HIGH WOOL PRICES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 65, 19 March 1925, Page 3

HIGH WOOL PRICES

TRIALS OF THE TRADE.

CFROB OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.*

LONDON, 24th January. Mr. Bertram Parkinson, of Bradford, who has just been elected president of the British Wool Federation, says that the wool textile industry is struggling through a difficult period, and that the year has not opened very brightly for the trade. Prices are from 20 to 70 per cent, dearer than they wore a year ago. There could be no true prosperity, he added, with raw material at such levels and exchanges and tariffs everywhere against the trade. No one conversant with the working of the textile trade would suggest that prices had been foroed to the present high level by Bradford The real point,was that the demand for wool for some time past had been in excess of supply, and that would continue until the supply overtook the demand, or until prices reached such a level that substitutes would be increasingly used. Continental and Japanese competition, having the advantage of favourable exchanges, lower taxation, and low conversion costs, could afford to pay better prices for their wool than the British people, and could undersell the latter in the home and foreign markets with- the finished products. The brunt fell on the manufacturers and merchants.