THE WOOL MARKET

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 8, 9 July 1931, Page 8

THE WOOL MARKET

Disappointment, no doubt, will, be felt by growers and others less intimately associated with tlie wool'industry at the low values ruling in London for the raw material. Prices for crossbreds, wools in which New Zealand is mostly interested, are down on closing rates of the May sales by anything from 5 per cent, to 15 per cent., according to fineness. A fall of 10 per cent, was forecasted. at the end of but subsequently the international political atmosphere, improved as a result of the consideration given to the Hoover. War Debt scheme; a difficult dispute between manufacturers and operatives in the Turcoing-Roubaix wool centre was settled; and at the end of last week there was a slight advance in the Bradford wool tops market." These factors were to be taken as contributory to an improved market when tlie sales opened in Coleman Street, on Tuesday, but that change for the better has not yet taken'placei A penny-a pound advance in tlie price of the raw material at the present time would exert a heartening as well as a good pecuniary influence on * tlie economic situation in New Zealand to-day. Confidence, it seems, is not yet enticed back to the wool market. Enticed, should be the appropriate word, for there appears to be no other way by which the prices of wool, as those of many' other commodities, can be brought to the point where they will give a reasonable margin of profit over cost'of production. Confidence cannot be dragged back to the market place. Unlike so many others engaged in other branches of husbandry, the wool-growers of Australia and New Zealand have not succumbed to such economic empirics as price-control, or State-aid in money, or high duties. Their feelings on such schemes appear to have been fully reflected in the opinion of the Empire Wool Conference recently sitting in Melbourne and representative of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. This Conference emphatically affirmed that "any scheme for the marketing of wool which disregards the law of supply and demand cannot be given consideration." This decision may or may not have been influenced by the precedent offered by the wheat growers of Canada, who set out to dictate to the world what it should pay for wheat, and lamentably failed. Apparently the Wool Conference thought, as many merchants and manufacturers think, that returns can yet be improved by judicious marketing, exploiting new markets, and new uses for wool and woollen goods, also by effecting every possible economy in the production and handling and marketing of the raw material. The difficulty in the way of increased consumption appears to be not the disinclination of the public to "buy more wool" but the inability to replenish its wardrobes at the current prices for woollen clothing. When purchasing power and prices are nearer than they are at present, then, perhaps, improvement in the price of wool will be noticeable. A. better feeling in the world of business than.now prevails _ will certainly bring about this desirable change. .