Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/38

 would have done no good." Brown bought much wool, and had the care of the flocks of the firm. Perkins admits that he was an expert in grading wools. Indeed, as an instant and accurate classifier of fleeces, he seems to have won an almost national reputation in the trade.

In 1846 he was sent to live at Springfield, Massachusetts, as the agent of sheep farmers of northern Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia. He graded and sold their wool for them direct to the manufacturers of New England. He lived at Springfield, with certain absences, some five years, carrying on a considerable business, which he finally brought to disaster by refusing what seemed to him too small a price offered for a large consignment of wool from the Ohio growers, and taking the wool to England in order to get a larger. There he obtained, instead of a better figure, only half the price which had