48 SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



35 cents for coarse. If New England farmers have not realized as 

 high prices, I think it must be their own fault, first, in not properly 

 washing, shearing, putting up and packing their fleeces ; second, 

 in not keeping up the fineness of their staple so as to bring the 

 average up to a medium standard, and third, in selling unwisely 

 when the price was down, or to peddlers ^nd speculators who have 

 appropriated to themselves all the just profits. 



I have thus far spoken only of the ordinary condition of things 

 as aftecting the future demand for wool in the United States. But 

 we have already entered upon conditions that exaggerate all these 

 estimates. The sudden call for blankets and woolen clothing for a 

 million of men converted into soldiers, and requiring more of such 

 goods than the same million could consume in a time of peace, and 

 because not paid for by themselves, much more quickly worn and 

 replaced, and the great cotton dearth caused by the war and 

 the blockade, which has caused that production to go up from 9 

 cents for middling Uplands, its ordinary price before the rebellion, 

 to 90 cents, the price at which it is now quoted in New York, has 

 greatly stimulated the production and enhanced the prices of man- 

 ufactured woolen goods. The vast expenditures already made and 

 still to be required for carrying on a war of such proportions as 

 that which has befallen our country, has necessitated a high tariff 

 system to produce adequate revenue to keep up the national credit 

 which affords ample protection to the manufacture of woolen. The 

 price of wool has not advanced as it otherwise would on account 

 of the low duty of 3 to 9 cents per pound on foreign wools. Still 

 from these causes, combined doubtless with the expansion of the 

 currency, the price of wool has gone up to 65 for fine, 55 for me- 

 dium and 40 to 50 for coarse, by no means a speculative price, and 

 more likely, as financial reporters say, to rise than to fall. 



Of the three causes I have named for a rise in the price of wool, 

 the first, the war, we trust, is a temporary one. The cotton dearth 

 too will undoubtedly come to an end, but cotton will not be likely 

 to fall to its old quotations for ten years to come if we fail to subdue 

 the rebellion, on account of export duties the Confederacy will be 

 likely to impose, discriminating against us, and if we succeed 

 because of the change of the labor system of the South, it will take 

 that time for an improved sj'stem to begin to justify itself, by 

 cheapening production. The tariff we must have for an indefinite 

 future period, so that contemplating the whole field, it is not likely 



