Uses for Wool.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19889, 28 March 1930, Page 12

Uses for Wool.

The common impression that the demand for wool is limited by its use for clothing was corrected recently in an address given before the Bradford Textile Society by Mr William Hunter, a director of a well-known Bradford manufacturing concern. This was a very full account of the great diversity of production in which wool is required, and made it clear that even that diversity can be extended. The wool production of the world is estimated at 10,000,000 bales, of which fully one half is required for purposes other than clothing. Three million bales, for example, are used in the manufacture of floor coverings, and another two million bales for other incidental purposes. These uses alone provide a big market for the woolgrower and that market offers the possibility of considerable extension, especially in Eastern countries, as the Westernising influence develops. It may also be news to many that very large quantities of wool are needed annually for crushing beans and other seeds, for making vegetable oils of various kinds, for use either with or instead of goat hair and camel hair in the production of belts for driving machinery, for the preparation of wood pulp as 1 part of the process of manufacturing newsprint, and in one of the stages of manufacturing cigarette paper. A very large use is also made of wool for the upholstery of the bodies of motor-cars, and for the manufacture of material required by the furnishing trades. Pure wool is therefore a commodity essential for so many purposes that it must always find a market. Although there are periods when lower prices have to be Suffered by the growers, there is no need to fear a general and permanent decline in world demand. The opposite is much more probable, a growth which sound methods will stimulate and confirm. Advertising and research stand first among' those methods; and co-operation among all wool-producing countries and wool-manufacturing centres to press on with both will give the industry a new energy and prosperity. Such a policy is immeasurably better than any calculated restriction of output to raise prices; for an assured and expanding market at fair prices will do more to benefit the grower than any temporary expedients born of depression.