FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 169 



Dairying took the place of wool-growing. It proved 

 a steadily and highly remunerative department of 

 husbandry. Fashion, custom, and the farm-training 

 of youth tend rapidly to absorb the rural population 

 in a prevailing and profitable pursuit. A generation 

 has been growing up familiar with and attached to 

 dairying, and unacquainted with sheep husbandry. 

 And it is not to be denied that the former, in proper 

 situations, cannot be surpassed in profit by any other 

 rural pursuit. Besides, the dairying region proper of 

 the United States bears no proportion, in extent, to 

 the wool-growing region, and therefore competition is 

 less to be feared at home ; and as it cannot come from 

 abroad, this interest has less to fear from legislation. 



The course of events for the last few years, however, 

 has turned more attention throughout very large por- 

 tions of our country to wool culture. It is time, in 

 my judgment, when that culture should revive in this 

 State. Our people must now be consuming annually 

 something like 20,000,000 Ibs. of wool raised outside of 

 our own borders. There is little doubt that instead of 

 thus paying out a large sum for the raw material of a 

 necessary of life, which we have abundant room and 

 time and materials to cultivate for ourselves, we might 

 grow all the wool we need, and a surplus of 50,000,000 

 Ibs. annually, without diminishing any other product 

 which is even approximately as remunerative. 



Dairying, under the best circumstances, is far more 

 profitable than sheep husbandry with inferior or mid- 

 dling animals ; but the best sheep are as productive 



multitudes of persons out of sheep husbandry, and prevented still 

 more from embarking in it. Proper legislation would do much to cor- 

 rect this evil. 

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