240 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



few remained that had not for the twenty- five years preceding been 

 more or less tinctured with Merino blood with a resultant increase in 

 weight of fleece and fineness of wool. 



In 1845 there 165,428 Merinos and crosses, yielding 487,050 pounds 

 of wool; in 1855 the Merinos had decreased to 65,548, yielding only 

 188,504 pounds of wool. The Saxonies in 1845 numbered 33,875, pro. 

 ducing 93,218 pounds of wool, and in 1855 had decreased to 6,806, with 

 14,549 pounds of wool. In 1845 the total value of all the sheep and 

 wool was $923,420; while in 1855, only 10 years later, it was $464,889 

 showing a depreciation in ten years of nearly half a million dollars. 

 The whole number of sheep had decreased from 354,943 in 1845 to 

 145,215 in 1855, and the wool product from 1,016,230 pounds in 1845 to 

 416,156 pounds in 1855. 



The period from 1845 to 1855 marks the transition from fine-wool to 

 coarse- wool and mutton industry. In 1845 the fine-wooled sheep num- 

 bered 199,303, or 43,663 more than all others, while in 1855 they num- 

 bered only 72,390, or 435 less than the coarse and middle wools. The 

 causes are various. 



The tariff of 1846 was ruinous to the fine-wool industry of the United 

 States. At that date many factories were producing broadcloth equal 

 in quality to any made in Germany and Great Britain. Large quanti- 

 ties of fine Saxony and Spanish Merino wools, equal in many respects 

 to that produced in Saxony, France, or Spain, was raised in Massachu- 

 setts and adjoining States and found a ready market at fairly remuner- 

 ative prices. But when that tariff went into operation the American 

 manufacturer could not compete with the cheap labor and vast capital 

 of the Old World; consequently, the manufacture of broadcloth was 

 abandoned and so absolutely that in 1860 there was scarcely a loom in 

 the United States making that kind of goods. The machinery released 

 from making broadcloth was employed in fabricating medium and coarse 

 fancy cassimeres, which required a coarser and longer stapled wool than 

 fine broadcloth. But the farmer could not change his sheep so quickly ; 

 they were fine-wooled, and with the loss of the broadcloth trade the 

 value of fine wool suffered depreciation; the sheep were valuable for 

 wool only. Their carcasses being small, their lambs small, and the 

 sheep being tender, rendered them scarcely remunerative; the breeds 

 were suffered to run out and the cultivation of fine wool was nearly de- 

 stroyed in the State and seriously affected in every other State. Whole 

 flocks that had been bred up on common sheep and become fine-wooled 

 ones were now crossed back into coarse- wooled flocks. It was under 

 this system that nearly 200,000 fine-wooled sheep in 1845 were reduced 

 to 72,290 in 1855. And the tariff affected quite as disastrously coarse- 

 wool growing. 



In 1845 the long and middle wool sheep of the State constituted 

 about two-fifths of the whole number and some improvement was being 

 made by the introduction of pure bred Southdowns, Lincolns, and Lei- 



