202 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



market for our wools at home. For many years to come, the sole 

 dependeuce of the American wool-grower must be the consump- 

 tion of our home mills. Even with an equality of natural facili- 

 ties, the prices of labor, the high interest on capital, local taxation, 

 and the general expenses growing out of the higher demands of 

 American civilization, will not permit our wool-growers to com- 

 pete with the producers of wool in the southern hemisphere. No 

 one can doubt for a moment that our mills sustain sheep-growing 

 in this country for wool alone. But it may be said that mutton 

 sheep would be grown for their flesh and lambs ; while the wool 

 might be exported, as in Canada, which has no home market for 

 its combing wools. In reply to this, we note the fact that, be- 

 cause she must export her combing wools, Canada is rapidly 

 diminishing the production of her mutton sheep, filling their place 

 with merino sheep, to sujjply her newly-established cloth-mills ; 

 while contiguous American States — Michigan, Ohio, and New 

 York — are even more rapidly increasing their combing wools and 

 mutton sheep, for which they have a home market in the worsted 

 mills and the populations which the mills gather around them. 

 Thus, recurring to the earlier propositions advanced in this paper, 

 our woollen manufacture directly benefits the nation in supplying 

 annual food, improving general husbandry, and settling new ter- 

 ritory. 



Clothes our People. Our own woollen manufacture cheaply 

 and abundantly clothes our people. Our last proposition has 

 established that our wool manufacture contributes materially to 

 the first necessities of a people, by supplying animal food and 

 increasing the productiveness of lands, thus cheapening bread. 

 The benefits it confers in supplying the second necessity, cloth- 

 ing, are beyond calculation. Much as cotton and linen contribute 

 to cleanliness and comfort, and silk to adornment, wool, in our 

 rigorous climate, is the only absolute necessity. It formed the 

 sole clothing of our million soldiers in the great war. Falstafif 

 said : " There's but a shirt and a half in all my company." With 

 respect to linen and cotton, the same might have been said of all 

 our armies. So easily did our mills supply one of the first neces- 

 sities of armies in the field, that, at the close of the war, there 

 was an overplus of three million overcoats. 



Sanitary Influence. Before proceeding to demonstrate the 

 proposition in hand, we will pause a moment to consider the sani- 



