WOOL INDUSTRY. 193 



In further illustration of this branch of our subject, we may 

 compare two other European nations : one possessing great dis- 

 advantages in a deficiency of experience, but with abundant 

 flocks ; the other having the highest advantages of experience 

 and traditionary skill in manufacture, but without sheep, — Russia 

 and the Netherlands. 



The first cloth factory in Russia was founded by Peter the 

 Great, solely to provide cloth for his troops, in 1698, when Nether- 

 lands was at the height of its manufacturing prosperity. In spite 

 of the encouragement of the government, the cloth manufacture 

 made scarcely any progress during the last century ; not improb- 

 ably because Russia had then no merino wools. In 1820, prohibi- 

 tory duties were placed on black and green cloths, and very high 

 duties on other cloths. We infer also, though we have no exact 

 data on this point, that the merino sheep husbandry began at this 

 period to receive expansion. From this period the wool manufac- 

 ture made rapid strides. In 1871, the factories in the empire 

 numbered 1,339; the workmen, 121,070; and the value of the 

 production reached the sum of 77,017,600 roubles. To this is to 

 be added a much more extended woollen industry, — the home 

 fabrication of cloth by the peasants. " The industry of wool," 

 say the Russian statisticians, " suffices largely for the necessities 

 of our vast consumption, and allows us even to export a part 

 of our products to Asia." The excellence and variety of the 

 Russian wool products were fully demonstrated at our Interiia- 

 tiotial Exposition. We need not add that the raw material of 

 these products is furnished to Russia by her sixty-five million 

 sheep, twelve million of which are merinos. These facts show 

 that it is by developing all her internal resources and making her 

 industries independent of all foreign supplies that this vast self- 

 contained empire dares to place herself, as she is at this moment 

 doing, in defiance of all the great powers of Europe. 



Netherlands in the sixteenth century was the chief seat of the 

 wool manufacture of the world. Then she absorbed the wool 

 product of Spain and England. Without flocks, her wool industry 

 has lost its importance, and in the poor displays at the exhibitions 

 of Paris and Philadelphia there were but few traces of its former 

 splendors. Switzerland, distinguished as she is in the silk manu- 

 facture, has no sheep and no woollen industry. Belgium, which 

 has no sheep, but a very considerable wool industry, might seem 



to contradict our position. But with some few notable exceptions 

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