Are Wool Values Safe?

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8196, 24 May 1906, Page 2

Are Wool Values Safe?

BRADFORD, April 6. Prices in our wool market contmao very firm, and, though there may not bo quite so much animation an daring the progress of tbo late London sales, still thoro is a quiet, steady business passing, in the raw article especially. Certainly, whilst such high prices arc ruling, dealers arc more than usually careful not to commit themselves, especially whon they may not bo sure of a profit. As regards tho users, the wish is certainly father to tho thought that such prices cannot laat for over. And whoro tho custom, or necessity, perhaps, has been to give the customer thrt benefit of favourable purchases, either in topß or in yarn, it can bo well understood that, as such contracts get worked off, the inovitablo squeeze must follow. Home-grown wools are also dear, and tend to become dearer. As showing an instance of patience being rewarded, the writer has just heard of a lot of Lincoln wool being bought which had lain in the grower's hands for forty years. It had been well kopt all theae years, and was of splendid quality. An interesting article appeared last week in the Yorkshire Observer on the subject, " Aro Wool Values Safe The writer ahows* that up to ten years ago the world's wool production kept pace with its * equipments. Taking the figures of imports into the L'cited Kingdom and tho Continent of Australasian wools only as typical and representative of tho world's total wool production, it is shown that from 1860 a continued expansion went on for 3;j years. Starting in that year with an import of 187,000 bales, there was an average yearly addition of 85,000 bales till 1870 ; an addition ot 42,000 bales till 1880, of 54,000 bales in the period 1880-90, and 120,000 yearly incroaso in the next five years to | .1895, when the high-water mark of ! 2,001,000 bales was readied. By 1904 these colonial imports had receded ; to .1,371,000 bales, but recovered lost year, whon 1,638,000 bales were imported. On thercasonableassuinption that the wool wa.s bemg consumed as soon as produced, for certainly it would not be buried or burned in the ground, and ! as certainly for .some time back it has ! not been safe for the mere speculators to lock it up; assuming then, that the world at large is not standing still in its requirements of the staple, it is seen what a leeway there is to make up before wool can again be looked for at £*il> a bale—the desideratum of the j Bradford user. For had the supplies I gone on increasing at the average rate' of the ;?5 years previous to 1805, the imports of the Australasian article Trot:ld now have reached 3,200,000 bales. In fact we are to-day in the matter of colonial wool supplies, at the same level as we were fifteen years ago. Whatever influence:; may bring about a fall in wool values the writer asserts that it will not be due to any shrinking in the world's requirements or to increased supplies for a long time to come.