THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1908. A "BEAR" RAID ON WOOL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3018, 15 October 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1908. A "BEAR" RAID ON WOOL.

Within the next week or two shearing will be general throughout New Zealand, and the question of prices during the coming wool season will assume an added importance in the minds of flockowners, as they see the bales mounting up in their sheds. It is a question of perennial interest, and the possibility of a "bear" movement on the part of big English wool buyers, as reported by the Bradford correspondent of the Chriatchurch "Press," is calculated to create a certain amount of anxiety as to the course of the market among those who will have wool to sell. Ther6 is, of course, nothing new in the means proposed to be employed in order to secure cheap wool. The opening of the season is usually heralded nowadays by "forward selling" on the part of manufacturers who want to force values down, and English firms are admittedly suffering from the serious losses they sustained in the season

before last. The conviction is growing among them, we are told, that "the only way to get back the heavy losses of, particularly, the last season is to buy the next world's clip of wool at prices sensibly less than those current to-day." It must be admitted that the buyers have good reason to wish that prices will come their way during the next few months, for apart from the fact that fortunes were lost in the wool trade r.t Home during the last year or two, the trade outlook is not bright, and with scores of thousands of men out of work the demand tor woollen manufactures must suffer. Woolgrowers, however, look at the matter from another point of view altogether, and they may derive some comfort from the thought that it is easier to devise plans for depressing the wool market than to carry them out successfully. As one Sydney authority remarked: "A 'bear' movement might be possible among Bradford manufacturers, but it could not affect the Australian wool markets. So far as the latter are concerned, a ! bear' movement among the buyers is an absolute impossibility." There are too many of them, and their interests are too diverse. Australian markets, as we are reminded, are not dependent solely upon Bradford competition—the preponderance of the buying power this side of the world is from the Continent. This is proved by the. composition of the little army of buyers that will operate at the Australian sales this season. Against the thirty-two buyers from England, there are fortyseven from France, thirty-five from Germany, twenty-six from Belgium, twelve from America, six from Japan, and a few from Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and India, while in Sydney alone there will be thirty representing local firms. In the multitude of buyers there is competition, and if prices are higher than the English buyers are inclined to give, they will have to stand by and see the wool go into other hands. , Growers are probably not expecting anything like the prices that rul=d two seasons ago—the, bad state of trade in Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and, in fact, in all the great manufacturing countries forbids any such hope, but, at any rate, there is certainly no reason at present, why they should feel alarmed at the possible, but not probable, results of the projected "bear" raid on wool.