Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1896-12-31

soldiers in time of war and our citizen
in time of peace.
TenthPast legislation has invited hi
efforts in this direction promising hin
rewards for his Investments of capital
time, labor and study, and it would bt
wrong to repndiate the contract.
/ Observation-Disclosures protection, which
| protects, we will supply the needs of tht
nation, for, under tariff laws which gave
measure of protection from 1860 tc
1884, the number of sheep in the United
States increased from 22,000000 to over
100000 and the wool clip from 100000.
900 pounds to over 3O8,OOO,0O0 pounds.
! The first five of these reasons are
abuadantly substantiated and fully estab-
! lished by United States consular reports
! from the greatest wool growing countries
of the world, viz: Argentine, Cape OF
Good Hope, Australasia and Russia.
| The sixth, asverth aud eighth have
been tastifoasto time and again, both be-
fore ways md meals committees and
elsewhere, by thSxs Wis, he~e knowledge
of the industry, and they have been de.
MED only by those with selfish ends, or
who think little and know less of the
wool growers necessities.
Number nine has been declared truth by
the best statesmen the United States has
ever produced from Thomas jefferson to
the present day.
The facts stated in numbers ten and
eleven ara TO be found in the statute
books aud in the statistics published by
the government, the latter showing con-
clnsively that this country possesses all
Of the natural resources necessary, and
the wool growers have the patience, per-
severance and skill required to produce
all of the wool needed by the nation and
that they will furnish it if the inducement
is held out to them.
The incentive necessary is a price for
their product sufficient to compensate
them for the effort, and this can be given
them by placing protective duty upon
imported wools that will give the wool
grower at least limited command of the
home market.
HOW MUCH DUTY Is REQUIRED?
The question is how much duty is re-
quired, and upon this point men will diff
fer widely, even wool growers, but what.
ever the duty may be made, the wool
grower insists it shall be specific and not
an ad valorem rate. He points to the
census returns of 1840, and 1860, as bis
reason for doing SO, for, during that
twenty years in our history, the duty
levied on imported wools was practically
an ad valorem rate and the sheep in the
country increased in number only from
19,3l1,374 to 22,471,275, a growth of bat
four ffths of per cent per annum; while
during the succeeding twenty years, from
the increase was from 22,47l ,275, to 35,-
192,074, a growthof 24.5 per cent per
Rnnum. He therefore insists that the duty
shall be specific.
We do not believe the most intelligent
the sharpest importer or
the shrewdest wool dealer is competent to
fix the amount. Their skill, knowledge
and capacity for handling inert, inani.
mate, dead property, utfits them for judg.
ing of live stock wlth;a Thousand ene-
mics and will of its own. They may
know more of the possibilities Of fleece
Of wool after It Is grown than the wool
grower, but they can have no realization
of what it has cost the wool grower to
produce it. The grass required is but
one item of many, yet free grass is popu-
larly supposed to remove the item of
cost from the production of wool. A
visit to the insane asylums of Arizona or
New Mexico would soon dispel that idea,
for there may be found men, sheep herd
srs, who all day long make the corridors
resound with their ceaseless bleat bleat!
beings who are but sheep
victims of the glare and heat of the shell
terless interminable plains, the unuttera-
BILE loneliness, the awful solitudes where
free grass is found. la
The question of how much it costs the
domestic wool grower in dollars and
cents to grow wool has been mooted,
p probably, in every wool growers associa-
lion in the land, and nowhere has there
been unanimous agreementA as to the
amount. 1t can be demonstrated beyond
The possibility of cavll that the losses
sustained by the wool growers of the
United States, from predatory animals
alone in 1890 more than equaled the in
30 many things to be considered and
lhkcH lubo hCCouuts sucu ab bne cObG OF
The location, sheep, bucks, shelter, labor,
grass, hay, grain, predatory birds and
animals, vermine, disease, salt, casualties,
fences, shearing, sacking, twine, tar,
seeds, burrs, hauling, freight, commits
'ions, drayage, storage, insurance, guar
antee, taxes, exchange, etc., etc, that the
is, the actual cost is usually
Twelve years ago when the sub ject was
discussed in the Missouri Wool Growers
the consensus of opinion
seemed to be that IN Missouri the cost of
Merino wool in the grease was not less
'han 20 cents per pound, and, while it is
possible to produce it for somewhat less
;han that amount to day, yet no one will
,ontend that the wool grower, who last
year hauled his clip of 5000 pounds 200
miles to market at Albuquerque, New
Mexico, and was paid az cents per pound,
received anything approaching actual
,ost, although he had had free grass.
THE ACTUAL oosT OF WOOL.
But it may not be essential to know
Ihe actual cost of wool either at home or
abroad to determine approximately the
amount of duty required to bring pros.