EMPIRE EXHIBITION

Evening Star, Issue 18532, 15 January 1924, Page 3

EMPIRE EXHIBITION

SECONDARY INDUSTRIES SLIGHTED. OAMTEEBtJKrS PROTEST. [Spxcial to the ‘Stab.’] OHRISrCMJROH, January 14. Some time ago the Canterbury District Committee of the British Empire Exhibition forwarded to the Advisory Council of the Exhibition at Wellington a strong recommendation that some person should be sent to London to attend the Exhibition as the representative of the dominion’s secondary industries, and to give information inquirers regarding them. The Industrial Corporation of New Zealand was risked _to endorse the resolution. The committee's suggestion has been turned down by both bodies, and at to-day’s meeting of the committee it was decided to enter a, protest against the Advisory Council's attitude.

The Chairman (Mr N. M. Orbelll) said ho thought it was a very great pity that no one was going direct from New Zealand as the representative of secondary industries. It had 'been mentioned that New Zealand information officers should be oaiTwhle, after seeing the various factories, to give information rewarding them; but that was quite impossible. It required someone well up in the secondary industries of the country to be able to answer any_ question regarding them. The dominion’s secondary industries were very important to the country, and there should be a capable man to represent them at Homo. _ A man should be sent especially in connection with the class of labor required for the dominion’s Industries.

Mr W. J. Jenkins (ex-president of the Canterbury Industrial Association) said he was entirely, with the chairman in the views he had expressed, and ho thought a great mistake was being made. He was afraid the Advisory Council was not as j sympathetic towards secondary industries as was the Canterbury Committee. Ho was positively sure in his own mind that the matter had not been bandied from Wellington in the w**** it should have been handled. Mr Jenkins gave particulars of a conversation he had last week with the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, Minister of Industries and Commerce, in the course of which Mr Jeiudns asked the Minister what was being done regarding a, representative of secondary industries, to which the Minister replied that nothing had been put to him in the matter. In reply to tho Minister, he (Mr Jenkins) had sketched the history of the action taken bv 'the Canterbury Committee, and bad told him that the Canterbury Industrial Association of the three industrial associations in the dominion had been the only one that be.d offered to contribute its quota towards the expense of sending a representative Home. The proposal had been that fhe Government should subsidise £ for £ the amount contributed 'bv the association. It had been felt, Mr Jenkins said, as the Canterbury Committee of the Exhibition had also felt, that, in view of Now Zealand manufacturers having given the exhibit, it was the bounder duty of the to send a man Home. Tho Murder had told him that ho had never heard a word about this, and that if he had something would have boon done. It seemed to him (Mr Jenkins) that something had gone amiss between tho Canterbury Committee and t-ho Advisory Council, and that the matter had been shelved by the council, either on account of the council being overburdened with other work or through lack of sympathy. Ho was not quite-sure which. It was a physical impossibility for information officers to do justice to the dominion’s secondary industries. They were sending men Home who knew no more about those industries than ho himself knew about how certain animals were bred. He had no word to say against the information officers; but they did not understand the dominion’s secondary industries. He admitted to the Minister that good men were going Home in the persons tf Messrs Hoare and Reid, but had pointed cut that they were going Homo to do other work than work in connection with the dominion’s secondary industries. thought that the secondary industries of Now Zealand were being slighted for the sake of something like under £2 000 expenditure that would bo justified in attracting capital to come to the dominion. and to attract the men required in the dominion's secondary industries. The Chairman said he agreed with Mr Jenkins’s remarks, and he thought that something might be done by pushing the matter with the Advisory Committee if it was not too late. Mr Jenkins: “I don’t think it is too late.”

A resolution ol protest was then adopted.