[285 I 



10,000,000 pounds annually equal in quality to the best English wool. 

 Wool yielded by cross-bred Merino and mutton sheep is held by the man- 

 ufacturer to be of great value, producing a combing wool that gives soft- 

 ness and cloth-like character to our fabrics not found in those abroad, as 

 admitted by the best London and Paris tailors. 



We are now raising good mutton and supplying a rapidly increasing 

 market. In 1839, on the great market day before Christmas, 400 sheep 

 fully stocked the market at Brighton, near Boston, Mass. Last year 

 272,000 sheep and lambs were slaughtered at the Brighton Abattoir, 

 20,000 of them coming from Kentucky. This wonderful advance in the 

 production of mutton and wool in the last twenty years has grown out of 

 the war and a protective tariff. Mr. McKean, in his address at the an- 

 nual banquet in Philadelphia last fall, of the National Wool-Growers' 

 Association (to whose latest Bulletin I cheerfully acknowledge obligation 

 for most of the figures of this article), answered the question, "What 

 does the wool come to?" by saying that the annual product of the wool 

 manufacture of the United States is estimated by Mr. Lorin Blodget as 

 follows : 



The six New England States $127,500,000 



New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware 98,340,000 



Twelve Western States and Utah 41,200,000 



Twelve Southern States 8,830,000 



Colorado, Oregon and Washinton Territory 7,250,000 



Total $284,120,000 



Capital employed by manufacturers he estimates at near $300,000,000, 

 giving work to nearly 200,000 persons, " for it is not alone the mill hands, 

 but the workmen who make the repairs and renew all the machinery, the 

 miners who get out the hundreds of thousands of tons of coal for the 

 engines, the teamsters and railway men who carry the wool to the mills 

 and the manufactured goods to the market, and the farmers and farm 

 hands and herdsmen who raise and tend the sheep and clip the wool- 

 There is no end to the ramifications." He goes on to say : " In nearly all 

 staple goods for wearing apparel our mills are abreast of any in the 

 world; the exceptions are the foreign goods, which some wealthy people 

 still have a weakness for like the family that bought a beautiful Ax- 

 minster carpet under the impression that it was a French moquette. It 

 was a great pet and pride in their house until they saw its mate at the 

 Centennial among American carpets ; then they were disgusted. Their 

 beautiful French moquette had been made at Smith's mills, at Yonkers, 

 where they weave as much Axminster every year as they do in all France, 

 and more than they do in Great Britain." 



The improvement of American machinery for manufacturing wool into 

 the most desirable fabrics deserves attention. The power looms that now 



