Page 3 Advertisements Column 2

Levin Daily Chronicle, 7 May 1918, Page 3

Says the Auckland '' Star'': —The steady increase in the price of boots and shoes for children since the outbreak of the war has formed the subject of frequent and bitter comment on the part of the man or woman in comparatively poor circumstances who has to provide for a large family. Questioned with regard to the matter, a local business man, interested in the boot trade, stated that the prices of children's boots and shoes were exceptionally high at the present time. One reason for this he stated, was the fact that children's footwear was not now made in New Zealand. The supplies from the Old Country had been cut off, many men engaged in the industry in the Dominion had gone to the war, and those who remained wore in many cases engaged in the manufacture of bootß for soldiers . The remedy, he contended, lay in the removal of the higli duties that had to be paid on imported footwear." If this duty were removed, boots and shoes could bo imported from Australia and sold at a very much lower rate than they were at present, and any locally-made article that was put on the market would have to come down in price accordingly. As, it was, tho country was paying an enormous sum of money for the development of an industry iu which the number of men employed was comparatively small. And it had to bo remembered that soldiers' dependents were equally penalised with others by the high prices ruling.