SALE OF WOOL

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 11 May 1921, Page 8

SALE OF WOOL

THE AUSTRALIAN SCHEME. RESTING ON A FALLACY.

RY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYBIGHT ' (Received May 11, 9.45 a.m.) LONDON, May 10. The Bradford Observer says the bare cabled outline of the Australian wool scheme suggests that it is fairly harmless, but foreshadows an extensive bureaucratic interference with the free play of commerce. The scheme rests upon the fallacy that it is possible, for the Australian Government to dictate to the world prices foY wool, irrespective of values in competing markets. Apparently Mr Hughes' fear of the consequences of great accumulations of lower grade wools very largely influenced the Government in deciding to resort to legislative coercion of the growers, but the Government cannot compel a single user tcL. buy a bale. The users will exercise their preference as before, and if the prices are arbitrary consumers will naturally prefer to take' superior wool, making the lower qxialities less saleable, especially as there is plenty of free wool of low quality in other parts of the world, as in South America. The great probability is, therefore, that low wools, instead of diminishing, will tend to grow. Mr Hughes' mountain of wool is trembling on the edge of a precipice, and will assume more fearsome, dimensions than ever. The weak point about the control scheme is it ends at the Australian coast. It was well mtentioned,/but it would benefit some growers at others' expense, and was unfortunate in its disturbing influence, exerted just at a moment when there were notable signs throughout the world of a reawakening in the wool trade which, if allowed to . develop, would probably have shown the Australian scheme to be unnecessary.