A PROTEST

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 129, 4 June 1927, Page 5

A PROTEST

OFFICIAL ADVERTISING

FORM OF STATE. TRADING

(From "The \Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, y I4th April. "Empire Production, '' the official journal of the British Empire Producers' Organisation, makes a protest of which, no doubt, it wotfld wish the New Zealand Government to take cognisance.

"We have one point of strong criticism to make in connection with the recently-issued Report on the Economic and Commercial Conditions in New Zealand," says the editor in his notes. "It contains advertisements. This is, in our opinion, a form of State- trading to which public attention should be widely directed.

"It must be remembered that the usual practice for business firms is to make an annual appropriation, and the extent to which they patronise official publications of this kind diminishes the amount of support they are able to give to trade and other papers which have to live, so to speak, by enterprise. State advertising mayj in the long run, prove destructive of many very useful publications. Apart from reducing the proportion of appropriations available for privately owned papers, it is quite conceivable that the advertisements arc being "ascepted for such official publications as this Report at prices which entirely undercut trade journals which have to fix their rate at a level which will enable them to make a return on their capital and labour after the cost of paper and printing has been provided for. These conditions do not control the scale of prices charged for official advertising, since official publications mus be produced- at any cost, with or without advertisements.

"We are sorry to see this development taking place under a Government which is pledged to oppose any extension of State trading. It is permitting a practice which is entirely inconsistent with its professions, and in the interests of the many excellent publications catering for the export tmsiness to the Dominions and colonies we urge most strongly that the insertion of advertisements in trade reports and other official dpogmeaig- will •be.foj*Jwwfch»-di*-iwiiite^<^jfV"~:-»g-s^y;Mtiaßttai«;