OUR YORKSHIRE LETTED.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2607, 15 September 1909, Page 2

OUR YORKSHIRE LETTED.

POINTS OF IMPORTANCE TO WOOL-GROWERS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) BRADFORD, July 30. We have now get to the time of the year when, in the natural order of things, slack markets and little doing can be expected. We are just now entering upon the great holiday period, and if we see anything approaching activity it will be a strange phenomenon. Still, I have known active markets in August, and when the heads of wool firms have, considered it expedient to stop qt home. As far as one can diagnose the immediate .future there is little likelihood of August producing a time of brisk business, but it is certain this last ten days more interest has been manifested in merinos in par-' ticular, and the business done is larger than many may think. When I hear firms candidly stating that they have sold 500 packs, others 600 to 1000, it is nroof positive that spinners \ have been buying, and that they must have sold more yarns, and covered same. This is exactly what has taken place. The recent course of London sales convinced both spinners and manufacturers that with top's having come down about a penny per lb, and with good greasy combing wool selling ht practically May sales’ rates, was sufficient to oonvinco the most scentical that such an anomaly could not exist indefinitely, and that before long such a condition of things would bo rectified. WOOL THROUGH THE MILL.

I have often thought-that growers care very little into what their wool is made so long as they obtain good prices for the same. At this end of the trade it is a case of familiarity breeding contempt, the life of the factory being just as commonplace to a large number as is the daily routine of going the paddocks and looking over a flock of sheep. But when a man has bought a lot of wool, then begins the real interesting part of the trade. There is the sorting, scouring, combing,, spinning, weaving, dyeing, and finishing, all interesting processes through which wool goes before it reaches the wearer’s back. The trade in yarns and pieces is just as big as it is in the raw material, and but for the former, the latter would be very little use. It is indeed highly scientific that the small fibres .protruding from the skin of a sheep can be taken and with automatic manipulations be so operated upon that these small lifeless particles can, be twisted together, find so produce a uniform thread. Yet that is what is done in hundreds of mills in the world every working day of the year, and so the big wool industry is continued, year in and year out. and will be when both writei and reader moves off the stage ox action. We all know that serges and tweeds, coatings and dress fabrics, cannot be made without warp and weft and it is from the raw material that all these indispensable commodities are abtained. Hence arises the importance of always having a valuable, and, I was going to say, inexhaustible supply of raw wool, this really being the foundation of the whole textile industry of the world. CAN QUALITIES BE CHANGED? As I have been writing the previous paragraph, the question has arisen in my mind, can qualities he improved? This is an important item, and perhaps of more direct importance to the manufacturer than the grower. At the same time I am satisfied that even to producers of the raw material there, is a side to this question which is of direct importance even to them. The fact is significant that the quality of woel is determined solely by the breed of sheep and climatic conditions, and once the fleece is grown, there is no power on earth to change it in any feature. Good 60’s merino wool is the same on. the sheep’s back as it is in the woven piece and vice versa. Of course., the greasy unpresentable article to the 'uninitiated may look a queer conglomeration of material, and by the different processes of manufacture it can be made to present a more taking appearance, but all the same there is just the same quality of wool when the fabric is finished and on the wearer’s back as there was when the fleece was shorn. There is no known process by which a wool fibre can be improved either in quality, strength, or length of staple as it passes through the different machinery as it is being scoured, combed, spun, and woven, the whole trade being entirely dependent upon the. sheep farmer to produce good material. Has it ever been considered by the wool grower what it means to the manufacturer when his clip is badly grown, tender, •and deficient in staple ? In the_ first instance it means a distinctly less price in the sale room, more loss in every dopaTement of manufacture, and inferior goods at the finish. In other words it is impossible to “doctor . the raw material, and if there is any deficiency in the grown staple it can no more be hid than a broken nose on a man’s face. This question of quality and character is one of the first importance to the* woolgrower, and it deserves all the attention that men ot brains and ability can bestow upon tlie art and science of sheep-breeding and wool-growing.