Birmingham Notes.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 40, 15 August 1895, Page 2

Birmingham Notes.

Cfkom oue own correspondent, j The road between here and Pemberton is in a bad state. Mr Windclburn, carter, had to get two additional horses to his team to take in twenty-five cwt. Mr Carter, the blacksmith, is starting a saw mill. Having totara and other good timber on his section he feels justified in the step that he is takinpr. As a number of men will be employed a certain amount of good is sure to be achieyed. Things commercially are in a very bad state. Why trade should be so dull 'tis hard to say, but the fact remains that it cannot bo much worse. The fourth series of London wool sales, which took place last month, were an agreeable surprise lo all. We are so intimately associated with this important industry that the fluctuations of the London market are eagerly watched for. Tlie cablegrams report a substantial increase of prices in crossbreds, and a fair advance in morincs. After many months of disheartening experiences it certainly looks as if the price of wool is at last on a fair way to recovery. Of course how far that recovery may go it is hard to predict, but there is the fact that the late heavy rise in hides, leather, and skins was quite unexpected. The conditions which influence the market for New Zealand wool are more favorable than they have been for a long time past. An era of restricted competition is passing away, and the popnhiiion of the United States is busy exhausting all the available stocks of articles of wearing apparel, and whilst the home manufacture of woollens has increased, additional importations of manufactured goods have been made, and latterly the quantity of wool changing hands in New Yo.ik has been very large. In Germany, France, ami Kn^l'ind both consumption and manufacturing have in-cn-aned. The exports of worsteds and woollens from England for the first four months of the present voar amounted to 7-1,000,000 jMrtls, n«ainsi 52,000,000 yards for the corresponding period of last year. The French exports fur the same period show an increase of nearly a million sterlirß. Turning to production we find that the ilocks in New South Wales have diminished by 4,000,000 in the last four years. Tho American Hocks are dwindling, and at the Cape wool growing does not pay, the number of sheep falling off in 1894 by '2,500,0 .0. In the Argentine the production of wool is stationary. Now Zealand and Australia have been in '. erensinji thoir ilocks. In 1894 New Zealand showed an increase of 850,460 sheep, the increase in tho Rangitikei district for the same period being 20,555, and this in the face of large exports of frozen meat. Altoget)ier the results oi the last woo) sales may be accepted as an omen of far better times than we h'»ve had of late.