PIONEER OF INDUSTRY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18249, 18 November 1933, Page 7

PIONEER OF INDUSTRY

FIRST WOOLLEN MILL FOUNDED BY LATE MR. A. J. BURNS Considerable interest lias been aroused by the reminder that the Mosgiel W oollen Company was founded by Mr. Arthur J. Burns, a grandnephew of Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet, and one of Dunedin's leading citizens, when that city was Known as the commercial capital of Ne.w Zealand. Mr. A. J. Burns was one of the first, probably tho first, to take advantage ot the Government’s system of encouraging industry in this country. It offered a bonus of £IOCO to the first company which would establish a woollen mill in New Zealand, the glaring anomaly at that time being the fact that, while the country was producing wool in quantity and of excellent quality, New Zealand had to import everything in the way of woollen manufactures from England. It was Mr. A. J. Burns who saw the opening that was being made by the Government of that day, and who personally went Home, bought a small but compete plant at Galashiels, in Scotland, and had 'it shipped out to Dunedin. The plant was soon erected at Mosgiel, on the Taieri Plains, when he claimed and was given the £IOOO bonus. That was in 1873.

The initial company, A. J. Burns and Company, finding a demand for goods other than blankets and rugs, was reorganised by the addition of further capital, nad became known as the Mosgiel Woollen Factory Company, Limited. Two daughters of the late Mr. A. J. Burns are at present residing in Wellington. They are Mrs. Haines and Miss E. G. Burns, of Pipitea street. Another daughter was the late Mrs. James J. Ames.

Miss E. G. Burns is still in possession of the first rug made in New Zealand, the product of the mill established by Mr. A. J. Burns, who may be regarded as the real founder of the Mosgiel com patiy, and the father of the woollen industry in New Zealand. Mr. Burns, who represented a Dunedin seat in the House of Representatives, was a son of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Burns, a pioneer Presbyterian minister of Otago, and a nephew of Scotland’s national poet.