WOOL SECRETARIAT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 74, Issue 6365, 2 May 1947, Page 6

WOOL SECRETARIAT

INTERNATIONAL BODY PROMOTING USE OF VALUABLE PRODUCT The following broadcast address was given recently by Dr Edgar Booth, chairman of the International Wool Secretariat. He said:— “I bring greetings from overseas, not only to our woolgrowers in New Zealand but to all people here in these happy islands, so far from many of the worries at present disturbing the content of those whom I have just left in other lands. I bring these greetings from' a diversity of peoples, in a wide range of nations, with whom my duties on the International Wool Secretariat bring me in contact. When 1 one mentions, overseas, “lamb,” the name New Zealand can very frequently automatically be added to it, because that food has been arriving in. very big quantities,, and is so much appreciated that the words “New Zealand” and “lamb” link themselves together in the‘minds of a meat-hungry people. When one talks of cross-bred wools the association is the same. Fat lambs and crossbred wool are part of the fundamental wealth of this country, and a pleasure and luxury to people overseas who buy them. I myself am an Australian overseas, the Australian representative on the International Wool Secretariat which has its headquarters now in London. By the election of my colleagues I am also the chairman of the Secretariat, and am here with you now, escaping for a while the rigours of a northern climate, as the guest of the New Zealand Wool Board, one of the controlling members of our Secretariat. Empire Production

Half the fabric wool of the world is grown by Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. A " considerable portion of the wealth of each of these countries depends upon the regular sale at good prices of their annual wool clips. The Wool Secretariat itself is not concerned with the actual handling and selling of clips, past or present. Its work is the promotion of wool, wool from all parts of the world, in all parts of the world and in every phase. Wool is a commodity which, although produced in greatest quantities by our three Dominions, is grown also in other countries and sold for manufacture also in other places. The consumer market is the whole world population. Not very much wool is produced each vear in the world if you consider the total number of people in it; but only the lucky ones enjoy such a high standard of living that they are able, even in times of plenty, to have all the wool they would wish to use. The total weight of wool grown everywhere in a year "is only four thousand million pounds, and there are two thousand four hundred million people. Even in the form of the greasy fleece as it falls from the shears there are not two pounds of wool for every person. But wool coming from the sheep contains a lot of wool fats (which eventually come to vpu cleansed in the form of lanoline, brushless shaving cream and other toilet preparations) and other solids, besides earth, which add to its total weight. So two pounds of fleece wool “in the grease,” as we say, yields only about one pound weight of scoured wool. Only one pound of wool each year for every person in the world. To give you some idea of how far this would go: A suit for a well-deve-loped man calls for three and a half yards of material, the ordinary weight, of the Worsted cloth used would be about 14 ounces to the yard, and the weight of scoured wool in my suit would be, therefore, something like three pounds. So, if I were allowed my fair share of the world’s wool, I would be able to buy only one suit every three years—and nothing else of any kind containing wool. As 1 have, lij<e most people, a full appreciation of the virtues and values of wool, I would find that extremely depressing, even more depressing in the cold northern climes from which I have just come. Actually there are hundreds of millions of people in India, and similarly in China and other countries, who consume practically no wool at any time. Higher standards of living and a higher consumption of wool go hand in hand. It could be taken as an indication of improvement in living standards if the consuption of wool per head of population increased. Found in Strange Places Wandering the world for wool I meet regularly the bales from New Zealand, many of them stored overseas for five years or more and turning up in the strangest of places. In the United States and in Canada, in France and Belgium and the Netherlands, and in more distant Czechoslovakia, as well as in London, I have watched the bales come in and “open-up,” and the New Zealand fleece tumble out, to be turned into woollen material for the protection of the wool-starved populations of those lands and of the places to which then they are also exported. New Zealand is one of the world’s greatest benefactors in providing and sending overseas those vital necessities of life, meat and wool; but she gets back for distribution amongst all the people in her own islands the value of that meat and wool. A good wool clip and a good price for wool mean a good return to the woolgrower—but this is money for all New Zealanders, not for wool growers alone. The New Zealand Wool Board is represented on our Secretariat in London by the most newly-arrived representative, Mr R. G. Lund. The Board itself is watching the interests of growers throughout New Zealand, and, through the Secretariat, in all lands overseas. Remember, the International Wool Secretariat is an organisation representing the men who really grow the wool. As .wool is of no use until it has been bought and scoured and manufactured into its final forms, and then sold across the retail counter to the ultimate consumer, the Secretariat works to facilitate the passage of wool through all these stages. It works in all wool interests everywhere. Youi see, although wool is useful to the sheep while it is on his back, it is of no use to mankind until it is on a human back, or otherwise in use after manufacture—perhaps into some of those glorious modern upholstery fabrics and other furnishing items that are proving so popular overseas. From sheep’s back to human back is

