RECORD PRICES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLI, Issue 20327, 28 January 1936, Page 2

RECORD PRICES

AN AUSTRALIAN PROTEST A protest is made by the “Pastoral Review,” of Melbourne, against the use of the word "record” in newspaper reports of wool prices. The paper quotes a Melbourne journal’s report as follows: —A new Australian record price for Merino lamb's wool was set at the Geelong wool sales yesterday, when prices up to 22d a lb were paid for the best lots offered. Simultaneously the Australian record price of 25d for comeback wool was also equalled.” The pastoral journal remarks: “This sort of thing is not only misleading, but is definitely incorrect. Twenty-two pence of lamb’s wool and 25d for come-back are not Australian ’ records or anything like them. They are, or were at the time, the top prices paid to date for a few bales of those lines during the 1935-36 selling season, a season of only moderate prices as a whole, and in no sense did they constitute a record. “The only way to assess the degree of prosperity or otherwise being experienced by the wool-grower is to consider the average price realised for all wool sold. For the current season to date it is about 13d, in 1934-35 it was 9.75 d; in 1933-34, 15.84 d; for the four years prior to that it ranged between 81d and 103 d; and for the seven preceding years, between 16Jd and 27d. On those figures there is little in the nature of a price ‘record’ about the current year.” The “record" Australian price for greasy wool is 531 d secured for Merino fleece in the 1924-25 season. The record New Zealand price was 423 d, secured in the same season, at Christchurch, for Corriedale.