the war tariff of 1867, when the duties were over 12 cents per pound), the number of sheep in the United States (under the influence of adequate protection) increased in four years 25 per cent. At this rate of increase, if continued until 1900, the American nation by that time would have produced its own supply of wool. This shows if anything does that protection when adequate does protect.31

Number 1st Period 2nd Period 3rd Period 4th Period Number

31 The secretary of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, in an able asticle in the September 1896 Bulletin of the Association, says:

"Under the act of 1890 the flocks of the United States had reached a total of 47,223,000, and were increasing at the rate of about 1,000,000 a year. With a value of $2.50 per head in 1892, our flocks were worth $118,057,500. They have been decreasing at the rate of 3,000,000 annually, under free wool, and their number had receded on April 1, 1896, to 36,464,405, with an average value of $1.70 a head. The loss in number is more than 10,000,000 sheep in three years, and in value over $60,00,000.

"We are using the statistics of the Department of Agriculture, and they are the only figures available for these comparisons. There is a widespread impression that the statisticians of the Department have so managed their figures that the full

X. EFFECT ON WOOL PRICES.

In 1883 the effect of tariff reduction caused prices for wool to fall. Grover Cleveland was inaugurated in 1885, and his free-wool theory was advocated aud took form in the Mills bill, and the woolgrowers of the United States were so alarmed that they fattened their sheep and sold them in countless multitudes to the butchers, and the slaughter was only arrested by the election of President Harrison in 1888. During Grover Cleveland's first term the number of sheep decreased from 50,500,000 to 41,500,000, a decrease of nearly 18 per cent, under the influence of hostile legislation. After General Harrison's election in 1888 the prospect of the passage of a tariff law giving adequate protection to wool, followed by the McKinley law, fostered the sheep industry, and the flocks increased under President Harrison's Administration 13 per cent, and up to the time of Grover Cleveland's inauguration the number of sheep had increased to 47,500,000.

If the McKinley law had not been menaced with repeal, and the effects of its repeal discounted, at the same rate of increase as under the McKinley law, the American nation before 1905 would have had enough sheep to furnish its entire wool supply. Thus it was at the end of the third or McKinley period.

The fourth period began with the inauguration of Grover Cleveland. His first message indicated that the policy of his Administration would be in the direction of free wool, and the Wilson-Gorman law was its fulfillment.

The fear of free wool, with the certainty of doubled importations of cheap foreign wool and woolens, caused the entire annihilation of American flocks in many sections of the country, so that by the 1st of January, 1896, there was only 38,500,000 sheep left in the United States. This country had more sheep than this in 1868, twenty-eight years ago. (See Schedule F.)

dimensions of the injury done the sheep industry are not revealed in them. In several States the returns of the assessors indicate losses in sheep much greater than the Department shows. Many districts are found where the slaughter has been wholesale.

"Mr. W. B. Snow, formerly the assistant statistician of the Department of Agriculture, a man thoroughly cognizant of the methods of obtaining these figures, has recently completed an independent investigation which reduces the total number of sheep now in the country to 32,000,000, more than 4,000,000 below the Government figures, and indicating a loss, in the last three years, of fifteen and a quarter millions of sheep. It is our opinion that Mr. Snow's estimate is closer to the fact than that of the Department; but it is not necessary to impeach the official figures in order to make out a case against the legislation which is destroying the results of thirty years of protection in this industry.

"Under the McKinley Act the wool clip was steadily increasing with the increase of flocks, and had reached in 1893 a total of 348,500,000 pounds, the largest clip ever grown in the United States, nearly double the largest clip ever grown in Great Britain, even when that country grew all the combing wools for the world's use; as large as the wool clip of the Argentine Republic as late as 1888; as large as the clip of Australia as late as 1885; equal to one-third of the available wool supply of all manufacturing nations as late as 1860.

