SHEEP-FARMING IN THE WEST. 137 



in various portions of the United States the grandest 

 and most extensive manufacturing enterprises the world 

 has ever seen. All questions of free trade will be 

 settled in a few years by these interior sources of 

 wealth." 



In an able, exhaustive article on " Sheep on the 

 Prairies/' the Hon. J. B. Grinnell, of Iowa, in speak- 

 ing of the necessity of a varied agriculture, says : 

 " The States of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Min- 

 nesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan have expended more 

 than $200,000,000 in the construction of railroads. 

 They have brought life to a thousand cities and villages 

 on the 'iron ways/ and wealth to such farmers as have 

 found a near market and an easy transportation of 

 their grain to the older States. But the demand for 

 grain is met, the warehouses are full, and in the North- 

 west wheat is a drug, and the future is not full of 

 promise to the grain-raiser. Our lands are fast being 

 exhausted, and for a wheat market we must depend 

 upon a scarcity in the Old World, and even then the 

 profits must be determined by the carriers and toll- 

 gatherers of sea and land, who fix their rates of trans- 

 portation as high as possible and yet not amount to a 

 prohibition of the products raised for market. Wool 

 is no exotic. Earnestness and skill are the first requi- 

 sites, and a production of wool equal to all the wants 

 of the dwellers on the continent will be at hand, bring- 

 ing into us millions of acres of the finest native sheep- 

 walks, now producing grass that is just suited to the 

 flock. Disturbed labor and an inadequate production 

 point to a virgin empire in extent, and invite the world 



12* 



