BRITISH TRADE.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19892, 1 April 1930, Page 9

BRITISH TRADE.

DUKE OP YORK'S APPEAL. INDUSTRIES FAIR BANQUET. (raOM OTTB (-W1 COBB1BPOHSBXT.) LONDON, February 20. The Duke of York was the principal guest at the banquet at the Mansion House in connexion with the British Industries Fair. Mr Arthur Henderson, M.P., Foreign Secretary, presided, and the . company included the diplomatic representative of practically every foreign country, many prominent business leaders, and the High' Commissioners for India, Australia, and New Zealand. His Eoyal Highness, proposing the toast of the British Industries Fair, recalled that on the previous occasion he spoke, at the banquet, in 1928, all had been hopeful for the industrial "future, asking whether a permanent improvement had. set in. "Since then, as we all know," he went on, "there have been fluctuations, and we are all conscious of the sad burden of unemployment, and of our individual duty to work for its removal. "The state of trade is not a subject on which I shall dwell to-night, not because I am depressed by present conditions or unhopeful for the future, but because the occupation of tide-watching is uncongenial to me. I make no doubt it is uncongenial to you—we are all too busy. ' "It is better to work than to watch. It is working, not watching, which has created the British Industries Fair; Much thought and much labour have gone to the making of this great cooperative enterprise. Much is being learned to-day from adverse conditions. Perhaps the chief lesson, >and one peculiarly difficult for the people of this country to learn, is the advantage of co-operation. "We hear increasingly of association in manufacturing enterprise and of combination for selling. I believe myself that there is not enough of it. But whatever may be lacking elsewhere, it cannot be said of those who participate in the British Industries Fair that they lack the will to associate together in selling their goods. The Fair Grows. "I note this fact," the Duke went on to say, ''that whatever happens to British trade, the Fair grows. It grows in London, it growß in Birmingham. This year, I am told, the Birmingham section will break all its records in respect of size, and it has been necessary to provide additional buildings at Castle Bromwich. I believe that we may regard this growth as a proof of genuine activity at anv rate in those trades which are represented at the Fair. The man with the goods to sell would not make use of the Fair if it were not successful, for business men do not as a rule persist in useless methods. May we not ask ourselves, therefore, whether the scope and utility of the Fair might not be extended P Might not other trades avail {hemselves of its advantages? I am glad to learn that his Majesty's Government have appointed a committee to go into these questions. The committee begins its work with our good wishes, and we hope that it may suggest some means of guiding the Fair to still more brilliant success." What the World Asks For. After- congratulating those responsible for the provision of the new building the Duke continued: "We hope that the overseas buyers will find it comfortable. The amenities which will be found at Olympia were devised as much for them as for the exhibitor. When the seller makes what the buyer wants a state of mutual satisfaction arises. The state of satisfaction is increased when business can be done in agreeable surroundings. The spirit of modern business demands them. The days of the dingy secret office, the dark, unhealthy workshop, are passing. We demand space, light, air, and all that, modern inventiveness can supply in the way of convenience and ease. It is also necessary that what is offered for sale should be attractive, solid, and adapted to necessity. The manufacturer must think, not of what his machines can turn out, but of how he can adapt his machinery to what the world asks for. fc

"It is healthy to remind ourselves from time to time of simple truths. A simple truth from which we _ must always take our 1 start is that in this country we live by selling goods, and that a large part of our customers live abroad. If we cannot satisfy those customers we perish. Every manufacturer and every one engaged in selling British goods has, therefore, a solemn duty, not onlv to himself or to his wife and children, but to every, member of the population. That solemn duty is never, to risk the slighe'st harm to the export trade of his country by selling an article that will not give lasting satisfaction to the buyer." Cost of War. Mr Arthur Henderson proposed the toast of "The Guests." Referring to the Naval Conference. Mr Henderson said very few realised the magnitude of the burden of armaments, and its serious effect on national finance. The world expenditure on armaments at the present moment was £900,000,000 a year, of which £520,000,000, or 60 per cent., was expended by European countries. Let them consider what that meant for this nation, which had an expenditure on armaments last year of £115,000,000. In 1913 it was £77,000,000. Allowing for the change in price, the burden of this unproductive expenditure was at least as great as it was then. Nor was that all. The War had left us with a debt of over £7,000,000,000. It took the whole-time labour of 2,000,000 workers, the Chancellor of the Exchequer calculated, working year in and year out, to produce the means.to pay the annual cost of our debt service. If they added what we spent on our fighting services, on preparation for the next war, it meant that we were spending a total of £520,000,000 a yearj or £IOOO a minute, in paying for past and future wars. Let them think what those figures meant in social waste and what they could do in carrying through industrial reconstruction and social reforms of many kinds if they could save any portion of that cost. With such facts before them they were bending all their energies on the task, and they were making progress. E[e regarded the British Industries Fair as a means of promoting international friendship. (Cheers.) They trusted that those who took back British goods when they returned home would take away with them also the feeling that we were glad.to see them and some deeper understanding of our friendship with all the world.