THE WOOL TRADE

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 71, 25 March 1936, Page 12

THE WOOL TRADE

Japanese Prospects. The wool manufacturing industry in Japan and prospects in China are discussed by Professor Alfred F. Barker, H.Sc., F.T.1., in tho Journal of tko iKoyal Society of Arts, London. Tho jivool manufacturing industry was started in Japan by the Government establishing woollen mills at Sonju, near Tokio, in IS7G. The Sino-Japanose and the ltusso-Japanese wars stimulated development for a time, but then came a .slack period, and it is only since the Great War that Japan has really developed a wool industry of note—an industry, however, which to-day enables her to come second to Britain as an Australian wool purchaser, though by no means second as a wool-manufactur-ing country.

Japan lias, perhaps, been most successful in the “bulk” manufacturing of such goods as wool muslins, fine serges and cloths, which can be manufactured -wholesale on cotton organisation lines. Even the imports into China show the dominance of Britain in wool goods where even a moderate amount of skill is called for, and in which bulk manufacturing is impossible. It should be noted that to a very great extent with wool, and to a lesser extent with cotton, the two markets of Japan and China have actually been created quite recently. Thus, just as wool-growing in Australia and woolmanufacturing in England advanced eide by side, so wool-manufacturing and wool-weaving in Jrtpan advanced side by side; and cotton-manufacturing and increased cotton-wearing in China also advanced side by side. These facts call for two observations: the first that wool-manufacturing and wool-weaving will most probably develop side by side in China in the near future; and, second, that a nation’s “home trade” is basic to its development, and should be regarded as both a stabilising factor and a “jumping-off” ground for the development of an export trade, and although “dumping” takes its rise in this fact, it is not thereby justified. It may be taken that Japan and China have advanced their industries on the developed mechanical skill of Europe —and principally on the skill developed in Lancashire for cotton and in Yorkshire for wool, although American, German and French influences have been by no means negligible.