EMPIRE COMMERCE.

Wairarapa Age, 17 March 1927, Page 3

EMPIRE COMMERCE.

TRADE AND EMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN. MOT’hER COUNTRY’S BEST OUTLET. LONDON, Miron 15. “If the world had increase! its purchasing of British goods commensurately with the increase in the Dominions, Britain’s unemployment problem would now be negligible,’’ said Mr D. A. MacDougall, at the Colonial Institute’s luncheon. England failed to realise that the Empire was becoming its most important trade outlet, because it never paid attention to the destination of the exports.

Australia and New Zealand and South Africa had increased substantially, while the rest of the world was decreasing its buying of British goods. Mr. MacDougall urged that Britishers should study the quality of exports, and should realise that Australians wanted only the best. The solution of the migration problem rested largely in England giving a substantial voluntary preference. Mr. MacDougall challenged a Midland newspaper leader asserting that Australia was vindictive to Britain’s cotton trade. If six million Australians were buying more cotton goods from England than the whole of America, w]mt would be considered generous?—(A. and N.Z.)

FOOD IMPORTS. BRITISH LABOUR PROPOSALS. LONDON, March 15. The agenda of the Independent Labour Party’s Easter conference at Leicester includes a recommendation from Dundeq, that the Government should purchase in bulk the essential food imports from the dominions and elsewhere and fix reduced retail prices, obviating the intervention of speculators and middlemen. The motion urges negotiation with Dominion Labour Parties and Governments in an effort to prepare to cheapen food prices on the advent of a British Labour Government.—(A. and N.Z.)