"BUY NEW ZEALAND GOODS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20882, 26 May 1931, Page 8

"BUY NEW ZEALAND GOODS."

There should be an ardent welcome for the Unemployment Board's proposal to further the sales of goods manufactured in Nsw Zealand. It offers a very practicable way of stimulating business and increasing employment in the Dominion. To the threefold proposal—for instructions to Government departments to purchase New Zealand goods wherever possible, for a campaign of publicity to arouse interest, and for a conference of retailers to promote the sale of these goods there ought to be given immediate effect. Each item in it is manifestly serviceable to foster the circulation of money within the country. There is money in circulation, without a doubt, as many an undeniable sign shows ; to direct it into channels that will give employment in the Dominion, rather than send it abroad on an errand of uncertain benefit to New Zealand industries—at tho best an indirect usefulness and at the worst a positive injury through assisting outside competition—is an urgent necessity. The Government instructions to departments are belated but none the less commendable. Retailers should heartily aid the campaign, for it means an increase in the volume of purchasing power exercisable by the community on which they obviously depend. As the selling of imported goods entails the fostering of some external and in many cases competing industry, so the selling of goods produced in the country gives needed aid to the industry producing them. That aid may turn the scale, saving a domestic industry from extinction and consequent throwing of employees out of workto the injury of the retailer as well as the employees thus added to the number of ths unemployed. But the main factor of success for the proposal is the pronounced determination of the purchasing public to give preference to New Zealand goods. If, before any sum is laid out, a little quiet calculation were made as to where the bulk of the amount to bo expended is likely to go—to some foreign factory, say, or one in this Dominion—there would soon be a marked change fnr the better. To encourage the "New Zealand" habit will be found worth while all round.