Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1901 — THE AMERICAN SHEEP. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE AMERICAN SHEEP.

MARKED INCREASE IN OUR DOMESTIC FLOCKS. Census for 1901 Shows a Gain Alike In Number Owned and in Average Value Per Head Over the Splendid Showing of Last Year. In view of the present low price of wool throughout the world, the lowest known for many years, and the great prostration now prevailing in the wool and sheep Industry In every country, except the United States, it is Interesting to know how the American sheep farmer fares. He fares best among all his competitors, very much the best. His industry has not been ruined; far from it. He Is infinitely better off than are the sheep and wool producers of the rest of creation. Vastly better off he is than during the disastrous free wool period of 1894-’97 and the succeeding two years of a home market overstocked with foreign wools brought here free of duty. So great was the glut of foreign wool under the Wilson tariff law that it was not until 1900 that our domestic growers began to feel the benefit of the duty on wool restored by the Dingley tariff. Even now there Is on hand, a considerable quantity of the free wool that was rushed in during the closing months of the Wilson law. A year ago the sheep census of the American Protective Tariff League showed some surprising results. Contrasted with the free-wool period of 1896 the census for 1900 showed a gain of 71.44 per cent in the total number of sheep owned and a gain of 121.59 per cent in average value per bead. But this was before the bottom dropped out of the world’s wool markets. Since then the great slump in wool values has taken place. * . Have American flocks decreased, and has their value per head declined along with the sheep of Australia, South America and other wool producing countries? Daddedly not. On the contrary, the sheep census of 1901, just completed by the American Protective Tariff League, shows: Number of States reporting 40 Number of reports received 707 Sheep owned, March, 1901 1,464,781 Sheep owned, March, 1900 1,256,738

Gain for 1901 208,043 Percentage of gain for 1900 16.55 It is found that against an average value of $3.90 per head in March, 1900, the average value for March, 1901, was $4.04, an increase of 14 cents per head, or 3.59 per cent. It would appear that the American sheep Aiser has a marked advantage over the flock masters of the rest of the world. First, he has in his favor a protective tariff which fixes an irreducible minimum of market value for his fleeces. Unless the foreign grower sells his wool for nothing, he cannot compete with the domestic grower in the American market. The Dingley tariff takes care of that. Second, the average value per head of American sheep is kept up by the enormous demand for mutton and lambs for food purposes. The American wage earner, when busily employed at high wages, as he has been for three or four years past and now is, consumes from three to thirty times more meat than the other wage earners of the world. He is fond of good mutton and juicy lamb, and he is a tremendous consumer of these meats. In fact, he is the best customer the American butcher has. It is not the rich people, but the wage earners, that keep the butcher shops going. It is no longer possible, as it was in 1896, under Wilson tariff free wool, to buy a good sheep for 50 cents. That day has passed, and will come no more as long as the tariff on wool protects the wool grower while the tariff on all lines 6t production makes times good, wages high and the consuming capacity of 76,000,000 people three to thirty times greater than the consuming capacity of the rest of the people on earth. Condensed Into a form easily read and understood, the sheep census of the American Protective Tariff League for 1901 is as follows:

Number No. of sheep owned In of March, March, State. reports. 1900. 1901. Arizona 4 37,500 32,500 Arkansas 2 265 530 California 7 27,015 30,470 Colorado 9 70,624 70,030 Connecticut 3 35 97 Idaho 6 133,100 194,300 Illinois 6 509 501 Indiana 59 8,351 7,616 Indian Ter 2 94 155 lowa 8 268 1,029 Kansas 8 3.813 4,367 Kentucky 56 1,712 1,043 Louisiana 1 10 16 Maryland 6 l.Vi 308 Michigan 49 4,309 4,102 Minnesota 4 616 933 Mississippi 1 2,000 2,300 Missouri 70 4,033 5,646 Montana 83 481,520 530,010 Nebraska 12 5,815 6,460 Nevada 1 7,000 7,000 New Mexico .... 9 82.400 52,710 New York ....... 17 1,054 1,279 North Carolina ..28 1,223 1,051 North Dakota ... 20 31,236 32,747 Ohio 29 24,929 25,735 Oklahoma ....... <5 4,9.0 6,760 Oregon 32 28,159 28,917 Pennsylvania .... 4 882 974 South Carolina .. 1 31 71 Soutfi Dakota ... 17 29,533 37,378 Tennessee 1 172 98 Texas \. 25 58.587 69,0*19 Utah 15 99.925 115,725 Vermont 4 625 655 Virginia 5 135 3*o Washington 14 24,<*27 32,715 West Virginia ... 53 3,785 3,751 Wisconsin 4 238 271 Wyoming 28 129,102 154.505 Total* 707 1.250,738 1,464,781 Numbet of States reporting 40 Number of reports received 707 Number. Value. Sheep owned In March, 1901,1,464,781 84.04 Sheep owned in March, 1900.1,256,738 3.90 Gain for March. 1901 201.043 *0.14 Percentage of gain for 1901.. 0.1655 0.0859 •• Higher than Under Free Trade. The wool sale* at Price yesterday averaged over 11 cents. This, of course, is not as high as wool raisers have got at some times, and It is l»elow the average for wool under this Republican ad-

ministration, bnt It Is so much higher than the average under the Democrat!®administration that preceded It that it takes the cheek of a mump sufferer for a Democrat to speak of low prices for wool.—Salt Lake City Tribune. Commercial Isolation. In an article deprecating the growing conviction in the South that the same kind of protection which has built np the manufactures and wealth of the world would be also good for that section of our country, the New York Times warns them that they “in so doing lose sight of the fact that the logical result of protection would be commercial isolation.” Logic is defined as the science of the distinction of true from false reasoning. If the result of the Dingley tariff has effected the commercial Isolation of this country the logical result of developing the manufactures and wealth of the South might be its commercial isolation. But the article in question is headed “Increasing Exports from the South,” but the increase as shown has occurred since the Dingley tariff went into effect, and we all have been assured that if we don’t buy we can’t sell. The fact is there is no logic in, about, nor anywhere near the assertion that protection leads to commercial Isolation. The editor of the Times has apparently mistaken Mr. Gladstone’s advice that we grow more cheap cotton and wheat for logic. Products of Protection. In spit.e of the immense increase in trolley lines in every city and suburb often paralleling the steam ralroads, the latter are doing more business than ever before. The increased business le In freight. Freight is the product of manufacture and agriculture. Manufacture and agriculture are the products of protection, with labor and wages all along the line. Greatest Contnmlna: Nation. The population of the world Is about 1,600,000,000; of the United States, 77,000,000, or about one-twentieth. Yet we consume about one-third of the whole world’s products. Why? Because we do forty-nine fiftieths of our own work, make big money and live like lords. They Mean Business. In 1804 we were producing 128,000 tons of pig Iron per week. Now we are producing, *find using, over 300,000 ton* per week. Protection and pig iron are great friends, and both mean business, and tfre farmer Is Just as much Interested as the manufacturer and laborer. Sect Every Flax bnt His Own.