ARTIFICIAL WOOL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22131, 10 June 1935, Page 8

ARTIFICIAL WOOL

A good deal has been said and written in recent years on the competition which natural fibres, like wool and cotton, will have to face from artificial textiles. New Zealand woolgrowers will therefore note with relief the statements at the International Wool Conference in Berlin

that Germany still needs wool. There have been confident claims that German chemical genius had provided satisfactory substitutes for wool and other textiles. If that were so, Dr. Schacht, who is the economic and financial dictator of Germany, and who has been closely engaged in investigating the possibilities of substitutes for imported raw materials, would not be found publicly admitting Germany's dependence on natural wool. The fact is that Germany has spent a great deal of thought, effort and money on "ersatz" or substitute industries. She invested £20,000,000 in an artificial petrol plant and another £20,000,000 in an artificial cotton plant. She can now produce about 30 per cent of her petrol requirements from her own soft coal, and later plans to produce 85 per cent, but this distilled petrol costs three times as much as the natural product. Artificial rubber is also being turned out but at a prohibitive price. Similarly in the textile field Germany has produced wollstra, rayon'stra, vistra, silekstra (substitutes for wool, rayon, cotton and silk), zellstra, cuprana, seelo, fiira and angorina. It all sounds very formidable and for a time the Nazis made a .boast of German ingenuity and self-sufficiency. "The world," they declared, "need not think it can bring us to our knees. We can make substitutes for anything we require." Superficially the boast may have been made good, but actually the substitutes are much dearer and seriously lacking in quality. Even in making rayon, German beech and pine have not provided an efficient substitute for pulp from Canadian and Norwegian woods. According to reliable reports the first appearance of cloths made from artificial wool is attractive but they lose their gloss and become crumpled and poor looking after a few weeks' wear. The reaction to wetting is unsatisfactory, the fibres rotting and decomposing, thus hardening the fabric. For thi'3 inferior material, the price is anything from 25 to 100 per cent dearer than for natural textiles. However reassuring this may be, the New Zealand woolgrower, if he is wise, will spare no effort to produce raw materials of a standard to suit manufacturers' requirements in competition with substitutes, and so do his part in confirming the established position of his product.