Scotch Woollen Trade

Hokitika Guardian, 9 March 1922, Page 4

Scotch Woollen Trade

COMMISSION TOURS CANADA

VANCOUVER, February 8,

Canada has faced the incursion of a party of Borderers from Teesdale and Teviotdale, but they did not cross r >

Atlantic in the spirit of the old Border novers who harried their hereditary enemies south of the Tweed when there was no fighting to do at home.

On this occasion the makers of woollen cloth in the south-east of Scotland, with mills in Selkirk, Peebles, Hawick, Galashiels, Tilicoultry, Edinburgh and several smaller centres, who have given Scottish “tweeds” a world-wide reputation, determined to essay a trip to the United States and Canada in order to protect their distinctive trade marks, fully persuaded to keep the vantage ground they and their forbears had won by merit of produce. In the words of their official statement, they came to the American continent for a welldefined purpose: “Two years ago, a counteract the mischief which was beicg done to the age-long traditional reputation of Scottish woollens by the flooding of the world’s markets with doth purporting to be Scotch tweed, but for the most part neither made in Scotland nor consisting of pure virgin wool, but composed largely of shoddy frequently adulterated with cotton, tho Scottish woollen manufacturers applied to the British Government’s Board of Trade for a corrective national trade mark for the identification of genuine Scottish woollens. The Board of Trade granted the use of such a trade mark, guaranteeing tho cloth upon which the mark is stamped as ‘Made in Scotland of pure new wool,’ at the same time laying down stringent regulations as to its use.” While the party of Scottish Trade Mark Association representatives had a cordial reception in New York, and other Eastern American cities, their arrival' in Canada from the outset was a triumphant one, and the first day of the delegation’s visit to Toronto was crowded for every hour with evidences that the aims of their mission to foster /inter-imperial trade had met with genuine response in that big Ontario of population. With tho press of business, duties and events of a more social nature, the day was not one of rest for the delegates. They were welcomed on every hand, the expressions of welcome including eulogies of the land from which they—and many of their hosts—hailed, and a persistent note of concurrence in the purpose of greater and closer trade nothin ' the Empire.