Antipodean Wool

Romney March, Corriedale, Polwarth, Southdowns, Ryelands are not the names of Pullman cars. They are the names of Australian sheep which grow one-fourth of the world's wool, about 900,000,000 lbs. The U. S., Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, Germany are ordinarily big buyers of it.

When World War II broke around wool men's ears, Great Britain impounded the entire wool supply of Australia, plus New Zealand's 300,000,000 lbs. For four months Britain sat on her wool, while U. S. mills which need Australian wool for apparel and blankets fidgeted and watched their supplies run low. The spot price of wool tops climbed from 82 1/2-c- to $1.31 a pound, and still Britain did not get around to releasing any for the U. S.

An Australian Central Wool Control was set up to manage the flow of wool, but no wool flowed. Even in the House of Lords, His Majesty's Government got a rap on the knuckles for not telling the U. S. and Canada promptly how much Australian wool they could have.

The war lid finally came off last week: 22,500,000 lbs. of Australian wool made available to the U. S. American buyers promptly bought 4,800,000 lbs. for $2,500,000 at prices about those for equivalent grades in the U. S. market. Purchases would have been larger but for the following factors: the buying season was at year's low ebb; the buying machinery creaked; since the beginning of war U. S. mills had tapped South American and South African markets for about 50,000,000 lbs. Then the purchasers had a fresh worry: transportation. Because of war-interrupted shipping schedules, it may be considerably longer than the usual six or eight weeks before American mills can place the new supply on their own shelves.

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