30 The Pence Question in the South, 



for wool is furnished in the fact that, with three and thirty millions of sheep 

 in the United States, producing annually 100,000,000 pounds of wool, the 

 annual consumption of wool by the entire population of the United States 

 is estimated at six pounds per head, thus requiring the supply of three hun- 

 dred million pounds of wool, or three times our present product. And inas- 

 much as each sheep averages two pounds of wool, this calls for the yield of 

 one hundred and fifty million sheep. Here, therefore, is the cause for our 

 present annual importation of forty millions of dollars worth of foreign wool, 

 besides twenty millions of dollars worth of foreign made woolen goods, the 

 larger part of which should be saved to American home industry. 



The United States possess one-half the cheap fertile lands included in the 

 wool zone of the world ; nearly half her territory lies within it. Experience 

 has amply proved that sheep are healthy in every part of the United States. 

 And no section of the United States presents so many advantages for the 

 successful raising of sheep as the country lying between the Atlantic and 

 the Mississippi, between the Gulf of Mexico and the line drawn east and west 

 at the head of Lake Michigan. Of this section the best portion lies south of 

 the Ohio river. 



For this there are some incontrovertible reasons established by modern 

 science, and confirmed by far reaching experience. While sheep require a 

 dry soil, and, as they naturally belong to mountain regions, a broken and 

 varied surface best agrees with them, certain other climate facts are needed for 

 their best condition and development as fleece bearers. The time has gone 

 by when it was said and believed that wool growing was impossible in the 

 South. It has been established that the fibre of wool is not changed or en- 

 larged by climate. Both qualities of length of fibre and fineness are on the 

 contrary greatly favored by the propitious climate of the South, whose superb 

 fleeces have repeatedly carried away the premiums of the best markets of the 

 world. Says Mr. Hayes : 



Having examined the volume of awards of the exhibition at London of 1851, commonly 

 called the World's Fair, we find that the report of the juries recognize the German wools as the 

 finest and longest. Two prize medals of the same grade given to the German exhibitors were 

 awarded to exhibitors from the United States. The awards are arranged in the order of merit. 

 The first is given to Mr. Cockerill. It says : " The wool transmitted by the exhibitor of Nash- 

 ville is well got up ; and exhibits, like the preceding specimens (the German), a quality of 

 fibre indicative of care and skill in the development and improvement of the fleece, which calls 

 for the award of the prize medal." The report further says : "One of the able experts, whose 

 valuable aid to the jury have already acknowledged, reports, ' Those shown by America (United 

 States) as most approximating to the character of German wools.' " Sheep Husbandry in the 

 South, p. 12.) 



It is now ascertained beyond discussion, that the exact remarkable condi- 

 tions that create the American cotton belt, equally favor wool production. 



This cotton belt, commencing in North Carolina, averaging two hundred 

 miles in width, excepting where it ascends the Mississippi four hundred miles 

 from its mouth, and terminating almost in a point in Southern Texas, has an 

 axis whose mean temperature is 64, with extremes from 27 by 30 to 98 by 

 104. 



The cotton plant seems to be in a peculiar manner dependent upon the 

 latent moisture of the atmosphere supplied by the great volumes of vapor 

 from the Gulf of Mexico, drawn inland by the draught of summer heat. The 

 sheep herder finds within the same induence all the security against droughts 

 that, in some seasons, are the dread and source of disaster in most of the other 

 famous sheep growing regions of the world. 



Again, the most successful sheep breeders of the South ascribe their success 

 to the provision for their sheep of succulent food throughout the year. And this 

 is furnished to a like degree in no other sheep raising region of the world. 

 One of the most marked advantages of the South is the ability to grow grasses 



