OUTLOOK FOR TRADE.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17976, 22 March 1930, Page 7

OUTLOOK FOR TRADE.

IMPROVED PROSPECTS. V PtO NEED FOR PESSIMISM. ON EVE OP REVIVAL. Mr W- Appleton, managing director of the -Charles Haines Advertising Agency, addressed a meeting of the Auckland Advertising Club yesterday. lie struck an optimistic note, and declared his conviction, after an extended .world tour, that New Zealand manufacturers were most favourably circumstanced, and were confronted with wonderful opportunities, as the public were beginning to acquire a spirit of co-operation in their preference for New Zealand-made goods.

The most outstanding lessons to be learned from a close personal study of conditions overseas were that in the manufacturing field there must be mass production and mass selling. Tremendous developments were now In progress in the Old Country, and within the next few years there would is a hold bid for more overseas trade on the part of British concerns. He did Not Feel At Ail Pesslmlstio as to the outcome, nor as to the ultimate position of the English manufacturer. As in the case of mass production, so with mass selling, the Americans had led the field in many lines, hut the American manufacturer had been assisted to a great extent in his domestic market by a policy of high protection. This enabled him to foster and build up a large foreign connection, even if, for a time, .the actual trade did not warrant the expenditure made upon it. The best lesson that the Old Country had was the operation of the McKenna duties. To-day the most flourishing industries in Great Britain were those protected by the Safeguarding Act. Notable examples were the motor industry and the silk and lace, industries. Other industries in England would flourish if the dumping of foreign goods were stopped, and thousands of the unemployed would be absorbed. Touching on the marketing of New Zealand primary products in the United Kingdom, Mr ' Appleton said that, generally speaking, an extremely high standard had been maintained. Mass production methods had been adopted, with excellent results, but there were undoubted weaknesses. One, he considered, was the present method of dumping produce into one central port (London) instead of

Decentralising the Distribution to some extent at the other end. All necessary precautions were taken in New Zealand in grading and packing, and the ships collected produce from a dozen or more ports, hut once on the ship it was sent to one market, instead of to places like Hull, Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool, in addition to London. Few people seemed to realise that there was a far greater population to he served in the Midlands and the North of England, including, of course, Scotland, than there was within an economic radius of London. The New Zealand producer paid the rail freight from London to the consumer because the selling price must he competitive. If Denmark could ship direct to the cast of England ports, New Zealand should do the same. Greater concentration on the distribution and selling would give even better results. What New Zealand would have to realise was that prices of all commodities must Come Back to Pre-war Level. In many lines they had already done so. New Zealand had been extremely fortunate, and it was only when one studied conditions in other lands that it could be realised how lucky people were in New Zealand. Even in what was regarded as prosperous America, tiie bulk of the people were much ■worse off than in New Zealand, while in Europe conditions were more desperate still.

Summing up, Mr Appleton said there was no necessity for people in the Dominion to become unduly pessimistic. Contrasting the lot of people here with those in other countries, he remarked that .working conditions generally were much more satisfactory in this Dominion. Wealth, in the main, was very evenly distributed, and while perhaps it was not possible to build up fortunes so rapidly in New Zealand as it was in other parts of the globe, the great bulk of the people were much better off. Wages might have to come down, but that would not be a great hardship, because world prices for practically every commodity had now receded almost to the 1914 level. “What we have to fight in New Zealand,” said Mr Appleton, “is this wave of pessimism. It is true that we have a certain amount of unemployment in New Zealand, but this is nothing compared to what is prevailing in other parts of the globe. Generally speaking, we are a happy, contented people.”