The herald., 1896-10-28
WOOL

PrOtectlOn mas pulieQ WOOL over tne
wool mems eyes. Wool, like all pro-
ducts, has diminished in it's expressed
value for some years in gold standard
countries. In California the sheep in
dustry has been distinctly on the down
grade since 1870. It's greatest other
drawback in California, and especially
in Southern California, has been the
higher uses of land and the consequently
very great increase in the price of
ranch lands available for sheep. Sheep
followed cattle in California as a DOM
mating industry and are now in turn
being hard pressed by the farmer or
fruit grower. Ranches that sold for
% cents to S. an acre as sheep ranges
are now worth $40 to S400 per acre as
farms and orchards. This is great in
crease of the capital required for sheep
raising. Labor has always been of a
peculiar and cheap grade in the Califor-
MIA sheep industry. Sheepherders lead
a life. so lonely as to be the largest pro-
portionate producers of insanity in the
state. The sheep shearing only oc-
CURED once year and was done by
Indians. High grade labor had no con-
nection with the sheep industry. Be-
sides the increase in land values which
have diminished the wool mems prof
it's, there has been at the same time
great deterioration in the native pas
turage where sheep have been run.
This is especially the case in the noun
tains, where the pasturage was free. The
sheepherderS were in the habit of set
ting fires in the mountains, sometimes
by accident, sometimes to keep rivals
out, but generally in the fall, as they
left, to improve the next years pas
ture. These fires have done incalcula-
BILE damage in all the western mountains
to the forests and watersheds. For the
first year or two the destruction of the
underbrush and forest did improve the
pasture, but the final effect of these
sheep fires has been as disastrous to
the mountain pastures as it has been to
the mountain forests.
I have been over mountain forests
pastured by sheep that will scarcely
support one sheep today where ten grew
fat a few years ago. The experience
of France shows the same results. The
sheep men in Provence entirely de-
stroyed much of their mountain pas
lures by the same methods used here
fire and over-pasturing. The results
were forest denudation. followed by soil
denudation, and so nothing was left to
grow anything on. AT the same time
the water-holding power of the noun
tains was reduced. Large sections of
arabic land in Southern France We're
carried away or covered up by floods
and torrent rubbish. Arthur Young es-
timated that before the French revolu-
ton 100000 acres had been thus de-
stroyed in the valley of the Durance
alone. OF course there was a corre-
spending loss of the permanent water
supply for human use. The French for
est system has long been at work re-
claiming the arid mountains and shift
ing sand dunes produced by forest, de-
nudation. 1t has been expensive, but
by their excellent system the great ad-
vantages of their work are paid for out
of the general receipts from forest pro-
ducts and privileges. Sheep do not en-
ter the Sierra Madre range at all at
present The wool men here are pro-
tectionists for the most part, and yet
their first daylight in their business for
many years is showing itself now in
a flrmer market due to exports. The
surplus wool of our grades is being eX-
ported and sold in competition with the
whole world in London. Whatever may
be said of protection from theoretical
point of view, its practical effects are
only too plain. 1t makes narrow mar
lSet; q narrow market is inelastic. Such
unusual profits as may be realized at
first tempt money and enterprise out of
other avocations until the one with
bounty or special privileges is over
crowded. A surplus is produced on an
inelastic market. Then comes war; Cut
ting and slashing destroy all profits.
Next the big men combine, crush the
little ones, fix their own prices, limit
production, and we have the giant trust.
The agriculturist who gets any pro-
lection or special privileges goes
through the same round up to the
last stage. Here. when 1t comes to the
trust and limited production. the sheep