American wool, taken as a whole, is the best wool grown in the world. It is not as soft as some Australian wool, but all of it possesses a greater strength than foreign wools, and it has long since been determined that clothing made of American wool will give better service than that made of foreign wool. Of the wool used in the United States for the manufacturing of clothing we produce about 70 per cent and import about 30 per cent. How Much Does the Wool In a Suit of Clothes Cost? It is customary for the person who buys clothing made of wool to believe that the value of the wool in the cloth is what makes the clothing seem expensive. However, if we take a man’s suit made of medium-weight cloth, such as is worn in November, we find that it requires about nine pounds of average wool to make the suit. For this wool the sheepman receives an average of seventeen cents per pound, so that out of the entire suit the man who produces the material out of which the suit is made receives a total of $1.53. A suit such as is here described would be of all wool and free from shoddy or any wool substitute. It would be a suit that would be sold by the storekeeper at $25.00, and if you had it made by the tailor he would charge you $35.00. Yet the wool-grower furnished all the material out of which the suit was made, and received as his share but $1.53. Thus it will be clear to the person who buys clothing and reads these lines that no longer can the blame for the high cost of clothing be laid at the door of the wool-grower. While the wool-using population of the world is increasing very rapidly, the number of wool-producing sheep in the world is decreasing. Ordinarily this would mean that a point would be reached where the supply of wool would be totally inadequate to meet the needs of the public. However, this unfortunate possibility is being averted by the energy and thrift of the sheepmen in breeding sheep that produce more and better wool than was the case in the past. The sheep which Columbus brought to this country, and, in fact, all the sheep of the world in that day, produced wool of very coarse, inferior quality, and but very little of it. One hundred years ago our sheep did not average three pounds of wool per head, but by careful breeding and better feeding we have brought the average fleece up to slightly more than seven pounds. Of course, some sheep produce decidedly more wool than this, but the fact that in one hundred years we have more than doubled the amount of wool that a sheep produces and increased its quality very materially speaks well for the ingenuity and determination of our sheep producers. Probably as time goes on the average fleece may be still further increased, so that in the next twenty-five years it is not too much to hope that our sheep will produce on an average of one pound more wool than they now do.