Treat Your Alarm Clocks With Care

Northern Advocate, 18 November 1941, Page 6

Treat Your Alarm Clocks With Care

[Per Press Association—Copyright.] WELLINGTON, This Day. Owners of cheap alarm clocks of the type so common in practically every home will be well advised to treat them with care, as, according to an importer, there is an acute shortage which will become even more acute. He said today: “It is not a question of whether all clocks needed can be imported, but whether they can be got at all, license or no license, to import. It is more than likely that the great clock-making plants at present working part time on munitions will swing over entirely to war work.” In 1938, imports of clocks—almost entirely low-priced alarm time pieces ,—numbered 164, 421, of which Germany supplied 88,349 and Japan 12,474. In 1939 the imports were only 94,120. Import restrictions came in December, 1938, and the effect became apparent in 1940 when the importation of clocks was only 36,190. From Dollar Countries Only For the first half of the present year the number was 17,147, which, including as it does, electric and other expensive clocks, means a small number of cheap clocks as compared with past years. As imports during 1942 are limited to 25 per cent, of the total value _of all clocks imported in 1938 (£50,265), only £12,564 will be available, and, of course, prices have risen, so decreasing the number of clocks the money will buy. Outside this, however, is the fact that supplies now appear to be available only from Canada and the United States, both dollar countries.