7. Finally, there remains the method whereby almost all the British and colonial wools are sold, namely, by auction. Auction sales have been established for almost a century in London, Liverpool, Antwerp, Bremen, Hamburg, Marseilles, and recently in Australia. This method of disposing of their raw product does not, however, appeal to the American growers, because of the inherent American trading instinct. It is also not very feasible in this country, because the wool is not graded in the shearing sheds and because sheep-raising in not standardized. [Sidenote: _Markets_] The chief markets for wool in this country are Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and St. Louis. 3. PULLED WOOL We have above discussed the shearing and marketing of wool obtained from the living animal. There remains a large quantity of wool which is taken from the pelts of slaughtered sheep. In 1919 there were produced 48,300,000 pounds of pulled wool in the U. S. as against 265,939,000 pounds of sheared wool. [Sidenote: _Use_] Skin wool, or tanner’s wool, as it is sometimes known, is used extensively for soft twist yarns, bed blankets, flannels, felts, etc. It is also used as an admixture in blends for top-making, as we shall see later. There are three methods whereby pulled wool is obtained. [Sidenote: _Sweating_] The oldest and simplest process is known as sweating, and consists simply in sweating the hides until the wool is loosened and can easily be pulled out. The disadvantage of this method is that it injures the hides. [Sidenote: _Lime_] The lime process consists in loosening the wool by painting the flesh side of the hide with lime. This also injures the hides somewhat and has a bad effect on the dyeing qualities of the wool. [Sidenote: _Depilatory_] The depilatory process is the best, and varies from the lime process only in that a solution is used instead of lime. This mixture consists of sodium sulphate, sulphuric acid, and oyster shells. By far the greatest pullery in the world is situated at Mazamet, France, where the industry has assumed gigantic proportions. The large packers in this country all operate their own pulleries, and the pulled wool is marketed largely by them. Most mills buy their pulled wool direct from the pulleries, but some is handled by merchants. 4. WHAT IS WOOL We have now traced the wool from the sheep’s back as far as the bag, and may assume that the bag has travelled from the shearing shed to the merchant’s or mill’s warehouse. Some foreign wools, notably Australian and South American, are, as we have seen, skirted and roughly graded in the shearing shed, so that, when the bag is opened, there remains only the sorting to do. Grading is the separation of fleeces into classified groups. Skirting is the removal from each fleece of the worst parts, namely, the britch wool, manure locks (known as tags), and matted or kempy portions. Sorting is the dividing of the individual fleece into various classifications.