THE FARMERS WOOL AND IRON QUESTIONS. 



35 



purchasers.. To show the sudden and vast growth of the wool 

 industry and the woolen manufacture in the United States under 

 Protection, we have compiled from the census reports the follow 

 ing tabular statement for three several periods. 



These significant figures tell the story of benefits conferred upon 

 farmers by the Protective policy. What else but the demand cre 

 ated by it for domestic wool could have induced such a heavy in 

 crease in the number of sheep? What else could have kept the 

 price of wool up to such high figures in the face of such a large 

 addition to the supply? See how slowly the woolen manufacture 

 crept forward between 1850 and 1860, the number of establish 

 ments absolutely diminishing that is, the big fishes eating up the 

 little ones under the Free Trade tariffs of 1846 and 1857. Then 

 observe the advance by mighty strides between 1860 and 1870, 

 under tariff Protection, the progress having been very much faster 

 than that of population. Of the wool consumed by the mills in 

 1870, as much as 154,767,095 pounds had been derived from vari 

 ous seasons of the domestic crop. 



Farmers should study these statistics, which bristle all over with 

 facts closely allied with their interests. To cap all, staple woolen 

 goods are cheaper than they were before the war, as the prices cur 

 rent will prove. Yet Free Traders, with monstrous absurdity and 

 dogmatic assurance, insist that Western farmers are plundered by 

 our system of tariff. They never were more prosperous, and they 

 know it. They, of all classes, were least affected by the panic of 

 1873, because of Protection to home industry. 



