Trade and Sentiment.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19343, 22 June 1928, Page 8

Trade and Sentiment.

There was a great deal of truth in the remark yesterday of the Daily Express that sentiment alone will not secure orders for goods. According to the. Express, and we must suppose that its figures are accurate, 44 per cent, of the total exports of the United States are sold to the British Empire. Fortyfour per cent, means 440 millions sterling, and the Express suggests that a large proportion of this trade goes to America simply because American firms enter the Empire and ask for it. Its argument is that if British firms would "combine to flood the Empire "with keen young Englishmen search- " ing for orders " there would be a different story to tell, and most people will suspeot that it is right. Although America cannot sell us 400 million pounds' worth of goods unless she buys millions of pounds' worth, sp that American sales to the Dominions are often only long-range trade between the Dominions and the Homeland, the Empire should avoid foreign halfwayhouses if it can, and the way to avoid them is to search more diligently for Empire orders. It is not so very long since Christchurch said good-bye to a highly successful American business man who came over here some years ago to sell agricultural implements, and who was frank enough in his farewell speech to say that New Zealand could sell as successfully in America, as America, through the agency of his firm, had been able to sell in New Zealand, if she adopted the same method. The secret was simply to send salesmen, and the goods to be sold, into the field in which the market was to be created, and there can be very little doubt that much of the business which the Daily Express says eludes the British manufacturer would come to him if he adopted American methods of securing it. It is of course a proof of the integrity of the British manufacturer and of his faith in his wares that he is so ready to expect them to sell themselves, but it is a rather dangerous expectation in these fiercely competitive days. Goods will sell themselves —and it is a lesson which New Zealand manufacturers also have yet to learn —only when everything else has been done to bring them before the mind and eye of the purchaser.