CONTROL OF WINTER SHOW

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 618, 21 March 1929, Page 8

CONTROL OF WINTER SHOW

AS a form of diplomacy suitable for use at those usually genial discussions known as round-table conferences, the methods

adopted by the Auckland Agricultural raid Pastoral Association cannot he commended. When delegates from this body met representatives of the Manufacturers’ Association with the ostensible purpose of negotiating for enquitable joint control of the Winter Show, their first act was to fling before the astonished manufacturers a set of preposterous conditions which they flatly refused to modify. The customary atmosphere of a round-table conference eould not possibly survive in a discussion thus initiated, and the manufacturers’ delegates had no option but to withdraw.

It is impossible to argue that the entries and exhibits which the influence of the Agricultural and Pastoral Association draws to the Winter Show are of no general interest, but the Association apparently fails to understand that the Winter Show caters largely—if not almost exclusively—for a city population, with whom displays featuring- new developments in science, engineering and commerce are at least equally popular. It is true that the steadily-improving show has in the past done much to emphasise to townsmen their dependence on rural industries, and to effect that closer understanding and sympathy that are so desirable. But if the promotion of this harmony has been the purpose of the A. and P. Association in the past, its attitude toward the Manufacturers’ Association at the moment is a striking variation from former policy.

There is no need for tears on behalf of the Manufacturers’ Association, for that body is a competent organisation run on business lines, and with its great range of resources could undoubtedly run a show that would attract the people and thus show a profit to the promoters, enabling them not only to realise their ambition of at length securing for the show its own exhibition buildings—an ambition with which the A. and P. Association showed a strange lack of sympathy —but also to prosecute its energetic propaganda on behalf of New Zealand-made goods. Allowing for the capacity of manufacturers to run their own show, however, it is hardly desirable yet to contemplate the necessity. If the A. and P. Association can be induced to approach further conferences in a more amiable and conciliatory spirit, there is no reason why the difficulties of joint control should not he eased, and bigger and better shows run by the combined bodies in the future.