Within approximately a month after the armistice the wool auctions began--first at Boston, where in three days (December 18, 19, and 20, 1918) the buyers bid in over 10,000,000 pounds of wool, out of 17,000,000 pounds offered for sale. The unsold offerings, of course, were lots for which no buyers bid up to the minimum fixed prices. Although prices were fixed, only in a sense were they sustained artificially. For each sort of wool the Government fixed a minimum price which equaled what it would cost to import the same quantity and grade of wool and deliver it to the American market. Thus the world prices actually prevailed, except that the huge American surplus was artificially kept from being a depressing factor in the world price. To sustain prices higher than these would have attracted large importations and thus injured the growers. To allow prices to go lower than the importation prices would also have worked injury to the wool growers of the United States. As a further concession to the farmers, the Government announced that it would stay out of the wool market when the 1919 American clip began reaching the market in quantities sufficient to supply the mills. In accordance with this promise, the government wool sales ceased on July 1, 1919, and did not resume again until the following November. When the auctions suspended on July 1, more than 316,000,000 pounds of the Government’s wool had been sold. Auctions had been held twice a month in Boston and once a month in Philadelphia, and three sales had been conducted at Portland, Oregon, for the benefit of the western woolen mills. Upon the resumption of the sales in November the wool continued to sell well, with the result that by the end of 1919 the sales had disposed of 365,000,000 pounds, and the success of the complete liquidation was assured. The sale of this wool was a triumph of merchandizing. The wool trade had never known such sales before, not even in England, the world center of wool, nor had the American trade ever before absorbed such a quantity of wool in such a short time.