UNIDENTIFIED GOODS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 24

UNIDENTIFIED GOODS

IMPERIAL FOODSTUFFS

A VITAL REASON FOR PREFERENCE

DIMINISHING STJPPLHI3.

<FBO3t OUn OTTS CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 9th April. Mr. Percy Hurd follows up Sir P. LJoyd-Greame's excellent letter in "The Times" regarding buying Imperially, and especially New Zealand butter. In another letter to-day, Mr. Hurd says there could be no sounder doctrine for the English citizen than that which Sir i Jhilip enunciated recently—buy the Empire product, especially when it is as jj'ood and as cheap as the foreign product.

"But do not let us forget," Mr. Hurd tjoes on to say, "as 1 am sure Sir Philip does not forget, two things: (1) .England itself is a not unimportant part of the Empire: (2) Dominion representatives at ttie Imperial Economic Conference frankly recognised that the British producer has the first right to the British market, which his rates and taxes and other sacrifices have done so much to create. Especially at this time o! difficulty in British agricultural and industrial life, the practice of the British housewife , and the policy of British statesmen, whatever be their party, should, I suggest, be this: Insist upon knowing whether the goods you buy are British, Imperial, or foreign; stamp out the sale of unidentified foreign good* as British: buy British goods if_, on the ground either of quality or price, their purchase is economical. ' .

"Good business-like charity begins at home. That is the maxim of the Canadian and Australian in his own land, and it should also be onr maxim. ' There is an abundant and profitable market here in' Great Britain for all the produce of our own home lands and the lands of other members of the British family oversea* it w& -will do three things: (1) Use our English genius for self-management to work out for ourselves and through our own organisations 'our own best methods of production and marketing in our own particnlar local conditions of soil, climate, and markets, and with the least possible intervention of officialism; (2) work better together as members of a complementary Empire family; (3) and then, producing the' best, make known from the housetops the virtues of all-British and all-Empire products." EMPIRE FOOD OR NOTHING. An article in tho "Grocers' Journal," written from the retail grocer's point of view, has a special bearing upon Imperial preference. The writer points out how Germany, which used to send us large quantities of dairy produce and other foodstuffs, has now ceased to be an exporter. Gradually, too, Germany began tapping the sources of supplies which we had been receiving from Hoiland, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. "Tha loss of this butter from Germany, and the reduced supplies from Scandinavia shipped to this country, would have made prices very high had it not been for the advent of our oversea Dominions, Australia and New Zealand, as exporters of dairy produce into the English market. "The same conditions that obtained in Germany in 1890 are operating in the United States to-day. That great country is going through the same economic change, and the export of food goods, with the exception possibly of cereals, is gradually becoming less and less. Scarcely fifteen years ago the United States were exporting to this country an average shipment of between twenty and twenty-six thousand boxes of hog products per week, and considerable quantities of cheese and butter. Very little cheese is being sent over to this country from the United States to-day, and hog products have fallen to a weekly average shipment of six to eight thousand boxes; while as regards butter, not only have shipments of this commodity entirely ceased, but every week the price of Danish butter to tho English distributor is being regulated by the shipments of that crmmodity from Denmark to tho American market. SERIOUS DEVELOPMENT. "But that is. not all. A more serious aspect of the problem is that the United States, by reason of the appreciated value of the dollar exchange as compared with sterling, is able to attract to her ports large cargoes of New Zealand butter, which were originally destined for our markets, and in the early part of last year the price of butter to the consumer in this country was increased by no less than 4d per ]b, attributable directly to the operations of American shippers in New Zealand butter. If this tendency is to develop (and there aro rumours that other consignments of butter this year are being diverted to the States), then a very serious problem will face the distributors of butter on this side of the Atlantic in the near future. '"Unless wo are to havo high food prices, and in consequence increased costs of production of our manufactured articles, which will cripple us in competition in oversea markets, I see no alternative than to encourage our oversea Dominions to vastly increase and export to this country food products of all descriptions, and in order to do this it is most essential that there should be a very close relationship between the Dominions and the Motherland, with the object of assisting (by bringing into cultivation more of the waste spaces of the Empire, and pivinsc encouragement for further _ development) in the increased production of dairy products. . BEGINNING OF THE END. "The recommendations of the recent Imperial Economic Conference were sound and were framed with a view to development on the lines I have indicated, and, moreover, the proposals would not have imposed any additional hardship on the consumer by increasing the price of his food; but even if they had, I should still have wholeheartedly supported the proposal, because I feel convinced that nnless we can en ourage and so procure this increased supply of food goods from our oversea Dominions, the time will eventually arrive when the cost of living in this country wJIbo so high as to prevent us maintaining our position as a great industrial nation (dependent, as we are, upon food from overseas to feed our teemnig populations), and that would be 'the beginning of the end' of our great Empire as we know it to-day."