Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1891 — FREE WOOL IN ENGLAND [ARTICLE]

FREE WOOL IN ENGLAND

HOW FREE WOOL HAS MADE ENCLAND GREAT. England’s 'Wool Duty Removed In 1838— increased Production and Higher Prices for the Farmer—Free Wool Has Given England the World's Wool Clip—Who Pays Hie Kail Tax. Slade England Great. Wo are told that a removal of the duty on wcoi would roiiilt in destroying our sheep-growing industry, but the experience of Eng and with the wool tax does not bear cut this claim. In 1800 England had a wotl duty of 12 cents a pound, and in that year produced 02,544,000 poundi of wool. Tliis tariff was continued till 1828, when t<ha product amounted to 111,<523,72 > pounds, e gaht of only 19,pounds in twenty-eight years. Then came free woo!, and air.ad yin 1850 the production of woo! in England had risen to 2,"5,t;00,0C0 pounds, or a gain of 103,370,271 pounds in only twen-ty-two year*. S neo that year this production of wco I;a> declined, but it is still greater l>y t 0,030,000 pounds than in 1828. But the rapid increase did not cause a decline in prices. In 1828, under protection, the pr.ee of one of the standard grades of domestic wool, that known to the Eng ish trade as “Lincoln ha'f hog,” was 2.‘ cents a'pound, and the average pr.ee from that year to 1850 was 24 cents. During the twenty sears, 1857 to 1370, the saute wool brought the English farmer an average of 40 <ents. The price last year leturned once more to 22 cents. So the British t armors ar ■ no worse off, in the matter of price, for free wool; and they had 'more to sell, too; but they had an enormous gain in the cheapening of woolen clothing But England raises sheep f.r mutton rather than for wo Four-fifths of all lambs are sla, ghtcrcd for market; and for twenty years the number of sheep has kept pretty closely to 30,010,000, sometimes a few millions above or below. Wool is little more there than an incidental product of the mutton-grower. Free woo Las made England the great wool market of the world. In 1850 that country imported on y 77,000,000 pounds of woo’, but importations had risen in 1889 to 721,000,000 pounds, of which abeut half was. exported and resold in other countries, thus making an enormous trade for English sfiipsand English merchants. In the meantime England s consumption of foreign wool has increased enormously. In 1814 it was 1,942,G00 pounds; in 1839 it was 363,435,000. It is our tariff, and it alone, that keeps us from rivaling England as a great wco-trading and woo-manufac-turing nation. England could never have reached her present position in the control of the world’s wool supply if she had adhere 1 to the policy of protecting a few country squires who wanted to breed sheep at public expense; and if she had persisted in her attempt to shut out foreign wool our own manufacturers would never have needed to besiege Congress so ong and so invariably with their ta e of ruinous competition from English competition. As it is, the bulk of flie world’s supply of wool goes to London, and English manufacturers, as a general thing, get the pick of the clip from ail lands. Free wool would give tho American manufacturer an equal chance: it would not necessarily huit tho American wool-grower.