WOOL SUPPLY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3200, 17 April 1871, Page 3

WOOL SUPPLY.

At the room* of the Statistical Society, London, on the 20th December, 1870, an exhaustive paper on “ Wool Supply” was read by Archibald Hamilton, Esq., E. 5.8., &o. f from which ire make’a lew extracts:— I shall now proceed to explain the manner io which the London* public of colonial wool htfi conducted; These have been regulated by an association,, formed in 1836, and art 1 conducted on principles which have been considered an example to those; interested in other articles of produce. In each year there have been held four series of pubHio sales, and in • Appendix ‘No. VI. there is a table'giving fall detai afrom 1839 to 1870 inclusive j all the wool which has arrived up to the -commencement of ' each series is entitled to be included therein, and the entire quantity arrived has usually been put up and sold—it being rarely the case, and under, exceptional circumstances, that any is withdrawn or bought in when once put up to sale; a: practice which has on the, whole been of great advantage, to. the sellers. The bales are lotted by the brokers from samples drawn from one end, and on the day of sale the buyers view the wool in bulk at the ware-

house, examining the balea-at the other end ; the sales take place in the evening, and £Bo.oiio to! £IOO,OOO worth oLiro.ol is thus disposed of-in- a day ; indeed, one day’s sale In the " series 'just concluded ; consisted of •000 bales, and amounted to over£ l2o,ooo. Theaales areall ,fpr cash in 14 days, without discount. ... ! In this manner, as much as £13,000,000 to £15,000,00,#. per . annum has, of late years, been disposed of; too payments having been met with unexampled punctuality, and the trade has been almost, if not entirely, free from speculativeoperations. Nothing could have forked more satisfactorily than this system until recently, when it has, in my opinion, been outgrown by the quantity. During the lest ten years the average number of bales in each; day’s sale has Increased, from 2500 to 6600,' and in twenty years the average number of days in the year on which sales are held has increased from 79 to 109. instead, therefore, of quarterly sales, or rather of four Series of sales during,the.year, lam of opinion that it would be better to hold sales every alternate, mpnth > indeed, if the quantity continues to increase as it has done hitherto, some such change will efe long become.absolutely necessary. Already, 8000 bales are more than can be examined by the buyers, in a November day for example, even though care be taken-to offer an assortment of wool adapted to the manufacture of various kinds of goods. Again, the lots now range from 1 bale to -50 bales, so that each bid of Jd per pound may range from.£2S to £4O, according to quality. In ,a doll Market this must operate against the seller i moreover, the large lots tend to exclude the small buyers. Besides which, too much is now thrown on the market at one time, which occasions fluctuations in the sales from day to day, to an extent not observable in former years, when tpe quantity declared for sale at a time was mbre within compass. At present tbe buyers !are: throna top much on theirbsnkers for assistance in preparing for their purchases, which would nob be; the case to the same extent if the sales occurred oftener. In times of dear money this operates injuriously ; indeed, I am inclined; to think that the wool sales may have occasionally turned the scale in favour of a rise In the rate of-discount, owing to the buyers-having to prepare through their bankers for cash purchases to the extent of £5,000,000 or £6,000,0dd at one aeries of-sales. At all events, I find that daring tbp last ten years the bank rate of discount has been raised six times during the week on which wool sales commenced. These drawbacks to an otherwise admirable system, would, 1 think, be remedied i>y more frequent sales, but this is not the occasion on which to pursue the subject farther. ' 1 have next to callattention to the title of prices of home ah<f colonial wool in Appendix No. VII., which has been compiled from the broker’s circulars; and through the' kindness of Messrs-J. T; Simes and Co., I am enabled to carry it back to 1839. Upon a comparison of tbfs table with the table of- imports, it will be found that the .fluctuations in the prices of colonial wool do not depend so. much on: supplies, which have been constantly increasing, as upon i . variations ; In demand,; owing to commercial vicissitudes and political circumstances ; thus the lowest point touched wasin 1848,'theygarof continental revolu tioaa, foliowing tMI %he commercial crisis of 184 V The panic of 1837 again affected prices, but not so seriously ; on the other hand, the market was strengthened by the cotton fa aline in 1862 to 1866. But the memorable crisis of 1866, and. Its subsequent effects, followed by. the war between France and Germany, have now depressed prices very nearly to the level of 1848. It seems probable that the preseUt prices will operate as a check for a time oh the rapijijhcrease