A FINE LEAD TO EMPIRE TRADE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2989, 21 January 1926, Page 3

A FINE LEAD TO EMPIRE TRADE.

Under the above heading the London Daily Mail Says:— “The British public will be grateful, and with good reason, to Sir George Elliot, chairman of the Bank of New Zealand, for the generous advice which he gives to the people of that nourishing Dominion to buy British goods in preference to all others.

“Sir George points out that Great Britain is the best customer of New Zealand, and that, if only for this reason, everything possible should be done both by the Government and people in New Zealand to promote the well-being of the Mother-coun-try. Everyone knows that New Zealand on her part has always been animated with a spirit of the finest loyalty to British tradition. At the present date the average New Zealand household of five persons spends on British goods £75 a year, and in no other country in the world can such a record be approached. The English family of five in the United States buys only about £2 .10/- worth of British goods. “New Zealand's altitude to the people of the Mother-country should never he forgotten here. It is one more strong argument in favour of buying Empire-produced goods. New Zealand butter, to take an example, is as good as the best butter imported from foreign countries; and if the British public insisted upon being supplied with it, in preference to foreign butter, farming in New Zealand would be stimulated and a wider field opened for British emigration thither. There could be no better country for the emigrant to choose; the soil and climate of New Zealand are famous, and there is no land in the world which possesses more romantic scenery.

The advantages of inter-Empire trade are such that we in England should make every effort to develop if. Trifling though the preferences seem which have at last been granted on Empire wine, tobacco, and dried fruit, they are prized in the Dominions as a sign that the preference movement is making rapid progress. The old antagonism to it is dying before such significant facts as this, that Australia and New Zealand have in recent years bought more British cotton piece goods than China and Hong-kong. Above all, in buying Empire goods we keep our money in the family, as it were, and strengthen communities which in the hour of our great danger gave us the most valiant and effective aid on the field of battle.”