Colonial Wool Sales.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 467, 14 June 1890, Page 2

Colonial Wool Sales.

Our Melbourne correspondent writes in regard to a cablegram stating that comparatively few European wool buyers will attend the next sales in Australia :—“ It would not be the first time by many that the London wool brokers have tried to show both sellers and buyers of wool that their interests are rather in the London than tbe Australian market. The reason is plain. Thanks to the strenuous efforts of the old house of Goldsbrough, which initiated the colonial wool sales, and for years fought the battle sioglehanded, these yearly sales have now assumed an importance that tells upon the profits of the London brokers. As I have shown more thau once, every year registers an increase in the bulk of business don a in Melbourne, and a decrease in tha done in London, so far as the Aust tralian stap'e is concerned. The drop in prices at the London April May sales, as compared with the rates ruling in London at the time the Melbourne sales . being held, is just tbe sort of L indon brokers would be likely to of for the purpose of pointing a morale the tale they have so often repeated. Bat, as they have so frequently failed to convince buyers, the chances are ten to one that they will fail again ; for experience, so far from showing that the buying can be done much more advantageously in London, proves exactly the contrary. But although buyers might not be influenced by what has taken place, there is just the chance that tbe sellers would ; and the ‘ statement that comparatively few European buyers will attend the next Australian sales,' may possibly have been dropped in our midst just in time to scare the squatters into sending their wool to London instead of the local sales. It this be so, the dodge is a clever one; but it ia not lixely to succeed. The squatting intereat, as well as the London broker, knows on which side of the bread tha butter lies thickest, and is not likely to be caught by such a flimsy devise; and, assuming that the attendance at the next sales might slightly fail off—which is not at all likely — ths good years and the bad must be taken together; for assuredly it would never do to disturb an important industry, and have to face the almost inevitable loss that would arise from effecting any such change as that to which the telegram seems to point.”