1867, 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



493 



One of our largest manufiicturers in Central 

 Illinois said at sLearing-time that for the first 

 time in a factory-business of twenty years, he 

 could not pay cash for any wool, but must ex- 

 change goods for what he bought. I have 

 known him well for about sixteen years, and I 

 am satisfied that necessity, not policy, brought 

 him to that decision. Added to it, perhaps, 

 was an unwillingness to make the wool-grower 

 as petty oifers for his wool, in cash, as his ne- 

 cessities would compel. He said it was the 

 first time he had ever been able to make as 

 many goods as he could sell at home, but was 

 then scattering them around the central part 

 of the State to try to work them oIF Of 

 course it was in a measure his own fault, or 

 his misfortune, whichever you please, as he, 

 like all manufacturers both Eastern and West- 

 ern, had doubled his machinery during the last 

 two years of the war. During the same peri- 

 od, importers imported as if there was not a 

 factory in the land. In addition to the large 

 amount of woolens, as affecting the price of 

 wool, we may put down the fact that we wool- 

 growers are now crowding all the large mar- 

 kets of the country with wool, under instruc- 

 tions to sell it "immediately, if not sooner." 



A. R. H. says the tariff has not helped the 

 wool-grower the firfet continental ; rather he 

 puts the language into the mouths of free trade 

 Congressmen. I beg to differ with him. I 

 feel that had it not been for the moral force 

 exerted by the mere fact of having such a 

 tariff, we should have seen a panic in wool 

 matters equal to that of 1861, when the first 

 Bull Run battle scared manufacturers so badly 

 that they bought much Western wool at 28 

 cents per pound. He need not borrow any 

 trouble about that tariff being knocked in the 

 head next winter — not if wool-growers can 

 exert any influence. I think the wool-grow- 

 ers of the country have worked too hard for 

 two or three years past to get this tariff, not 

 to, if necessary, work still harder to keep it. 



Before I leave this matter of the tarifr, I 

 would like to ask "A. R. H." (inasmuch as he 

 has put some very pointed questions to me) 

 whether he ever gave a dollar or a day's time 

 to help secure the tariff? I discover, that, in 

 a general way, the men who exhibit the most 

 querulousness with regard to the tariff — the 

 m£n who think it won't do any good — that the 

 manufacturers have got the big end — that they 

 even framed our end of the tariff, &c. &c., are 

 the men who don't come down with "the 

 stamps." 



Having reviewed "A. R. H.'s" chapter of 

 disappointments, I would like to address my- 

 self for a short time to the whole class of sick, 

 supremely disgusted, four-year-old sheep men 

 — a sort of "application," as the preachers 

 would call it — of the preceding discourse. 



My Very Dear Friends : — You all claim 

 to be very sick of sheep. I have no doubt you 

 are, and most possibly with reason ; but the 

 trouble is in yourselves and not in the business 



of wool-growing. Some of you claim to be 

 converts of mine. I have sown much sheep- 

 seed in the last seven or eight years, and I see 

 that in your cases it has fallen in stony ground ; 

 the stalk, after four year's weakly growth, has 

 withered away, because it had not nuich root. 

 I have always said that not all nn-n were 

 called, or fit, to liandle sheep ; that the busi- 

 ness of sheep-raising required plenty of watch- 

 fulness, every-day care and hard work. Some 

 of you who took up the shepherd's crook, are 

 Reubens, — unstable as water, ye shall not ex- 

 cel. You are the class which make fre(|uent 

 changes of business, — every change involving 

 a loss. It always so happens that when it 

 rains your dishes are not right side up. You 

 could not see any money in sheep until old 

 culls — mere dead sheep — and hard-driven Mi- 

 chijran sheep, sold at from four to six dollars 

 each. I have said to you that you might come 

 out right, even in this case, if you would hang 

 on long enough, and well enough, to grow a 

 young flock out of them. But the luing-on 

 isn't in you, and as you went into sheep just 

 when they were highest, so you must needs 

 supplement your foolishness by going out of 

 them, when, perhaps, they are lowest. The 

 sicker you grow of the stock, the less care 

 you take of your flock — thus hastening your 

 descent down the broad road that leads to 

 cholera hogs and tew-cent corn. As a heathen 

 poet has expressed it, 



"Facile descensus Averni." 



I know the present situation looks rough — 

 that wool should be only thirty-five to forty 

 cents per pound, with gold at 140, and with 

 taxes and expenses at fever heat, but, my dear 

 friends, are you going to gain any thing by 

 giving away your sheep ? I gi'ant you this is 

 the hardest season wool-growers ever saw, but 

 I say to you that in sixteen years I never saw 

 two hard years for wool-growers come to- 

 gether. 



Again, my friends, sick as you now are of 

 sheep, you are very much inchned to view 

 other specialties and pursuits of farming as if 

 surrounded and enveloped with a golden at- 

 mosphere. Look at wool-growing ; won't the 

 profits of it average, or more than average, 

 with those of other kinds of farming for the 

 past ten, or fifteen, or thirty years ? Have 

 you come to feel, in your supreme disgust, 

 that there are no drawbacks to other kinds of 

 agriculture ? Have you forgotten that here in 

 Central Illinois men sowed whole counties, al- 

 most, in quarter-sections fields of winter wheat 

 from '57 to '62 inclusive, and did not harvest 

 their seed through all those years ? Have you 

 forgotten those three years of ten to fifteen 

 cent corn ? Have you not known a number of 

 years in the past sixteen when men purchased 

 stock hogs in the fall, fed their crop of corn 

 to them, and sold the pork for less than they 

 gave for the hogs ? Have you not known men 

 to feed cattle with the same results ? 



