From the February 1943 National Wool Grower Magazine.
American Wool Council Holds Annaul Meeting
The American Wool Council held its second annual meeting at the Hotel Utah, Salt Lake City, January 24, with representation from all the member associations except four.
R. C. Rich, Burley, Idaho, was continued as president; J. B. Wilson, McKinley, Wyoming, as vice president; and F. R. Marshall as secretary-treasurer. F. E. Ackerman of New York was also reappointed as executive director of the Council, and J. M. Jones was named assistant secretary-treasurer in the Salt Lake office.
New members were elected as follows: The American Angora Goat Breeders Association of Rocksprings, Texas; the Colorado Wool Marketing Association; the Ohio Wool Growers Cooperative Association; the Cooperative Wool Growers of South Dakota and the Utah Wool Marketing Association.
?An abnormal war economy turned the Council?s 1942 efforts from ordinary channels of education and promotion into an offensive and defensive program seeking to maintain wool in the civilian market, and to correct impressions regarding critical shortages of wool,? Mr. Ackerman said in his annual report. ?The Council has opposed consistently efforts to force adulteration of wool products. It has fought attempts made to repeal the Wool Products Labeling Act. It assisted materially in defeating attempts to forbid the use of wool in specific wool products. It has published studies and analyses of different phases of wool wartime problems of supply and demand. It has maintained a general news service to the nation?s press, and to radio services. Representatives have made some 25 addresses before different trade and merchandising associations.?
Mr. Ackerman further stated: ?The competition for the wool growers? market on the part of synthetic fiber manufacturers has not been halted by the war; on the contrary it has been tremendously accelerated.
?The volume of use and the methods of usage for these man-made fibers will be finally determined in large measure by the energy and ingenuity shown by their producers in developing new markets and by the resistance offered to their efforts by producers of the natural fibers, including wool, which they seek to displace. The history of the rayon industry is one that makes it certain that nothing will be left undone either in energy or expenditure of funds to increase existing markets and to find new markets.?
The greatest single wartime threat which faces the wool growing industry at this time, in Mr. Ackerman?s judgment, is that of compulsory blending.
?A program requiring that all products containing wool be adulterated with other fibers would permanently cripple, if it did not entirely destroy, the American wool textile industry as an industry devoted primarily to the use of wool,? he said. ?Compulsory blending is not dead; it is not even quiescent. Garment manufacturers and textile workers? unions continue to urge that the wool textile industry be forced to adulterate its products so that approximately the same yardage produced in 1939 will be produced now with the limited allotment of wool for civilian uses.?
The Council will continue its opposition to this blending program as it did during 1942, when it enlisted the aid of wool textile manufacturers, agricultural and consumers? organizations and members of Congress.
The Council also assisted the National Wool Growers Association and the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association in getting mohair released from governmental orders prohibiting its civilian use, and later prepared and distributed 5,000 copies of an illustrated brochure, ?Mohair: The Most Versatile of Fibers? on the results of a survey of present and future markets for that product.
A steady news release service to trade and consumer magazines was also maintained by the Council during 1942, and a number of special articles prepared by the Council appeared in magazines and Sunday newspapers and supplements. ?Woolfacts? and ?Fabrics and Fashions,? two regular releases of the Council, are recognized, Mr. Ackerman stated, as authoritative news bulletins for the wool industry.
Another publication of the Council?s that received high praise was the booklet, ?Your Woolens, Their Wear and Care,? that had a 450,000 distribution.
The very distinctive wool exhibit in the Army War Show that was shown to more than five million people in its tour over the country was also a part of the Council?s activities during 1942, although the major part of the expense involved was borne by the Botany Worsted Mills.
The 1943 program of the Council will be continued along the same general lines of activity with provision for expansion as conditions warrant. It has been the policy of the Council to keep the activities on a skeleton basis during the war, but to conduct research preparatory to the launching of a larger program later on.