The Belding banner-news. (Belding, Mich.) 1918-1973, 1920-12-29
FARMERS PLAN
TO SELL VIRGIN
WOOL BLANKETS
SYSTEM BEING WORKED OUT
WILL SAVE CONSUMER Full
LY ONE-HALF OF PRICE

| Woolen blankets, made of three
eights wool, grown on sheep in Mich
igan, Iowa, Wyoming, Texas and 9th
er western states, are to be sold dir
ect from designated woolen mills to
the consumer, thus affording the wool
producer fair profit and the user
a. saving of perhaps fifty per cent of
the present cost of blankets. The
blankets are to be woven of virgin
wool direct from the farm.
This plan is being worked out in
the west and it has every chance of
success. At present there is no mar
ket for wool and the warehouses in
the wool states are filled because of
no sales. The wool growers are des-
perate. Two years ago they receiv-
ed as high as rs and 80 cents a pound
and this year not bid is made by the
buyers as a general rule, although
woolen clothing and blankets remain
practically as high as they have been
for more than a year.
The plan embraces the grading and
concentrating of the wool in central
warehouses and supplying it to des-
ignated wooden mills which are to
manufacture it into blankets to be
sold to hotels, hospitals and private
individuals. Agencies may be estab-
lished in Nevery large city and the
price of these blankets is to be about
one-half the present cost in the re-
tail market, according to careful cal
culations made by the wool growers
j. +. Bogg-Scott, of Coleman, Tex.
one of the largest wool growers in
the southwest and member of the
National Wool Growers Committee
of the American Farm Bureau Fed
GRAFTON, says out in his country men
and women are weaving saddle blan-
kets of virgin wool for the cowmen
and ranchers on old-fashioned hand
looms resurrected from the attic
The plan of the southwestern wool
growers is to concentrate their wool
at Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico
from which it is only days by wa
ter to the big New England woolen
mills. Mr.. Bogg-Scott showed the
comittee that present rates from the
western states by rail to Boston can
be lowered to the tune of as much as
60 cents pound of wool by water
from Galveston.
The loss to America wool growers
is about ,$225, 100000 of which $75,-
600 900 is on the shrinkage of the
price for raw wool; another. similar
sum for the lower valuation fof NUT
ton and lamb and still another like
sum for depreciation in the value of
breeding stock.
The bill introduced by Senator
Smoot to place an embargo on for
eign wool is being watched with
great interest by wool growers thru
out the land. There is no doubt that
the present decline in wool is the
direct resalt of large irnportations
of Australnfi and wool from other
countries cpnipetinke with American
wool. r
Thc price Of wooi does not mean
as much to local farmers now as it
cid once upon time when this
country was newer and when many
sheep were raised both for wool and
mutton. Some people tired of the
sheep raising from one cause, some
from another, but one of the main
causes has been the depreciations
made upon focks of sheep by dogs, a
matter in which legislation tending
to eradicate this menace has not sue
ceeded very well.
George X. Joslin, of Eaton Rapids
a brother of Frank Joslin of this city
is here visiting this week. Mr.. JOS
lin has responsible position with
bhe big wooden mills at Eaton Rapids
and he says that there is absolutely
no market for wool at the present
time. He says that his firm during
the war paid as high as $1.47 per
pound for wool and that at the pres
ent time they are able to buy a world
full of wool at about 80 cents per
pound At the time of the peak price
of s1.47 the article was mighty hard
to get.