WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 5 April 1929, Page 2

WELLINGTON NEWS

WOOL INDUSTRY PROBLEMS

(Special Correspondent.)

WELIXGTON, April 4

“Quite clearly the return to normal cannot mean a return to the pre-war economy of wool production and manufacture (observes Professor A. M. Shimmin,M.A., senior lecturer in textiles, Leeds University). The post-war years have brought to light in the principal pastoral countries a keen determination to establish a variety of economic activity within their borders. Australia is no longer content to enjoy pride of place in the world’s wool production. There must be manufacturing industries, and the Australian believes that a keen policy of protection is the only means of 'their creation. Wool production is still foremost in Australia, but he who would sell to that market will realise the meaning of the process of altering the balance between the production and the use of raw materials.

South Africa, too, according to the Professor is in a state of transition. The decline in the popularity of mohair lias driven the South Africans to the cultivation of the merino, and experts declare that the quality of this wool is already equal to Australia’s best. This inspires the country with the hope of a vigorous wool producing future. Jn South Africa wool production must settle to the level which will he determined by the counter attack of cattle breeding and meat trading. The supplies of domestic wools in Great Britain, France and Germany show a tendency to decline as tho trouble and exiien.se of farming shows smaller returns than the manufacturing industry. While the world is faced in the primary wool markets, with the economic readjustments, there is no less important revision in progress on the side of the demand for finished wool fabrics. The general trend from tRe finer dressy worsted fabrics to the rougher every day type of woollen fabrics has been noted in all the principal manufacturing countries. In Great Britain the problem of worsted production is specially acute. A shore time ago dress goods suffered in face of the craze lor knitted garments.

With respect to artificial silk the Professor does not regard it as a menace to wool. The production and manufacture of artificial silks are now fairly established from being the technological curiosity that produced trifles and trimmings, artificial silk lias become fairly established in the realm of wearing apparel. Colossal corporations have sprung up to finance the production and in rather more than twenty years this industry has absorltod one hundred millions of capital to apply on an international scale. The technical possibilities of working together cotton and artificial silk have proved greater than those of combining artificial silk and wool. The incidence of the introduction of artificial

silk is in danger of being exaggerated. To double the present output of the world would require an outlay of something like £80,000,000 and even then the amount would only be equal to 4 per cent, of the world's cotton production The Professor believes that the greatest hope of a return to prosjierity in the woo! trade lies in the union of forces between employers and employees to master the problems of raw material supplies, fashion, cohijk:titive costs of production and tiie effective marketing of the finished product.

The origin and development of artificial silk are interesting from tho coin, morcial viewpoint. Jn 1754 a French physicist, in his book on the history of insects, suggested producing a yarn similar to silk by artificial means. .Ninety years later, in 1845, Schoenbein discovered ni.tro-eelluloise, and after a study of its properties, attempts were made to produce threads resembling silk. In 1855 Audemars, of Lausanne, took out tbe first patent for transferring Nitru-rellulo.se into threads which he called artificial silk. But. from the textile point of view, the “father of the artificial silk industry” is Count Hilaire, a Frenchman, who in 18-14, was able to produce his first synthetic fibre, using the trunks and limbs of the mulberry tree as raw material. The process of manufacture introduced by Count Hilaire was modified by Lebnor, who established himself in Switzerland. Later the Copra-Ammon-ium, process was discovered, and the next advance to lie made was the Viscose process in 1892. This latter was started on its road to prosperity by the intervention of the Tophnm-Centrifugal spinning box which makes 5000 to 10000 revolutions a minute. The next process discovered was Cellulose-Ace-tate. Thus the present world production of artificial silk is by four processes, namely, viscose 70 per cent., ni-tro-cel)ulose 18 per cent., copra-ammo-nium 5 per cent, and cellulose 1 per cent.