PROFITS OF. SHEEP ON THE PKAIRIES. 251 



per head if as well fed, as in the old Eastern States, and the 

 wool is not deteriorated in any apparent or real quality. 



It can require no formal array of facts to show that the 

 profits of sheep husbandry on the prairies must greatly exceed 

 those obtained in States lying further east, where the land is 

 no better and costs from five to fifty times as much. It seems 

 now also to be a conceded fact that the profits of sheep 

 production decidedly exceed those of horse, cattle, or swine 

 production on the prairies. 



The surplus wheat and Indian corn of the West finds its 

 market on the eastern sea-board. It generally costs half of 

 the crop of wheat, and from five-sixths to six-sevenths of the 

 crop of corn to transport the remainder to New York by rail 

 in the winter, from regions lying no further west than the 

 east bank of the Mississippi. It costs less than two cents a 

 pound to transport wool, which, at the average prices of wool 

 for thirty-five years preceding the present war, is less than 

 two forty-seconds of the value of the medium, and two thirty- 

 fifths of the value of the coarse article. By the Mississippi, or 

 by the northern river, lake and canal navigation which is avail- 

 able in summer, the transportation of the heavy, bulky Western 

 products is considerably less. But when a pound of wool is 

 worth on the farm about as much as four bushels of corn, and 

 when that amount of corn is more than fifty times as bulky, 

 and two hundred and twenty-four times as heavy* as a pound 

 of wool, there must, under any circumstances, remain an 

 insuperable obstacle to the comparative profitableness of 

 corn as a marketable product and indeed of all other bulky 

 and heavy products, f 



* In some of the States the weight of corn is established at 56 Ibs., in others, 

 58 Ibs. per bushel. 



t Since the above was in the hands of the publisher, the articles on sheep, in the 

 Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, have fallen under my eye, and I find the 

 following statements in an article on " Sheep on the Prairies," by Hon. J. B. Grinnell, 

 of Grinnell, Iowa: "At any point two hundred miles from Chicago this ratio of cost 

 in freighting is well established ; that to transport your products to the seaboard, on 



, . . 



gross on wool 4 per cent. This is not conjecture, but my own experience, that I give 

 80 per cent, of the value of my wheat which impoverishes my farm, to find a market ; 

 and 4 per cent, to find the best wool market, the production of which enriches my 



wheat you pay 80 per cent, of its value ; on pork 30 per cent.; on beef 20 per cent.; 

 wool 4 per cent. This is not conjecture, 



per 

 acres beyond computation." 



The following statements occur in a paper entitled "Sheep Husbandy in the 

 West," by Samuel Boardman, of Lincoln, Logan county, Illinois :" With wheat 

 worth sixty-five cents per bushel, it costs one bushel to send another from Central 

 Illinois to market. With corn at ten cents per bushel, it takes over six bushels to 

 carry the one to New York. It costs one cent and two-thirds of a cent to send a 

 pound of wool to New York ; less than two cents will carry fifty cents' worth of wool 

 to market ; to carry fifty cents' worth of corn costs about three dollars. In my own 

 case, I could haul my wool to New York in less time than I could haul the corn I feed 

 to my sheep in the winter six miles to the railroad, and I could also haul the wool to 

 New York cheaper than I could ship the corn by rail. Even in this State, with its 



