

South Australia gave the world the str

per-harvester, and did not patent it. S

gave also the stump-jump plough and "V

toria patented it. As Mr Shearer

marks: - "A Mr. Smith, of Victor

patented the stump-jump plough and at

the patent for £60 to a patent agent. The

South Australia parted with her birthday]

through" a stranger, for a mere song. T

Braybrook Company, of Victoria, bong

the patent, charged other manufacturers :

a furrow royalty for manufacturing, as

after a time prevented outside manufactu

The stump-juniper is an essentially Ai

tralian mallee plough, and has naturally be

little seen in England. Mr. Martin as

he never heard of their being used them

but Lord Kilmorey took one to Ireland

and frightened the people with it. The

thought the devil was amongst them."

The winnower, like the stripper harve

ter, comes of a good old family. Countless

years ago, when the Chinese, were young

enough to have some expression in the

faces, they tilled the soil and used a wi

power on the grain products. A Dutch ca

rain in more recent times took a camp

winnower from China to Holland, and

Scotchman, looking around Holland f<

bargains and ideas, carried a sample of a

foreign machine to Scotland. England be

rowed from Scotland, and in 1840, at

founder of the "Pioneer" implement work

of South Australia, made the first windows

in Australia. The firm have made 12ft

since, but they are probably prouder of the

one they exhibited at the last Adelaide

show than of any other, except the. first

for the one on show had been in use for

Mr. J. A. Bagshaw tells the story :

his evidence before the Tariff Commission

' "When my father (the founder of the

firm was a lad on his father's farm, the

used to clean the wheat in the old-fashioned

way-on a windy day, between two bal-

doors. Before he left England his father

obtained a very small winnowing reaches

that had come from Scotland. From the

type my father made the first winnowing

machine in South Australia. My father

came to South Australia in 1838, and continued

in a small way, and had to do with

the erecting of the first wind, water, an

steam flour mills in the State. The first

winnower came in 1840. There being a

timber or iron yards at that time, he use

a bullock yoke for the fan spindle, and a

the rest of the machine was made of timber

from the emigrants' bunks The screen was

made of bevelled strips of wood, and th

sleeves were wooden frames woven with]

copper wire, and also obtained from the

ship's stores. The fan was driven with

belt made out of raw hide." This machine

answered its purpose, and is the progenitor

of a family under its own roof-tree alone o

Western Australia's First Mining Engine.

Western, Australia produced -.12,916,87

fine ounces of gold, of the value of

£54,865,256, up to the end of 1904. " That

statement alone covers an inimitable field

of romance. The Tariff Commission has

the curtain rolled upon the wonderful

stage land of the marvellous and the roman

tie while they were in Kalgoorlie, but it

remained for Adelaide to supply them with

one of the most interest has titbits from

their point of view. They had been told in

Western Australia that Australia could not

make mining machinery of the best class,

and as the testimony came from managers

who professed to be anxious to take Australian,

machinery wherever it was reasonably

suitable, the Commissioners were dis-

couraged, even despairing. The evidence of

Mr. J. F. Martin, of James 'Martin

and Co., engineers, of Gawler, South Australia,

came as an invigorating tonic, and

they drank deeply of it to quench the thirst

which Western Australia had provoked,

and to steady the nerves which Western

Australia had set a quivering.

From Bullock Dray to Steam.

The firm of Martin started in 1849 in

the good old Australian style manufac-

turing bullock drays. Farming implements

were added, and when the successive

mining booms followed, mining

plants were engrafted upon the production

of the firm. Railway locomotives

came next, and the bullock-dray-ihakin,»

concern developed into a property with

plant valued at upward of £100,000 as a

Such an engineering establishment

must needs have many records of which

it is proud. There is one of which it is

more than proud, since in its Australian

intensity it is. a whole volume of answers

to adverse criticism of Australian manufactures.

Thirty-five years ago the late

Mr. James Martin, the originator of the

firm made an engine to drive his engineering

plant. The cylinder and all

the smaller castings were made from

colonial iron, smelted from colonial ore.

When Fraser's mine was started in the

early days of Western Australian mining,

Mr. Martin supplied the mine with the

first battery in the colony, and his own

Australian - bred engine, the first mining

engine to enter the colony, was sent in

mistake. When the day comes for that

engine to be scrapped. the present representative

of the firm told the Commission,

we intend to get back the parts as a

keepsake." The Melbourne Herald." I