WOOL TOO DEAR

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 8, 1 August 1930, Page 3

WOOL TOO DEAR

PROFESSOR LIONS’S VIEWS. USE OF SUBSTITUTES. Acting-Professor P. Lions, in an address at the Sydney University recently, said that Australia must tackle the problem of Utilising her cellulose resources and providing others. It was inevitable that the wool trade would diminish. Wool was too costly, and would be unable to compete in the market except for high-class fabrics. “Cellulose, which comprises the cell walls of plants,” Professor Lions continued, “is being even more widely utilised by man.

In Europe alone the yearly demand for soft woods now exceeds their growth by over 3000 million cubic feet. Cellulose is used mainly for newsprint, rayon fabrics, and cellulose ester lacquers. Raw sulphite pulp can be produced for less than threepence a pound. One ton of the pulp can be converted into 3 500 pounds of rayon fibre. This means that the chemist now 1 finds in artificial fibres the most fruitful solution of man’s growing shortage of clothing.” At the present time. Professor Lions raid, cotton was the chief textile fibre. Wool, artificial silk, and silk followed in that order. Cotton failed by its lack of • brilliance and artistic qualities. Treated I chemically, however, it was equal to silk, ; and would in the future be better. So far 1 manufacturers have confined their efforts I to imitations, in an endeavour to out-silk I silk and out-wool woolliness. “Presently,” j he added, “they will awaken to the fact that the idea! fabric has yet to be evolved. We have so far contented ourselves with a second best.” There were, he continued, many possibilities in Australia. Over 14 million pounds of seed cot ton were grown annually in Queensland. Again hundreds of thousands cf tons of bagasse, the fibrous residue from sugarcane, were burned each year in Australia. The time had come when sugar was to be only the by-product, as in some parts of America. In addition many of our eucalypts could be readily pulped to give quite a serviceable newsprint. Australia, with the best pos- i sible supplies of natural tannin barks, still depended upon imported supplies. South Africa, on the other hand, had an industry valued at over £3,00P.000 per annum. from wattles originally imported from Australia. “The essential oil industry in Australia,” he concluded, “is in a precarious state. Over three-fourths cf Australia’s natural vegetation produce essential oils. The eucalypt has been planted abroad in large quantities, and is considered of great value. We shall probably realise, one day, that we are importing the very substances which we should be recovering from our own essential oils.”