WHISPER OF "A SMALL LEVY"

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 149, 28 June 1929, Page 8

WHISPER OF "A SMALL LEVY"

When prices rise,, they bring with them the spectre of substitution; when they fall ? they conjure up fears of the bankruptcy court. On one or the other of the horns of this dilemma the wool-growers and the wheat-farmers of Australia rest (or, rather, fail to rest). Wool is, or at any rate has been, up, and wheat is down; but the grower is in each case disconsolate, for the sheep man fears the rise of artificial silk, and the raiser of the staff of life says'he cannot see enough profit in it to buy bread for himself. It is true that Australia might try to off-set a low world-price for wheat by raising the price to the Australian consumer and by making him pay an export bounty (as in the case of butter). Professor Giblin, in assessing the cost to Australia of aids to export, has indeed expressed the fear that the wheatgrower will demand, and will receive, such artificial help, leaving to wool the distinction of being the only unboosted primary product, the last of the Mohicans." But' export bounties have ceased to win the applause that they might have received in Australia three or four years ago. Some economists do not consider an export bounty to be preferable to bankruptcy, but rather worse. The wheatgrower who cannot meet lower world prices by means of lower farm costs has little reason for regarding the drop in the world's markets as other^than a calamity, liticallyj he has little to hope 'for from the now obviously alarmed Bruce Government; and in the Old Country .the return of a Labour Government offers no consolation whatever. As to wool —and here New Zealand, being an exporter, is directly interested—the good prices of the past couple of years have been accompanied with a marked increase in the competition of artificial silk and other competing fabrics, so that (according to the "Evening Post's" Australian representative) "the world's consumption of wool has decreased by hundreds of millions of pounds weight," and the price of Australia's wool has latterly fallen' by 25 per cent., which meaiis fifteen millions sterling to her wool-grow-ers. A £1,500,000 publicity campaign, on "use more wool" lines, is proposed by Australian wool-grow-ers. ' But while this Australian story was told on the "Trade and Finance" page, on the cable page of the same issue Bradford returned to the campaign for cheaper wool, telling the Australian grower that'the real road to using more wool is reduction of growers' costs and of raw wool prices. Notwithstanding Continental buying competition at the Australian wool sales, the "Yorkshire Post" still seems to think that Bradford manufacturers will have the final and deciding word on this question, and that the price of wool will be determined in Britain., Besides the publicity campaign, the Australians seem to be contemplating a wool research bureau to cost £200,000, and they expect New Zealand woolgrowers to join in and contribute. But while our Australian representative speaks of "a compulsory levy of Is 3d a bale," the New Zealand Conference of iA. and P. Associations, in the course of its deliberations in this city on Wednesday, had before it a proposed levy of 3d, and the resolution it finally adopted stipulated "a small levy." In Australia the voluntary levy on wool last year was a semi-failure; they now seek a compulsory levy. The questions of compulsion and of co-operation with Australia seem to be untouched by the conference's resolution.