THE BOND.
Page 12
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The S.M.M.T. Exhibition Bond, Satisfactory in Invention, Appears, says "The Inspector," Inevitably to Involve Hardships to Certain Manufacturers.
ALL those manufacturers, concessionnaires, and agents who desire to secure the right to exhibit at the annual national motor shows promoted by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders at Olympia, ag well as at those approved by them and organized by other people until December, • 1923, have, this week, been furnaed with the new form of Bond agreement, by virtue of the signature of which they must undertake "not to do nor permit to be done and to prevent all those with whom they deal, whether as vendor, purchaser, or agent, doing or permitting to be done" any of a -copsiderable number of things constituting exhibition in an unauthorized way. The circulation of this new Bond form comes at a time when there is further evidence of dissatisfaction with the operation of the current agreement of this kind.
The Cambridge show of the Royal Agricultural Society of England is over, and, although there have been no cases, so far as the writer is aware, of Bondsigners coming right out into the open and exhibiting where they ought not to exhibit, there have undoubtedly been not a few cases where Bond-signers have not hesitated to take advantage of opportunities which have either presented themselves, or which they have created, to secure publicity during the show period. .
A great many reader § of The Commercial Motor, and particularly those who are _in any way associated with the manufacturing and sales branches of the industry will know very well that the " Royal " this year was shorn of its petrol-vehicle section by the united action of manufacturers who, through their Society, came to the conclusion that this year, at any rate, it would be wise, from an economical point of view, if for no other reason, to withhold the Society's permission from this display.
The columns of the teehnical Press have recently contained a number of editorial and other comments on the wisdom of this particular decision by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, but, after all, the matter is one which the manufacturers have in their own hands and which they must be permitted, in their own wisdom, to decide. They alone are able to judge collectively as to the advantages or disadvantages, commercially and financially, that would have accrued from participation in the show at Cambridge. The Bond in itself is good ; its intention is excellent. It aims at securing united action and limitation in the matter of exhibitions, etc., but there are quite a number of loopholes, however carefully the Bond agreement may be drawn, and there are a number of infringements of the spirit of the Bond which the Society finds some little difficulty in countering, but to which they must give the most earnest attention, if the growing discontent with the present state of affairs is not allowed ultimately to reach such proportions that a wholesale break-away from the Bond restrictions' results.
Take Cambridge alone, for instance, as a very recent illustration of what happens. The steamwagon manufacturers have, for reasons of their own and particularly because of their long years of association with the building of friction engines (always an interesting section of the Machinery in Motion yards at the Royal Shows), for a long while refused to be bound by the Society's Bond. They decided 028 that it was in the interests of their businesses that they should show where and when they liked, and _ particularly at a number of agricultural shows up and down the country. So long as it only affected steam wagons, the hardship that resulted was merely that steam had a number of exclusive opportunities to appeal to specialized publics from which its rival, the petrol wagon, was barred, but there was, at least, one individual case of hardship even then.
This year the steam wagon people were persuaded to sign the Bond, providing that they had the rikht to show at four other fixtures than Olympia and at the recognized S.M.M. and T. displays. It must be remembered that the non-Bond-signing steam-wagon makers had not hitherto been barred from Olympia ; they enjoyed the same facilities, with a little sacrifice of position, as did the people who had tied themselves hand and foot by signing the Bond. This year there were, I think, more than 12 steam-wagon makers at Cambridge, most of them, at any rate, now subscribing to the Bond, because of the Society's permission to exhibit elsewhere, but the petrolvehicle people were rigidly barred out. Neverthe less, there was a Thornycroft wagon shown by a horse-box manufacturer—a petrol Thornycroft of current type. The explanation was offered to the writer, when he inquired, as to this, that, in all probability, it would be found that this machine had been bought direct, without Thornycroft's intervention in any way, as returned Government stock, and that, in such a case, it would probably be found that the Society could not interfere. If that is so, what an extraordinary situation arises., when we find that the Society expressly forbids the exhibition of second-hand machines at its own shows; it expressly forbids, by virtue of the Bond, the exhibition of new or second-hand petrol wagons anywhere else, and yet such a machine, so far as the public is concerned, is available for inspection and -publicity purposes at the " Royal " after all.
Then, again, there were the cases of motorbuses of various makes, amongst them the Straker, running on what was obviously demonstration work in-show emergency service between the town and the ground. The Burford tractors were displayed under a sign declaring the makers to be "Motor Lorry Manufacturers.' There were other examples of well-known makes of machines to be seen with little. trouble on special exhibition not a mile away from the; show ground, not, be it understood, with the connivance of the Bond-signing manufacturers ; but that is no point so far as the effect on the public is concerned. The net result is that, Bond or no Bond, the public is given an opportunity to see these machines which are barred from the show by the Bond.
So far as the reconditioned machine is concerned, apparently, 8.0 long as the machine is bought direct from the Government, it can be shown without compunction, and the Bond cannot touch it but if the machine is one which has been bought back by the manufacturer from the Government, in accordance with the S.M.M. and T.'s original plans, and reconditioned by the original maker, that machine must not be shown—firstly, because it is barred by the Bond, and, secondly, because it is a reconditioned machine. The whole position bristles with injustice. This state of affairs is certainly not by any wish of the executive of the S.M.M. and T., but because of the difficulty of dosing all the leaks in the fabric.