"At an average value of 15 cents a pound on the farm, the wool clip of 1893 was worth to the farmers of the country $52,200,000. The entire value of all the Australian and colonial wool imported into London in 1870 was only £11,600,000, or about the same as the farm value of our domestic clip of 1893."

CHAPTER VI.

[From the American Wool and Cotton Reporter, Boston, October 29, 1896.]

AN APPEAL TO THE WOOLGROWERS.

By WILLIAM LAWRENCE, President of the National Wool Growers' Association.

SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER.

I. WOOLGROWERS WANT THREE THINGS.

1. A market for wool.

3. Payment in honest money.

II. A MARKET CAN BE SECURED BY "THE MOST AMPLE PROTECTION FOR WOOL.'
III. HOW FAIR PRICES FOR WOOL CAN BE SECURED?

1. Free wool reduced the price of wool

2. Statistics of prices...

IV. HOW FREE WOOL HAS RUINED SHEEP HUSBANDRY

V. RAGS AND SHODDY

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2. Fair prices....

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VI. PAY FOR WOOL IN HONEST MONEY..

1. International bimetallism.

2. Free coinage of silver

VII. AMPLE PROTECTION WILL ENLARGE SHEEP HUSBANDRY

1. How much

VIII. AMERICAN WOOLGROWERS CAN SUPPLY ALL NEEDED WOOLS.

IX. ADVANTAGES OF THE INCREASE.

X. SHEEP AND SILVER..

XI. FREE-SILVER REPUBLICANS.

XII. LOOK ON THIS PICTURE-THEN ON THAT.....

I.-WOOLGROWERS WANT THREE THINGS.

The woolgrowers of this country want three things:

(1) A MARKET FOR WOOL.

(2) FAIR PRICES.

(3) PAYMENT IN HONEST MONEY.

II.—A MARKET CAN BE SECURED BY THE MOST AMPLE PROTECTION FOR WOOL.

This can be secured by a protective tariff for wool manufactures. Under this in due time, the manufacturing industry can be sufficiently increased to supply all American wants for woolen goods. The tariff should then be increased sufficiently to exclude all imports so long as American prices should be fair prices. This is the position of the National Wool Growers' Association. It is ready for friendly cooperation with wool manufacturers. Without an adequate protective tariff

wool manufacturing will be destroyed by foreign competition having the great advantage of cheap pauper labor. The evidence of this is abundant.

The wool circular of Justice, Bateman & Co., of October 1 says:

FREE WOOL AND CLOSED MILLS.

After two years of actual experience with the Wilson law, not over 25 per cent of the American woolen machinery is running on full time. The Wilson law has permitted foreign manufacturers to monopolize a large share of the American market. It has destroyed a large part of the woolgrowing industry and has crippled so many other industries as to have seriously decreased the purchasing power of the nation, and has thus further narrowed the home market. Two years of melancholy experience with the Wilson law, which was voted for by William J. Bryan in order that our manufacturers "might enjoy a wider market," has conferred no benefit upon either manufacturers or consumers. The nation as a whole has lost, and lost heavily, from the loss of the woolgrowers. The "free wool" period has been one of depression for manufacturers. The consumers have received but a small decrease in the cost of their clothing, but have suffered an enormous decrease in their ability to buy clothing or anything else. No nation can afford, for the sake of securing slightly lower retail prices, to damage an industry which brings prosperity.

The able secretary of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, S. N. D. North, in an article in the Bulletin of the association for September, 1896, has proved this. He says:

The woolen schedule did not go into effect until January 1, 1895, four months after the rest of the tariff bill became operative. The volume of the imports soon became appalling. They averaged $5,000,000 a month in value, so that at the end of the first twelve months under the new law-that is, from January to January-the total value of woolens imported had passed the mark of $60,000,000 foreign value.

