REQUISITIONED WOOL

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2937, 24 November 1916, Page 8

REQUISITIONED WOOL

DETAILS BEING ARRANGED

SALES ALREADY MADE

■ Only details of administration remain 'to be settled to complete the scheme for the purchase of all New Zealand wool by the Imperial Government. Negotiations went on yesterday regarding the rates and general conditions on which the services of the brokers and the buyers are to be obtained, by the Government. • Ono of the' worst difficulties ahead will be that of dealing witn private sales of wool which had taken placo long before the requisitioning scheme was announced as a possibility. The Minister's proposal is that all these contracts of sale shall be cancelled. But it was not taade clear to the conference of growers .that the Government had any power to declare these contracts void. All the Government can do is to insist that all exported shall come • under the requisition scheme. If a buyer has contracted with a grower to buy his clip, and.the. grower. refuses to release the buyer from the con tract, the Government can not insist upon it, and if the contract stands, the loss will fall on' the buyer, and not oh.-the grower. This, at any rate, seems to be the position, but perhaps in these days of extraordin- ■ ary expedients to, reach extraordinary ends, some way out of- the difficulty will . be" found. •The Minister of Munitions and Supplies (the' Hon. A. M. Myers) stated yesterday that the purchase of woql for the Use of ihe local mills now mainly, cn- ■ caged on Defence ■ contracts, had not been .lost sight of in the preparation of / the requisitioning scheme. -This wool Tvould be bought for the Government at. the prices fixed by the valuers in the quantities required.''