N.Z. IN THE EMPIRE’S MAIN STREET

Hokitika Guardian, 16 April 1931, Page 2

N.Z. IN THE EMPIRE’S MAIN STREET

WORLL’S LARGEST NATIONAL FAIR. BRITAIN’S GREAT BAZAAR. (From a Special Correspondent). “Your Empire Marketing Board stand is the most richly representative thing of its kind 1 have seen in tbe world,” was the comment made by a Swedish tea-buyer at toy visiting the Empire’s great display at the British Industries Fair, opened this week in London and Birmingham. New Zealand and seventeen other Empire countries (or groups of countries) have spread out their wares to attract the 1 eye of buyers from all nations who ' come to visit the largest National Fair in the world. Anyone who has visited the East remembers the native “bazaar”—a I haphazard jumble of richly coloured cottons, bowls of sugar and sacks or salt, bananas and bicycles ; the variety of smells as mixed as the Wares; and animating all the ail' til activity, bustle and business. The bazaar is a nerve--1 cell of trade, complete in itself yet mysteriously linked with thousand ot others to form a complicated, sensitive nervous system of commerce. AN EMPIRE BAZAAR. The Empire Marketing Board's stand at- this vast Fair (with its fit teen miles of stands) reminds one forcibly of a bazaar from which the smells and the noise have been sub tracted and a newv dignity added by tbe fine design of tbe Pavilion, for which Mr Chari ’s Holden (one of the leading British architost* of the nm 1 dern school who was responsible for the well-known “Underground” building) is responsible. | The Malayan warrior who guards bis stand in native dress with a formidable spear, the black officers in charge of the Gold Const and West Indian I stands, add colour to the illusion. Ground-nuts and copra from ‘ Ceylon, cinnamon and spices from India, sugar cane from Mauritius, all bring a breath 'of the distant tropics to the nostrils, in spite of the snow that lias been falling outside from cold February skies. I The Empire displays are arranged lon each side of a main street running the length of the pavilion. A stroll up I and down this street is the most romantic walk in the world. The giant harvests of the great Canadian wheat | fields or Australian wool stations, down to new-born products like Cyprus Turkish Delight or Mauritius cigarettes, fti‘6 coiifcentfatcd in two liiies of crowded counters. In half ni\ hour you can get a bird's eye view of £3O-1,000,000 j worth of trade—the sum total of tho * overseas Empire’s exports to the United Kingdom. New Zealand’s stand has the usual attractive display of butter, honey, cheese and lamb. Butter is sold in small samples and pleople why buy it . to take home can taste the reason why j it s sales have been multiplied four-fold | since before the war. Jars of honey are also on sale. j In the central avenue are benches where visitors can sit to watch the Empire Marketing Board’s daylight cinema projector showing films of Empire production scenes. SEAL-SKINS FOR THE QUEEN. Contrast is the essence of the Em- * pire. Opposite New Zealand .the most Southern Dominion, is Newfoundland, the most northern, and a newcomer to the Empire Marketing Board’s hall. Sealskins, salmon and cod liver oil are her products. When Her Majesty the Queen visited the pavilion she wa s so struck by the beauty of the furs that she ordered some to make up into coli lar and cuffs for a coat. Over 200,000 seals are killed every ■ year and now these soft, warm skins are on the market at 30s a piece, so ' that a first quality fur coat, I was told, could be had for £2O. The inquiries have been so brisk that by the i second day all the skins on the stand had gone as samples to interested traders. Thousands of tons of salmon, brine-frozen by a new process, are now being imported into Great Britain from the Newyfoundland fisheries, and Her Majesty also ordered some for the Buckingham Palace kitchens. Next to the seals and salmon are Mauritius sugar-canes and a new exhibit—acacia seeds which are boiled for cattle feed. On the the other side is the East African display, where Her Majesty accepted two Uganda baskets for her knitting and a Kenya cedar pencil. Ceylon, with Newfoundland, is also a newcomer. She displays beautifully worked silver and brass trays and boxes made by village craftsmen who inherit. their berets from the dav« of tli” Kandyan Kings. Southern Rhodesia devotes her stall almost entirely to tobacco. Malaya shows how to use pineapples with steak and kidney pie and with filleted sole. The Gold Coast just-

ifies its name by explaining that £600,000,000 worth of gold has been mined since its discovery in tbe 15th century. THE END OF THE SLUM I*. The Fair contains 1,100 answers to tlie pessimists whose ghoulish gloating that British industry is “down and out” is too much heard in the land. There are 1.100 exhibitors and tlie stands occupy nearly 300,000 square feet. The Fair promises to be the record yet held. On the first day it wa s visited by 1.000 home buyers and 450 foreign buyers—-an increase ol 810 p f T cent, and 65 per cent. respect vely over last year. On tlie third day there were 500 overseas and 15,000 bom ’ havers. Never before has there Iv on so striking a display of tbe ingenuity and variety of British industry Pr.ieti_ c-dlv every stand boasts a novelty. Hard times and bad trade are the finest stimulants to the British manufacturer. They make him think herd and when he does that the results arc nev, designs and improvements and inventions that still give a lead to tbe rest of tbe world. A list of new “features o'' tlie Fa : r” issued on the first day contains ovei 150 items. They ranged over every imaginable type of article from inttl '- j skin gloves to reed of steel furniture, elephants hair wrist-watch straps to “hahv’ 1 grands and all steel pianos Dr the tropics, artificial silk uiibroakabh’ gramophone records to a “robot which can detect colour shades invisible to tho human eye. Hollywood’s cinema lenses are made in Britain, o".lining machinery is exhibited by one firm which makes 50,000,000 cans a year for British packers who export canned home-grown fruit and vegetables all over tlie world. Tn tbe Cotton Textiles Exhibition, held separately at the White City, there are two miles of cotton goods. They range from fabrics so film and beautifully printed that limy are indistii\guishablei from tho finest side, to cotton which is used in tarmac l-onl surfaces. There is a large flieafr” for mannequin parades and over 400 different designs of afternoon frocks and bathing suits, tennis dresses and beach pyjamas, are paraded several times a day. The Empire Marketing Board has a stand showing exhibits of raw cotton from seven Empire countries. A third section of the Fair i s the Artificial Silk Exhibition at tbe Albert Hall, where new fabric and designs show how scientists can put tho silkworm in the shade. On the first day a buyer who had previously done all bis business on the Continent placed an order for ten miles of British artificial silk. The Fair is a magnet of Brit’sh trade. Orders are pouring into Olympia and White City. Empire buying is becoming daily a greater reality. Tbo immediate success of tlie Fair prov s that Great Britain still leads the world in design and quality in spite of foreign competition and world depressions,