Page 10 Advertisements Column 5

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21308, 30 October 1934, Page 10

Aii amusing example of business enterprise was given by Dr. W. G. Fern in a luncheon address yesterday. lie told members of the Canterbury Advertising Club and of the Christchurch Business Men's Club that two unemployed carpenters in America conceived the idea of making money by taking a whale through the country and exhibiting it. They had a little money and managed to build a truck which was to be run on the railways. When the truck was finished they had a temporary set-back, for they could not procure a whale. One of the partners suggested that people would be willing to pay to see the truck which would have contained the whale had one been obtainable. They undertook the tour, and he was reliably informed that they paid their expenses and made a small profit. In their anxiety to help a very worthy cause, some of the singers at the community singing session last evening in the Civic Theatre willingly paid what a thrifty housewife would consider "outrageous" prices for such commodities as cakes and sweets. But one man outdid every other effort. For a box of two dozen small cakes he bid so enthusiastically that he finally won a spirited bout with another singer and secured the cakes for ss. Immediately he sent the box back to auction and it was put up again, to realise the additional sum of 3s 6d. So that two dozen cakes went for the probably unprecedented price of 3s 6d.