SIR JOHN ROBERTS, C.M.G.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7931, 3 January 1906, Page 5

SIR JOHN ROBERTS, C.M.G.

THE WOOL AND WOOLLEN INDUSTRIES. Mr John Roberts, 0.M.G., accompanied by , Mrs Roberta, Miss Roberts and Mrs George Roberta, returned to Duaedin from a trip to England on Saturday. Mr Roberts' visit to the Homeland was in no sense a business trip, and accordingly be has but little to say regarding Home affairs. Being, however, largely interested in agricultural and pastoral matters in New Zealand it was only natural that be should visit the principle shows in Britain, and speaking in regard to tfaern to a Otngo Daily Times reporter on Saturday, Mr Roberts said it was noticeable that the breeding was going on along the old lines and in conformity with New Zealand breeders' ideas. He was very pleased with the colony's wool prospects, a« evidenced in the opening local sales of the season." There was nothing special at Home to account for the hign prices ruling other than the, sound state of trade, the woollen industries being very prosperous at present and for the last few years. Few commodities fluctuated more in price than did wool, and very often those whose hands were right on the pulse of the business were altogether mistaken in their foreoasts regarding the market. There was no question about the present season being a favourable one for New Zealand flockowners, but Mr Roberts expressed doubt ps to how'far it might be taken as an index for the future .hi view of the fact that next season the market will be asked to consume an additional 150,000 bales from Australia. On the manufacturing side of the wool business, Mr Roberts expressed himself as pleased with the past year of the Moagiel Woollen Company. They could do good business in plain tweeds, hut one thing that operated against them and New Zealand mills in general was the fact that iia checks and fancy tweeds men preferred a suiting of a pattern that wasi only worn by a minimum of others. 1 This taste, and a perfectly natural one, too, Mr Roberts admits, waa catered for by the Home mills at the end of each season cutting up their remaining tweeds and distributing them over the colonies in such a way that not more than, say, two suit lengths of the same pattern would be placed in one town. Such a proceeding was of course only possible to business having a very wide field of operations, and up to the present was out of the question with companies having so limited an area to work upon as the New Zealand concerns. Not much was heard at Home in the principal cities just now about preferential trade, wbioh no doubt would have received a set-baok by Mr Balfour's resignation and the promotion to office of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. It was not to be supposed, however, said Mr Roberts, that preferential trade was a dead subject, for there were many, rightly regarded as farseeing men, who believed that, some change on the lines of Mr Chamberlain's proposals would sooner or later come about. In July M* 1 Roberts took the opportunity, to cross the Atlantio and speind a week in America, visiting New York and Boston. The holiday right through was a thoroughly enjoyable one, and the party have returned, benefitted in every wav, to New Zealand, vvhich, in Mr Roberts' opinion is a country for workers and not idlers, whether well-to-do or otherwise.