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3.
Textile Trade Revival. The wholesale textile trade has just
completed its summer stocktaking, and the figures reveal that
trade has been so good that stocks in hand are nearly 10 per cent
lower than at this time last year. Textile warehouses will now
begin stocking supplies for the autumn trade, and it is estimated
that by September the wholesale houses will have laid in stocks
worth £30 millions. The volume of British exports in textiles is
encouraging, and the figures of exports of all-rayon knitted tissues
may be quoted as an example, In the first six months of this year
exports of these tissues amounted to 2,440,000 square yards, valued
at £90,000, compared with 1,736,000 square yards, valued at
365,000 in the first half of 1936.
The British wool tertile industry is now more active than
at any other time since the beginning of 1937, when the level of
activity was considered particularly satisfactory. It is not
only that Government contracts keep a large number of spinners and
manufacturers busy, but that there has been a marked improvement in
civil demand, a reflection of the increase in the purchasing
power of the public. The extent of the revival is evident from the
trend of raw wool consumption. Since January not only has the
consumption been on a much higher level than in the corresponding
months of last year, but monthly consumption this year has been
rising steadily. During the first half of 1939 the amount of raw
wool sent to British mills as 334,000,000 lb., compared with
236,000,000 lb. in the first six months of 1938; this represents
an increase of no less than 41 per cent.