Past Dreams Realised: A Permanent Home.

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 58, 18 September 1928, Page 16

Past Dreams Realised: A Permanent Home.

PROVINCIAL progress, the fruition of long-cherished industrial and sporting ideals, and the future of secondary industries in the Dominion, are all closely connected with the opening of the fifth Wellington Winter Show to-morrow in its permanent home off John Street, overshadowed though these considerations may be to the casual observer by the wonderful success of courageous individual enterprise in the face of tremendous difficulties by the Wellington Winter Show Association. The concentration of festivities and sporting attractions in a carnival week is essential to the success of the Show, and has its advantages to the centre in attracting visitors, but there are, perhaps, not many people who realise that the holding of yearly industrial exhibitions in the central city of the Dominion was the dream of early statesmen, as it has long been the desire of all Wellington manufacturers, and that winter shows of the future are closely bound up with the questions of technical education and the extension of manufactures, without which New Zealand cannot hope to hold the population to enable it to fulfil its Imperial destiny. In this the Show Association is a national benefactor. As regards the city, by taking in hand a piece of rugged ground that nobody else could suggest a use for, spending considerable sums in excavation, and providing employment when it was sadly needed, the association has done a public service. "Jam Tin Gully," the dumping ground for far less peasant objects than jam tins, and the paradise of countless rats, has been turned into a great amusement park, with a building which, though it looks unsightly in its unfinished state, will provide room for many social activities. Were it used only for storage, the floor space would pay for itself in a city where space is so valuable. As regards the show itself, it has a great advantage in bringing not only the primary and secondary producers of the Dominion together, and encouraging each to get the other's point of view, but also of bringing into closer touch the retailers of the country and the manufacturers. For some reason the former still shows a decided preference for the imported article in many directions where their wants could apparently be equally well supplied by the local manufacturer. It may be that the big importing houses are able to employ, on the whole, a superior grade of traveller; it may be that the wider range of goods offered on the one occasion by the huge concerns of the Old Land appeals to the retailer. Whatever the cause, it is the duty of the retailer to support local products where this is not against his own interests, and it is at shows such as this that retailers can survey en masse all New Zealand goods, discuss prices, and regulate the year's buying accordingly. Wellington's gala week will bring together every commercial interest, and the diversity of entertainment will attract no less important sections of the community in the general public, which after all is the final arbiter of the fate of any product. Purely as a source of amusement, the Show this year, with the spacious dancing floor, the many diversions, and the facilities for refreshment and comfort which it was hitherto impossible to provide, will be a bigger draw than ever, and it must be remembered that it is only necessary to repeat past attendances to assure its success.