AUSTRALIAN WOOL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 22, 7 November 1935, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN WOOL.

JAPAN’S PROPOSED PURCHASES.

GROWERS HOPE FOR INCREASE

Tliere is still talk of Japan taking 1,000,000 bales of wool a year out of the Australian market. If she does, what effect will this have on our other customers, especially Bradford. Obviously, there are difficulties ahead, writes “Warp,” in the “Sydney Mail.” At the present time 81-adford is the largest individual purchaser of wool in Australia and we are just as much interested, from the wool point of view, in seeing that this competition continues as we are that Japanese competition should be increased. In fact, the woolgrower would like to see all sections of the trade buying more—or perhaps it should be written ( ‘competing more,” for all the past season’s clip was cleared and if some of our customers had wanted more, higher prices, with some customers unsatisfied, would have resulted. 11

It all boils down in the end to the fact that the grower has no control whatever over wool after he has produced it. He certainly can say how it shall he sold, and, within limits, at what price; hut to whom it will be sold, provided the buyers are prepared to pay the price demanded’, he cannot say. Much as the grower’s feelings may incline toward the British Empire’s main wool-manufacturing centre Bradford —he is not in a position to do very much about it. As regards reciprocity, this is a very different matter. We are asked, and with a fair amount of reason, to extend our custom to those countries which buy our wool. Naturally, we cannot in every case buy exactly as much from them as they buy from iis. Even if we were able to' do this the solution of the Japanese question is still as far off ps ever, simply because we have no conti ol over the countries to whom Japan is endeavouring to sell manufactured goods. The wool trade has come to look for the Annual Review of Balgety and Co., Ltd., each year as being the most comprehensive publication of its kind: in the world, and the current issue is quite up to the high standard of its predecessors: Every phase of the industry, not only in Australian and New Zealand, but in each wiool-producing and wool-using country of the world, has been thor-

oughly covered. To use the time-worn phrase, the Annual is “a mine of information,” and there is liaadly another phrase that will adequately coyer the publication. Wool is a commodity about which the unexpected is always likely to happen, but the world generally is in far too bad a state to induce wool booms. Certainly a boom would have disastrous results—and probably within a very short time—but there is still plenty of room for price advances without exti'avagant figures intruding into the scheme of things.