THE WOOL IMPASSE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 44, 21 February 1930, Page 8

THE WOOL IMPASSE

Total absence of buyers from the Wellington wool sale, fixed for yesterday, is a matter of national, no less than of local, importance. In tb^ present economic circumstances of the Dominion it is necessary that every pound or ton of exportable produce should be turned into money at the earliest moment. Disposal of the offering of the 15,000 bales of wool available for this sale, after allowing for "passings-iri" and a very modest average price for the wool, would have put at least a quarter of a million of money into almost immediate circulation. This may be a rough-and-ready estimate of the amount, but it will serve to point the fact. Into the dispute between local brokers and wool buyers as to responsibility for the quantity of wool to be-offered at this sale it is unnecessary to go, for both parties have fully stated their view 3in print, and readers who are interested can draw their own conclusions from these statements. If the buyers feel free to abstain from buying, growers are equally free to refrain from selling part or all of their wool. No doubt some of the growers*'are willing and even anxious to meet the market, but they are prevented from doing this by the action of the buyers; and if they are in immediate need of returns from their produce they may suffer great inconvenience. However, as was pointed out in an interview in "The Post" yesterday, there are facilities for the financing and the selling of wool outside New Zealand, and probably such facilities will be made use of. Mr. W. H. Field, M.P., speaking at the Tow£ Hall yesterday, suggested that,, if the wool were sent Home for sale on growers' account it might be there received by hostile buyers. It is difficult, however, to believe this. Although the trouble appears to have originated in Bradford, the benches in the Coleman Street Wool Ex- ! change are not a close preserve of Yorkshire buyers. There are, too, important financial elements in the dispute which none of the parties to it should overlook. The broker has already acted as shock absorber, lout now that grower'and buyer have asserted each his right to sell or buy, as the case may be, when and what he pleases, we can only hope that both will speedily settle their differences and get on with the sale.