Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, FEB. 5, 1903. Hemp.

Manawatu Herald, 5 February 1903, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, FEB. 5, 1903. Hemp.

Thk cable from the Agent-General published in our Tuesday’s issue should be regarded by all interested in New Zealand, as being a very important one, inasmuch as it announces the prices of N.Z. Hemp as being £B2 10s per ton, and Manila as £35 per ton. We have thus, in a high market, reached within fiftyshillings per ton of the price of the very fibre for rope-making in the world. It is a record the hempmillers should be proud of, and illustrates the very great advance our fibre has made in the London market. It used to be urged, in the olden days, when we never got within £lO per ton of the price of Manila, if wr could get our fibre near to the quotations for Manila the flax industry could be reckoned on as .a permanent industry. To-day we have got there, not at a bound, but, as will be seen by a perusal of the quotations for the past year, by a gradual improvement, and we are therefore justified in considering that the production of N.Z. Flax has become one of the permanent industries of the colony.

The millers have to be thanked for this satisfactory position, for more care has been taken in the output and the Government grading has placed the dealing with the fibre upon a satisfactory basis. Buyers know what they are dealing in, and millers know the prices they will gat. As we have, so frequently, pointed out, the supply of the green flax must be seen to, and suitable land will soon have to be laid down in flax. We have had just lately an instance of pluck and push in some millers launching out largely in the purchase of flax growing lands, but even around the river there are yet lands which though redeemed, as it was once thought, from flax, would pay better now in that crop than any other. At one time there was the uncertainty as to the continuance of the industry, but now no better proof of its value can be quoted than the comparison between flax and Manila, so that further caution is nothing but a piece of carelessness of much loss to the colony as a whole as well as to the owners of the land.