32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



actually lessened the demand for native wool, with the effect to 

 lower its price. Apart from this, it is a notorious fact that the 

 price of wool does not ever bear the relation it ought to, on pro- 

 tection theories, to the rate of the duty. I once traveled with a 

 wool-buyer, years ago, when a lower tariff than the present one 

 prevailed, when he bought wool of the farmers, to speculate on, 

 and gave one dollar a pound for it, which was the market price. 

 Does any wool-farmer expect to get over half that now ? A very 

 intelligent farmer, on whose hundreds of acres the wool product 

 has been a feature for sixty or seventy years a man who holds 

 general " protective " opinions told me frankly that the tariff, 

 touching wool, gave no enhancement of price. He confessed that 

 he had got very high prices for wool under a low tariff, and very 

 low prices under a high one. 



As this wool-bribe is a menace to direct and equal laws, and 

 is the price offered the farmers for support of legislation abso- 

 lutely hostile to them, suppose we look a little further on its effects. 

 Here are some facts for farmers to think over. Twenty-one years 

 ago there were thirty-eight million sheep in this country east of 

 the Mississippi River. "We have " protected " them all this time, 

 and there ought fairly to be now, under a decent ratio of growth, 

 at least fifty million. Are there this number ? On the contrary, 

 there are now only eighteen million one hundred thousand. And 

 they and the wool itself have greatly declined in price. It is said 

 that, since 1875, there has been an increase in the number of sheep 

 of about thirty per cent. But this is accounted for by the exten- 

 sion of farms in our new Territories. The large flocks there are 

 chiefly owned by aliens or absentees, and even these flocks, with 

 their peculiar local advantages, are declining in value. Not a 

 fraction of this increase in number can be due to the tariff, and no 

 benefit comes from it to the growers of wool in the older States. 



To supplement these facts properly, read the following answers 

 to questions propounded by the " Massachusetts United Questions 

 Club," given by ex-Congressman John E. Russell : 



Question 4 is as follows: "Does the tax on foreign wool imported put the 

 price of that up so much that, although the price of American wool is lower than 

 it ever was hefore, yet our domestic woolen manufacturers are put at a great dis- 

 advantage with foreign manufacturers, so that we can not make goods at so low a 

 cost or of so good a quality, except such kinds of goods as can he made wholly of 

 domestic wool?" Mr. Eussell replies that the specific duties on woolen cloths 

 and flannels put the American manufacturer of fine goods at a sad disadvantage, 

 confining him to the home market, and that the high price he is compelled 

 to charge for goods narrows and restricts his market. Mr. Russell continues: 

 "Makers of the fine flannels that are sold in competition with the best English and 

 French goods import South American wool that has been sent to France and there 

 cleansed of dirt and burs, and scoured. The duty on this wool is thirty cents a 

 pound. There is no wool raised in this country that will answer the same pur- 



