30 THE TLORIST AND 
Reported for the Florist. 
PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 
Stated meeting at rooms, Masonic Hall, South Third street, on Wednes- 
day morning, January 3d, 1855. 
President, Dr. A. L. Elwyn, in the chair. The minutes of the preceding 
meeting were read and approved. The following gentlemen were elected 
resident members, viz: Messrs. Edgar Black, William G. Warder, Thomas 
Drake and Henry Grambo, of Philadelphia, and Mr. James Sloan, of Port 
Kennedy, Montgomery county. Pa. After the reading of the Treasurer's 
Report, Mr. David S. Brown, of Philadelphia, presented to the Society for 
distribution, a number of copies in pamphlet form of the letter of Mr. David 
M. Stone, of New York Journal of Commerce, to the wool-growers ; also 
copies of the New York Evening Post, containing an article on wool. 
Mr. Brown accompanied his donation with some highly interesting remarks 
on the manufacture of woollens in the United States, in the course of which 
he stated that the discriminating duty on wool, which had been designed to 
benefit the manufacturer, had been found so injurious that the mills for the 
finer fabrics were nearly all closed. He referred especially to the manufac- 
ture of broadcloths. In such goods the warp was formed of American wool, 
for which purpose such wool was eminently adapted ; but for the woof, or 
filling and face, foreign wool was found indispensable. This wool the pre- 
sent tariflf almost excluded from our market, and as a consequence the broad- 
cloth mills had stopped one after another, until the last, that of Mr. Slater, 
of Rhode Island — whose father was among the first to introduce the making 
of broadcloths into this country — had ceased its operations. He (Mr. 
Brown) did not vouch for the correctness of the view entertained by work- 
men, but he knew that they ascribed the superiority of Saxon wool for the 
above purposes to the fact that, in Germany, they sheared their sheep twice 
a year. Certainly German cloths, at the present rates of duty, were fast 
driving all others out of the market. A removal of duty altogether would 
probably open the way for an unprecedented increase of manufactures. No 
better state of the trade was possible than that of freedom from all duty. 
This was true as well of dye stufis as of wooh If we admitted them free 
the price in all other markets would at once be raised. Eor certain fabrics 
our wool was in demand. It was more flexible, longer, and a large portion 
of it was finer than the European and Australian wool. Great Britain had 
wisely opened the raw materials of the world to her manufacturers. Here 
