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Wool Industry. 



By Henry W. Wright. 



The development and prosperity of pastoral enterprise in tlie Aus- 

 tralasian group of colonies, and particularly in New Soutli Wales, since 

 tlie dawn of the present century are not only marvellous in themselves 

 but without parallel in the history of states. The growth of the cotton 

 trade in the southern portions of the United States of North America 

 has undovibtedly been sufficiently remarkable to constitute one of the 

 principal of the many features of industrial expansion which have 

 marked the course of the same period ; but even that gigantic industry 

 can show no such stupendous an increase as has been witnessed in the 

 case of the Australasian wool trade, nor can the pecuniary results 

 derived from the growing and exportation of the great vegetable textile 

 fibre in North America be for one moment compared to those which 

 have accrued from the promotion of wool-producing interests on this 

 Continent. Born almost with the birth of the mother colony herself, 

 the national industry — mainly through which it has been possible for 

 Australia to advance — of producing what may justly be regarded as 

 the most valuable fibre used in the manufacture of textile fabrics has 

 gone on expanding decade by decade until for some time past Australia 

 has stood unrivalled among all the countries of the world for the 

 quality and quantity of her wool products. 



The handful of sheep in this colony a hundred years ago have 

 given place to countless numbers, which have spread throughout 

 Australasia and are now approximately estimated at upwards of 

 121,000,000. This rapid spread of the flocks has fortunately been 

 accompanied by a no less surprising growth in the colonial wool trade. 

 Happily truly marvellous advances in the manipulation of raw wool 

 and other fibres of a like kind, and in the manufacture of textiles 

 in the old world, have been coincident with the development of pas- 

 toral enterprise in the southern hemisphere. But for this fact such 

 phenomenal progress as that witnessed in the Australian wool trade 

 could scarcely have been possible. The people of these colonies as 

 a body freely acknowledge the debt of gratitude they owe to those 

 who first formed flocks of fine-woolled sheep in New South Wales ; 

 but the good which has either directly or indirectly accrued to these 

 young countries through the successful efforts of such captains of 

 industry as Donisthorpe, Lister (now Lord Masham), Isaac Holden, 

 and others, in Yorkshire and Lancashire, is probably less generally 

 recognised and is certainly less frequently referred to. It was mainly 

 through the instrumentality and wonderful ingenuity of these and 



