Читать книгу John Brown онлайн

49 страница из 55

“‘A nobler toil may I sustain,

A nobler satisfaction gain.’”^[47]

The next year, however, came a severe money pressure, “one of the severest known for many years. The consequence to us has been, that some of those who have contracted for wool of us are as yet unable to pay for and take the wool as they agreed, and we are on that account unable to close our business.”^[48] This brought a fall in the price and complaint on all sides: on the part of the wool-growers, because their profits were not continuing to rise; and from manufacturers who demurred more and more clamorously at the prices demanded by Brown.

He writes early in 1849: “We have been selling wool middling fast of late, on contract, at 1847 prices;” but he adds, scenting the coming storm: “We have in this part of the country the strongest proofs that the great majority have made gold their hope, their only hope.”^[49]

Evidently a crisis was approaching. The boycott against the firm was more evident and the impatience of wool farmers growing. The latter kept calling for advances on their stored wool. If they had been willing to wait quietly, there was still a chance, for Perkins and Brown had undoubtedly the best in the American market and as good as the better English grades. But the growers were restive and in some cases poor. The result was shown in the balance-sheet of 1849. Brown had bought 130,000 pounds of wool and paid for it, including freight and commissions, $57,884.48. His sales had amounted to $49,902.67, leaving him $7,981.81 short, and 200,000 pounds of wool in the warehouse.^[50] Perkins afterward thought Brown was stubborn. It would have been easily possible for them to have betrayed the growers and accepted a lower price. Their commissions would have been larger, the manufacturers were friendly, and the sheepmen too scattered and poor to protest. Indeed, low prices and cash pleased them better than waiting. But John Brown conceived that a principle was at stake. He knew that his wool was worth even more than he asked. He knew that English wool of the same grade sold at good prices. Why not, then, he argued, take the wool to England and sell it, thus opening up a new market for a great American product? Then, too, he had other and, to him, better reasons for wishing to see Europe. He decided quickly and in August, 1849, he took his 200,000 pounds of wool to England. He had graded every bit himself, and packed it in new sacks: “The bales were firm, round, hard and true, almost as if they had been turned out in a lathe.”^[51]