The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1919. WOOL AND MEAT VALUES.

Taihape Daily Times, 28 February 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1919. WOOL AND MEAT VALUES.

(Wish which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waleamo News).

The price of wool and the cost of I living in Britain have been the subjects of several cable messagejs received quite recently. Before tbe close of the war there was considerable speculation as to whether wool valises would appreciate or depreciate, and meetings were held in various centres protesting : against the Government requisition of wool being extended till June, 1920. Mr Lysnar, whose bona fides we cannot question, ■&ent around to these meetings, telling farmers that it .was little short of madness..and suicide, to allow-their w r ool to be requisitioned now that the war was no longer raging, and that there would be such a demand for wool that it would rise to somewhei’e near the vicinity of four shillings a pound, or even more. Mr Lysnar wont nearly crazy on wool prices as though it were a matter of life and death to him, but scarcely had his ravings died away than it was authoritatively • stated that wool was becoming a drug on the British market, 'and that prices must go down accordingly. Realising the alarming increase of tumultuous civil war, of the revolutionary propaganda that was irrepressibly being spread over all the countries of Europe by a Bolshevism to which the German Kaiser and his military curse had put the firestick, we saw that it was utterly impossible for there to be any systematic drfnand for wool until the real nature and magnitude of the trouble had been correctly appraised and had been irrecoverably cheeked, put down to'a state in which it wodlu be possible for industries of the European continent to reorganise and re-establish to a degree -when their demand for raw material would have any appreciable effect on the market. While the peoples of Europe are little more than a rabble, while every man's hand is lifted against his brother, and women are taking a part in the horrifying orgy of fraticide, there can be but little demand for best woollen manufactures, and certainly none of dependable regularity such as would tend to keep wool values up. The chief wool producing countries of the world are more free from the anarchist and Bolshevik, and the processes of wool production have not been .materially disturbed, and it appeared to ns that while the markets for wool were in the whirl of a huge revolutionary cycle a normal market was utterly impossible, and we urged our farmers accordingly to be sure of their market till middle of next year, when the world would cither be under the heel of Bolshevism or that curse would be suppressed for ever. With the world’s normal production going on to such a market it seemed sheer lunacy to expect anything like normal demand, let alone an abnormal demand that would rush j up wool values as Mr. Lysnar contended. With most of the European woollen factories transformed into munition factories, and many of them destroyed lUogelher and their machinery removed, and worse, the robber country in the revolutionary throes of Bolshevism, in which it seems to re-establish anything but extension of that bloody cult, is out of the question. We could not realise where the four shillings a pound wool market was going to arise, and we think Mr Lysnar should now have something further to, say to the Farmers’ Union members on the subject. To argue that a stable market was going to rise phoenxx-lik'e, out of the ashes of the war was to contend for the impossible. It was wholly and distinctly in the interest of the British Tnanufacturers that there should be no price fixed for Australasian wools, and if Mr Lysnar had

been engaged in their behalf he could not have done more for them than he did. B'ut this wool experience goes to show that something more rhan mere assertion should be insisted upon; something more than a playing upon the avaricious side of human nature required before taking action upon so vital a question. While military clothing was wanted by the Imperial Government, as well as by the Allies, manufacturers were naturally clamourous for wool so that they might participate more largely in "a cloth, worsted md tweed market through which they were extorting as much as five shillings an ounce for the wool the New Zealand farmers received fifteen pence per pound for. Now, those same manufacturers who, Mr’ iLysnar told our woolgrowcrspvere going to pay four shillings a pound for their wool, do not want it, have no use for it at even one shilling per pound. Mr Lysnar and the manufacturers from whom he took his four shillings a pound cue were very likely mistaken; they thought, perhaps, that Bolshevism and anarchy were not the power they have proved to be, and, therefore that their action would hot disturb the normal recovery of trade. Now, they find that the kind of clothing almost wholly needed in Europe is of the lower grade and coarse kinds; that they have thousands of tons of old military clothing to work upon; that the continent of Europe can only buy clothing made of the veriest shoddja the shredded and re-spun military uniforms that have been discarded, ox for which there is no use; that there is only a limited market for the highest class goods, and that is largely a distant market, but it would have been fatal for New Zealand woolgrowers to have fallen into the same error, however much the contenders against extension of the wool requisition may have been in earnest. It was fortunate for them they did not rashly follow* the Ea'st Coast bell wether, as they will require all the money the Imperial Government has agreed to pay for their w r ool w r ith which to meet the taxation of a staggering nature that they are shortly to be apprised of if this country does not get some considerable indemnity from the defeated enemy. Official cable messaged also inform us that the cost of living : ,is to be reduced in Britain; that huge stores of food for military use, no longer required! are being released, but it is evident that prices of food New Zealanders export may take several falls in Britain before the present requisition prices are affected, consequently, the decrease in cost of living probably means that a process of eliminating the profiteer is to be put into action. Meat Trust agents in this Dominion may do their utmost in forcing down stock values, and so partially recoup th'eir loss on selling prices forced upon them in Britain, but there appears nothing in the' background l to warrant any fear that this can bo carried to any dangerous extreme. In any case the meat and wool requisition farmers assented to wall save them from all marketing eccentricities for over a year into the future, when it may be reasonably hoped that a saner state of the public mind will then have been established.