NEGLECTED WOOL GROWERS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1196, 3 August 1911, Page 8

NEGLECTED WOOL GROWERS.

APATHETIC LEGISLATORS. Commenting on the fact that, the South African Governments have improved thenwool by supplying settlers with stud sheep from Australia, appointing experts, and granting preferential railway rates on all wool which has been ' shorn, cleaned, sorted, and baled, in accordance with regulations drawn up by the Department of Agriculture, "Uaigety's Itevieiv" says it i., a most remarkable fact that Australians and New Zealanders have never received very much encouragement or assistance. Legislators in the past either did not recognise that these countries owed their prosperous condition to the golden lleece more than to all other commodities put together, or else they had thought llockmasters were getting along famously without, any assistance. This may have been all very well when the flocks were large and ill the hands of the comparatively few, but. now that the country was being closely settled, and there were, actually more sheepfarmera than grain-growers in the Commonwealth and Dominion, it behoved the .various Governments tj take action, otherwise Ihcre was every possibility of serious deterioration in the Australian and New Zealand clip. The Governments had assisted lesser industries, but so far had practically ignored the wool industry. It was not yet too late to appoint sheep and wool experts lo instruct farmers nor to put a still export duty on live merino sheep. We have done infinitely more harm to our wool-growers by not checking the export of stud merino sheep, the "Keyicw" concludes, than South Africa would do to her Angora goat and ostrich breeders by abolishing the export regulation of those animals.