a long and expensive cycle; anything which disturbs the movements of the fleece in the intervening period adds to its difficulties and final cost, and means either less money in a New Zealand pocket or a long delay in its arrival there. Work of Secretariat

The Secretariat’s work is wool promotion in its fullest sense; science and economics and world wool information and statistics, fashion exposition, and straight-out publicity. You see, it is not only necessary for us to sell our wool; it is also essential that we should remember that we are selling it in a changing world, in which there are now more and more new fabrics made from other fibres. We have silks and cottons and linens, rayons and nylons and other chemical fibres, that naturally enough are putting before the public their claims for specific purposes. We know that the natural protective fibre, wool, has a wide range of special qualities and virtues which ensure the prestige it enjoys. But merely knowing that is not enough; because science day by day is offering miracles to the people; adding atoms to groups of atoms here and there, and producing different types of modified fibres. We can do the same thing with wool. The scientific research work which we carry on or subsidise enables the elimination from wool of apparent disadvantages, and gives it new and more interesting properties. You can gild the lily, and as we have seen in our florists’ shops, if there is a demand for gilded or for coloured lilies it is in the interests of the lily and of the florists to do those necessary things to the flower \vhich will help it meet a consumer market.

There is no sense in our saying that natural wool fibre requires no modification, being supreme in itself; we are selling something, and the point of view of the buyer has always to be considered. Nowadays wool can be made . shrinkproof—and has been made so in most countries—also moth-resistant and waterproof at will. Actually the felting property of wool is one of its most valuable primary characteristics, and enables us to get that multiplicity of textures, surfaces and strengths which is impossible with other fibres. It is a further value that when we have taken full advantage of this felting property of wool we should be able to control it, and stop it when we so wish.” “Happy World Family”

I have had the pleasure of meeting sheep raisers and woolgrowers over here in New Zealand previously, because this is not my first visit to your country. I have had many pleasant recollections of my stay here about nine years ago. I know well also the sheep-men of my own country, both the breeders of the finer fibre, merino, and of the medium types such as those in which particularly you excel here. I have wandered on the high Karoo of South Africa, where the King and Queen and Princesses have just passed, and met the sheep-men there. Over in the United States of America I have . travelled down through the great sheep areas and ranges to attend a big convention of sheep-men at Salt Lake City in Utah. I have met the sheep-men, though they fewer, of colder Canada; and we have on our Consultative Committees of the Secretariat in all countries which I have mentioned earlier representatives of the woolgrower and sheep-raiser. They arc a very happy world family, and much the. same everywhere in type and in their attitude towards life. The sheen-man is one of our earliest civilised beings. We see him and his flocks wandering over the dawn of social life in the early stages of our history. The sheep to eat and its coat to wear have been a back-ground of our civilisation from then till now, and wars have been fought in which one of the fundamental economic causes was the sheep. We would expect to find, even if civilisation, through our stupidity, should crumble, the sheep man and his flock still there—looking into the possibilities of a fairer and saner civilisation yet to come.

I go from here, by the islands of the Pacific, to the United States of America, where we have a very active section of our international Wool Secretariat; td San Francisco and Los Angeles, Denver and New York, all in the interests of that material which links our world together—wool. Canada also will come within my ambit. I shall meet our Consultative Committee there and discuss problems affecting the wool man and his fleece. Then I jump the Atlantic by aeroplane to our headquarters in London, where I will report to your representative on the International Wool Secretariat how I found his country, and how much I have enjoyed my working visit here.

I am glad to have had an opportunity of speaking thus to you personally and bringing before you the fact that wool is wealth to New Zealand, a wealth in which all share. To say also how happy we are here, as also are nur countrymen in. Australia, to be so far removed from the scenes of present turmoil; to have a greater opportunity to enjoy our lives intelligently.”