WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 94, 7 May 1937, Page 35 (Supplement)

WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE

Optimism in the Eighties A faith in the future of Hawke's Bay as a manufacturlng centre is disdosed in the announcement, in an issue of the Hastings Star in 1886., of the prospectus of the Hawke's Bay Woollen Manufacturlng Co., Ltd. With a eapita'l of £50,000 it was proposed "to carry on the business of textile manufaeture in all or any branches of woollen manufacture, and to manufaeture garments, clothing and other artlcles." The prospectus quotes the xemarks of Dr. Hector, in his report to Parliament on the Christchurch Exhibition, in which he said: "Woollen goods are certain to become the chief staple oommodities in this colony, where every natural, facality for their production exists in perfection, but • at present they have hardly reached the stage of supplying local consumptlon, as we find in the l&test statistical returns available (1882) that woollen cloths and hosiery were imported to the value of nearly £200,000 in one year; also, made-up wearing apparel was dmported in the sarae year to the extent of £287,000. The preference shown for imported shop goods has no deeper foundation than ignorance and prejudice, as it ie beyond all doubt that clothing made of New Zealand fabrics, and in the colony, aTe quality for quality. and price for price, more lasting and far more suited to the requirements of the counfry than most of the imported goods." This was not a bad spirit of optimism in 1886, when the population of New Zealand was 578,000. The provisional dareetors of the company were: Messrs. J. D. Ormond, M.H.R., E. Beck, J. Chambers, senr., J. .Close, G. Ellis, H. Gaisford, O. B. Hoadley, J. Heslop, R. D. D. McLean, Captain Russell, M.H.R., F. Sutton, T. Tanner, J. N. Williams, R. Wellwood, and W, A. Oouper.