BUY BRITISH GOODS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19700, 29 January 1926, Page 6

BUY BRITISH GOODS.

CLAIMS OF ALL THE EMPIRE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 18. At the Mansion House there has been launched a great campaign to encourage the purchase of British goods throughout the Empire. The meeting had been organised by tho British Umpire League and was presided over by the Lord Mayor. On the platform, supporting the project were; Sir Philip Onliffe-Lister, M.F., President of the Board ot Trade; the Hon. AV. O. A. Ormsby-Gore, ALP., Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Colonies and Protectorates; Lord Southborough, Lord Alorris, the High Commissioners, and other representatives of the dominions; Sir Vansittart Bowater, M.P. for the City, Air Stanley Alachin, president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce; Sur-geon-Colonel W. Culver-James, Sir W. Herbert Daw, Air B. Borgan, and Lt.-Col. Eric Murray, secretary of the league. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister declared that in Ibe development of inter-imperial trade there were immediale and growing advantages, direct and indirect, not only to the other parts of the Empire, but also, and equally to people iu this country. “Buy British’ would be a truncated policy if it did not include and embrace the whole of our trade within the Empire. “We have many virtues as a people," remarked Sir Philip, ’but we have one defect. Wo arc too modest about our achievements. We take our quality for granted and are a little too unwilling to boost it, whether it be the product of home markets or of the dominions and colonies. We must be a little less modest in the way we carry out this movement.”—(Cheers.) While- every purchase we made of British goods was a confession of our abiding faith in our trade and an encouragement to our trade, it should also be an advertisement of that trade throughout the world.—(Cheers.) This was not a. stunt, Init a national movement It represented our complete confidence in the quality of British goods, the skill of British workmanship, and the initiative and enterprise of British industry. (Cheers.) “ ENG LIS CHE ” ARTICLES. Hr Ormsby-Gore, Under-Secretary tor the Colonies, said that in Empire settlement they always came up against the truism enunciated by the Prime Minister of Australia at the last Imperial Conference that the development of the Empire was bound up with men, money, and markets, and the greatest of these was markets. Half the trouble was our amazing ignorance of Imperial economic geography. Sir J. A. Coddiurn asserted that the marks on goods at present were fallacious. He declared that linns in this country sometimes sent abroad their labels, and they were placed upon goods made abroad, but sent here with all the appearance of British-made goods. The devices of some of our rivals were very ingenious. There was one country in which all sorts of marks misleading to the public were placed on goods, and in one instance of the articles were marked “Knglische." —(Laughter.) Goods most be, marked in such a way, said Sir John, tiiat there could be no doubt. That mark must be cither British or foreign. The Merchandise Alarhs Bill promised by the Government would receive, vehement opposition, because there -were plenty of people here who did not want the British public fo distinguish between foreign and British goods. He asked why there should not be an optional mark at once, to be used at the wifi of the manufactures ?