"BUY BRITISH GOODS!"

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 227, 25 September 1930, Page 6

"BUY BRITISH GOODS!"

It is to be hoped that the remarks made bySir Gr. Elliot yesterday at a meeting of company shareholders will secure the sympathetic attention of a wide circle of readers. Sir George pointed out that under our system of preferential trade New Zealand imports yearly £40,000,000 worth of goods from the Old Country, and this probably represents £10,000,000 in wages to British workers. Under preference, 80 per cent of our total imports come from Britain. Without preference Britain would almost certainly lose 50 per cent of her New Zealand trade. Needless to say, Sir Gγ. Elliot supports Imperial Reciprocity. But he pointed out that under the present one-sided arrangement New Zealand has to compete with the rest of the world in the British market without any handicap in her favour, and he expressed the hope that the Imperial Conference may open the way for some sort of fiscal readjustment on more satisfactory lines. It is obviously to,our commercial advantage that the people of the Dominion should support British industries, thereby enlarging the purchasing power of our best customers. But it"is also'our duty to assist our-';. own manufacturers and secondary producers, and here a conflict of' claims undoubtedly arises. In a country in which the principle of "Protection for Home Industries" is accepted as a fundamental principle of public policy, it is futile to "suggest, that-we ought to neglect our own industries entirely, in the interests of British trade. The case for buying New. Zealand goods, as against foreign imports, was put forcibly'and effectively by Miss Melville in her address to the Manufacturers' Association last night. In cases where we can produce goods of satisfactory quality for ourselves there is neither, reason,nor justice, as-.Miss Melville phrased- it, fin _' f making foreign countries rich at our expense"; and though both the •consciousness of kinship and "enlightened self-interest" should combine to induce us to purchase most of our imports from Britain, not even the claims of the Motherland should force us to neglect our primary responsibility to pur own producers £nd our own. people, \