there were strong economic incentives to mechanize farming processes and
the government even offered prizes for successful new mechanical harvesters.
In 1883, when he was just 18 years old, H. V. McKay built a stripper-harvester
using bits and pieces lying around the farm (Lack 1986).
McKay’s machine was efficient and effective and he quickly took out a
patent. He approached local farmers for financial backing and though
he received many knock-backs—notably from Charles Hyde, a prominent
Raywood wheat farmer—he gained enough support to set up a factory in
Ballarat and began making and selling harvesters. Charles Hyde’s decision
not to invest in McKay’s harvester quickly looked like a mistake as business
boomed in the late1880s. However, he would have felt less foolish when
McKay’s business was one of thousands that failed in the crash of the early
1890s. Most businesses that failed in the depression of the 1890s never
recovered, but McKay successfully restructured his business and, as the
economy recovered, it grew at an amazing rate—he sold twelve harvesters
in 1895,fifty in 1896, 500 in 1901, and nearly 2,000 in 1906. In 1901 he
began exporting harvesters to South Africa, Argentina, and other countries.
McKay even made a sales trip to Russia in 1911, but the First World War
intervened before he was able to make significant sales. A family tale records
that his original booking included a transatlantic voyage on the maiden
voyage of theTitanic, but he changed his plans not long before the ship
sailed to its doom.
By 1904 McKay was Australia’s largest exporter of manufactured goods. In
real terms his overseas sales were probably greater than any Australian manu-
facturer before or since. He employed over 500 workers—the number eventu-
ally rose to 3,000—and his profits made him a rich man. He installed
modern plant and equipment, developed assembly line processes, and ran a
business that was highly efficient by world standards. Nonetheless, competi-
tion from North American companies such as International Harvester and
Massey Harris wasfierce, and McKay argued strongly for high tariff protection
for his industry.^5
H. V. McKay had strong views on industrial relations and wagefixing. He
believed that market forces should determine wage levels and, at the factory
level, he believed in individual bargaining between employer and worker.
He was strongly opposed to trade unions and to wages being set by tribunals
or arbitration, and in 1904 moved his factory from Ballarat to the outer
western Melbourne suburb of Braybrook after obtaining secret undertakings
from the Victorian government that the jurisdiction of wages boards and
(^5) McKay set out his case for protection in evidence to the Tariff Commission in April 1905.
(‘Harvesting Machinery. American Competition. Prohibitive Duty Suggested’1905. See also Lack
1986, pp. 292–3.)
The Industrialist, Solicitor, and Justice Higgins