An Industrial Exhibition.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17392, 1 March 1922, Page 6

An Industrial Exhibition.

The proposal to hold an industrial exhibition in Christchurch has been so long "in the air" that there has seemed some danger of its remaining there, and never materialising. The danger, we may assume, has passed, now that the Canterbury Industrial Association, acting in accordance with the wish of the Industrial Corporation of New Zealand, has decided to hold.such an exhibition in Christchureh towards the

end of the year. As was recognised by more than one speaker at last night's meeting of the Industrial Association, that body cannot organise and carry out the undertaking unaided. It will require the practical assistance of the citizens, and should receive as much as it will need. The project deserves, indeed, the warm support of all. A good deal of time was spent at the conference of the Industrial Corporation last week in discussing the question of finding outside markets for New Zealand products. It is a matter well worth the consideration of our producers and manufacturers. But it would have been a pity if in its desire to cater for foreign consumers, the Corporation had lost sight of the fact that the best of all markets for New Zealand products is the New Zealand public. That market has never yet been exploited to anything like its capacity. Spasmodic efforts have been made to attract the attention of the people of the Dominion to the goods made in the Dominion, goods generally of excellent quality. But spasmodic efforts in this dire:tion are, if not quite useless, much less useful than would be a steady process of educating the local public to buy the articles made by their fellow-countrymen. The amount that the average New Zealander does not know about the manufactures of the Dominion is no credit to the manufacturers, whose business It should be, surely, to see that no man or woman in the country has the slightest excuse for ignorance as to the extent and variety of our secondary industries. The proposed exhibition should, if it is properly organised, supply a most valuable aeries of object lessons in this direction, and we trust that the Industrial 'Association will receive the hearty co-operation of the citizens in the task which it has undertaken.