220 State Board of Aguicui.ture, &c. 



tioii, .stiniulMted by tJie failure of tlie cotton crop in the 

 Southern States during tlic hite i-ehellion, created a reaction 

 of the i^niericau market, not alone, but every other wool 

 center of the woi'hl, because so enormously overstocked that 

 litter ruin and anniliilation stared wool growers and manu- 

 facturers alike in the face. But they were not to bo driven 

 to the wall without an effort. They met in convention in 

 Syracuse, New^ York, in December, 1865, coming from 

 every part of tlie loyal States, big with the importance of 

 their undertaking, a common dangei- making a common 

 cause. 



I cannot do better than to quote the Hon. John L. ]Iayea, 

 in his second address to wool growers and manufacturers, 

 fit Syracuse, in December, 1871. He says : 



"The convention of 1865 is memorable, among other 

 things, for the conflicting sentiments in the woolen industry 

 which preceded and was the cause for invoking it. A dif- 

 ference of opinion, amounting to actual hostility, between 

 the two interests supplying and manipulating the raw mate- 

 rial of our woolen mills, had been gaining strength for fifty 

 year's, and had assumed the phase of sectional animosity 

 between the East and the West. On the one hand, tlie 

 West, representing tlie wool growing interest, exaggerated 

 the profits of the Eastern manufacturers ; claimed that it 

 bore, witliout compensation, the burden of the duties which 

 promoted their profits ; ignored the fact that the specific 

 duties of! foreign goods competing with our own were but 

 the equivalent for duties on the raw material, which the 

 wool growers received, and demanded the mis-called equal- 

 ity, so cbuoxious to the manufacturing interests, under the 



