Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, SEPT. 26, 1933. EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 256, 26 September 1933, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, SEPT. 26, 1933. EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD

The announcement from London that the administrative and financial control of the Imperial Institute of Entomology and the Imperial Mycologicai Institute are being vested in the Imperial Agricultural Bureau from the beginning of next month may be taken as a reminder that the Empire Marketing Board will make its exit from the Imperial stage on the same date. It was on the recommendation of the Imperial Committee on Economic Consultation and Co-operation, which is responsible for the change in the control of the Entomological and Mycologicai Institutes, that the decision in regard to the Marketing Board was reached by the British Government. This Committee came into being consequent upon a decision at Ottawa to investigate a number of organisations engaged in the economic welfare of the Empire. The object was to prevent overlapping and unnecessary expense. When the future of the Empire Marketing Board was raised at Ottawa the Dominions were asked to give consideration to the question of sharing the expense, which had been borne in full by the Mother Country. Mr J. H. Thomas, the. Dominions Minister, agreed to finance the Board unaided until September 30 of this year to allow the Dominion Governments time to give the matter full consideration. Meanwhile the Board was one of the several organisations whose future the Committee mentioned above Avas charged to determine. An adverse report was naturally followed by the announcement, failing a satisfactory response from the Dominions, that its activities would terminate on September 30. The Government’s decision has been regretted by responsible opinion in Great Britain; so has the negative attitude of the Dominions as to sharing the cost. The Daily Telegraph considers that the statesmanship of the Empire _ is grievously at fault in allowing the Board’s demise. In its opinion the British Government would have been well advised to have continued the work of the Board, even at the sole charge of Britain. The Dominions also are not spared by this critic, which “confesses to being greatly surprised that their Governments are so little alive to the practical trade results which have been achieved for them in familiarising alike the British shopkeeper and the British purchaser with the immense variety and admirable quality of Dominion products. If when the informative and educational work of the Board ceases the results fall off correspondingly the Dominion Governments,” it adds, “may regret that they took so limited _ a view.” The Manchester Guardian comments on the fact that since the first announcement heralding the approaching end of the Board no Dominion lias made an offer to keep it alive. “One would have thought,” it says, “that at least one Dominion would have made some gesture towards the support of co-operative research into the production and, equally important, preservation during transport of staple Empire products.” The Board was created in 1926 as some measure of compensation to the Dominions to whom the British Government could not grant preferential treatment in trade. The Mother Country has shouldered the burden. But the Ottawa Agreements wiped out the special considerations for bringing the Board into existence, and in commenting on this fact the Spectator said: “If Imperial co-operation means anything the case for the continuance and extension of such work is unanswerable, and it is _ incredible that the Dominion Ministers with whom the final decision lies should not see that.” It appears to be the fact, however,' that the Dominion Governments are prepared to permit the Board to pass out of existence without one effort to keep its remarkable organisation intact. The recently published survey of its work in the

past year combines with those of other years to present a wealth of evidence of its value to the Dominions’ producers. The scientific work will continue, but other valuable functions are to be permitted to lapse. There is every justification for the, complaint that Empire statesmanship is at fault in the matter.