EMPIRE SHOPPING WEEK.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19759, 9 April 1926, Page 10

EMPIRE SHOPPING WEEK.

DOMINION PARTICIPATION. WOMEN'S PATRIOTIC LEAGUE. (From Ocb Own Correspondent.) LONDON, Eebraaiy 24. May 24, Empire Day, falls tbie year on another English festival and Bank Holiday, Whit Monday. The week before Whit Monday it is considered that people save their money for a week-end trip, and during the following week they have no money to spend. Those who are organising Empire Shopping Week are considering, therefore, whether it would not be wiser this year to select another week han that in which Empire Day occurs for the usual effort on benaif of British produce. This year it is hoped that all the dominions will fail into line in the Empire festival. Lady Cowan chairman of the British Women's Patriotic League, has been over to Canada for three months interesting that dominion in the scheme. It was this league which inaugurated the week in 1923. From the league’s point a* view it is an educational scheme to demonstrate, by win-dow-dressing, the vast resources of the Empire, in order to prove to the public wbat an enormous number of quite common articles are of British origin and how self-suppoit-ing we might be. The league disclaim* sny idea of” forcing British wares upon the customer, for, being strictly non-party, it is impossible to enter upon controversies regarding the problems of Tariff Reform and Fre; Trade. The Empire Shopping V\ eek scheme, of cot.ise, ha* been taken up by other organisations like the Women's Branch of the Conservative .association, by the British Empire Organisation, and by the Board of Trade itself, but the credit cf its establishment is due to the British Women’s Patriotic League. NEW ZEALAND IN LINE. Ladv Cowan is anxious that New Zealand should come into line, with Great Britain. Bpcsrirg in this subject to roe she said; “We have got Australia to take it up, and now we liave got it taken up in Canada, where I ha'e spent three months. The women's organisations in Vancouver, Wjnnipeg, and Toronto have got the matter in hard We have made a start in South Africa, too “What we want to do is to maae it a festival of Empire, Unking up all the dominions, so that during a certain week wa are all doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts. It is the sentiment oi Empire that we want to conserve. When this movement was started one firm selling dominion goods telU me there was not a. single application from customers for specifically British goods. Now more than 40 per cent, of the customers of those stores give instructions that nothing but Empire goods should be sent to them. "I understand ” said Lady Cowan, that New Zea'and has been having her British shopping months and people have been urged to buy British goods. I know that no countrv is more loyal than New Zealand. But we want to know definitely that the Dominion is supporting us in our movement, that the whole of the dominions are making this Shopping Week a manifestation o. the Empire snirit We want to know that New Zealand is in line with the rest.