Wild & Woolly

In the musty auction rooms of Sydney's Royal Exchange, the wildest wool market in history got under way last week. Buyers pulled off their neckties and rolled up their sleeves as prices jumped in the heavy bidding carried on by burry-voiced Yorkshiremen, throaty Flemings, precise, high-pitched French. All Western Europe was bidding for this year's crop of Australian wool.

The crop was short because floods during the last three months had drowned some 4,000,000 sheep, disrupted transport of the clip to the market. When Auctioneer J. L. Brassil asked for bids on a lot of grease wool (i.e., raw wool) that would have brought 91-c- a Ib. only two months ago, a Frenchman quickly offered $1.12, lost out to a Briton who got it for $1.32. Said Auctioneer Brassil: "Never did I dream of such prices . . ." The average: 94-c-, v. 60-c- last season.

If good for Australia, such prices were bad news to U.S. woolen mills, which can expect even higher prices this fall when they start bidding for fine-grade apparel wool (last week's auction was mostly limited to grade B stock). The U.S. will import more than 300 million Ibs. of wool this year; textile manufacturers fear that the skyrocketing wool prices will boost the cost of woolen cloth by about $1 a yard, tack an extra $5 on a man's good-quality suit by next spring. And last week the tight-squeezed wool market got ready for another pinch: the National Security Resources Board Chairman W. Stuart Symington said that the Munitions Board will start stockpiling wool for Army, Navy and Air Force uniforms.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.