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This article was published in 1941
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INSTITUTE OF INSPECTORS OF STOCK OF N.S.W. YEAR BOOK.
AUSTRALIAN WOOL AND THE FUTURE.
By Professor I. CLUNIES ROSS, D.V.Sc., Dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University, Sydney.
What is the position of the wool industry to-day and what plans must be made for the future?
So far as the wool industries of the great exporting countries are concerned, of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Argentine, two major markets alone remain. Great Britain and the United States. There is available to these countries roughly 5,000,000 bales of apparel wools.
It is satisfactory also to remember that American army cloth is of a different character to that of the British forces, containing a much higher proportion of Merino types, and therefore American defence needs will relieve to some extent the position of the Australian Merino clip.
However satisfactory British and American demand may be it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that a serious accumulation of wool in the exporting countries is inevitable and that the longer the duration of the war the greater the proportions this will assume. In view of the latest developments in the Pacific the proportions of the surplus will of course be much greater. So far as Australia is concerned, it would be suicidal not to face the facts and plan intelligently to meet them. The problems will not end with the war. On its conclusion, with the sudden decline in army orders, we shall have to build up our markets in Europe again: a Europe which will have been starved of wool andd no doubt urgently needing it, but a Europe which will be bankrupt: a Europe which will have invested huge sums in the development of wool substitutes and whose people will have become accustomed to their use. There will be no parallel between the situation at the end of the last war and this: no assurance that the measures followed with such success then will prove adequate to-day.
Can we do anything to prepare the industry for perhaps the hardest struggle in its history? I believe we can. I believe that the Commonwealth Government should immediately establish a permanent standing commission to consider how best to safeguard the future, not only of wool, but of all primary products during the war and after: a commission composed of representatives not only of those interests, but also of economists and financiers: a small committee of men of vision, initiative and courage who are not afraid to contemplate the radical and unorthodox idea which may be necessary to regain markets which otherwise may be permanently diminished, if not entirely lost. It Is possible, for example, to envisage a situation in which, to re-enter the European market, wool may virtually have to be given to impoverished countries which otherwise will continue to use cheaper substitutes. It may be that the problem of how to assure the disposal of primary products and effect the recovery of international trade may be so great that it will depend on not national but international measures, and particularly on American co-operation. It may be, however, that Australia will have to undertake responsibility for the salvation of her own industries and for effecting the disposal of her products at prices which Europe and Asia can afford, while maintaining the internal price level to her producers.
In spite of the confusion and uncertainty as to the future, the time for thought and planning is now. Though there may be some who consider all speculation as to the future to be idle and vain, it is surely obvious that as intelligent men we must prepare not necessarily for one, but all possible outcomes of the war, given the one unalterable belief that England still shall stand.
In any case, whatever the uncertainties in regard to the major issues there is no doubt about certain measures that are necessary. In the first place we must endeavour to arrange that Britain does not experience the results of a serious shortage of spot supplies which, after the last war, sent prices rocketing upwards, to be followed by an inevitable collapse when wool began to come forward from the Dominions. It has to be appreciated that to a manufacturer who has orders and no stocks, wool ten or twelve weeks away is of little value, and momentarily at least all the phychological evils associated with a shortage are created. For this reason the American wool storage scheme is of great value, not only in relation to the war, but also to post-war needs, since such wool is within ten days of Europe and the consuming markets. It may be necessary to arrange for such stocks to be increased materially.
Further, it is obvious that whatever economic and financial measures are devised to win back markets now lost, wool must be presented as clothing material in form, colour and design that a public long deprived of it or strictly rationed will demand it again and, when possible, be prepared to pay a premium for it over substitute fibres. It is here that the International Wool Secretariat must lead the way by taking up its full programme of work again, and, it is hoped, with much greater resources available to it. To-day, expenditure of its funds is considerably curtailed and the funds of the contributing boards will be accumulating. This is as it should be, and those accumulated funds should enable a more vigorous campaign than was previously possible to be launched immediately the war is over.
The Australian woolgrower, like his South African and New Zealand cousins, has not questioned the continuation of the wool levy, and rightly so, for whatever the need of wool publicity when the secretariat was begun in 1937, the need for it after the war will be infinitely greater. If there is any question which should arise, it is not whether the levy is now unnecessary, but rather whether during this period of assured prices the growers should not decide to increase it: to increase it so that the great commodity they produce, in the face of poverty, of intensive scientific research aimed at its replacement, and of increasingly severe world-wide competition from substitutes may win back and maintain its great and rightful position in the world.