FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 151 
This system operates most injurionsly on the pro- 
ducers of the best and cleanest wools who do not live 
near good markets. The maximum price is a Pro- 
crustean bed to which they must be cut off, though 
their neighbor has been stretched to its length! If 
they refuse to sell when all their neighbors are selling, 
they have reason to fear no more buyers will come in 
to pick up half a dozen scattering small lots in a 
whole county. So they often reluctantly succumb 
and get only two or three cents more on the pound 
than other men whose wool is fifteen per cent. coarser 
and fifteen per cent. dirtier. This soon drives them 
out of wool-growing or into growing coarse, dirty 
wools. 
I fear that the manufacturer has looked with rather 
more toleration on this system, because sometimes 
perhaps he thus gets enough good wool under price to 
offset over payments on bad and dirty wools. How- 
ever this may be, one thing is certain, that if he con- 
tinues to permit the sacrifice of friends for the benefit 
of enemies, he will within a few years not have 
enough of the former left to keep up the present equi- 
poise in his over and under payments. The soap 
sheep, as they should be called, are rapidly spreading 
everywhere; and farmers seezn to wash their wool 
more and more poorly. 
Am I asked what practical remedy can be adopted ? 
It is not easy to point it out. But I have always 
believed that if each manufacturer would select his re- 
gions tor purchase, buy in those regions every year, and 
employ a few trusty and experienced travelling or 
local agents tied down by no maximum price which 
disregards quality and condition, instructed to buy 
