TRAMCARS AND TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 34, 9 February 1903, Page 5

TRAMCARS AND TRADE.

A statement was recently published to the effect that the institution of the electric tramways system in the city had had a" serious effect on the trade of certain of the suburbs, Karangahaperoad being included in the list of those most deeply concerned. .A tour through the principal businesses of the thoroughfare to-day gave an unqualified denial to the statement, it being very evident that the assistants had their hands full, while interviews with the proprietors strengthened the impression that no slackness of trade had followed the advent of-the trams. Indeed, in almost every case the owners of businesses told an exactly opposite story, customers being more numerous and the trade and ttirnover having increased within the period of the mew service. Heads of the principal houses in the various trades in Karangahape-road were interviewed by our representative, and there were none who expressed dissatisfaction at the present state of trade, or who had any complaint on that score against the electric trams.

; In the drapery trade the head of one of the largest businesses in the street stated that the last three months had been perhaps the busiest in the history of the concern, while the turnover for last month, usually the slackest month of the year, was £500 in excess of the same four weeks last year. This increase was put down as being in some measure due to the trams, the general traffic having increased since the new system was begun, while the old customers have not shown a tendency to desert Karangahape-road for town. Similarly in Ihe furniture and ironmongery trade, both firms in this department visited reporting satisfactory increases in their, trade within the last three months. Although a few customers may have been lost, still the new trade more than counterbalances this, and the shopkeepers find a largely increased trade from such distant suburbs as Parnell and Newmarket. In the cabinetmaking trade a certain amount of slackness followed Christmas, but this the proprietors put down to the drapers' sales, a similar falling off being always coincident with the selling off of the season's stocks. In the jewellery trade the volume of busiuess has shown no signs of slackening off, but rather the reverse, the various firms engaged in tlie trade having good reason to congratulate themselves on the increases in their turnovers. Ihe butchery and grocery trades, with their system of calling for orders, have not been in the least affected by the trams, and Ihe fruit and confeetionerv shops; which might be expected to suffer most, have found no reason to complain since the inauguration of the service.