A. They have taken steps to increase the wool. They entered into general combinations to eat no more lamb; and very few lambs were killed last year. This course, persisted in, will soon make a prodigious difference in the quantity of wool. And the establishing of great manufactories, like those in the clothing towns here, is not necessary, as it is where the business is to be carried on for the purposes of trade. The people will all spin, and work for themselves, in their own houses.
Q. Can there be wool and manufacture enough in one or two years?
A. In three years, I think there may.
Q. Does not the severity of the winter, in the northern colonies, occasion the wool to be of bad quality?
A. No, the wool is very fine and good.
Q. In the more southern colonies, as in Virginia, don't you know, that the wool is coarse, and only a kind of hair?
A. I don't know it. I never heard it. Yet I have been sometimes in Virginia. I cannot say I ever took particular notice of the wool there, but I believe it is good, though I cannot speak positively of it; but Virginia, and the colonies south of it, have less occasion for wool; their winters are short, and not very severe; and they can very well clothe themselves with linen and cotton of their own raising for the rest of the year.
Q. Are not the people in the more northern colonies obliged to fodder their sheep all the winter?
A. In some of the most northern colonies they may be obliged to do it, some part of the winter.