WORTH £12,000,000

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 267, 31 July 1918, Page 6

WORTH £12,000,000

NEW ZEALAND WOOL

ENORMOUS QUANTITY NOT SHIPPED

NEXT YEAR'S CLIP

"Wool" was one of the many subjects touched on by Sir James Wilson in his address to tho Farmers' Union Conference yesterday.

"With our other products," he said, "wool is still much tho largest, and tho valuo of it is stated in the statistical tables to be <£12,000,000. There is still an enormous quantity of wool not shipped at the present moment in store, and apparently, unless wo can get some of the old 'wind-jammers' to take it away to its destination, wo shall havo the next clip piling up. Fortunately there is no deterioration from as there is— although only to a small extent—in our stored food products. If anything can draw us closer to tho Mother Country, the treatment by the Imperial Government, in relation to our products, and especially wool, should tighten the invisible bonds. Just imagine, if we had been a German colony and the Kaiser had been able to control onr products. The military would have made very quick work with us. : We should have been lucky if we had got anything. Resistance would have been useless; wo should have been treated in tho same way as the Ukraine peasant who 1-efuses to give up ' his grain to the military forces sent to collect it. The peasant is shot and the grain taken without payment, or at the best a scrap of paper handed in return for the produce. Imagine the position at the present moment if we had to deal with the German Government! 'Our stores are full of wool, our freezing chambers full of meat, butter, and cheese. It is not possible to think that any consideration would have been given us. /Our whole financial position would 1 e ; a chaos; we should be back again to tho early days, when there waß scarcely any money to circulate. The only thing that could he said for certain would be that we would not starve, for we can grow enough food for the people, and wool to clothe them. We have, of course, some little claim on tho English Government, because for war reasons they have taken away the ,trading vessels which we relied on to transport our produce. The main point was to win the war—that is the one question of the ■moment to the Empire, and I think wo may claim to have done a little towards it. The Imperial Government, howeve", has acted generously to us all through. It first us with money until we got into our stride. It bought our woo], meat, and cheese 'and latterly our butter. The wool was bought, paid for, and stored at the Imperial Government's expense, which possibly is reasonable seeing that the shipping is entirely in' its hands. The meat, however, was paid for f.0.b., and that entailed the financing of\ the transaction by tho companies, firms, or individuals who bought. When it was shown that this was hampering the finances of the Dominion, the Imperial Government advanced three' million, and that has helped much, although the value in the chambers is much greater thun thnt sum. It is easily imagined what a find it would be for the Germans to lift all this meat for their soldiers; it would give them a good feed for a week. . Then the cheeso was bought; when there was anxiety about the butter, that was purchased, too, and butter and cheese advanced against, enabling the companies to ipay to the suppliers their well-earned cheques. When all this is contrasted with what would have happened had the Huns 'been our masters, we can seS what it is to belong to an Empire the Mother Country of whicil Ireats her children in the way she has done, and what a bond of union it. creates, as well as the glorious fact that our boys are 'in the front, together with the men of nearly all tho other countries of the world, except those from Germany, Austria, and Turkey, and wo thank God that we are not on theiir side.

"This brings us to tho point of the offer of the Imperial Government for the wool production of the Dominion up to the end of the war, and twelve months after the month of Ju.no on peace being declared. Tho union has expressed no opinion as a whole upon this point liecause the provincial conferences had been-held before the offer arrived. The Australian clip has been purchnscd on these, terms, as well as tho slipe wool of tho Dominion. I hope, therefore, that Ihe decision of this conference will bo that, wo not only agroe to the terms of the Imperial Government, "but state that the voolgrowers of the Dominion recogl'iso the gireat efforts which the Imperial Government, has made to help us in our need. I do not think the townspeople, recognise the benefits they have derived from not only Ihe Imperial Government, but tho producers of the Dominion. It appears some are harping, still in their meetings of how wrong it is that the woolgrowers are asking for 55 per cent, when only 45 per cent, was citered over 10W prices. The lower figure would have been much below market price, and while the growers wero prepared _to sell at market price, they did not think that one class of producer should be asked to pay a special tax towards- war coats. That the market price was above even the 55 per cent., I know,- for a clip of wool which was soldlate in 191J- after the war started fetched more than it did the year the 55 per cent, on 1!)14 prices was paid. The total return from the 19U clip was 10 per cent, above the sum paid for the clip after the wool was purchased. The sale enabled the British Government to save millions of money, and was, as I sav, below the market price at the time of the sale. Then the city population forgets, 100, that it is the producer who enables wages to rise as cost of living has done."