WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1921, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE WOOL SALES. AN IMPROVED TONE. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, May 27. The wool sales held here yesterday, though not marked by the eager competition that was general before the commandeer, were on the whole satisfactory. -Buyers commissioned from England, the Continent, America and Japan -were present, and, while, of course, they devoted most of their attention to the finer class of wools, they were not altogether indifferent to the offerings of other descriptions. It cannot be said that all anxiety concerning the future of the industry has been removed by the less depressing tone of the marke.. but it is certain that both growers and (shippers aro mulch less pessimistic than they were a few months ago. Mr. A. E. Mabin, who returned from his mission to Australia while the sales were in progress, has to make his report to the Government before he can discuss the position for publication, but it was fairly obvious from what he felt at liberty to say la/st night that such words of cheer as he has in store will be chiefly for the growers of the finer wools.

UNEMPLOYMENT. It seems, after all, that Mr. James McCombs, when speaking in Christchurch the other day, did commit himself to the ridiculous statement that the Government was “engineering the present unemployment for political purposes.” The personal friends of the member for Lyttelton, who respect the man without accepting his politics, had hoped it would be shown he had been misreported. He might have said legitimately, and perhaps with some measure of truth, that the Government was largely responsible for the extent of the existing unemployment. Had it utilised a greater area of Crown and Native land for soldier settlement under a co-opera-tive system of preparation, as was suggested at the time, and abstained from paying highly inflated prices for occupied land, the majority of the ultimate settlers would have been better off than they are now and the Public Works Fund need not have been so sadly depleted. But to accuse Mr. Massey and his colleagues of “engineering” unemployment is simply malicious nonsense.

HOME MARKETS. While meetings of branches, executives and conferences of the Farmers’ Union all over the country are demanding the better marketing of the farmers’ products, it may not be amiss to quote a paragraph from a letter received here yesterday from a New Zealander, of wide agricultural and commercial experience, now on a visit to London. “It has astounded me,” he writes, “to see how little live attention ds given by anyone in authority to the distribution of our meat in this country. I visited a dozen butchers’ shops this morning and in three of them found what the shopmen told me was New Zealand meat — and ‘Canterbury’ at that—and what I was sure was the poorest Argentine. We don’t grow sheep in New Zealand that would cut up as these carcases did.” Most people had hoped this sort of thing finally disappeared during Sir Thomas Mackenzie’s reign at the High Commissioner’s Office, but apparently it still persists.

FARMERS’ SHIPPING. The same farmers’ organisations are fondly hoping for the establishment of a shipping company for which the Government will supply most of the money and the producers all the brains and the management. The East Coast farmers have struck out for themselves in this respect and have achieved a measure of success which has sharpened the zeal of their neighbors. But the Acting Prime Minister, when seen about the matter to-day, was not disposed to encourage any hope of the scheme being realised in the near future. The Government, he said, was considering the proposals which had been submitted to the Prime Minister’ by the Producers’ Committee some weeks ago, and there was just the suspicion of an inflection in his voice which suggested that the Government might be considering them six months hence. In any case, as Sir Francis Bell called to mind, the freezing companies have made arrangements for the carriage of their meat to London during this year and next, so there is no need for haste about the matter unless the producers, instead of buying ships, are intent upon building vessels for themselves.