335 
equalling in a single year the imports of woollens for the entire period of the war, 
as the following totals will show : 
Total for four years ending June 30, 1865.............-...- $87, 762, 918 
Annual average for four years ending June 30, 1865.........- 21, 940, 729 
Imports of the year ending June 30, 1866..............---.. 57, 115, 901 
“This is a sum equal to the present total valuation of the annual wool clip of 
the United States. The expectation of obtaining a fair price for wool will be 
futile until this immense stock of goods is worked off, the old army supplies 
exhausted, and a normal condition of supply and demand is regained.” 
Of the fleeces imported in the year ending June 30, 1866, nearly all was in 
direct competition with our own styles of wool, and about thirty-seven million 
pounds from Buenos Ayres alone, twenty-five million pounds of which came in 
at three cents duty, and nearly all of it was clothing wool that displaced an equal 
quantity of the home product. Fine wools, imported in the dirt, came in at less 
than half the internal revenue taxes upon our own wool growers. ‘I'he quantity 
at each rate was as follows: 
Pounds. Value. * Rate of duty. 
32, 366, 135 $3, 522, 417 3 cents. 
35, 211, 402 5, 705, 293 6 cents. 
8, 529 2,398 10 cents and 10 per cent. 
330, 965 150, 975 12 cents and 12 per cent. 
Here is more than we should import in three years, at a rate of duty that was 
a direct discrimination in favor of foreigners equivalent to the «mount of duty 
which they actually paid. Added to this was the import of woollens, costing in 
gold fifty-seven millions of dollars, and in greenbacks, with freight and commis- 
sions added, fully one hundred millions; the whole requirmg as much foreign 
wool to produce it as the entire importation of woollens for three years of the war. 
Can sensible manufacturers and intelligent wool growers expect prosperity till 
this glut in the market is removed? That it is being removed, since the passage 
of the wool-tariff law, the falling off in importation shows. 
The wool grower should not despair. His business incidentally enriches his 
farm, while wheat and corn growing impoverishes it, and he is comparatively 
independent of the freight monopolies which threaten to destroy all profit from 
bulky farm products. And the price will inevitably prove remunerative if its 
manufacture shall not be broken down by foreign competition. 
The facts.of wool and woollen importations, and the history of the woollen 
manufacture in this country, show that we have arrived at a period when one of 
two results must follow—either domestic manufactures must mainly occupy the 
field of domestic supply, or foreign goods will fill the markets of the country, 
stop the factories, depress sheep husbandry, reduce the price of wheat and other 
grain by decreasing the number of consumers and increasing the number of com- 
peting consumers. 
The following extract from the annual report of the statistical division 
embodies a digest of such history : 
“The aggregate importation of wovllens for each decade, and the average per 
year for forty years, ending in 1860, are as follows: 
Aggregate. | Annual average. 
Denbyears,ending ind S30eee ss.) 2 seen n+ <2 «5.222 $86, 182, 110 $8, 618, 211 
Ten years ending in 1840 -......-...- Bee. «25 soe 129, 336, 258 12, 933, 625 
Tenyeurs ending in leo) © nos. eeter. =. 2 = tect 109, 023, 552 10, 902, 355 
Tentyears ending inl CG0 Meee soe eee ee 2. co ooe 282, 682, 830 28, 268, 283 
Horty yealsiendinrinblebQetase oe soccer es a. =| oom 627, 224,750 15, 680, 618 
