Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1866-03-21
Important to WOOI-GrOwers.
A. nn..nA-u nn.AI....


Wool NOT PROTECTED BY PRESENT TARIFF.
MEssRs. EDITORS "A protective tariff
can only be justified on the ground that
it is necessary, in order to protect ,Ameri-
can industry from foreign competition,
and develop our great national resources.
What is American industry? Certainly,
it is not millions of machines; but the en-
terprise, and labor of the great mass of
the people. A protective tariff does not
produce the greatest revenue. Free trade
produces no revenue. A tariff on wool,
based upon the principle of obtaining the
greatest amount of revenue. would be far
preferable to the sham protection, now
| heretofore given to wool growers. Gov
ernment can realize large revenue from
the imports of foreign wool-now coming
/ into the country at the rate of 100 or Us
million pounds per annum-subject to q
mere nominal duty; and the great divi-
dends of our woolen manufacturers do
not raise a sound objection to Il.
Our present and previous tariffs have
proved juggle and fraud, and failed to
be of any use to farmers; if not from de-
sign and corruption, from the neglect to
consider and act upon one single fact, to
to wit: that fine wool costs no more than
port most of our supply of foreign wool.
We have now sliding scale of duties,
predicated upon the cost of wool at the
places from whence imported, going upon
the idea that the soft and beautiful South
American Saxon, Merino and Mestizo will
pay the highest duty per h.. when, in
fact, it costs no more in South America
than the coarse Buenos Ayres or the Cor
dova, &C., therefore comes in Invoioed no
higher than the coarse, or even the Cri-
mea wool; consequently pays the lowest
rate of duty, in the scale of duties, which
is merely nominal.
There is no reason, in the nature of
things, why wool-growing and manufac.
turing wool should not have been equally
profitable in this country, and if those en-
gagged in one of these branches of business
have amassed larger fortunes, and enjoy
ed more of the luxuries and elegancies of
life, than those engaged in the other, this |
must be accounted for by artificial and
not natural causes. Wool growers have |
as much talent and ability as manufac- |
turers. Certainly, they have no machines |
by which they can make one sheep grow
100 fleeceS. They have now to pay high |
wages, treble taxes, double the expense
of living, and cloLhe their families at the |
very high prices for cloth, secured to the
manufacturers, by high protective tariff,
which gives them the monopoly of home
market, while the home market for the /
wool-grower is destroyed by foreign COM
petition. England sends US supplies of
wool from Australia, Van Dieman'S Land,
Cape of Good Hope and her Provinces in
North America. British wool damages
our market more than British broadcloth.
The preceding remarks we shall illus
trate to a demonstration From a state
ment from Washington, Jan. 16, 1866, to
wit, THAT within four years, ending
June Both, 1865, our woolen manufactur-
ers have doubled, the imports of woolens
averaging about $21 100000 per annum
that in the same four years our imports
of raw woods amounted to 297 ,000, 900 lbs.
inyoiced at $45, ,00O, 900; the duty averag-
ing less than FIVE cents per ID. The woods
of Australia and South America, fine
Saxon and Merino, were inYoiced at less
than "a cents per 10.
This invoice price need surprise no one,
for South American Saxony rams wool
has been sold in New York, at a large
auction sale of wool, for 104 cents per 10.
Twenty-four bales of Mestizo Tor grade
wools) were sold at 81 cents per h., at
the same sale. Sheep run, as it were,
wild, the year round, on the vast pampas
of South America-tens of thousands be-
longing to single owner, with no trouble
to him but to shear them, or TO gather
their wool when it drops of, and to i'm