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if Hong Kong is going to keep its place in the industrial field. Because of their visit, Hong Kong industry will know a little better the goal towards which it must aim and in knowing that goal can estimate the efforts and practices which will be essential if the road to that goal is to be traversed. It would be unwise to say more than that the grain of mustard seed has been sown but without that sowing there could have been no harvest.
12.
The Committee too is convinced that the British Industries Fair has done a great deal to bring Hong Kong and the Motherland into closer union. The centre of the Empire is no longer thought of as a far distant fairyland known only vicariously through the administrators and businessmen who come to live in our Colony. Our representatives saw the British Industries Fair as the centre of the Empire in which Hong Kong is an integral and essential unit, where the people who call Hong Kong their home are welcomed because they are members of a larger whole we call the Empire. Our efforts, our production, our way of life, and our capacity to contribute to the Empire have been amply demonstrated in the United Kingdom. On the other side there must be hundreds of persons in Britain to-day who know more about Hong Kong because they have met our representatives or because they have heard of our participation in the British Industries Fair. Through the personal and business relationships which have been established with the British in their own country, we feel confident that a closer understanding has been achieved between the people of Britain and of this Colony, and it is from such an understanding that the links are forged which bind the component parts of the Empire together.
FINANCE.
13. It must be conceded that the financing of this foray into the British In- dustries Fair left much to be desired. The correct method would have been to estimate the approximate cost of the whole exhibition and then apportion it among the exhibitors. Unfortunately, figures on which a very approximate cost could have been based were about the latest information which became available to the Committee. In point of fact the exhibits were well on their way to London before the first estimates, which were by no means comprehensive, became available. For example, the first mention of the rent of the stall was 5/- per square foot, but later it turned out that this was only the floor footage and that the cost of the shell stall would be 27/- per square foot. In addition, we were pioneers in the exhibiting business, and many of the incidentals, such as the type and cost of lighting, the installation of a telephone, the construction costs of the stand only came to light in the days before the exhibition opened.
The Hong Kong Government had generously promised to meet the rent of the stall space, and exhibitors were therefore only called upon to meet the additional supplementary costs. In the circumstances, the Committee thought it wiser to appeal to exhibitors to contribute what they could towards these costs and the generous response of some of the larger Hong Kong firms was responsible for the Committee being able to balance its budget. It happened therefore, that some exhibitors paid more than the amount of space which they would have been required to pay had the cost been assessed on a footage or "site" basis. This was perhaps the most difficult problem which the Committee had to face in organising the exhibition and the Com- mittee records its appreciation of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and the larger contributors for the help they gave without which the Fair could never have been a success.
This situation is not likely to arise again for another year. It will always be possible to fix an estimate on the basis of the previous year's costs. The total cost of running an exhibition "on the cheap" is not to be recommended.
While a lavish squandering of money is not advocated, a policy of cheese-paring is considered in advertising of this nature to be a false economy.
OUR THANKS.
14. In addition to those firms who helped the exhibition by their generous financial aid, we would express our special thanks to all who exhibited at this Fair,