Wool Sales.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5701, 7 December 1889, Page 3

Wool Sales.

ITO THE EDITOR. I

Sib, —As a quondam knight of the hammer, and one who, with tho exception of Mr. C. B. Hoadley, has perhaps done as much as anyone in Napi»r to persuade growers to offer their weol by public auction, I cannot refrain from breaking a lance with my friend Mr. A. C. Lang over this discussion, and as I am now neither a buyer. nor a seller, my lance is a free one. Mr. Lang's letter, put shortly, amounts to this—that he offers his full limit privately and considers himself bound to do so, but that at auction he will buy below his limit if he can, and therefore it is better for growers to sell privately rather than by auction. Ii all other buyers would make the same declaration, and if we were as well acquainted with them as we are with Mr. Lang, and could therefore believe them,: the wool auctioneer, like Othello, would, find his occupation gone. There are buyers and buyers. Certainly we have Mr. Lang's word for it that the wool buyer " makes his bed, and has to lie on it," but he can only guarantee that he never lies anywhere else. But this is digression. There are now a number of gentlemen in New Zealand who are wool buyers only, and are the salaried servants of their principals. They have no monetary or mercantile transactions with a large clientele whose confidence they wish to retain, but they are under no obligations to anyone except to their principals. I have known a buyer who twice increased his offer in a fortnight (it was not Mr. Lang). This buyer may or he may not have dove so upon cable advice increasing his limit. I have known wool buyers—yea, even Mr Lang—attend wool sales with large orders for execution, and fall very far short of fulfilling them, because other buyers had higher limits, although " such limits wero determined by the Tuling price of top in the Bradford or French market." Mr Lang says that ho purchased " about one-third of,the catalogue" (of 3rd December). Quite so. but as soon as our sales comprise from lour to five thousand bales we shall secure the attendance of the buyers to whom I have referred, and the com-; petition for " decent lots" will be much improved. ■ . Mr Lang continues, " and I can truly Say that the prices are very considerably in my favor as compared with wools bought privately.'' This is an argument for selling wool privately, but I have already shown that it is only applicable to the buyer, who " makes his bed and has to lie upon it, and at present Mr Lang is the only buyer who has given us the virtuous assurance that he never lies elsewhere ; therefore, we < can only sell privately to Mr Lang. This \ expression of opinion displays the trueness -of my friend's heart rather than the brilliancy of his wit, for with what joy would the persons for whom Mr Lang buys read the statement that although he can buy cheaper by auction he advises the grower to sell to him privately, and to be assured that then the manufacturer's full limit will be paid. A gentleman called 3t. Matthew makes some pertinent remarks in tho concluding lives of his twenty-fourth verse of his sixth chapter which will repay

perusal. . I am not going into the questions ot discount, commission, &0., which make up 10s 6d per bale, because at the risk of being thought rude, I must characterise that portion of my friend's letter ns " flap- "•" doodle ;" nor will I argue tho point of cut bales, further than to remark that Mr Lang's statement is not borne out by the large and ever-increasing Australian and New Zealatul catalogue*. But I must quote him once moro:—" Growers who sold before the wool was all off the sheep s back, or who dealt before shearing began, have undoubtedly had a piece of bad luck, as this unusually wet weather has washed a large percentage of grease, and consequently weight, out of the wool, and made what ig left more valuable to the purchaser. This, however, is the fortuno of war, but it might just as easily have been tho other way." Like Maccabe's Irishman, " I understand him perfectly, but I don't know what ho means." . , When Mr Lang tells us he has seen the price of cut bales " drop a halfpenny in the London market" I can't refute his statement, but when besays that the " unusually wet weather" washes the grease out, but it " might easily be the other way," I know he is wrong. I have had a much longer experience of New Zealand raiti than Mr Lang, and until we obtain a special license from Heaven to alter the quality of the water supplied, I positively assert that the rain will oontinue to make the wool light. No grower who has once commenced bearing will during fine weather stay his hand until tho grease makes his clip heavier, bntif he experiences this " unusually wet weather," he must stop, even if ten per cent. of his weight bo washed out The "fortune of this kind of " war" is all with the purchaser. My friend concludes by saying that you, Sir, "aro apparently looking at this question entirely from an auctioneer's point of view;" but it does not seem to strike him that he is looking at it "entirely from Mr A. C. Lang's point of view," who, to continue the quotation, "naturally desires to swell his wool purchase commission by any fair means in his power." One of tho leading London wool brokers whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Australia told me that manufacturers had practically no supplies, that buying orders were being sent out freely, and that when . they were fulfilled there would probably be \ a steading and possibly a drop in prices, so that I *' havo no doubt but that persons who havo sold to Mr Lang have done well," but when he seriously attacks the time-honored institution of sale by public auction it is impossible not to poke fun at him, and to suggest that he ia obviously "barking up tho wrong bamboo."—l am,. &c, ■■'■.. ROBERT DOBSON. 5 Napier, 6th December, 1889.