WOOL AND "ALL WOOL."

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1204, 29 March 1895, Page 5

WOOL AND "ALL WOOL."

Just at the moment when we were reading the somewhat sanguine opinion that a vast future lies before the product of New Zealand looms in the markets of the Old World glutted with mixed fabrics, the news came from London of a rise of 7i per cent, in the price of wool. We are ready to believe in any fair report of a general rise for a very simple reason. It is that a rise in wool of substantial character running into a welcome increment of millions to the national incomes of the Australasian and South African communities is one of the certainties of the. future, and is perhaps not far off. The depressed state of the industry is no doubt very real and most deplorable. But that is not a reason for ignoring the essential conditions of the wool market. These are, first, that the world's population is increasing faster than the world's sheep; second, that there are many millions of people in the European and American world—we say nothing of Asiatics and Africans who either wear woollen not at all, or sparingly, or in combination with other materials ; third, that nothing in either cold or 'hot climates is so comfortable and healthy wear as wool, pure and unmixed. Sixty millions in America wear "shoddy," four times that number elsewhere wear wool mixed with cotton, and many millions do not wear it at all. While the populations are yearly outpacing the flocks, the reduced price must create increased demand, and demand once increased never slackens for an article of such comfortable and sanitary wear. The result must be an increase of price after every depression. That is the history of the wool trade of the past fifty years, and there is nothing in the natural conditions to make the history of the next fifty years any different. The croakers have through- j out the history of the past shown the •

abject wretchedness which is their special possession. They are true to their past, for while the price rules lower and lower there is no note from them of any possibility of recovery ; their song is a dirge of ruin, its refrain a prophecy of perpetual catastrophe. It is a thing to be ashamed of by men who have a spark of courage in their breasts or a grain of common-sense in their heads. To preach immediate good fortune in the midst of misery merely for the sake of being cheerful is of course absurd. But there is no reason why it should be one whit more absurd than the prediction of a dismal future. It is time for the depressed industry to look with hope to the bright side of things, and a rise of wool to the extent of 7l per cent, is very much the bright side of things. Some mercantile expert has made up for the disgraceful and continued pusillanimity of his class by declaring his belief in the news without hesitation. If the sale maintains the price, we shall be justified in regarding the rise as permanent. In that case, of course, the rise is certain to be shortly increased. This will be, then, the position : The pendulum of price has reached the extreme of poverty, it has got back on the return journey towards prosperity one-fourteenth of the distance. Why, being a pendulum, < should it stop at bhat point ? The condiS tions of the market being what they are, the vivid probability is that the increase will increase with vigorous and startling rapidity. Already the Australians are counting up the improvement, and talking of an Australasian million and a half — truly a fine sum to come all bright and shining and unexpected out of the black gulf in which the prophets of evil see nothing but distress. But there is no reason why the pendulum should not, the conditions being what they are—the more rapid increase oi mankind than of sheep, and the increased demand for "all woollens/' stimulated by cheapness and maintained by the quality of the article — there is no' reason why the pendulum should not swing back to what it was twenty years ago. In that case the Australasians will be counting their increase of annual wool money up to a cool twenty millions sterling. We do not say that the price is certain to recover so far, nor to do so at once. But there is less unlikelihood of that than there is of the perpetual depression in which the croakers believe so implicitly. If the turn really has come nothing is more certain than that seven and a half per cent, on the last and lowest prices will not bound the increased returns to Australasian growers. So long as we have the sheep with us, so long shall we be certain that there i 3 balm in G-ilead, ,