Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1894 — Some Facts About Wool. [ARTICLE]

Some Facts About Wool.

If American manufacturers are to supply themselves with foreign wool, it would be only because it would be cheaper to them than American wool. Who, then, will be left to buy the American clip, and what is to become of it? If American wool falls to the foreign price under free trade, the American sheep will be fattened and sent to the butcher, and woolgrowing in America will cease to be an industry except in limited cases where the farmers can produce the coarser wool ■heep for the meat as they now produce cattle for that purpose. They would then have to consider the wool a by-product, as bullocks hides are now considered. If the duty be soon removed or even reduced at a time when the government needs more rather than less revenue, the only way to procure even the same revenue that is now collected is to double our imports. If we double our imports we obtain our supplies from abroad instead of at home. We cripple our manufacturers and lessemour market for car wool. We give a great industrial impul.se to foreign mills, and to this extent take employment from our American mills, and for what? Simply in order to raise as much revenue uauer reduced duties for revenue only "i we now collect under duti."* that are protec-

tive. Why, therefore, should we destroy a well-establiShetl industry that pays taxes to our government and instead promote a foreign industry that pays nothing toward the support of ou r government.