PRICE OF WOOL

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 32, 1 November 1932, Page 8

PRICE OF WOOL

Immediate Substantial Rise Unlikely

AUSTRALIAN’S WARNING

Dominion Special Service.

Auckland, Oct. 31.

A warning that farmers should not expect any immediate substantial rise in the price of wool was uttered by Sir Norman Kater, the well-known Australian grazier, who arrived by the Niagara from Vancouver on his return home from the Ottawa Conference, where he co-operated with Mr. F. H. Tout, president of the Graziers’ Association of New South Wales, in representing the Australian pastoral industry. “Since the conference,” said Sir Norman, “I have been to England and with Mr. Tout and Mr. Devereux, the official representative in London of the Australian woolgrowers and representative of the wool producers at Ottawa, I went to Bradford. So far as I could judge the wool trade appeared to be improving, but I learned nothing which would lead me to believe that we may expect any substantial rise in wool prices for some time to come.

“I think it behoves all primary producing countries to reconstruct their economic systems and cut down their costs to a degree comparable with the price levels of their export products,” he added. It was and would be dangerous, he said, for farmers to carry on as they were doing in the hope that prices would return to boom level. If they did, so much the better, but Australia and New Zealand should adjust their costs immediately to the present level of prices. They then would be proof against adversity.