CONDITIONS IN BRADFORD.

Shannon News, 24 December 1923, Page 3

CONDITIONS IN BRADFORD.

CAUSES OF WOOL SHORTAGE.

AN ENGLISH MERCHANT'S VIEWS,

Of the vicissitudes through which Bradford merchants and manufacturers hav,e recently passed and the. conditions prevailing in the" wool market when he left the Old Country some nine weeks ago, Mr A. Rawson, who was for 38 years, a director of a prominent firm of Bradford cloth merchants, had some ' interesting xuwujis to tell a "Chronicle" reporter yesterday. Mr Rawson has recently retired and in the course of a tour of Ne.w Zealand is staying with his brother, Mr I. Rawson* of Levin. "Bradford is just getting over an exceedingly bad ti me ." saia Mr Rawson. "During the war it was said that millionaires in Bradford were ,as common as cobblestones on the road. But their wealth had no real existence, except on paper. It was just a mushroom growth* They mistook it for a permanent tree, and it vanished in a single night. Many firms were exceedingly hard hit and fosit huge sums. Some had the courage .to cut their losses and decrease their capital alia so got back on to a sound looting. This meant, of course, that their shareholders lost money, but it is' better to have. 10s worth, of stock which represented real money than ill on paper. The trouble ,is that many could not face this and are hanging) on with their original capital.

KNITTING CRAZE SAVES WOOL INDUSTRY

"As to the market for raw wool it is good at present because there is a shortage. What the future holds it is very difficult to say. Personally I am one >ol' those men who live lroiii day .to day as regards these things; 1 have seen so many prophecies come to nought. However, I should say that as long as the fashion for knitted materials continues, the price will be maintained. It is the ladtfes' trade which is keeping the price up now; the men's <trade could never have done it. The fashion for knitted fabrics has absorbed an enormous quantity of wool. It takes far more wool to make a yard of the average knitted fabric than to make a yard of the average dress material—about half as much again I should think. It has to be all wool, they cannot adulterate it and tnls has no doubt had a good deal to do with,, its popularity, besides the fact, that it is warm as well as light and porous. It was certainly exceedingly fortunate that knitted fashions came in just when the wool market was glutted. It may have been engineered? Well, such things are possible. Another thing which helped was the -big orders for wool from Germany. She has 'been taking huge quantities of wool, arid I believe a large amount of it was. on account of Russia, the Ruissian merchants having bought through Germany. Again a number of European countries which used to .grow wool in minor quantities now produce.none." NEW ZEALAND CLOTH. Regarding New Zealand cloth, Mr Rawson was of the opinion that its delects were, due to mistakes in the blending of wools in .spinning the yarn. The British manufacturer blended his ' yam scientifically and tested the strength of the different wools so the fibres should support each other. He had noticed that New Zealand materials ihad no. elasticity and when once stretc'hed did not resume the original shape. The English maker experimented until he .got a yarn which after being stretched would spring back into its original length, when rested. The secret lay in spinning the yarn. , • . In describing the facilities Which the Bradford merchants had at their command Mr Rawson stated, at Bradlord tMere ,was wh ; \Jt was called a "conditioning house." This, hatf » staff of highly trained experts who would dissect and test a sample sent to •them, under microscopes, and return an exact description of the proportions of wool and cotton or other materials which it contained. Thus, if a merchant thought a line of cloth was not up to sample he had only to send a piece to the conditioning house for examination.