"POPPY DAY" FLOWERS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 60, 13 March 1925, Page 11

"POPPY DAY" FLOWERS

LOCAL MANUFACTURE URGED

A new avenue of employment for returned disabled soldiers, that of manufacturing the paper poppies, which are at present imported from France and sold on "Poppy Day," was touched upon at a meeting of the Wellington Returned Soldiers' Association last night. Mr. Harrison, general secretary of the New Zealand R.S.A., said that "Poppy Day" was first inaugurated with the idea of making returned soldier organisations practically self-supporting. If the flowers could be manufactured in New Zealand, it would mean that from fourteen to twenty disabled men could be permanently employed. The contract with the French people for the supply of the poppies expired after the next "Poppy Day," and with local men working on the manufacture, the money would be kept in the Dominion. Until two years ago the British Legion obtained its poppies from France, but since then had made its own by the employment of disabled men. Last year it made £300,000 from the sale of poppies, even as far afield as China. Australia, until last year, got its flowers from France, but since then had made its own.

The proposal was carried unanimously, and will be forwarded as a remit to the Wellington Metropolitan Returned Soldiers' Association's Conference at Palmerston North.