which has takeii place in ‘oiir importations. Bat, as already said, so great ia the demand for woollen such the preference shown to woolVor all .planner of clothing purposes, that whatever quantity may come forward will readily he consumed; because the more cheaply'woollen and fabrics can be produced, the wider will be the area of consumption; instead of being mixed or adulterated with cotton, it will take the place of the latter wherever the two fibres come fairly into competition, i scarcely,-Indeed, hope that the word “ shoddy” will disappear from the vocabulary of Yorkshire, though it may become less familiar. I am of opinion'that there is still a wide field for further increase in our imports'ions, and that the production of wool will still constitute i an .indefinitely increasing source of prosperity to our manufacturers and to our colonies. On the conclusion of Mr Hamilton’s lecture, a few remarks, evincing an intimate knowledge of the subject under notice, were offered by Mr A. Webster, of the firm of Webster, Darvail, and Co. Mr Webster spoke as follows: “Mr President and Gentlemen, —• As a fellow of this society, and one not altogether unacquainted with the subject for this evening’s consideration, possibly a few remarks may not be altogether inappiopriate. But, notwithstanding, I should not have ventured to take part in the discussion, had I not been most courteously invited some few weeks smee, by my friend Mr Hamilton, who has favoured us with this most interesting paper on the ‘ Wool Supply.’ Confining my observations, then, to the strict, definition of supply, 1 would premise that the slight difficulty the lecturer experienced in reconciling the quantities shipped in the years 1858—1862 from Victoria, may perhaps be explained by the fact that very large parcels of wool in -certain years for the c mvenienca of transit, found their port of shipment at Melbourne, which were actually grown in the territory of New South Wales, and would, but for a circumstance I shall presently mention; have made their exit from Australia at Sydney, the capital of the older settlement. This observation applies to the whole of the large productive district of Riverina, that country bounded on the north by the Darling, and on the south by the Murray, where some of the largest flocks ;of the colony are depastured, and which constitute clips of 1000 to 1500 bales of one brand. These flacks are despatched down the Murrumbidgee to its junction with the Murray, then up that stream to Echuca, where the railway direct to Melbourne has its terminus, and hence many thousands of bales, owing to the advantage of water-carriage and rail are shipped from Melbourne instead of Sydney, and swell the totals of exports from Victoria: when, in truth, they are the growth of a province of New South Wales The same peculiarity also applies to many of the flocks of (he upper districts of the older colony and of Queensland, which reach the Murray in its lower course by its junction with the Darling, and thus the wools gown on the Bogan and other rivers, frequently find their way down these streams, and are shipped from Adelaide, South Australia ; when; in fact, they are the produce of a country hundreds of miles away, and of a character totally dissimilar to t.w. of the colony from which they are ostensibly exported. In regarding, therefore, the export of Australian wools, it would be safer, for statistical purposes, to take the ports in the aggregate of the great Australian continent, and compare the yearly increase of the combined colonies without reference, to the port of shipment; and in this light,! think, we may reconcile any alight apparent discrepancy in the Customs’ returns, which, upon the whole, «e most regard as accurate. Passing, then, to the countries of supply Australia stands in a pre-eminent position, not alone in respect to quantity, but to the hiih estimation in which her produce is regarded in this market, the excellence and variety of her breed of sheep—Victoria producing the long combing wools adapted for yarns and tbm textile fabrics, as merino dresses and shawls; and New south Wales and Queensland the shorter and finer wool used in the manufacture of doth—the comparative freedom from seeds ami all extraneous matter, the improving character of the wool, the regularity and honesty of the packing, all tend to place Australian wool in this position, tbit it wi 1 command a market when no other wool can be sold, and it forms a standard or gauge, by which all other growths are estimated. Indeed, so successfully and deservedly has it made its way, that it hss dri-en all other descriptions out of use; from the first it oh-

