SCHOOL PUPILS’ CLOTHING

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25088, 21 January 1947, Page 3

SCHOOL PUPILS’ CLOTHING

ACUTE SHORTAGE IN CHRISTCHURCH SOME LINES ALMOST UNPROCURABLE Clothing for secondary school pupils is in very short supply in Christchurch. A general shortage of children’s clothing has developed in the last few years, but some lines which are sold specially to secondary school pupils are now almost unprocurable, and there is little possibility of the trade being able to meet the full needs of customers when the schools resume next month. About this time for many years drapers’ shops in Christchurch have made competitive displays of the regulation clothing worn at the various colleges at Christchurch; but only one shop has been able to make such a display this year. A department manager of another of the city’s largest drapers said yesterday that it was the first occasion in the history of his firm that a window display had not been made. A member of another firm said that small quantities of clothing were available, but not anything like the full amqunt that was required. Never before had. such shortages been apparent, even during the war, and it was certain that many customers who had left their orders for clothing until the last minute would be disappointed. There was usually a. rush just before the schools resumed, but now as clothing came to hand it was being rationed among customers on a waiting list. Apart from firms which made up their own cloth, Christchurch was dependent on two large manufacturers for its supplies of school children’s clothing, But their output had been heavily curtailed by shortages of labour and other problems. Schoolboys’ caps were now almost impossible to obtain, said one retailer, as the Kaiapoi Woollen Mills, which were the only big manufacturers of this article near Christchurch, had closed down all their cap-making machines recently because of a shortage of labour. School hose was also in very short supply, partly because of a labour shortage and partly because of the limited quantities of worsted yarn which were being supplied to the factories. Girls’ clothing as well as boys had been affected and the shortage was part of an economic problem which was general throughout New Zealand to-day.