OPERATIONS CURTAILED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18838, 13 October 1924, Page 9

OPERATIONS CURTAILED

KAIAPOI WffOLLEN WORKS.

WEATHER AFFECTS TRADE.

IMPORTATIONS FROM ENGLAND.

[EX lEX.ECr.Arit. —OWN coreesjpondent.] CHUISTCHURCH. Saturday. The employees of tho Kaiapoi \yoollen Company, Limited, have had their working hours reduced, and in future there will be no work on Fridays and Saturdays at the Kaiapoi mill and the Radley hosiery works _ until trade conditions improve. This will mean a reduction of 12 hours a week in the time worked. A serious inroad into the earnings of the workers is thus made.

In discussing tho matter to-day, Mr. J. H. Blackwell, chairman of directors of the company, said the need of working short time was rendered necessary to some extent by abnormally fine weather, as much of the production of the company was a class of goods suited for cold weather. The general depression in tho woollen trade in the Dominion had been marked for some time, and this was due to excessive importations of woollen goods in the past few years. The classes of trade most affected in this connection were the clothing, hosiery, and woollen piece goods branches. During the past four years £15,000,000 worth of woollens had been imported, as compared with £6,000,000 in the four years preceding the war. This was largely the result of the slump, and a reflex of the woollen trado of England. Eighty-five per cent, of the London woollen' merchants were compelled to mako compositions with their creditors, and millions of pounds' worth of cotton goods had to be unloaded at any price, with the European markets closed to them. The result was that English holders had to get rid of their stocks in Australia and New Zealand very largely, and the markets here- had been flooded with lines, many of which were landed at dumped prices. A good many of these lines were shoddy and cotton mixtures, that competed with our own fine woollen articles.

The exchange rate, while benefiting importers, he said, was detrimental to primary and secondary industries. Tho New Zealand customs tariff was the lowest in the Empire, and the effect of the exchange rate was to reduce the already very modest protection the trade had been given, almost to vanishing point. Some of the other works of the Dominion had been on short time for some months past, but the directors of the Kaiapoi Company hoped that improving trade conditions would not necessitate the following of the lead of other similar works, for the directors recognised that the shortening of hours was a very serious matter for the employees, manv of whom had been in the employ of the company for the whole of their working lives.