196 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



The Sheep Industry of the 



South 



By F. R. Marshall 



Senior Animal Husbandman Bureau of Animal 



Industry, United States Department of 



Agriculture 



Mr. Chairman, after this discussion I am in somewhat an 

 embarrassing position, but I believe I am complying with the 

 will of the majority, and will undertake to say, very briefly, some 

 of the main essentials of sheep raising. 



My subject permits me to cover the entire South, but I 

 shall not endeavor to do so. I have been interested in listening 

 Import<mceof ^^ ^^^ discussions; and I take it that now we have cleared the 

 in the South ^^^'^P^ o^f the land and surveyed the soil ; we have established 

 pastures, and we have eradicated the ticks ; I don't know whether 

 to say we have established demonstration farms, but we have 

 debated it. 



You don't need to do all that before you talk about going 

 into the sheep business. You could have done that without 

 much of the other, but up to this time, I presume, the sheep 

 business has seemed to you a rather minor and secondary matter ; 

 but if you will acquaint yourselves with the facts in that con- 

 nection and with the methods of utilization of these lands, I be- 

 lieve you will no longer agree that the sheep industry is a second- 

 ary proposition. 



I (will explain to you the reasons for those views. In what I 

 propose to outline briefly, I take it to be the consensus of opinion 

 of this conference that at least a large part of these cut-over lands 

 must, for some considerable time, at least, be used for grazing 

 purposes. I don't know how much or how long. When you come 

 to consider a grazing proposition, you have sheep and cattle 

 mainly to think about. 



The thing that has impressed me most in this connection, 

 and in tlie conservative constructive thinking along this line, is 

 a statement made by a gentleman that after he studied the means 



