WOOL UPHOLSTERY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 26

WOOL UPHOLSTERY

SECRETARIAT'S PLEA

BASED ON WIDE GROUNDS

New developments in wool upholstery for cars were announced by the International Wool Secretariat last month. The Secretariat has the finan-. cial support and co-operation of a number of. Yorkshire manufacturers of upholstery cloths and a concerted effort is. being made to popularise the use of the material. A publicity campaign is to .be launched.

In the presence of Earl Howe and Lord Barnby, Mr. F. S. Arthur, the New Zealand representative on the Secretariat, addressed manufacturers.

"Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand," he said, "have a vital interest in wool. Our countries are prosperous or poor according to the price we get for our wool, and on our prosperity

depends our ability to purchase British exports. True, we have our tariffs, but we take one-fifth of all British exports, and with only 11,000,000 white people, buy three times the value of British exports bought by 130,000,000 people in the United States.

"Related to the car trade, the value of the trade with these Dominions is even more striking. In 1937 the total British exports of cars was 56,620. of which 25,265, or 47 per cent., went to Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand—Dominions, which, I have said, depend for their ability to purchase British exports very largely on the prosperity of their pastoral industries.

"In addition, the wool from these Dominions provides 75 per cent, of the raw material for the great Yorkshire wool industry, which employs directly 250,000 people and indirectly many hundreds of thousands more in Great Britain. Here, then, you have a great Empire industry, an imperial industry, (he prosperity of which is your concern as it is ours in the Dominion?."

In these days of restricted trade, he said, it was of the utmost importance that new avenues should be explored and fresh outlets found for the products of industry. Wool upholstery for motor-cars was not a new idea. It was familiar in the higher-class cars and was standard upholstery in practically every American car. For many years British railways had been upholstered in wool fabrics, and buses all over London and the provinces were upholstered in wool. As a result of a close investigation made into the use of this class of upholstery by these services they had found that the reasons could be summed up very briefly as economy, comfort, durability, variety of design, and public satisfaction.

He suggested that women's fashion writers might be interested in the field that would be opened to their art by the adoption of wool upholstery for cars. Women had as much say in the choice of the family car as in the husband's suit, and what an added attraction was made available, to them by the use of wool upholstery in its variety of design and colour combined with utility and durability. There was a luxury and comfort about wool upholstery that would s appeal to every woman. He mentioned that they had entered a wool-upholstered Car in the R.A.C. rally.