writes:‘The farmer says“But I was paid wheat price for that.”So he was...
because whatever he sends, however clean it may be, he gets only f.a.q. price’
(Griffiths 1920, p. 3). With no reliable method of determining quality, bulk
handling was impossible.
The bulk-handling question was a matter of considerable enquiry before
the First World War, but recommendations for its introduction were
‘received with apathy’, according to the compilers of the 1953Common-
wealth Year Book(ABS 1953, p. 954). Yet with Argentina’s transition to bulk
in 1900, the competitiveness gap between Australia and the American con-
tinent was clear. The cost of landing a bushel of wheat in England from
South Australia in 1910 was 7½d, compared to 4d from Argentina, 1½d from
Canada, and 1d from the Atlantic ports of the USA (‘Wheat in Bulk’1910,
p. 9). A South Australian Royal Commission in 1908 recognized that the gap
was only partly accounted for by the length of the journey. They heard
evidence from NSW that it cost 1½d in Australia merely to bag a bushel of
wheat and load it on a truck:
One only has to see a vessel being loaded with bags of wheat, with a large number
of men laboriously employed, and then imagine the grain poured into it
like water, to be convinced that a considerable saving of cost could be effected
by the latter method, and a substantial saving of time to the vessel. (‘Wheat in
Bulk’1910, p. 9)In a paper delivered to Victorian farmers in 1910, W. G. McRoberts said
economic grain handling in Australia was imperative:
If we intend to settle a vigorous and hardy population of wealth producers and real
nation-builders, also to develop, with the best results, the hidden wealth lying
untouched in our almost limitless and unequalled agricultural areas, and, if we
intend to compete with other grain-producing countries, in the effort to supply the
human race with that important natural food product, we must adopt the bulk and
elevator system of our competitors, which has built up their immense trade, and
made them so successful in settling and developing their agricultural lands, by
means of which they are leaving us far behind, although we enjoy much better
and, indeed, unsurpassed natural conditions of life.
(‘Handling of Wheat in Bulk’1910, p. 3)‘The losses are appalling under the present bag handling arrangement—you
can’tcallitasystem’, thundered H. A. Griffiths in Western Australia’s
Merredin Mercuryin July 1920. It cost Western Australian farmers £16,000
a year in freight alone to import the sacks, which were simply slashed open
with a knife when they were unloaded in the UK:‘All the farmers’labour
in sewing the bags and ramming the wheat and his 1s 6d paid for the bag
goes to waste.’
Barons versus Bureaucrats