LECTURES ON WOOL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 July 1939, Page 3

LECTURES ON WOOL

EMPIRE SCHOOLS SCHEME

PLAN PROVES POPULAR.

MAJOR EMPIRE INDUSTRY.

A success considerably greater than was anticipated when the scheme was launched at the beginning of the year has attended the issue of a series of short school lectures upon the impor ■ tance of the wool industry to the Empire by the International Wool Secretariat. an organisation formed in 1937 to look after the interests of wool growers of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa by maintaining close touch with the manufacturing trade and wool research in Britain and on the Continent.

The lecture subjects cover the history of the use of wool for clothing; the history of the Empire's sheep and the wool industry: the sources of the Empire’s wool; how wool becomes clothing; and the influence of woollen clothing upon the health of the nation and the individual. The scheme was launched in England at a fortunately opportune time in that the Department of Education had advised all educational authorities to devote special energy to the intensive study of food and clothing, and the lectures were thus given a flying start, with the very ready support of such bodies as the Polytechnic and London County Council Technical Schools. The Secretariat wrote to 400 odd county education committees and received in reply requests for the supply of lectures, with accompanying diagrams and maps, to over two thousand schools, and in addi - tion, as a result of notices in education ■ al journals, over a thousand individual teachers responded, asking to be placed on the mailing list. As the scheme was first planned it was to apply to schools in the British Isles only, but of necessity it has broadened to a far wider base. Invercargill, New Zealand, was one of the first overseas applicants for lectures, and copies have also been sent to educational authorities or individual teachers in Ceylon, South Africa, India, Canada and Tanganyika. LINK WITH BRITAIN. Sheep and wool are taken for granted, particularly in sheep raising and wool growing countries, but for centuries wool has been “the flower and strength of England,” the claim of thespacious days of Queen Elizabeth. Edward 111 began the Hundred Years War largely to preserve the market for England’s wool. Its importance remained undiminished for another two hundred years, down to the day when Pitt threatened to fill the American colonies with soldiers if they imported a pound of wool for local manufacture. The stories of England’s wool industry and England’s greatness are closely intertwined. Historical incidents are numberless .... the origin of the Woolsack .... Elizabeth’s law which made the wearing of wool caps obligatory for all over seven years of age on pain of a fine of three shillings and fourpence .... Charles H’s law which made it compulsory to help wool and England, even in death, by wearing a wool shroud .... the law, which was only repealed in 1825, under which it was an offence punishable by death to export live sheep or wool. WOOL GROWING DOMINIONS. But the wool industry of Britain only achieved its full stature with the development of the sheep and wool industries of the Dominions, and a main purpose of the school lectures is to demonstrate just what the wool industries of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa mean to these Dominions, how greatly their prosperity is interdependent with that of Great Britain, and to what extent Britain’s greatness today, as in past centuries, still depends on wool. Wool comprises nearly 50 per cent of Australia’s total income from all exports (excluding gold and bullion); in South Africa wool production is almost equal in value to all that country s agricultural exports; and with mutton and lamb makes New Zealand’s largest export. These three Dominions with only eleven millions of white population in 1937, took nearly 20 per cent of all British exports. The United States, with 130 millions, took 6.3 per cent and yet we are, perhaps, accustomed to emphasise the importance of this market. The Dominions ability to maintain their high imports of British goods depends largely on their returns from wool. With low wool prices, their imports must decline, British export industries suffer, less workers are needed and unemployment is the result in domestic and export industries alike. Here, surely, is a unique link between a single industry on which these Dominions so largely depend and all sections of British industry. There is ample material for a new interest which can be made to appeal to every child.