WOOL MARKETING

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1929, Page 14

WOOL MARKETING

ORGANISATION NO PANACEA

The serious decline in wool values has revived the old collecting of marketing schemes that lie dormant in the profitable years when wool goes swimmingly into consumption and cost of production does not unpleasantly obtrude, states the "Pastoral Eeriew." The Premier of Queensland (Mr. Moore) has been engaged in trying to induce various Australian interests to reach some agreement "by which thpy could come under an organised system of marketing, so as to enable the wool industry to be put on its fept" Mr. .Moore (states the "Keview") was scornful of any benefit that might accrue to the industry by the reduction of rents and railway freights. He called it "a mere bagatelle," and reiterated that what they had to get -was "an organised system of marketing," if the help was to be of a permanent nature. The thing to do, however, he said, was to induce th'c woolgrowers to realise it. and it would be wise tn extend the scheme so as to include Xew Zealand and South Africa, and make it an Empire marketing "show." We do not for a moment question Mr. Moore's sincerity or anxiety to help the woolgrowing industry, but he will achieve little in that direction till he first learns that tangible concessions suth as freight reductions, rent decreases, etc., will do infinitely more real good than all the grandiose, impractical schemes in the world. _ "Organised marketing" and its near relations have come to be regarded by practically all shades of Australian political thought as the panacea for every ill contracted by any primary industry, but we are not told in what way it is going to stimulate demand or cure the basic troubles at the consumer's end of the trade. As a matter of fact it is doubtful if any industry in the world possesses a more efficient and completely organised system of marketing than does Australian ■wool.