Dunedin Exhibition and Industrial Association.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18242, 28 November 1924, Page 8

Dunedin Exhibition and Industrial Association.

We publish a letter to-day from tho President of the Industrial Association explaining, or purporting to explain, why tho Association will not help the Dunedin International Inhibition. The reason given is twenty-one months old, and we may say at once twenty-one months too old. It does not mattei in the least to-day in Christ-church whether Dunedin originally intended to hold an Imperial Exhibition or not, or had good reasons or had ones for enlarging the scope to include other nations, Those questions may still he of interest to the directors of the Exhibition and to the citizens .of Dunedin, but they mean no mora here than the answer the Canterbury Industrial Association made in February, 1923, to the invitation to participate. All that concerns us here is that Dunedin is working now for an, Exhibition of international s?ope, and has asked for, and received, the hearty co-opera-tion of the merchants and manufacturers of every other important, centre —not excluding our own, Wh|it the Association means by saving that it is impossible for it to recognise an International Exhibition we do not know, and since- that is "the point it desires (< to emphasise" wo should hare been, told. But what it will he held to jnean is that the AEfeoc-iation does not wish New Zealand-made goods to te goon side by side with those of other countries. The public do wish that, and it has been proved that tho most progressive producers and manufacturers wish it also. It is to t-hp interest of everybody who can see tar enough that the Dominion should not be shut off from the competition of other countries, biit shoijld li«ve the benefit of their methods and 'standards; and if it is not a f.act that the Canterbury Industrial Association has the reasons tho public suppose it lias for refusing these lessons, the real reason ghoukl hare been For it is ridiculous to talk of ''lmperial" reasons when the rest of the Empire is aiding and abetting what Dunedin is doing? and jnore ridiculous still to withhold official" recognition when Canterbury manufacturers will and must be present in Dunedin in full fqree. The Association should admit quite, frankly that it has made a piistake, that the scope of the Exhibition is Dunedjn's business and no one else's, and that what the public of Chrisfcchureh, of Canterbury, a,nd of the whole Dominion approve of cannot he frowned on in this fashion without arousing a Domip-ion-wido laugh.