Evening Post. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1926. BUYING FROM OUR BEST CUSTOMER

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1926. BUYING FROM OUR BEST CUSTOMER

"The industries of the Home Country," writes Mr. Stanley Baldwin in his message for the "Evening Post" British Trade Number, "have need to-day of all the sympathetic aid that our partners in the Empire can give to meet the difficulties arising from the World I War." The call is, in the first place, a call to British patriotism. Tc was not slackness or sloth that gave a setback to British trade between 1914 and 1918. Home manufacturers may at times have been careless of Imperial trade opportunities. They may have let slip chances of tightening their grip upon Dominion markets. But such carelessness cannot be written down as the main cause of the trade advance made by rival nations. Great Britain's competitors made their inroads on her trade between 1914 and 1918 not while she slept but while she fought. As comrades of the Mother Country in the Great War, we stood by her side in the strife which led to victory. It is now our patriotic duty to stand again by her side as partners in her economic destiny. The War hindered our commerce but little. Britain bought our produce and kept our sea-highways open. We are doing no less than our plain duty if we now strive to repay her. Simple gratitude requires this from us; but if we choose to take « lower level of argument we cannot thereby escape our obligation. 'Business is business," it may be said; and the answer must be that it is good business to buy from Britain. What manufacturer, producer, or trader would think of passing by his best customer? Would he not rather seek to put in that customer's hands all the trade he could command? Great Britain is our best customer. She takes 80 per cent, of what we have to sell and we buy from her 52 per cent, of our imported requirements. Clearly there is scope for improvement upon our side. Selfishness, good business management, enlightened self-interest—or whatever else we may choose to call it^should lead us to ' regard the interest of the United Kingdom as inseparable from our own. For every pound we spend with Great Britain we now obtain much more than twenty shillings' worth of custom. Surely, then, we are neglecting our own interests when we send elsewhere any money which can possibly be spent in the purchase of British gooda. Of all the countries with which we do any appreciable volume of trade Great Britain is the only one that gives us as good as we send. With all the others we sell too little and we buy too much. In other words, we have an adverse trade balance. This we must pay by means of the credits which Britain's greater buying gives us in London. An even balance of trade with all countries is impossible of attainment, but it is sound economic policy to redress the balance as far as possible. Our British preferential tariff affords some aid in this readjustment, but individual citizens should not rely upon the Government to do all their thinking and acting for them.! They should find the weakness and apply the remedy themselves. In this case the remedy is to buy British goods whenever they -can be bought, and to turn to the foreign manufacturer not first but last. To do so will not involve loss or the acceptance of inferior quality. "Those industries," states Mr. Baldwin, "are still supreme in the quality of their products." The articles which we publish from leading manufacturers and business men contain ample material in proof of this assertion. British quality has not been lowered; but some of her erstwhile customers during the War developed other buying habits. All the arts of the salesman have been used to win and keep the Dominion custom. The consequence is now that in some lines the buyer is firmly persuaded that he obtains greater value from the foreign manufacturer. The British manufacturer does not ask. that he should be given an artificial advantage over his competitor; but he does make a plea for fair judgment—a fair inquiry concerning the price of what he has to sell and a fair test of the quality. Judged upon this basis, he is confident of the result. He is anxious to supply this market, and the least that we can do (and we should do it in our own interests) is to give him every opportunity of studying our requirements and meeting them.