tained possession of 4hej English market, next that of France and Germany, and-now it la feven obtaining a. footing.ip..that protectionist stronghold—the original home of the merino itself., The lecturer in h!s exhaustive paper: touched but Very lightly pn the subject of wools of European growth, and Veil be.might, and that for the very beat of reasons, that, there was really very little to say, so completely has the import of fine Russian and. Spanish been superseded by Australian and, Cape. The Odessa. merino is now for the-most part consumed at home {n the manufacture of cloths , for the overland; barter trade, with China, which is said to be' subsidized by the Russian Government, and the.. little, now - exported is sent. to Brunp,, in Moravia, while the Spanish manufacturers in Catalonia require a. large proportion of their home clip ; to keep . their mills running, the duty being: so high on imported wool, and the rest is sent in an unwasbed state over the Pyrenees into France,, or across by ship to Marseilles, very: little of .the old R. F. 4 S. scoured, as formerly'pre? pared for this market, reaching England.; We next corns to the United States of ‘America, which produce a heavy clip, but one that is entirely consumed In the country : itself, the high tariff almost entirely excluding j the importation of foreign wool. T cannot, I myself, concur in the sanguine expectations indulged in by many gentlemen, who have taken part in this discussion, that America is , about to open her ports to colonial or foreign I wool, as the legislation of Congress rarely pro- , ceeds on the merits of the question; America being a log-rolling country, any remission .of duty being accompanied by a relaxation in that upon cloth, so as to protect the one interest against the other. But even should “ this consummation, devoutly to be wished,” take place, the first country to feel the benefit would be the states of the Argentine Confederation, and this for many reasons, one only of which I need now to refer to, namely, that a trade of a very extensive Character already exists between Boston and New York, and Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, all.the timber used in the latter countries being shipped from Canada and the western.states. The next country that would be beneflioially affected would be the Cape, and much for the same reasons, nearly all the tobacco and breadstuffs; as well as agricultural implements; imported into our South African colonies, being of American origin, and in. return, Cape goatskins almost invariably command a higher value in the States than in this country, and unwashed Cape wool would, as before the Morril tariff, be again largely exported thence. Australia would feel it least and latest, but in this she has nothing to fear, as .from the general advance in these comparatively outside wools, she would find greater compensation in the London market, where, at anything like an equality of price, the growth of Australia is infinitely preferred. The only other topic on which i will venture to trespass farther on the p&tience of this company; is the very important one of the enormous and rapid growth of the wool of the River Plate, and to this, more than to any other cause, is attributable the low range of value that has obtained since 1866. The effect on this market, though indirect, Is not the less real, for a demand that hut . for this yrould have existed- for Cape, and the lower grades of Sydney-and Queensland wool, is supplied in Antwerp and Havre by the imports from the River Plate. It wilt be naturally asked why, in this, the wool emporium of the world. South American has not been sold in the London catalogues 7 and the reply very briefly must be that the wool is infested with the spherical seed of the wild clover, which in manufacture unravels like a corkscrew, and which, when found in Australian or Cape, would reduce the value upon washed wool at Is 6d to the extent of 3d per pound. The Belgians, not having Australia and the Cape at their backs, were nat rally glad to possess a wool-pro-ducing country to themselves, and through the enterprise of their merchants, the comparative cheapness of labour, and the adap ] taiion of their machinery, they have established Buenos Ayres wool as a permanent institution among themselves, and it is a curious fact that though this wool is for the most part grown by Scotchmen, herded by Irishmen, shipped in British bottoms, valued for . upon London, consigned to English bouses, prepared by Yorkshire patented machinery, and when spun, shipped as yarn to Glasgow and'Galashiels for tweed trouserings, the only English member of the mercantile community not engaged in the distribution of this particular class of wool is the unfortunate broker, every other interest being represented by British subjects. To sum up the whole matter, although millions of acres in Queensland and New South Wales have been sur rendered to the Government, ; from the inability of the squatters to pay the license-fee, I am still hopeful for the future of the great Australian Continent, and that we have passed through the worst phase of depression, and shall now steadily and surely recover our former position; but, in any case, the growers not merely of our own race and language, but our fellow-subjeots, have this satisfaction in the confidence that so long as man requires clothing, their produce wih be in pre-eminent demand, and that in short, So far as merino wool for this market is concetaed, Australian and Cape are ‘ the be all and end all ’ of ‘-he wool supply.”