ART UNIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1929, Page 5

ART UNIONS

SIR. J. WARD’S VIEWS.

NAPIER, May 9.

The Napier Thirty Thousand . Club to-day approached the Prime Ministei’ (Sir Joseph Ward) with a view to inducing him to endeavour to make it legal to offer gold specie as prizes for Art Unions. The speakers recognised that the holding of Art Unions with gold prizes wa,s stopped by Parliament because of extravagant organisation consuming most of the profit, but in Napier the Club paid all expenses, and distributed the profits among sports bodies, or used them for effecting improvements about the town. Sir Joseph Ward replied that if all

Art Unions were conducted as in Napier there would probably not have been any need for prohibiting gold specie prizes, but in many cases the organisation had been so extravagant and the distribution of tickets so indiscriminate that the profits were very small. For this reason Parliament put a stop to it altogether. He did not know if it would be possible to restore gold prizes, as once a right was taken away it was not the easiest thing to have it resurrected. , The matter was under revision, but if any change were made it would be necessary that the administration be ,in responsible hands and the Art Union confined to a. small area.