Facts Recorded in Wool

1896

"The sheep from which that wool was cut," said a wool commission man on Michigan street, "didn't have enough to eat during February and March. How can I tell? Why there is a weak spot in the wool which was made during those months. Anything which affects the growth of the sheep, whether prolonged dry weather in the summer or disease or want of food in the winter, will show in the wool just as accurately as the heat or cold is shown in a thermometer."

"The wool business," he continued, is like every other; it is full of little details that are surprising to an outsider. You ask any wool dealer who has ever handled New England wool and he will tell you the clippings of sheep from the same breed on opposite sides of the Connecticut River, one in New Hampshire and the other in Vermont, differ from each other. On one side of the river is a granite soil and on the other a limestone soil, and the difference in grass grown on these two soils makes a difference in the wool. Now, the rich black prairies of Illinois make a wool from the same family of sheep which is quite a little coarser than the wool of the sheep grown on the finer grass of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The fiber of the Illinois wool is not so clear, dense or strong as that produced in Ohio." — Free Press.