GRAMOPHONES IN SCHOOLS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18414, 22 June 1925, Page 7

GRAMOPHONES IN SCHOOLS.

COMMENT ON RECENT PROTEST. Tlio Council .of the New Zealand Association of British. Manufacturers and Agents has considered a report of a meeting of the Wellington Provincial Industrial Association, at which -a protest was made' against the action of .the Education Department in accepting tenders for imported gramophones in preference to accepting the tender of a concern which manufactures machines locally. "In the first place," writes the Association of British Manufacturers to the Industrial Association, "we observe that throughout the report the instrument selected by the Education Department is referred to as an 'imported' machine. This term, of course, includes machines imported from foreign countries as well as from Britain, and it would surely have been less misleading to the public to have referred to this particular instrument, which is xJritish made in every detail, as 'British' instead of, 'imported.' "We also desiro to put on record what must be a well known fact to your Association, that practically all of the so-called ! Kew Zealand-made' instruments .are composed of motors and fittings imported, not from Britain, but from foreign cAintries, such as Switzerland, Germany, and Japan, and to some extend of wood imported from some of these countries. "It i 9 stated in the letter quoted from one of your members that they have a suspicion that in the present instance dumping prices were a contributing factor in the imported articlebeing selected, and that it .is possible that reduced Customs duties on the imported instruments might be applied for. We are' in a position to state definitely that there was positively no question of dumping pikes, and that, as regards Oil stoma duty, the instruments have paid the full tariff duty for British-made goods, and that r.o refund of duty has been fippjied for or- will be applied for by the - agents."