MINIMUM PRICE IDEAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 51, 2 March 1937, Page 8

MINIMUM PRICE IDEAL

Presumably the Wairoa Farmers'^ Union has gone a little way into the feasibility of selling wool on a minimum price basis, but its ideal of a world association of wool growers agreeing not to sell wool below a certain price appears fantastic to the lay mind. True , Australia, -New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina are great producers of wool, but there are others, and their name is legion, including not only the British Isles, but Continental and Asiatic countries and the United States. Anything like agreement of wool producers' of the world as to the price which their produce shall be bought—that price and nothing under—appears to be impossible of accomplishment, to say nothing of the great varieties of wool grown and the diverse uses to which it is put, or the differences in cost of production in different countries. But there are two quite formidable obstacles to be overcome before price dictation can become effective: (1) Price resistance by woollen manufacturers, and (2) recourse to, substitutes in the form of staple fibre, or synthetic wool. The minimum price ideal is fascinating but illusive, as this country is discovering over the guaranteed price for butter. It is not surprising that the Wairoa Farmers' Union has no liking for Government control of wool, but why it should desire control by some vast international organisation which Avould have to fix and enforce a price below which wool could not be sold is difficult for the ordinary business mind to understand.