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WHY WOOL IS SCARCE The army and navy monopolize the wool market Orders for our soldiers and sailors not only require every highgrade pound produced in the United States but compel the utilization of our precious ships to bring in more Civilian requirements de ¬ pend and must depend for a considerable time to come upon the shoddy and rejected stocks that fall below the army and navy requirements Until our ship production has so expanded as to supply ad ¬ ditional tonnage for the supply of wants not di ¬ rectly connected with war effectiveness there will be no more wool for civilian use Our government equips its fighting men better than any other na ¬ tion Twenty average sheep are required to equip one fighting man each year During recent years we have shorn about 3j000000 sheep annually and the pulled wool taken from sheep and lambs slaughtered for meat brings the total clip up to the equivalent of about 40000000 fleeces If all of this were suitable for military use which unfor ¬ tunately is not true it would be enough for only half of the 4000000 men we will have under arms This country always has been a heavy user of for ¬ eign wool Since the war we have had to stir our ¬ selves in seeking new sources of supply The United Kingdom and Australia which formerly sup ¬ plied twofifths of our imports are using practi ¬ cally all of their stocks for their own soldiers and instead of 80000000 pounds they sent us iii 1914 they could let us have only 4000000 pounds last year Fortunately we were able to secure vast quantities in South America Argentina sold us 210000000 pounds in 1917 us compared with only 37 000000 three years ago Uruguay quadrupled her shipments and Chile sent 15000000 as against none a short time before The Department of Agri ¬ culture is working hard to increase American pro ¬ duction Every extra fleece of American grown wool says Secretary Houston is a direct con ¬ tribution to increasing the shipping tonnage for carrying supplies to Europe1 Leslies Weekly
