MANCHESTER GOODS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1926, Page 21

MANCHESTER GOODS

I THE COTTON INDUSTRY. j I ENGLAND STILL LEADS. j I DOMINION MARKET VALUED. \

(By Sir Percy Woodhouse, K.8.E., J.P., D.L., President Manchester Chamber of Commerce.)

I welcome this opportunity of communicating on behalf of the numerous Manchester firms who supply goods to the New Zealand market with the thousands of people in the Dominions who actually buy our products. I suppose that practically every man, woman, and child in New Zealand at this moment is probably wearing as a garment or using for domestic purposes some cloth produced in Lancashire, and that this is no exaggeration is supported by the undeniable fact that, taking the population of New; Zealand as a whole, they spend 30s per head per annum on English cotton piece goods. All I car. say is that if the rest of the world did but onequarter as well, there would never more be any peridds of slackness in Manchester trade. The fact is, of course, that some of our other markets have not been keeping so steadily to their usual amount of purchases, and in consequence our trade has not been free from difficulties. We have had to work short time, and our production has necessarily been on a smaller scale. Who would suppose, however, that a great world export trade like curs could fail to be affected by the unprecedented disturbances of the war and the economic upheaval which succeeded it? It was inevitable and unavoidable, but. some people have made the mistake of magnifying our difficulties, with the result that in distant countries, possibly even in New Zealand, there has perhaps grown up the impression that this great 1 Lancashire industry is no longer enjoying that pre-eminence for which it has always been famous. To suggest that the cotton industry— or for that matter any other of the staple trades of the Mother Country— is tottering to a' permanent decline is pessimistic nonsense carried to absurd degrees. We have in Lancashire, not merely numerically the greatest number of factories of spindles and looms of any country in the world. We have, as we have always had, the best machinery and —our most valuable asset—the most skilled operatives, whose unique abilities are. inherited from generations of forbears engaged in the cotton trada,

HIGHLY PROGRESSIVE.,

More than this, we are at this time as an industry more alert to take advantage of every new means of improving our produce than we have ever been in my fifty years' experience. Let me make my point clear. A few years ago artificial silk was a relatively unimportant product. The cotton industry discovered that it could use it, mixed with cotton to produce dress goods more attractive and appealing to the eye than cotton goods pure and simple. Nowadays we are exporting some fifty million yards annually of these goods of cotton and artificial silk mixed, and it is a branch of our trade which is growing daily. This means that Lancashire manufacturers have been progressive enough to instal the necessary new machinery. Lancashire designers have been keen to embody the new schemes in their fash-:*

ionable suggestions. Our dyers and printers have overcome the technical difficulties of apply colour to cloths composed of mixed threads: and all this has taken place within a few years. This is a good i example of the progressive vigour which still pervades our industry, and to my mind is an excellent answer to those who take a gloomy view of our future. Parenthetically, I may add that to New Zealand alone we exported 112,000 yards of these new cloths in the first four months of the present year. : Kecently there has been a special artificial silk exhibition in London—the first of its kind—and a great proportion of the exhibits were cloths of artificial silk mixed with cotton. The beautiful effects which are obtainable are truly remarkable, as all of my readers will agree who have seen them on sale in New Zealand. I ought perhaps to apologise for this digression into the subject of artificial silk. I did so in order to show how readily our great industry responds to the needs of the times and thus to prove its continued ability to supply to the world at large the best in quality and price in everything connected with cotton.

GOOD QUALITY TRADE

I myself have personally considerable acquaintance with New Zealand trade, as nay own firm has been selling to that market for a number of years. It is a market for which we in Manchester have a high regard, because it buys good qualities (which encourage us. to produce our best) and because of the very good reputation which New Zealand buyers enjoy amongst the Manchester houses. For many years, of course*, probably most of the transactions have passed through the London houses, who act as

buying agents for the New Zealand firms. Nowadays several Manchester concerns have their own branches or ■ agents in New Zealand, thus establishing even closer contact with our customers in the Dominions. I suppose the United States is our chief competitor in New Zealand, but the quantity imported from that country is negligible in comparison with that which comes from Manchester. There may be one or two lines which fare produced on standardised lines in- the U.S.A. which happen to suit New Zealand requirements, but for the great bulk of their needs New Zealanders already come to us, and there is, I feel sure, no occasion for me to encourage them to continue to do so. New Zealand is one jf the few markets which are taking practically the same quantities from us as before the war. Our shipments regularly reach the neighbourhood of 40 million lineal yards, or thirty odd million square yards, of a present-day value of approaching £2,000,000.

AN ENGINEERING CENTRE.

I Famous as our city is for its cotton ' goods, it is sometimes given less than its I due as an engineering centre. In point j of fact there is no town in Great-Britain with more important engineering plant than Manchester. In addition to all the great makers of textile machinery— which does not interest New Zealand very much—we have in this city several firms of world-wide renown in electrical engineering products, locomotive and heavy engineering, fire sprinkler apparatus, etc. Such firms as Metropolitan Vickers, Armstrong-Whitworth, and Mather and Platt, to mention but' a few, must be well known in New Zealand. The motor-car manufacturers are represented by Crossleys, whose works are in Manchester. The engineering industry in Manchester is singularly well-equipped with modern plant. As an example of purchases by New Zealand of our engineering products which happens to have come to my personal notice amongst doubtless many others of which I am unaware, I may mention the five large1 generators which were constructed in Manchester at the works of Messrs. Metropolitan Vickers, Ltd., and are now working in the New Zealand Government's important hydro-electrical scheme at Mangahao. Then I understand Messrs. Mather and Platt have recently carried out important contracts for special motor-driven pumps and compressors for the refrigerating and mining industries of New Zealand. Space is lacking to give further detail of Manchester's extensive trade relations with New Zealand. We are the centre of a great population which is consuming New Zealand dairy products and other imports from the Dominion in everincreasing quantities. The Chamber of Commerce, of which I have the honour to be. president, encourages this mutual aspect of the trade by every means in its power, and I am sure we oan look for^ ward to continued growth in our trade to and from the Dominions for which we have so high a regard.