Page 2 Advertisements Column 2

Southland Times, Issue 12105, 9 April 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

The majority of New Zealanders want educating up to the fact that many articles in general use manufactured in their own country are equal, often superior, to anything which can be imported at the price (says the New Zealand Times.) So fur as woollen manufactures are concerned, the public has recognised that for blankets and travelling rugs New Zealand-made are the best, but they have still to find out that they can get Just as good value in buying other New Zealand-made articles. A prejudice, probably born of the experience of crude early productions, undoubtedly operates against the local article as a rule, but the Industrial Associations of Christchurch and Wellington, backed by the New Zealand Shopkeepers' Association, are commencing an education crusade which should help the manufacturer infinitely better than a protective tariff, because a prejudice is hard to surmount even by offering a cheaper article than the fashionable one. A Christchurch boot manufacturing concern is credited with sending out some lines of bighlylinished ladies’ shoes branded with a French name, simply because many ladies believed that nothing but a. French shoe would be satisfactory. Mr S. Crown told the Wellington Industrial Association about a very fine bard candle which a New Zealand firm produced specially for raining work. It would not flicker, and was just the tiling for the miner, but a particular brand of English candles hold sway, and the New Zealand candle never got even a trial until the makers turned it out in packages closely resembling Its rival.