Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1888 — The Tax on Wool. [ARTICLE]

The Tax on Wool.

Wool is also a necessity, and a very great one. In this trying American climate, with its sudden changes and fierce storms, warin clothing is one of the absolute essentials of comfort and health.' It is also obvious that no class is so much exposed to the rigors of the climate as the laboring people. And yet this is iust the class who now find warm woolen clothing beyond their means. It is this class to whom the piles of cheap, flimsy, half cotton goods on the counters of the merchants are sold. And they buy them because they can afford nothing better. The wife of the laboring man, seeking winter clothing for her children, prices the warm woolen garment, and then with a sigh turns to the shoddy stuff which is within reach of her means. But even for this she often pays a price which would purchase a good garment in other countries, while the purchaser of a better article of clothing knows, if he is at all familiar with facts, that he is paying nearly twice as much for it as it would ccst in London or Liverpool or on the continent. The truth is that we are now ' shearing both the sheep and the people, and the one is about as helpless in the hands of the shearer as the other.— lhe Advance (Chicano).