WOOL AND " WOOL."

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9545, 4 December 1893, Page 4

WOOL AND " WOOL."

A case which la Its ultimate bearings neoesaarily affects the prospects of our great Auatraliau staple— wool— was tiled In October before the Leicester Borongh Police Conrb. The prosecution was undertaken by the Board of Trade, at the instigation of the Nottingham Chamber of Commerce. The defendant) was Thomas Henry Downing, trading asDiwnlng and Oo M one of the principal .hosiery manufacturers In Leicester. Mr Downing was obarged with having applied a fulse description to some articles described as Spathenhoe hygienic underclothiug— women's natural wool yeats, No. 518. On snalyfi", this make of vests was found to contain 69 per cent of cotton and only 41 per cent of wool. The defence was based on section 13 of the Merchandise Marks Act, which provides that the provisions of the Act with reference to false trade descriptions shall nob apply where prior to tho passing of the Aco a trade description, though perhaps iocorreot, was lawfully and generally applied to a certain class of goods, Numerous witnesses — spinners, manufacturers, and retailers— were called for prosecution and defence, the defonce trying to establish the fact that "every merchant ku«w very well that woollen gcoda at a low price contained an admixture oi cotton, because the'term « wool ' was used by all the large manufacture™ in 1887, and indeed until a few months ago, iv a general sense, whilst 'natural 1 was only a guide to color." To this the Mayor of Leicester, who presided at the Court, remarked that " two blacks did not make one white." But whilst a nnmber of the leading manufacturers declared that " wool " meant "wool" in the trade, and not a mixture of wool and cotton, others were as emphatic in their declaration tbat it did, and that "natural wool" covered articles priced from tho highest to the lowest, and the lowest qualities were known to be a mixture, or, as the counsel lot the defence neatly put It, "every man and merchant knew that if he paid a high price he got all woo', and if he paid a low price he got a mixture of aninul wool and vegetable wool, for id was all wool "(I) The rery natural and pertinent question of the Mayor, How are the public generally to know whether the goods are all wool or not? was objected to by the defence on the ground that in this case they were not concerned with the public, but with dealings between a manufacturer and a merchant. It was generally admitted, however, that In consequence of an action brought a few mouths ago by the well known Dr. Jaeger's Company against a firm who dealt in- adulterated tfoods, a stticter interpretation of the word " wool " had taken place, and defendant himself bad to admit tbat he had since altered the description of the goods in question, though he was now pleading bona fides. It la pleasing news to all who are interested in the progress of the ■wool trade and the Rxteneion of the wool market tbat the view of the Board of Trade was shared by the Leicester magistrates. They found that the descrlptlan need by the defend in t was a false trade description under the Act, and they fined faim the sum of £5 and costc