The imports of that first year represent on the basis of present prices a domestic value ($90,000,000) equivalent to about one-third of all the woolen goods made in the United States in 1890, as shown by the Federal census of that year. The total value of wool manufactures returned by that census, after deducting the duplications in the form of yarns, etc., and the cotton knit goods included in the enumeration, was about $250,000,000. The output of American mills was reduced in a larger percentage in 1895 than the imports were increased; to such a degree, in fact, that it is safe to say that nearly one-half of all the woolens which entered into consumption in that year were of foreign manufacture. We have in this country enough woolen machinery to manufacture all the woolen goods our people can consume, but we have no use for it under the present tariff.

The real significance of these imports does not appear in the value; we must look to the quantities to measure their influence upon domestic industry. Taking cloths for an example, the following table shows (besides the total imports of woolens) the quantities and values of cloths imported for the calendar years ending December 31, 1891, 1892, and 1893 (three years, during two of which the McKinley tariff was in operation under normal business conditions), and also for the calendar year 1895:

Import of manufactures of wool and cloths, years ending December 31, 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1895.

[From the Commerce and Navigation Reports, United States Treasury Department.]

The computations above made show that the quantity of cloths imported in 1895 was almost equal, in pounds, to the total quantity imported in the three years of 1891, 1892, and 1893, under the McKinley tariff. The cloth imports of the year 1892 were the largest in quantity of any one year in our history, up to that date-16,248,313

pounds-showing that the McKinley woolen tariff was not the prohibitory tariff its opponents represent. The imports for the year 1895 were, however, 40,070,143 pounds of cloths, an increase over the largest previous year of 147 per cent. These figures convey some impression of the degree of injury inflicted upon our wool manufacturers in the first years of the Wilson tariff.

III.-How FAIR PRICES FOR WOOL CAN BE SECURED.

Woolgrowers want fair prices for wool.

This they can not have without an ample protective tariff. This has been proved by the tests of practical experience.

1. FREE WOOL REDUCED THE PRICE OF WOOL.

From 1816 to the free-wool Wilson tariff act of August 28, 1894, there was under various laws a tariff on wool. The act of March 2, 1867, was for the time sufficiently protective; that of March 3, 1883, was less so; the McKinley act of October 1, 1890, was intended to give "full and adequate protection" to the wool industry, and if the bill had been passed as first reported by Mr. McKinley it would have been so if conditions then existing had continued.

The election of 1892 made Cleveland President, with a Democratic Congress, and the free-wool Wilson act of August, 1894, followed.

Our experience under it has shown that American woolgrowers can not successfully compete with the immense flocks of Australia, Argentina, and other countries having pasturage at a cost generally less than the taxes on our lands and with climates requiring generally no winter feeding. Free wool has filled the country with foreign wool, at prices which will not pay the cost of production in our States.

The following statistics compiled from the wool circulars of Justice, Bateman & Co., of Philadelphia, show the price of wool in that and other Eastern cities under the McKinley act until the election of 1892 gave the certainty of free wool, and the continued and further decline in price after the Wilson bill became a law:

2. STATISTICS.

HOW FREE WOOL REDUCED THE PRICE OF WOOL.

From 1816 to the free-wool Wilson tariff act of August 28, 1894, there was under various laws a tariff on wool. The act of March 2, 1867, was for the time sufficiently protective; that of March 3, 1883, was less so; the McKinley act of October 1, 1890, was intended to give "full and adequate protection" to the wool industry, and if this bill had been passed as first reported by Mr. McKinley it would have been so, if conditions then existing had continued.

The election of 1892 made Cleveland President, with a Democratic Congress, and the free-wool Wilson act of August, 1894, followed.

Our experience under it has shown that American woolgrowers can not successfully compete with the immense flocks of Australia, Argentina, and other countries having pasturage at a cost generally less than the taxes on our lands, and with climates requiring generally no winter feeding. Free wool has filled the conntry with foreign wool, at prices which will not pay the cost of production in our States.

The following statistics compiled from the wool circulars of Justice Bateman & Co., of Philadelphia, show the price of wool in that and other eastern cities under