LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4921, 4 January 1926, Page 3

LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

EDUCATING THE PUBLIC.

INFORMATION IN ADVANCE. Trenchant comment on methods of inducing the public to support local trade appeared in the following leading article in the Christchurch Press: “When all other interests are organising themselves, our manufacturers would be foolish if they neglected to do the same for .themselves, and our secondary industries can hardly fail to benefit if they follow the advice given to them on this point by the President of the Industrial Association at the annual meeting of the association recently. Manufacturers, the president said, must face intenser competition from abroad, and lie made various suggestions as to the course which ought to, be followed if this competition is .to be me.t effectively. But it seems to us that the association, which) presumably shares, its president's views, suspects dangers whichlio not exist and exaggerate others, which do When we hear talk of a ‘public outcry engendered from time to .time by overseas interests with the connivance of the freetrado press,’ we wonder that a’public outcry’ should be so inaudible. Wc have never heard—nobody has ever heard—any outcry against New Zealand goods, which, generally speaking, are very good goods, nor have we seen any signs, of any misehievous campaign of disparagement of these excellent articles. There is certainly a small amount of prejudice in favour of some classes of British wares as against similar wares of local manufacture, but the old general preference for the British or foreign article as such lias died out. The great handicaps to tlie New Zealand industries are high production costs, and the want of large scale methods of manufacture, and it is to these handicaps —which arc much lightened, of couroe by the protective tariff—that our manufacturers must address themselves. They are hardly likely to overcome them very completely, however, if their efforts are to have the same inspiratiojn as, the president’s really astonishing views on the value of newspaper publicity. Newspaper advertisements, he said ‘do*not educate the buying public!’ Instead of advertising, manufacturers, he recommends, should go in for ‘lectures, and campaigns, exhibitions of goods, shop and window displays, attractive get-up, effective showcards, short circulars,’ and so on. These are all good things, of course, and they would be sufficient, and even more than sufficient if it were true, in fact and in implication, that ‘the time to educate the public is at the moment of buying, and in general persons buying goods do not bring a daily paper .with them.' It would hardly be an over-statement to say that these sentiments would be dismissed, not merely as erroneous, but as utterly incomprehensible, by every successful .trader in the world. “It is perfectly true that 'the purchaser in need of something does not start out with a paper in his hand ; but he has read tlie paper before starting out. 'And he is. far more likely to go to the shop which in the paper has told him of its whereabouts, and of its goods and of .the article he seeks than to wander vaguely into town in tlie hope .that lie may somehow before sunset chance upon some unheard of article of New Zealand manufacture that will suit him. If tlie manufacturers were to. adopt the president’s theoiy concerning publicity. they would still be complaining of hat'd times* such of them as were left, a century hence. Friends of local industry’ will hope that some sounder psychology will go to the organising of . the forward movement which is promised.”