Wool Buying.

Manawatu Herald, 17 April 1897, Page 3

Wool Buying.

la the oourse of conversation (says jPrutk't London correspondent), with the head of a Urge business firm extensively interested in New Zealand produce, I asked him to what he attributed the present weakness in the wool market. "In my opinion," he said, "the present dulness is due in a large measure to the fact that British and Continental and American firms are getting into the habit of sending out their buyers to purchase in the. colony instead of waiting and competing at the London auctions. When the representatives of the3e firms go out to the colony they naturally want to buy as cheaply as possible, but the colonial sellers regulate thejr prices largely by those ruling at the latest London sales. Manifestly, then, it is in the interests of the finis at this end to depress the London prices as much as they can, and so their object is to organise and arrange and combine in j all aorta of ways to keep prices rela- ! tively low, so that their buyers in the I colony may be able to point to these ! ruling rates and purchase on most | favourable terra*. This also works ! in another* way and re-acts upon the London sales. Every care is taken here to direct attention to the low prices fur which wool is bought in i the colony, and this is used in its ! turn as the means of bringing about lower quotations at the next London | sale. Here, again, as in the case of j meat, the producer is prejudiced by the praotice of selling f.o.b. or c.i.f ." "On the other hand," he oon* tinued, " the growers say, with reason, that they are anxious to turn their goods into cash as soon as possible. They may have advances to refund, or debts to pay, and so be unable to wait until their wool is sold in London, and, therefore, jump at the chance of selling i 6 out and out on the spot. The real faotis that in regard to all produce, it is injurious to have two markets, one in tho colony and one in London. Each tends to hinder the other, and each acts and re-aota upon tho other, and almost always injuriously."