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About Wool

About Wool image
Parent Issue
Day
23
Month
March
Year
1894
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The Howell Republican pulís off its coat, rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and makes a feint at a "prominent farmer" who had the audacity to say, in a paper read before the recent Farmers' Institute held in Howell, that under the workings of the McKinley bill wool decreased in value. It claims that the said farmer loses sight of the influence of the great law of supply and demand in regulating prices. But, Mr. Republican, you would better brush some of the cobwebs from your memory and try to recall how republican speakers and papers promised the farmers as high as 50 cents (see speech of Congressman Allen) for their wool under the McKinley bill, without reference to the law of supply and demand. Did they not try to deceive the farmers into voting for protection by the argument that it would keep up prices of wool? If prices had gone up under the McKinley law, would they not have claimed that it resulted from that measure instead of the law of supply and demand? Now, if it is honest to assert, when the price of wool goes up, that the rise is attributable to the duty, it is quite as honest to claim when the price goes down, that the falling off is also chargeable to the operations of the tariff. The argu" ment is certainly no more absurd in the latter case than in the former. The repuhlican also asserts that e'very cargo of foreign wool that enters our makets drives just that many sheep from the American pastures, and displaces a certain amount of American labor. Now, we submit there is a goodly degree of diluted vaporing about that statement. If the Republican knows anything about the wool statistics of our country it knows that we do not produce under the most favoring protective legislation to exceed 60 per cent. of the wool which we consume. The tariff has never materially checked the imports of foreign wools, nor has it stimulated the wool growing industry of this country Under a high duty our imports of foreign wool have increased in ten years 124 per cent., while our I domestic clip has increased but little more than 7 per cent. In the same time our consumption of wool increased 30 per cent. and the increase was largely in the consumption of foreign wools. In the face of sueh figures and under the most favoring protective legislation, it is perile to claim that the admission of foreign wools drives American sheep from the pastures. All has been done that can be done by protection to increase theAmerican wool cliip up to the demands of the American market, but it is impossible to do it as is conclusively shown by the above figures. We deny the asserItion, therefore, that it is possible to produce here "every poand of wool necessary to clothe 65,000,000 American consumer. Inasmuch, therefore, as this matter of importing foreign wools is a "woodchuck case," pure and simple, the duty ! should be removed that the manufacturers of woolens may have the benefit of free raw materials whereby they will be able to place their producís before the corisumers at a reduced price without any necessary diminution of their (the manufacturers') own profits. It is not claimed that this will extend the farmer's wool market, for he already has a vastly larger market than he can supply; but it would increase to some extent the importations of foreign wools, which we have to have to mix with ours in order to produce the kinds of woolen goods made in this country. Cheaper foreign wools would tend to stimulate woolen manufactures here, and the result would be an increased demand for American wools. This, at least, is true, that an increase in the price of our wool has always followed the removal of the duty. In reply to the other point which the Republican tries to niake to the effect that the price of wool has gone down " during the last six months," while an effort was being made "to put wool on the free list," we would refer our contemporary to the fact that during the time mentioned, with the McKinley bill in f uil operation, the loss in price is not greater than during the time from the passage of the act up to the time of Cleveland's election. Now, Mr. Republican, if the fear of free wool caused the decline in the last six months, what, pray, caused the decline from the passage of the McKinly act up to the election of 1S92? Whatever demoralization exists in the price of wool began farther back than six months and the Republican is too inteligent a sheet not to understand this. It is too plain not to be seen by all who will see that the tariff has utterly failed to keep up wool prices.