OUR WOOLLEN INDUSTRY

Hokitika Guardian, 13 November 1930, Page 2

OUR WOOLLEN INDUSTRY

TIMARU MILLS CEASE WORK. (N.Z. National Review.) Two recent paragraphs in the local press concerning the woollen goods industry are interesting and significant. In ?onte it was' stated that a c|aim to be the first place iwhere New Zealand wool manufactured into cloth has been made by kelson ;in the “Evening'Mail s'* 5 '* during-a “New Zealand Industries Week” there; '

'That paper claims that a Nelson' pioneer, Mr Thoirias Blick, built a. weaving loom . of wood and bamboo in 1847, and a"" year loiter began to weave cloth from yarns spun by the wives of German, settlers in the Nelson district. The good wives could spin a pound of yam a day, and were satisfied with a shilling, a day for their labour. ' '

Mr Webley, another . Nelson pioneer settler,' was a partner df Mr Blick in this enterprise, and for many years Nelson led the way. in the spinning and weaving of woolj but could not retain the lead in later years,

It seems strange, after reading hotf the industry was launched 87 years agp, to learn that owing, to the prevailing depression the South Canterbury Woollen Manufacturing Company has suspended operations at its TimflfU Wills, after working for some time with a reduced staff, . A staff of fifty employees will be thrown idle as the result of the Piosing after manufacturing had been Parried on for so many years, and the lose of wages in Tirnnm will, amount to between £12,000 and £15,000 per annum.

‘ Yet we are still importing a huge quantity of woollen goods, much of which is made from inferior wools, and often adulterated with dead wool, cotton, or shoddy, and the folly of our “freetection” policy becomes more apparent as the ranks of ’our unemployed skilled workers become more and mpre swollen. High authorities agree that no country can produce bettpr woollen goods, whether fine underclothing or heavy woollep blankets and travelling rugs, than the products of opr New Zealand mills, and we should he exporting instead of importing manufactured woollen goods.