EMPIRE SHOPPING WEEK

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 62, 26 May 1928, Page 5

EMPIRE SHOPPING WEEK

BECIPEOCAI TEADING. INTERESTING VIEWS. Throughout all parts Of the Empire, Empire Shopping Week opened on Thursday. The object of the Week is to bring Empire goods Lo the fore, retailors being asked to, as far as possible, mjike displays entirely composed of Empire goods. The importance of the Week is, perhaps, not fully realised by all retailers and all members of the public, and it is safe to say that if Dominion retailers fully realise what is being done at Home to foster trade in Dominion products they would see that Empire Shopping Week in the Dominions was made a chief feature of the year's trading.

THE WORK AT HOME. Some interesting observations on the general question of Empire trade were made in an article in a recent issue of the "Empire Mail" by Sir" Harold Bbwden, chairman and managing director Of the Raleigh Cycle Co. "We are all political economists in these days," he says. "Even the working man is beginning to realise that his wages are ultimately paid by the consumer, and that if there are, fewer consumers there is less to go round in wages. But a potential consumer cannot be an actual consumer unless he has purchasing power. There are other factors besides cost, quality and salesmanship. Up to two years ago, British East Africa was one of the best markets for Briijh cycles, and the natives showed their discrimination by riding the highest class of British machines and ignoring cheap foreign productions. This market has fallen away, during the past eightteen months, not through any fault of the British manufacturer or his agents, nor through any changed tastes on the part of the consumer, but owing to th e simple fact that a poof cotton crop lis reduced purchasing power. The problem of markets is thus a complex one, the solution of which depends on a variety of factors. Over many of these factors neither the British working man nor his employer has any contol.

CONTROL OP CONDITIONS. But bonding speaking, we have, all of us. more control over conditions in our own Empire than in foreign countries. That is why business men to-day look more and more to a development of interImperial trade —with all that that implies—for help in our basic economic problems. That is the justification for the existence of the Empire Marketing Board, and for the expenditure of the British taxpayers' money for the purpose of encouraging the* demand for Imperial products. Teh theory is that if we buy from them they will buy from us; or, in other words, that we will pay for what they pell us, not with money, but with British goods, and thereby help to increase production and employment at home. . . If the working man and his wife can be made to s§e that their wages are paid by the Australian currant-grow-er, or the Canadian wheat-grower, who will make our manufactured products in exchange for currants and flour, they will make a point of asking for those Empire products, instead of putting the money in the pockets of the Yankee, who is quite capable of making for himself the goods that we manufacture here. There Empire Marketing Board posters do not teach this lesson to the British workman's wife one quarter so effectively as that Coventry motor car firm which displays in its workshops the notice: "Tell- your wives, if they buy imported goods, to see that they are produced in Australia or New Zealand. These countries are the best overseas customers for our cars."