So far as the manufacturers, or mills of various sorts, are concerned, there is one striking difference about the paper of woolen and worsted mills as against cotton mill notes which appear in the open market; cotton mill paper, except in the case of the strongest mills, usually bears the endorsement of the commission house which sells the mill’s product, but this is not as a rule the case with woolen and worsted mill paper. The reason is that a large number of the wool manufacturing establishments sell direct to wholesalers and jobbers, and have no close affiliation with a selling-house. [Sidenote: _Trade Terms_] Trade terms vary a good deal. Raw wool is almost invariably sold for cash by the grower. Dealers make various terms to mills, the most usual being 1% ten days, sixty days net. The terms on which mills sell to jobbers also have a wide range; some sell thirty days net, some 10% thirty days, others 7% four months. 2. DEMAND AND SUPPLY Sheep raising is, as we have seen, chiefly carried on on the borderlines of civilization. As civilized life encroaches upon the pasture lands the flocks are driven gradually further and further into hitherto uninhabited regions. The population of the world is steadily increasing, and the available grazing acres are constantly being reduced as the world becomes more thickly populated. Also, as the population increases, the demand for clothing and food increases, so that, on the face of it, it would seem that the production of wool would decrease while the demand grew constantly larger. In a measure this is true; but there are several factors which tend to arrest this Malthusian spectre. In the first place, there are still vast areas of desert land which can be reclaimed for grazing purposes. In the second place the growing of wool in most countries is as yet practiced on a very crude and consequently uneconomical scale. And, finally, the use of shoddy and wool regained from rags, has only begun to be developed. Nor is it true that sheep must necessarily be raised in uncultivated regions; England, with her closely settled soil, supports about three-fifths as many sheep as the United States, on an area of only 121,377 square miles, as against the 3,026,789 square miles in this country. The world’s total output of wool in 1921 is estimated at three billion, three million pounds, as against two billion, eight hundred and ninety-four million pounds in 1918. The production of the 1921 crop was divided as follows: Europe 899 million pounds, Australia 718 million pounds, South America 592 million pounds, Asia 327 million pounds, North America 298 million pounds, Africa 169 million pounds. The following table will show the amount of wool produced and imported in the United States between the years of 1897 and 1922: WOOL PRODUCT OF THE UNITED STATES [Sidenote: _U. S. Product_]