THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1088, 24 April 1913, Page 3

THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

At the annual meeting of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday,.the President, Mr A. E. Mabin, in his address, dealing with the hemp industry, said New Zealand hemp benefited by the bountiful harvest in America and an anticipated shortage in competing fibres. The advance in price and increase in production would fall largely into the new season’s returns, and should swell the Dominion’s exports by about over the previous year, “I am sorry to say,” Mr Mabin went on, ‘‘that there has been a serious falling-off in quality of th ; s article according to the grading returns. The useful grade, good lair average quality, seems to be getting less and less.” - He quoted official figures in support of his charge, showing that whilst the bales graded had nearly doubled, the quantity of- g.f.a.q. produced had remained stationary, and the percentage of g.f.a.q. had fallen from 46 1-3 per cent, to 28 percent. But this did not, he said, disclose the full fall in quality, for, whereas a large proportion of the 12,583 bales graded fair in 1912 was of high quality fair, he feared a considerable proportion of the large output of 28,891 bales in 1913 was low grade fair ; a quality not approved of by consumers. These figures told a tale on market prices, and the matter was of the utmost importance to the trade.

There has been a serious blight in the Manawatu affecting the leaf this year. Many millers blamed, and probably rightly, the blight for the low quality; but there were millers not in the blight area who failed to produce good fair average. The poor milling was attributed by some to the many new and inexperienced millers who had entered the trade recently, by others to the independence of the workmen, the raising of the grading standard, and various causes, but whatever the trouble the remedy must be found. Under high prices there might be a disposition to dispense with that minute care and attention to every detail, which was the essence of successful milling, and which, when prices were low, must necessarily be given to the work to avoid loss. High prices, in short, induced a tendency to for quantity and not for qualityThis tendency must be checked, or the industry would be imperilled. It was quite possible that the miller did not see an immediate return for the extra cost of turning out the better article, but the return was there all the while. Markets were lost because the consumer could not obtain the better grade and could not use the lower. This was amply borne out by the lecent happenings in America and Australia, Markets were readily congested with poor 'quality, and prices fell,