AMERICA'S WOOL

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12069, 26 July 1917, Page 7

AMERICA'S WOOL

A RAPID FALLING-OFF

NATION MUST RAISE MORE

SHEEP

" The production of wool in the United States is falling oti at such a rapid rate that, unless the devastation of our docks should be arrested, it will be only a question of time until we shall be without wool for our clothing,'' writes Anselm Ghomel in the ' Nation's Business" (Washington, U.S.A.). "We ought to have 100,000,000 sheep of shearing ace to provide the 600,000,0001b of wool required each year to make our clothing, ono sheep for each person. We now import mors than half the wool we use, the world supply is dwindling, and no one can sav-what the price sis: months from now will be. ''Women are learning what the shortage means. The largest stores find it more difficult day by day to get woollen piece goods and dresses, and some makers of women's specialities who formerly produced nothing but allwool garments now confine themselves to those made of cotton and wool. Our carpet manufacturers, who used to depend upon Asia, Turkey and Russia. see these markets closing to them as our own output of carpet wool reaches the vanishing* point. Thus it comes that we are forced to scour every nook and cranny of the earth to get the wool we need for our clothing, carpets and felt aoods

' : But the foreign markets on which we have depended are bediming to tail us. Changing fashions here, expansion of agriculture there, decreasing flocks everywhere, make it harder and harder for us to get wool enough to clothe our people. Some of the cl.tficulties in which we find ourselves are due to the war. end will, in the main, pass away with it. The peril that threatens"us, the peril that will not pass away with the war. has its roots m the shiftless disregard of things on which rest some of our most vital interests.

<l The problem touches every man, woman and child. It is not only an American probler. - -•-..

lem, not only a. clothing problem, but. a food problem, not omy a j/oulu p_.,.jlem, but a war problem. The outputof wool, in order to clothe us. ought to keep p ace population, but in this ca*e the world has lest its economic balance. Production not only fails to increase with tlic children of men, bat ■ shows an alarming decrease. As man ; grows, his clothes supply shrinks, and | ho must piece it out more and more j with shoddy. The world's wool clip in 191(3 was '2,7oO,ooO.CGolb—more than 156,000.0001b' less than in the preceding year. In some parts of the world, as the United States, there is a steady decline. Some countries seem to bo at a. standstill. Australia, on the other hand, gives promis'e of maintaining her position as a wool-producing country. " The dog has been the worst enemy of the sheep industry in eastern States. But the dog is not "an insuperable obstacle. He can be shut out by a proof fence. The eastern farmer who holds back because of tho dog forgets that the western sheep raiser has his coyote. '■' The sheer? must come hick into his own on the farms of the East and the Middle "West. The Department of Agriculture says h P v.-ill bring profit to" the farmers with him. For one thing, sheon are the scavengers of the farm, and do the work at hast as well as men with scythes and grubbing tools. Then, at the present, prices of | wool and mutton—and there- is no reason to suppose that high prices will | not prevail for a. long time to come— I a substantial revenue can be derived \ from the sale of lambs, and wool. There i r.ra cases on record to show that nci; ' retuT'ns as high as eight and nine dcl- : lars a head are being realised. Tlia ; greatest fortunes of Australia, and ■ seme big ones in cur western States, ; rest on sheep. Millions of sheep could hi raised on the farms east of the Mississippi that do not now know them, and the poorest land need not be given over to them either. "Within fifty miles of London, for instance, j farmers find it good business to devote productive ground to the raising of sheep. ' : A man who spent twenty yfars in the saddle rounding up his cattle, on the plains confesses Unit sheep are- a safer investment for the westerner than, steers. Cattle men 'go broke,' he says; sheep men never. Sheep can be kept constantly tinder their owner's eye and can be moved more easily than ! cattle to new grazing ground " when | the grass, begins to give out. j "Our problem, is nob only to grow j enough wool, but to grow all of the j varieties which we need. The finer the wool, the poorer tho mutton, and since th e sheep must-, compete with the high price of beef, he has taken to growing coarser wool in the United States, satisfying, as well as one animal can, our demands for both food and clot-hint'"