“SADDER BUT WISER."

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17787, 12 August 1929, Page 9

“SADDER BUT WISER."

SALESMAN’S METHODS. SETTLER’S COMPLAINT. EMPIRE SENTIMENT ABUSED. A country settler gives the following account of a recent experience with a travelling salesman: — “I wonder how many other people have had the same experience as I, and are now wiser and sadder'women. A young man came to the door last week —nothing like the ordinary traveller — I in fact, he began by assuring me that he was not an ordinary traveller, but ! was employed by the New Zealand Publicity Office to boost British-made goods, and to try and induce people to help the unemployment problem in ■ England by buying frona our own | people. His nice patriotic sentiments ' and references to Empire Week quite j lulled my suspicions. He went on to ! say how Germany had renamed some |of her towns for some of our big manufacturing centres, thus deluding people into buying ‘British’ goods that were really made in Germany. In view of this a number of English manufacturers had, he said, combined, and by offering their unemployed part wages, amounting to twice as much as the dole allowed, and by foregoing all profits for themselves, they were issuing an article at about half the usual cost. Then our New Zealand Government was doing its bit also by i allowing these goods in duty free, and it was costing the New. Zealand Publicity Office £3 17s Gd to place each finished article in the homes of the people. Thus all outside profits were cut out, and we were receiving the best quality British goods at exactly one-third of their usual cost, and so on ad lib. Then he went out to his car and brought in the goods, and they certainly looked nice. “I suppose you will wonder how any sane woman could have believed all the foregoing, but that young man, apparently so honest and open, could make anyone believe anything, and I ain not the only one who fell in about here. His goods were just the cheapest quality, camouflaged to look the real thing yet he must have taken at least £2OO out of this district alone. I am writing this in the hope of preventing other people from doing as I did, and from spending the sleepless nights I spent. “What my husband said when he came home and saw my ‘bargain’ can be imagined, and I really deserved it. My one hope now is that some day I may meet that young man again.” “I hope you will publish this, and so help to protect other country women from this particular salesman who is travelling around." [When approached regarding the above the Government Publicity Officer denied all knowledge of the salesman referred to, and also pointed out that no canvassers are employed by his department. He further stated that | the camera staff attached to the office, who are the only representatives tour- , ing the Dominion, carry credentials I and badges indicating that they arc i accredited representatives of the de- | partment. In any case, no officer of the'department is possessed of autho- j rity to solicit payment for any services whatever.]