LOOMS BUSY

Evening Star, Issue 21055, 18 March 1932, Page 9

LOOMS BUSY

BRITISH WOOL INDUSTRY BOOM AT BRADFORD ]Pre»« Association —By Telegraph Copyright. LONDON, March IG. The Bradford correspondent of the f Daily Express ’ states that lour months of exceptional business have just been completed in the wool industry. It is agreed that this has been" the best trading quarter since the war period. The unemployed, which numbered 50,000 in September, now numbers 19,000. Scores of firms .which were facing bankruptcy in the autumn are now prospering, owing to the decline in sterling and the import duties killing competition _ from low-wage countries on the Continent. Spinning and weaving mills are now working double shifts, and wool combers are operating twenty-four hours per day. The chief boom is in fine, light fabrics for women’s wear, and Yorkshire is hoping for at least 33 per cent, on such goods. Export business is slow, but improving. The chief difficulty is the failure of twenty-three foreign countries where there are State restrictions against the export of currency to pay their debts. Yorkshire merchants favour an international clearing house for trading debts, working on the lines of a bankers’ clearing house and arranging payments by credits for accounts instead of transferring currencies.