A Levy on Wool

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21118, 20 March 1934, Page 8

A Levy on Wool

The message in which the High Commissioner was reported to have stated that New Zealand farmers were ready to pay a levy of 2d a Laic on wool was surprising. since the levy proposals have won by no means general absent. Sir James Parr is either misinformed, or, as the secretary of the Canterbury Sheep Owners' Union suggested yesterday, inisreported. But it is a great pity that the fact is so and very much to be wished that he had been right—except that 3d might be better than 2d. Nothing is more disappointing in the Dominion s wool industry than the failure of growers to agree at Jeast and at once that they need more help from science than they arc getting, and that they must buy it. They have seen a "rival industry strengthen itself and grow gigantic, through the use of the researcher and the publicity expert: they have seen their prices collapse far below ;he cost of production, which has been the most constant industrial factor. Vet a levy on wool, to improve Quality, to develop new uses and better processes, to lessen costs, to expand markets, and to make capricious consumers faithful, lias been opposed as " more taxation," or on the ground that the Meat Board and perhaps the Government might be willing to pay instead. A North Island conference, it is true, adopted an outline scheme and left it open to the South to co-operate or to act independently. The Government. has shown, through the Prime Minister's special report, that it heartily favours and will support such an attempt by tho industry to insure and advance it>e)i. But it begins to look as if, lor want of prudence, imagination, enterprise, ana unity, tlie industry will let slip its best chance ol mastering its ov. n destiny.