The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 1898.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9389, 16 March 1898, Page 2

The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY. ] WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 1898.

ITINERANT TRADERS.

The drapers of Wanganui complain bitterly, and not without reason, of the unfair competition they are subjected to by visiting traders, who bring from other places large stocks of soft goods, which they have been unable to dispose of in their own towns. These stocks are mostly composed of what has been too long on the shelves, and become almost unsaleable except at a " slaughtering sale," where at the opening a few cheap lines are judiciously sold to the usual bargain hunters, who, like " first nighters " at a theatre, may be seen congregated round the door before it is opened on the first day of one of these sales. Many heads of families hold such things in wellfounded dread, as they have learnt to their cost what an expensive thing a drapery bargain really is, and how their wives have been led into buying articles they either did not really require, or could not afford, simply because they were marked as having been reduced from 25 to 50 per cent, in price ; a bait many women cannot resist, as all drapers know and take advantage of. But what we waut to draw attention to is the unfairness of allowing these itinerant vendors of soft goods to come into the town, take a shop for a few weeks, and compete against resident traders, who are obliged to pay heavy rents and taxes, whilst their opponents do neither, and are mere birds of passage who contribute nothing towards the municipal funds, and reap all the benefit of their expenditure. This is wrong. Such people should be called upon to pay a substantial license fee to the Borough Council, to be refunded if the visitors become permanent traders. A period of, say, twelve months' continuous occupation of business premises should be the test of this intention. In many places in the colony travelling soft goods and other vendors are compelled to pay such a fee ere being allowed to commence short bargain sales, which are, without doubt, the means of crippling many of the resident business people, who see people whose names have been on their books for long periods going with their ready money to these so-called " cheap sales," instead of paying their overdue accounts. This must be most galling to the resident trader, who, to com pete with their visiting opponents, are compelled to lower their prices so much that little or no profit remains, whilst on many lines an actual loss has to be faced, in order to keep custom. So great has this evil grown in Wanganui that our local drapers arc complaining bitterly of having to compete on unfair terms with people who come here for a few weeks with drapery stocks which have been eliminated from the overstocked shelves of shops in other parts of the colony, and which have to be sold at starvation rates to effect a clearance, and provide their owners with ready money to^meet pressing engagements. This is a matter the members of the Wanganui Borough Council should lose no time in attending td, as it is their duty to protect the resident traders, whose burdens of local rates are very heavy. The Hawera Borough Council, we believe, has a bye-law in force which compels itinerant traders, who take business premises for a short period, to pay a license fee as a contribution towards the rates. If the same were insisted on here, and the fee fixed at a substantial figure, this evil would be greatly abated, and our local traders in some measure protected against unfair competition. We commend the matter to our City Fathers, who, we trust, will give it their early and serious consideration. .