LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 115, 7 January 1926, Page 5

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. tire annual meeting of the association last night. Manufacturers, the president said, must face intenser competition from abroad, and ■he made various suggestions as to the course which ought to be followed if this competition is to be met effectively. But it seems to us that the association, which presumably shares its president’s views, suspects dangers which do not exist, and exaggerate others which do. Whfen we hear talk of a ‘ public outcry engendered from time to time by overseas interests with the connivance of the freetrade press,’ we wonder that a ‘ public outcry ’ should be so inaudible. We 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 mischievious 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 has died out. The great handicaps to the New Zealand industries are high production costs and the want of large-scale methods of manufacture, and it is to these handicaps—which are much lightened, of course, 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 inspiration 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 heed of something does not start out with a paper in his hand l ; but he has read ’the 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 the hope that he may somehow before sunset chance upon some unheard of article of New Zealand manufacture that will suit him. If | the manufacturers were to adopt the I president’s theory concerning publicity, they would still be complaining of hard 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 fortvard movement which is promised.”