Among the vested interests resisting bulk handling were the‘lumpers’,a
unionized cohort of heavy manual labourers who frequently took strike action
in support of better wages and conditions. There were other complaints about
the price of bags, which further reduced the return on wheat. Rail-side storage
sheds offered poor protection against the elements and vermin. There was
opposition too from some traders and millers, who, the commission found,
had established cartels operating against the interests of farmers.‘The price is
fixed by traders acting in unison, and not in competition’, the commission
found. The‘honourable understanding’, as the traders preferred to call it, kept
farm-gate prices consistently below those in other states.
The absence of competition was, to some extent, enforced by the pattern of
railway development. D. W. Meinig’s comparative study of the South Austra-
lian and Columbia Basin railnets illustrates how the free-wheeling North
American capitalism delivered a far more efficient and competitive system
than the paternalistic state. The systems were constructed in much the same
period to link farming districts with tidewater, but the differences are striking.
Wheat growers in the Columbia Basin were served byfive inter-regional trunk
lines to competing Pacific ports at Puget Sound and Portland. There were
four trunk lines leading to Chicago and the East. A web of competitive branch
lines gave many farmers a choice of two services, with some districts serviced
by three.
In South Australia, by comparison, lines were constructed on the assump-
tion that wheat would be fed to the nearest offive ports. Port feeders were
narrow gauge, while the metropolitan system servicing Adelaide was broad
gauge. Break-in-gauge points at Hamley Bridge and Terowie were deliberately
chosen to prevent Port Adelaide competing with local ports. Of the three
agricultural districts served by rail, only a small portion of one, the west-
central portion of the Lower North, had a choice of port destinations. With
the construction of the standard-gauge Commonwealth Transcontinental to
Perth in 1917, Port Pirie achieved the dubious distinction of being the junc-
tion of three different rail gauges.
It is little wonder that the 1908 Royal Commission was‘much impressed’
with the case for a transition to bulk handling, which would provide consid-
erable efficiency savings:‘Against this, however, are the difficulties in connec-
tion with the adaptation of shipping and business methods...Such a vital
change should not be recommended without the most complete investiga-
tion’(‘The Wheat Commission’1908, p. 10).
Legislation to introduce bulk handling was brought before the South
Australian parliament, but failed to pass on at least three occasions, in 1922,
1925, and 1937. It was not until 1952 that thefirst bulk-handling terminal
was completed in South Australia, built by the Wheat Board at Ardrossan.
Frustrated growers formed the South Australian Co-operative Bulk Handling
Barons versus Bureaucrats