SERVICE TO PEOPLE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 24 June 1943, Page 3

SERVICE TO PEOPLE

CLAIM BY COMPANY' CHAIRMAN Auckland, June 23. The value of big companies to the community is not always recognised, said Mr A. D. Bell, chairman of the Farmers’ Trading Company, at the annual meeting to-day. Last year the company purchased from suppliers within and outside the Dominion considerably more than £2.000.000 worth of goods, and in so doing provided a most useful service to people in which the wage-earner was the principal beneficiary. Mr Bell said the company might well be taken as an example, for while the profit motive was the reward for enterprise the company recognised wider obligations, including the selling of goods so that the public received value for its money and employees worked under the best conditions. He specially repudiated the idea that his and companies with similar motives were concerned with profits regardless of all else. The company’s boot factory had made sufficient military boots to equip the personnel of nearly four divisions with a pair for each man. Enough greatcoats had been made I in the factory to equip fully a whole division and thousands of soldiers’ uniforms had been manufactured. The furniture and tent factories were concentrating on Government requirements. Over 200,000 parcels had been packed for shipment to soldiers and others overseas.—P.A.