SHEEP’S CLOTHING

Hokitika Guardian, 14 June 1929, Page 5

SHEEP’S CLOTHING

. Writing from London on May 1, “E.L.G.W.” says: This will surely be known as the Ersatz Age, the age of synthetic, chemically-made substitutes for food, for Clothing and for many another necessary of life in a complex civilisation. Cotton has been ousted by artificial silk. In that as much as anything lies.the tragedy of Lancashire’s cotton industry. Now we learn that an “ersatz” wool has been produced—a wool made cheaply from a vegetable source and not from the sheep’s back. This artificial wool, the basis of which is a waste vegetable material, is chemically changed into a staple which is claimed to possess elasticity, strengli and softness of texture allowing of competition and co-operation with the real thing. It will be marked at something like one-tliird the cost of common wool! We learn that it is only to be used for mixing with the real thing from the backs of the Dominions’ flocks. This is as far as present information goes.

The curious thing is tfjat only a week ago a novel “Shep’s Clothing,” by A. R. R-awlinson, was issued by Messrs Nash and Grayson for review, i in which the struggle between two great world master financiers .hinges on the possession of a secret process for artificial wool, made from a cheap vegetable substitute. “Sheep’s Clothing” is a really thrilling yarn and ; its happy ending does not come until • the inventor, the inventor’s wife and a villain or two in the pieoe come by , sufficiently violent ends. : The hero Derek Orr, is a young Englishman, rather simple,' hut with flashes of shrewdness and a determination to stick it out even in the dangerous job .lie is set by the heroine’s uncle, Ulrich Panssard, who is a world-famed financier at dagger’s drawn with his only world rival, . Soronoff, as sister, blood-thirsty a speciman of the financial magnate who rules continents as ever adorned the pages of a' thriller. How Derek unmasks Mudor, Panssard’s secretary, who is all the time Soronoff, and able, .through his intimate knowledge as Mudor of Panssard’s affairs, to baulk all the latter’s financial coups and turn them to his own advantage as Soronoff, one must leave the reader to find out; how the secret formula for artificial wool is hidden in the word “sheep.” and the long-»sought secret—the raw material for it—grows openly and luxuriantly in a garden in the Sussex Downs and is, in fact, nothing but nettles, this highly exciting story tells in vigorous language, and bow the “simole” young Englishman foiled the band of international crooks although lie went amongst • them armed only with his steadfast courage, while they, of course, had pockets full of guns,