PRICES FOR READY-MADE SUITS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 287, 28 August 1920, Page 7

PRICES FOR READY-MADE SUITS

Sir—The chairman of your local Woollen Mill hiis been firing Wank cartridge to make a noise, and try to provo that a certain gentleman, who shall be nameless, has been making rash statement?, the. gist of which was tbnt his' farming friends got only 15d. per lb. for tlieir wool, or about pre-war price, and hajl to pay fifteen guineas, or about two and * half times more, for'his suit. 'The prica of tl*e suit was alright, as I know to my cost.-and according to a statement issued by the responsible Government Department, read in Parliament by Mr. Manser, he is only a fractional part of a pennj out in the price of wool, as the average cost to these mills, under Sir James Allen's Order-in-Council, for the eightyone thousand odd bales, chiefly merinos and halfbred, taken during the four, years of the commandeer, works out at Is. Sid., or aliotit a third of the price the sumo wool would liavo realised at Homo

Tf, as the chairman states, these Dominion mills aro only working at a fair margin of profit, how comes it that tho selling price of their stares is <loul>led, and in isolated cases more than trebled, during the war, and that shareholders are displaying such llvelv interest at their meetings? , '. The fact is. and if tho enalrman down t know he ought to, that these same shave-, holders are waiting like so many carrion! crows, waiting for the carcase, m. the shaixs of farmers' half profits, to be thrown at them by wav of dividends and perliaps watered stock, to do a little gnmble with on 'Change. ' The time has come when the duty, on ready-made garments, for both male alia female, should be abolished and the' tailor get his fair share of locally mamir foctured tweeds, as these woollen companies are employing all our na tailotesses, anil can afford to undersell the ttnported ready-made and dutypaid garments, but many of them don t, and make a pull ■