Bill Barlow's Budget

The Wool Warehouse Scheme.

Wyoming and other western wool growers seem to have good reason to be satisfied with the operation of the national wool warehouse established through their agency in Chicago about four years ago.

They ship their wool to this warehouse and keep it there until they find a buyer. It is different from the old way, under which the wool was kept on the ranch until some man came along and bought it.

With ranches far removed from railroads, the wool growers got the benefit of much less competition among buyers than they do now with their wool stored in Chicago.

Of course the tendency is to make Chicago much more of a wool market than it was. This is a notable gain for that city, for St. Louis and Boston have had something of a lead in the wool trade.

The policy of establishing a warehouse of this kind in Denver has often been discussed; and it has commonly been recognized that were a movement of that kind successful, it would draw a good part of the wool trade to this city. But fear has been expressed that little of the wool of Wyoming and other parts of the northwest would come to Denver, and also that, since most Rocky Mountain wool is produced north of the Colorado line, it would hardly be worth while to erect a warehouse here.

Probably at first little wool from Wyoming or Montana would come to Denver: but it does not follow that it is useless to build a warehouse in this place.

Some wool comes to Denver over the Denver and Rio Grande and some by way of the Colorado and Southern. Although in the aggregate these shipments do not amount to nearly so much as those from the northwest, they are worth looking after.

They would provide business for a small warehouse, and this would form a nucleus for a market which in time might force the railroad companies to make rates which would bring part of the northwestern wool to this city.

Because the market in the beginning would be small is no reason why an effort to establish it should not be made.--Denver Republican.