The Wanganui Chronicle “Nulla Dies Sine Linka" TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1921. “TO DISPEL IGNORANCE.”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18257, 16 August 1921, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle “Nulla Dies Sine Linka" TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1921. “TO DISPEL IGNORANCE.”

The Department of Industries and Commerce, through the Board of Trade, is issuing the following circular to New Zealand manufacturers:

“It has frequently been brought to notice that goods which can be produced in the Dominion are purchased abroad because the buyer is not aware that Same can be manufactured locally. This Department desires to widen the local market for the products of New Zealand industries by bringing the manufac-

turer into closer touch with the merchant and consumer. This can be done by obtaining a complete list of the manufacturers and the goods they produce, so that the Department may be able to answer the numerous inquiries which are being received as to whether certain goods are manufactured In the Dominion, and, if so, where they can be purchased. When the information is complete the question of whether it may be desirable to publish that portion which is not confidential, in the form of a New Zealand Manufacturers’ Directory, will received consideration. Will you therefore kindly fill in the information asked for in the attached Schedule A and return it at once to the local office of this Department in your district in the stamped addressed envelope which is enclosed for the purpose.”

We- do not usually find ourselves In agreement with the “Lyttelton Times” on matters touching the Government; but we think it has sounded the right note concerning this tentative proposal. While deploring the popular ignorance of “the wide versatility of the native manufacturer,” and recognising that it should be dispelled as speedily as possible, the “Times” canont see why the Government should shoulder the cost of dispelling it. It says:—“The duty of advertising their wares surely devolves upoli the manufacturers themselves, and if the Government is going to relieve them of that duty, then it will find an almost limitless demand for its beneficences arising

from other traders of all kinds. We have been told a good deal in recent months about the “prejudice” which existg. in this country against local manufacture, but we are coming to believo that ignorance has been mistaken for prejudice. The average New Zealander, we are sure, has sufficient faith in his own countrymen, and sufficient regard for the welfare of his own country to make him a warm supporter of N.Z. manufactures. The trouble seems to be that not only is he not asked to support them, but that he generally has very little means of ascertaining whether an article is locally-made or imported. That remarkable American, Henry Ford, in a recent newspaper interview, sjud, ‘lt’s no use branding an article ‘Made in U.S.A.’ unless that means that it is the best in the world.” There is a lot of shrewd insight in that remark, and applying its meaning to New Zealand we gather that most of the New Zealand manufacturers are overmodest concerning the quality of their product, since they fail to brand , it with either their name or the country of its origin. We are convinced that there is no good reason for this diffidence, and that a vigorous and adequate campaign of publicity on behalf of New Zealand manufactures would tremendously stimulate our secondary industries. Such a campaign, of course, to have really good results, must be undertaken by individual manufacturers, in conjunction with a policy of letting the goods advertise themselves. Vague generalities and hazy appeals to’ patriotic sentiments will not help to sell anything. The New Zealand manufacturer is no more immune than any other trader from the necessity of advertising.” Our contemporary’s principal objection to the Government’s proposal to spend the taxpayers’ money on free advertising propaganda is that it will strengthen manufacturers in their mistaken belief that there is no need to exert themselves in the matter.