PRACTICAL HELP

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1640, 12 May 1925, Page 4

PRACTICAL HELP

* WHAT ENGLAND IS DOING FOR HER DOMINIONS.

Mr J. Gray Buchanan, member of the Advisory Committee to His Majesty's Department of Overseas Trade and a member of the Advisory Committee \of Imperial Mineral Resources, who recently visited Wellington, had some comment to make upon the annual report of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce.

, "I agree with them as to the questionable benefit of a combine for selling," he remarked to a Dominion reporter. "Such a combine usually leads to a trial of strength." "The Imperial Conference of 1923," explained Mr Buchanan, "was only held with one section of Great Britain represented, which will not, I hope, happen again. Hence your temporary disappointments, but the fact that the Colonial Trustee Act, which was brought in to give colonies under Britain's control cheap loans, still applies to the self-governing Dominions, is a most important gift that is 'not generally recognised or acknowledged. Britain lends money to her Dominions at rather less than 5 per cent., while she is getting 8 per cent, from an American colony."

"The 75 per cent. British labour and material decision will, I hope," he proceeded, "not be passed by your Government. Where we have passed it as necessary in certain lines to make the finished articles from foreign (generally French) semi-raw material to return to the world's trade in the finished article, it has generally been done by works who have done this; although it means keeping their own raw material works idle. It is not, therefore, an attempt to take advantage of your preference, as many Australians and New Zealanders think."