THE ALL-BRITISH SHOPPING WEEK.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 67, 20 March 1911, Page 2

THE ALL-BRITISH SHOPPING WEEK.

The interest which Germany is taking in the All-British Shopping Wefek, to be held in London from Mai-ch 27th to April Ist, suggests that some tangible results are expected from this great movement. It need hardly be explained that the scheme does not aim at boycotting foreign goods. It is not an antiforeign movement; it is pro-British. If it educates the public and.removes thej absurd prejudices that exist with regard to Home-made goods—and that is its main objective—it is merely insuring a fair competition for British manufactures. There is the phrase "French hand-made throughput," for instance. A lady investigator found that many a Parisian gown bearing this passport to the wardrobes of English society had never crossed the Channel. "The fetish of the Paris gown dies hard," saijj one organiser, "but the AllBritish Week should kill it once and for all. A lady must have a Paris dress, but I guarantee that I could put two gowns side by side, one English made and one Paris made, and not one woman in a hundred could tell which was which." In practically every shop in Regent Street, Bond Street, Oxford Street, and Tottenham Court Road, window displays will press home to the consumer similar facts. Every day for weeks past shopkeepers in all parts of London have been showing their sympathy with the movement by pledging themselves to do all in their power to push the sale of British goods. Success is now inevitable. But the Union Jack Industries League does not intend to rest on the laurels won by its energy and resourcefulness in organising the AllBritish Shopping Week. It is even now evolving plans for a national movement on the same lines. "We hcjpe," says Mr O'Brien, the secretary of the League, "to establish a national week for the whole of the country, and in this way to work up to a great Imperial exhibition to be held in 1915."