TRADE WITHIN EMPIRE.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17447, 6 July 1928, Page 9

TRADE WITHIN EMPIRE.

MR AMERY’S LIFE MISSION. AN ARTICLE OF FAITH. “What you have done so' successfully with your meat, you can do with vour dairy produce, fruit, honey, and other products.” Such was the view expressed by Sir Benjamin Morgan, chairman of the British Empire Producers’ Organisation, Empire Sugar Federation, and Empire Tobacco Fedoration, who arrived at Wellington by the Makura. . , “I am touring the Empire, he explained to a Dominion reporter, “with a view to promoting intcr-Empirc trade, and particularly to arrange lor continuity of supplies of primary products to Hie British market. I intend visiting Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, East Africa, and Mauritius. “The Empire Producers’ Organisation is a federation of producers’ associations of primary products in the Empire, and we want to do in regard to dairy produce, fruit, sand other food supplies what you in New Zealand, have so successfully done with your Meat Producers’ Board, with the foundation of which we were proud to be associated.

Praise for New Zealand iYleat Board.

“I am simply astounded at times,” Sir Benjamin Morgan proceeded, "to see in your press questionings as to the usefulness of this body, l was very familiar with this trade before the establishment of your board, and I believe al that time the producers of Canterbury lamb were getting about 4d per lb" for their product. If your board did not exist to-day your product would be getting even less than that. The whole trade was open to speculation; we continuously' had gluts on the British market; the produce was sold under a hundred different brands; and not a small amount of Argentine and other inferior lamb and mutton was sold in England as Canterbury. All this confusion of marketing, with ultimate loss to the producer, has been effectively disposed of and, in addition, you are saving immense sums in freight rates; and, through better grading obviating the sorting out of parcels of lamb and mutton under the separate brands and consequent loss, the steamship companies themselves are actually able to make more money out of the trade. “What you have clone so successfully with your meat,” Sir Benjamin Morgan proceeded, “you can do with your dairy produce, fruit, honey, and other products.”

What Marketing Board is Doing

Questioned as to the operations of tli c Empire Marketing Board, Sir Benjamin Morgan referred in llic highest terms to the effectiveness of the work of that board. “Through its functions,” he said, “Empire buying has become an article of faith in nearly every family in the Mother Country. The Empire Marketing Board is spending nearly a million pounds a year in advertising English products and in research work, with a view to making it possible for those products to he carried over the high seas to the consumer in Great Britain in prime condition. While we have not been able to give the Dominions a tariff preference on Empire foodstuffs, we have been able through the operations of this English Marketing Board to create a demand which is even greater than the present capacity to supply in the majority of essential food products. This is the conception and work of that great Empire statesman, Mr Amery, whose life-work has been to promote the unity of the Empire. “1 did not come to New Zealand to preach Imperialism,” Sir Benjamin Morgan concluded, “for Ibis Dominion is as essentially British as Great Britain herself,” but to confer with your men of affairs as to how we can strengthen trade lies with the Mother Country.”