COLONIAL WOOL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8359, 15 February 1907, Page 7

COLONIAL WOOL.

■(From Our London Correspondent). LONDON, January 4. Messrs Windeler and Company's annual circular contains the following : —Apart from one temporary but pronounced decline, there has been, •during 1906, no exceptionally striking feature in the market or in the course of prices, which have progressed generally at a fairly high level throughout. As in the preceding year,. merinos. have again established an advance of about 5 per cent. This description has remained remarkably steady since 1902, with fluctuations in a very narrow compass. Crossbreds at one time reached a record point and closed, in average, 7£ to 10 per cent, higher than they began. * Every year of late has been marked by a break in prices, followed by recovery. More usually this has occurred in the spring time from the temporary superabundance of supplies and the difficulties of finance. But last year that dangerous point was successfully weathered, and the set back, unnecessary'as usual, was engineered in the autumn. Otherwise the trend of prices has been continuously- upwards, and all descriptions have participated, but the high-water mark of values reached in May has not been recovered. -If any special variety of wools can be singled out as being in exceptional favour were all have done so well, we should imntion those of deep grown staple, whether merino or crossbred, particularly when in high condition. For in a season like that under review when the margin of eventual profit is so narrowed, buyers have had to be -vary fastidious in their selection and favoured those descriptions which though high in first cost prove more profitable in the end. To sellers, of course, prices as during the last few yaars have been exceedingly satisfactory, whether growers or speculators, and heavier quantities even than usual of colonial bought .wools, sent o/er from the Continent and elsewhere, have been realised to great advantage. At the same time the position of the spinner and manufacturer continues to improve owing to the higher prices now more freely obtainable for the more finished article, while the ease with which the increased production of some 250,000 bales of colonial wool has been absorbed at /so much enhanced rates testifies to the world's increased consuming power and the absence of anything like over-production. Hardly sufficient importance is attached to these considerations when wool is represented as being unduly high at the present time. In all the great industrial countries both of the Old and New World, immense trade activity and prosperity prevail, of which the high gold rate and the state of the iron and steel trades are typical symptoms. At the same time in those large raw material producing countries, which are less highly developed, commercially and industrially, exceedingly high prices are being secured for all their products, while the populations, increasing in numbers and wealth, are every year becoming larger consumers of wool manufactures. Coincident with these conditions the world's production of wool remains little more than steady and though these high prices might naturally be expected to stimulate production, it if any substantial increase might be confined to Australia, though even there the liability to droughts and, as this year, the uncertain growth of fleece, makes dependence on a regular augmentation from this source quite precariuus. Expansion is further kept in check, as in New Zealand, by the increasing meat-consuming population, the slaughter of stock for freezing, and the rapidity with which agriculture and dairying are annexing, under Government encouragement, the better sheep-rearing countries. Similar causes and the more profitable cattle raising are militating against any immediately large gain of flocks in the Argentine, while in South Africa, the remaining country of vast and unpeopled distances in the temperate zone, .things move verv slowly and ways must be thoroughly changed before any large increase of flocks can occur. Elsewhere, in lands of large population, as England or America, sheep are stationary, or, as the Continent, • steadily and rapidly falling off. Consequently, with a clip coming forward from Australasia smaller than was anticipated, with great trade activity, and stocks of colonial wool practically cleared up both here and on' the Continent, the situation appears quite sound. While, however, wool is not over-abundant, there is -on the other had no actual famine of the raw material. Necessity, too, has provided much ingenuity in the use of substitutes, and in the future the production of vegetable fibres is quite likely to extend in quantity anc variety. But this is not imminent, and the increased winning of golc tends to keep all raw materials at t high price.