THE PRACTICAL TEUTON.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 63, 14 March 1924, Page 8

THE PRACTICAL TEUTON.

PICKS UP A FRENCH TRADE. Although the French once had a full monopoly of the trade in thermometers, their business in this field has been practically ruined because insufficient crecautions were taken to protect ii against foreign, and especially German, competition. This discovery was the re- ; suit of an investigation conducted by the Ministry of Commerce of trades which have suffered from the war and which might he considered worthy of I rebuilding. The inquiry revealed that, although France and her colonies need about 500.----000 thermometers annually in times of peace and 25,000 more in time of war, French factories can produce onlv--123,000 a year. The principal reason for this is that few skilled workmen remain in this trade to-day. During the war France was obliged to buy thousands of thermometers from Switzerland. When it became difficult to purchase them there France opened a big factory just outside Paris and set German prisoners to work there. When the war ended the Germans were sent back and to-day only a few French workmen remain in the factory and of these only one or two are experts. It is said that drug stores in all parts of France still sell German thermometers and that the only French ones to be bad are of no use to the medical projpsajnn.