STREET APPEALS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 82, 7 April 1933, Page 2

STREET APPEALS.

BUSINESS MUCH AFFECTED. FEELING IN" CHEISTCHURCH. The retail business community is steadily becoming more and more restive at the incursions that are being made on business by the street collections that are held periodically in the city (sajs the "Christchurch Star"). Every street collection that is held has a bad effect on shopping, it is stated. One prominent business man who discussed the matter placed the decline in the takings as the result of a street appeal as high as 60 per cent. While business men have been employing every device to increase trade, the street appeals, with their negative effects, have been Increasing, and a point has nowbeen reached where the protests are assuming very emphatic form. "These street appeals would be an evil on any day, but an Friday, the principal shopping day of the week, they are simply dynamite," said the manager of a big retail establishment.

"We think," he said, "that the time has come when a stop should be put to holding street collections practically every other Friday. The objects for which these appeals are made, though worthy, are still of "minor importance and should be supported by the people" interested. The tremendous drop • inbusiness that' takes place is not made up on other days. We have found that if people do not purchase on their usualshopping day they simply do not purchase at all." .-• ■ ■ • " Street appeals, he said, had the effect of deterring people from coming into town. . It was not so much that' they grudged the sixpence that was demandedof them as that they, did not wish to be bothered by the collectors. ' "The col: lectors are most peVsistent," he added. "They come into your shop and worry your customers, and you do not like to tell them to get out."