A BIG PROFIT.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 61, 18 April 1914, Page 11

A BIG PROFIT.

AUCKLAND EXHIBITION. STALLHOLDERS LOSE MONEY. Press Association. AUCKLAND, April 18. The Auckland Exhibition closes tomorrow. Discussing the financial side of the institution to-day, Mr Elliottf, president of the executive, said:—"The Exhibition has been a success. It is at present impossible to form more than an approximate idea of what the balancesheet will indicate, but we are going to show a bigger profit than has been shown by any Exhibition previously held in Australasia. Just what a setback the epidemic meant to us we never allowed the public to know, but at one time it almost looked as if we would not survive the check we received. Intending exhibitors all over New Zealand, Australia, and in Great Britain wiote or cabled cancelling their applications for space. They all thought that the epidemic meant the end of the Exhibition. That is one reason why there were so many small stalls and small stallholders. Wc had to largely remodel the original scheme to meet this contingency. "There has been one great disappointment in connection with the Exhibition—the absence of machinery and working models. This was to have formed one of the features of the undertaking. Agents came forward freely with applications for space, and a special machinery court was built. Then came the set-back, and nearly every application was cancelled. The attendance during December and January was also greatly affected by fear of the epidemic. In the south, even in February, when Mr Holmes, the secretary, went as far as Invercargill with the Royal Artillery Band, he found people still labouring under the delusion that they could not come to Auckland without first being vaccinated. On top of the epidemic came the general strike, and just how great were the troubles it entailed will ■ be still fresh in the public mind."

Mr Elliott's announcement of'a satisfactory profit has not been received with any enthusiasm by the large I'Uinber of stallholders who purchased the selling rights. Almost all of them have lost money. Some are only a few pounds out. Quite a number have lost some hundreds, while one man at least, who is interested in "Wonderland" as well as the Exhibition, estimates his loss at £3OOO or £4OOO. Almost all these people counted on an attendance equal to, if not surpassing, that of the Christchurch Exhibition; that is, nearly two millions. Instead, the Exhibition will close with a total attendance of between eight and nine hundred thousand.