Something For The Major To Explain

Seldom has the month of July been ushered in with the wool market in a more depressed and unsettled state, says the American Wool Keporter of this week. Prices in sonie grades are lower than they have been in years; it is difflcult to sell any large line of wool except at concessions; Ohio and Michigan fleeces have been a drag on the market for the past six months, steadily declining; high tariff laws, as f ar as wool is concerned, "have been demonstrated to be a delusion and a snare, deservedly involving those who were the most instrumental in securing their enactment." So much for what has actually followed the imposition of higher duties on wool. This should be eompared with the expectations of those who made the law. Major McKinley, as chairman of the committee on ways and means, in reporting his tariff biU to the House, said with reference to the higher duties proposed for raw wool: "The United States ought to produce all of the wosl it consumes, and will with adequate encouragement and defensive legislation. The amount of wool consumed in all forms and for all purposes is nearly, if not quite, 600,000,000 pounds annually." (Of which he said in 1889 some 245,000,000 pounds were grown in the United States and 350,000,000 imported ín the raw or manufacturad state.) . . . "There seenis to be no doubt that with the protection afforded by the inereased duties recommended in the bill, the farmers of the United States will be able at an early day to supply snbstantially all of the home demand, and the great benefit such production will be to the agricultural interests of the country cannot be estimated. The prociuctioii oí 690,000,000 pounds of wool would require about 100,000,000 sheep, or an addition of more than 100 per cent to the present number" Mr. McKinley .will have abundant opportunity in the Ohio campaign this fall to explain to the Ohio wool-growers the reason why the real results of the higher duties have fallen so far short of the expected results, and what he has to say wlll be awaited with interest. Instead of making the industry so profitable as to invite an increase of 100 per cent in the number of sheep as predicted, the higher duties after a trial of nine months have left the home market so depressed, demand so light and prices so low that a slaughter of Ohio and Michigan sheep greater even than that which followed the tarifi of 1867 seems imminent. At the same time importations of foreig wool have been exceptionálly heav and their prices higher in the hom market. A day of reckoning is clos at hand for the false prophets who have been leading the Ohio wool