THE FUTURE OF THE WOOL TRADE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XX, Issue 1427, 8 February 1888, Page 5

THE FUTURE OF THE WOOL TRADE.

In endeavouring to peer into the future we have to bear in mind that comparatively few countries in the world — principally Australasia, South Africa, the River Plate, and South Russia — are fitted for raising merino sheep under natural conditions,and that in Europe and North America, which will produce more than half the wool of the world, the ceaseless increase of the population is leaving year by year less room for sheep to graze. As during the infancy of civilisation the hunting stage became superseded by the pastoral stage, so it, in its turn, is slowly but surely giving way to the agricultural and manufacturing ones. While the supplies of wool per head thus seem likely to remain almost stationary.the tendencies of civilisation, in the shape of greater sanitary knowledge and a greater command over the material comforts of life, seem to point inevitably to an increased demand for wool per head. Should the United States G-overnment decide — as seems by no means improbable — to abolish the present onerous duties on wool (amounting in the case of Australia to 5d per lb, or nearly 50 per cent ad valorem, the cost of woollen clothing would be very largely reduced to 55,000,000 of wealthy and civilised people who are naturally inclined to wear woollens. The inevitable result would be a great increase in the consumption of wool, and in the demand for it. It would seem, then, that problem to be solved is not so much where to find an outlet for the increasing supplies of wool Australia may be expected to produce, as to ascertain where the wool requirements of the civilised world can be supplied from.

It is true that we have in Australia immense areas of country as yet undeveloped, where tens of millions of sheep may yet graze, and where hundreds of thousands of bales of wool may yet be grown. But the modern conditions uuder which sheep farming in Australia can alone be carried on with the hope of profit, demand a very large expenditure on improvements before stocking new country. And it is just as well for the trade to bear in mind that these improvements will not be extensively carried on until the price of wool is high enough to justify the expenditure, and until the supply of capital available for pastoral improvements has considerably increased. But these conditions can hardly exist without bringing about a decided improvement in the value of sheep stations generally .which is almost certain to take place before we witness the next great movement in the direction of increased production of wool.