Fascination Of Old Papers

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 55, 14 June 1948, Page 5

Fascination Of Old Papers

HOW THEY SOLD VEHICLES IN 1917

There’s always a fascination about old newspapers. Perhaps more than anything else, they serve to show just how rapid-

ly this changing world changes. Back in 1917, for instance, J. T. Barry and Co., auctioneers, estate and commission agents, found they had to be persuasive to sell new motor cars at from £l7O for a twoseater runabout (standard specifications) to £230 for a de luxe touring job which carried the then luxury feature of electric lights. In the last year of the, war just past, the pre-sent-day product of the same factory could have been sold at any price on the first hint of availability. The advertisement that appeared in the Beacon’s ancestor, -the Whakatane Press, on February 14, 1917, makes amusing reading today. Here are some extracts from the halfcolumn, solid-set announcement: “Do you ever think of the high cost of living in the country and the high cost of living in the towns? There are fruits and vegetables rotting on your farms for which the people in the towns will pay you good money. Get a car and get wealthy! You are unable to visit the stock sales in the district because the old horse is too slow and you can’t get back to milk ' the cows. You are losing the price of a car

every year not being up-to-date with prices—and the other fellow with the car is getting it!”

The advertiser finished on a strong note. “The fittest survive,” he told his prospects. “Neither men nor machines, if unfit, can long withstand the crushing strain of an exacting existence. Our car’s strength has withstood supreme tests in every land where' man himself has penetrated.” Those days, that was some claim. And a car’s existence was exacting alright. ' That was acknowledged the same day by one Thomas Hallett, agent for another popular. car. She was the goods, this 1916 model. Self starter, speedometer, electric lights, cantilever springs front and back and, believe it or not, three forward speeds. The agent said its light weight in comparison to power allowed it to run up, hills and over bogs with ease. That also was some claim, because bogs were bogs with a vengeance those days.