IMMENSE STORE OF WOOL

Southland Times, Issue 25550, 19 December 1944, Page 5

IMMENSE STORE OF WOOL

Britain Has Accumulated Vast Stocks (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 18. “Britain owns today the largest store of wool ever known, amounting to 13,000,000 bales weighing 4,000,000,0001 b, which is considerably more than the whole of the annual world production,” states The Daily Mail. “Britain is going without new clothes and becoming daily more threadbare while wool stocks are so vast that manufacturers do not know what to do with them. Hundreds of thousands of bales have been diverted to us. “The immense hoard began to accumulate at the outbreak of the war, when Britain stopped wool sales to enemy countries, took over the entire wool production of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and acted as the supplying agency for the United Nations. Then, with clothes rationing for civilians and austerity styles, wool began greatly to exceed the demand, The needs for service clothing fell far short of the accumulating wool surplus. There is enough wool in Britain to supply several times over all the garments, blankets, and so on needed, but labour is lacking.”