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:

Table showing the price per pound for the leading grades of American wool in the eastern market and on the farm on January 1 and July 1 for the years 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, and 1896.

Table showing the price per pound for the leading grades of American wool in the eastern market, etc.-Continued.

Table showing the price per pound for the leading grades of American wool in the eastern market, etc.-Continued.

Every wool grower knows that these free-wool prices are ruinous to American sheep husbandry.

IV.-How FREE WOOL HAS RUINED SHEEP HUSBANDRY.

The following statistics show how the Bryan free wool act of August, 1894, has injured American sheep husbandry:

Thus it is shown that under free wool sheep have been decreasing at the rate of more than 3,000,000 annually, whereas under adequate protection they would have increased at the rate of 15,000,000 or more annually.

The full loss to woolgrowers consists not merely. (1) in the reduction of the number and (2) value of sheep, and (3) the amount and value of wool product, but (4) in the loss of the increase which would have accrued under protection.

The number of sheep for April, 1896, above given, is from the Democratic statistics of the Department of Agriculture, and, of course, presents the best showing for the free-wool era. In several States the assessors' returns make the number less than given by the Department of Agriculture.

W. B. Snow, formerly assistant statistician of the Department of Agriculture, has ascertained errors in its statistics, and makes the total number of sheep now in the country only 32,000,000, showing a loss in the last three years of 15,250,000 sheep.

Thus, it is shown that free wool, if continued, will soon substantially destroy our wool industry.

V. RAGS AND SHODDY.

The Bryan free-wool act admits free also foreign rags, wastes, and other adulterants, and shoddy with a mere nominal duty. The result has been that in the fiscal year 1896 the imports of these adulterants amounted to 18,874,670 pounds, supplanting the use of 56,624,010 pounds of wool-more than the whole wool clip of Oregon, California, and Texas-the three largest wool-producing States.

Then the low duties on wool manufactures drove American wool manufacturers to use this foreign shoddy.

Thus the extensive wool manufacturers, Collings, Taylor & Co., of Cleveland, Ohio, in a letter to the Ohio Farmer, August 1, 1896, said:

During the years 1890 to 1893 we bought nearly all of our wool from the Ohio farmers, and paid in the neighborhood of 27 to 28 cents for washed fine. To-day we can buy for 14 to 15 cents, but the trouble is we have no use for it, for since the WilsonGorman bill came into effect we have not been able to pay the existing low prices for wool, but have had to resort-like a great many other mills-to the purchase of foreign rags, of which we have purchased hundreds of tons, and worked them up, displacing just so many pounds of Ohio wool. We had to do it in order to compete with the cheap goods being imported into this country since the Wilson-Gorman law came into effect.

We will also say that previous to the Wilson-Gorman bill or during the McKinley law we never purchased a single pound of foreign rags, waste, or wool, and during the McKinley law our mills never stopped one day for being short of work, but since the Wilson-Gorman law came into effect it has been very hard to keep the mills running three days per week, and for the last two months we have not run more than one day in each week, or in other words, we are practically shut down, with no prospects of work until after the election, and we look for little then unless our tariff laws are changed.32

VI.-PAY IN HONEST MONEY.

1. Woolgrowers want pay for their wool in honest money-money having the world-wide value of international bimetallism.

2. The free, independent, unlimited coinage of silver by the United States, under present conditions, without the aid and cooperation of at least some of the principal commercial nations, will result in silver monometallism, as in Mexico and in every country adopting the silver standard. Under it our silver dollars would become equal, probably, to 60 cents each, measured by the gold standard.

If wool be sold for such dollars the price will be nominally higher than (1) the gold-standard price or (2) the price of the bimetallic standard, but (3) the value will be no more than that fixed by the

32 The Textile Manufacturers' Review and Industrial Record, of Boston, October 17, 1896, gives the following:

"The value of the imports of carbonized wool, mungo, shoddy, etc., also yarns for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1896, amounted to $2,400,000. We reproduce the

standard of the great commercial nations. There may be a wide difference between price and value. The woolgrowers want payment for wool in money which will buy in foreign countries the greatest possible amount of foreign products, consistent with a just monetary standard.

Woolgrowers, therefore, want payment for wools in money having just value and a fair purchasing power. Hence, free silver with free wool will not be beneficial to woolgrowers. How will they be benefited by money of less than bimetallic value? In another article I have discussed this more fully.

With amply protective duties for wool manufactures and for wool, woolgrowers will have:

(1) An ample market for wool;

(2) Fair price, and

(3) Payment thereof in honest money.

With these, sheep husbandry can be enlarged sufficiently to supply all wools required by American needs.

importations in detail, taken from the recently published statistics of the Treasury Department, as follows:

The foregoing will be found in the "Imports for Consumption and Duties Collected, 1894 to 1896," Bureau Statistics, Treasury Department, 1896, page 296. The foregoing are not all the imports, only those for immediate consumption. A large amount of imports remain for future use.

The total imports for the fiscal year 1896 were:

These are the figures as found in the "No. 12 Series Monthly Summary of Finance and Commerce of the United States, June, 1896," page 1528. For some reason this document does not give by name shoddy, mungo, flocks. And there is an item "all other;" but it is understood that shoddy, etc., are included in the above figures.