WOOL INDUSTRY. 19]^ 



or sixteen millions of acres. " There is not a rod of these sixteen 

 million square acres," says Dr. Latham, " that is not the finest 

 of grazing-, and which is not covered with a luxuriant growth of 

 blue buffalo and gramma grasses." He continues: " New York, 

 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and California are the five largest 

 stock and wool growing States, aggregating sixteen million sheep. 

 The sixteen million acres in one valley would graze all the sheep 

 of these States, and still leave millions of acres of grasses un- 

 touched." Texas and other Southern States have millions of acres 

 nearer at hand, with advantages of winter grazing equal to those 

 of Australia. We have before us the careful estimates of the 

 most experienced flock-masters in this country, proving that sheep 

 husbandry can be profitably conducted in Texas on the same 

 gigantic scale as in Australia and Southern Russia. Who will 

 deny, in view of these facts, that the wool industry performs the 

 high part which we claim for it in our national economy ? 



Relations of Domestic Wool to Domestic Manufacture. The 

 domestic production of wool is highly promotive of the perfection 

 and abundance of the wool manufactures of a nation. As a 

 rule, the characteristic wool manufactures of the leading nations 

 have been determined by the abundance and peculiarities of their 

 own raw material. Turkey, having no clothing wool, makes but 

 few and expoi'ts no cloths ; but she sends her beautiful Smyrna 

 carpets and rOgs to all the wealthy markets of the world, for the 

 simple reason that she has in abundance the admirable carpet 

 wool produced by the barbarous or fat-tailed sheep inherited from 

 the remotest ages. It may be said that the United States excels 

 in the manufacture of carpets, although producing no carpet 

 wools. This exception to the general rule is due to the fact that 

 American' ingenuity, developed in other branches of the textile 

 industry, first successfully achieves the manufacture of carpets 

 by the power loom. 



England, the creator of the long combing-wool sheep, and by 

 far the first country in the world in their production, was the in- 

 ventor of the countless dress fabrics for common consumption 

 made from this fibre. It is first through these fabrics, the pro- 

 ducts of the peculiar fibre of her own sheep, that England ranks 

 as the first wool manufacturing nation in the world, and, 

 secondly, that she has practically the command and the first 

 choice of the products of her colonies, the fine wools of Australia 



