SHEEP—UNITED STATES, NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA. 81 
sitate cooperation among growers to an extent not likely to be possible 
for some years at least. 
The only other means of securing the results sought in auction 
selling is to consign classed or graded clips to commission saleshouses 
and permit them to combine different parts of various clips such as 
may be necessary to make up offerings of size suitable to the trade. 
This is the practice of interlotting described on page 26. Such prac- 
tice can succeed only when the grower feels that his selling agent, 
whether it be a cooperative or a private concern, will act fairly and 
use only wools of similar value in the combined offerings. 
Such selling facilities, or any others that are practised, can by no 
means remove the need of selling houses or firms to get the wool to 
the manufacturers. Such intermediate agencies may in the future 
consist more largely than at present of commission sellers, though it 
is unlikely that the time will ever come when no wool will be bought 
and held for market rises. 
COOPERATIVE SHEARING SHEDS IN NEW ZEALAND. 
In New Zealand the sheep raisers are equally as determined as those 
in Australia to have their wool clips well put up. A few farmers 
keeping very small flocks do not skirt or class their fleeces, and such 
clips commonly go to speculators, who do the skirting and classing 
and in selling combine various purchases so reworked. 
Some owners of medium-sized flocks (1,000 to 5,000) cooperate in 
the ownership and operation of a common shearing plant. Each 
sheep owner using the shed holds shares of stock in the plant in pro- 
portion to the size of his flock. Prior to shearing time the stock- 
holders meet and agree upon a salary for a superintendent selected by 
them for the season’s run. This superintendent hires shearers, shed 
hands, and a classer, purchases supples, and in fact does all the busi- 
ness connected with the work, delivering to each stockholder his 
classed clip in bales, and the season’s expense is paid by the stock- 
holders on the basis of the number of sheep shorn for each. 
EDUCATION OF WOOL GROWERS AND THEIR EMPLOYEES. 
Australia has five agricultural colleges, with a total annual at- 
tendance of about 1,000 students. At each college students are given 
as a part of the agricultural course instruction in the handling of 
the wool at shearing time, and are required to assist in the work. 
Other sheep than those owned upon the college farm are sometimes 
shorn in order to prolong the run and permit each student to take 
part in each phase of the work. Bales of unskirted or unclassed 
wools are often purchased to be used as laboratory material in teach- 
ing the best methods of preparing a clip of wool for the market. 
