though in greatly diminished numbers, but the last of the annual ram sales at the home of the breeder, that of the late Robert Game of Aldsworth, has now ceased; and these gatherings, which afforded such a pleasant outing and such a hospitable entertainment to friends, neighbours and customers, are a memory of the past in Gloucestershire*
There are many curious tales told in the Cots wolds as to the way in which wool was hoarded by some rich farmers in the sixties and seventies when it sometimes fetched 2s. 6d. a pound and even more, and was reckoned to pay the rent of an average Cotswold farm when rents were 30s, to 30s. an acre, I knew a man, now deceased, who was said to have kept wool for some of which he had refused 60s. a tod (28 pounds) till it was seventeen years old, and had two empty cottages with the windows bricked up, full of wool. As prices went lower and lower lie became more and more obstinate, and at last when he had to sell, no one would make a firm oiler till it had been all opened out, as the quality was much injured by such long keeping. A good deal turned out rotten, but no one was told how much. It was also told how, after weighing a lot of wool at home in the presence of the buyer, tod by tod as usual, and sending it off packed in large sheets to the station, the same farmer, finding the station weight more than lie thought it ought to be, opened a sheet, took out some fleeces and went home with them in his trap, and this after losing thousands of pounds by hoarding it.
Wool buyers were difficult people to deal with when I began farming. There were then no auction sales for wool, and however much pains you took in getting up your wool they would never allow that it could be worth even a farthing a pound more than that of your more careless neighbours. As it had all to be weighed tod by tod in clumsy swinging scales, and half a pound draught allowed to the buyer on each weighing, there was room for a good deal of manipulation on the part of the weigher, who tried to make each weighing as heavy as possible so as to give fewer half pounds in. I always saw the wool weighed myself, and it took sometimes the best part of a day. On the one side of the scale was 28½ pounds, on the other one put two, three or four fleeces, adding as many pounds as necessary to the balance as it would just draw, and calling out so many pounds over or under as the case might be* The buyer on one side and my bailiff on, the other booked the weights as they were called out. It is obvious that this sort of thing, repeated some hundreds of times, gives rise to little differences which entail a certain amount of give and take to settle fairly. I sold once to a man whom I had not previously dealt with and from whom I squeezed the last farthing per pound. Whether lie had given a farthing too much in the hope of securing what he had been told was a high-class lot, or whether the market was falling, or he thought that he could arrange matters with my steward in my absence, I do not know. But when we came to weigh I found he wanted nearer a pound than half a pound draught on each tod, and was very angry because I would not give it him. This led to a row and very nearly ended in my kicking him out, but he thought better of it and we got through an unpleasant task at last in peace.
There was another buyer from Stroud, a most curious character, of whom my steward said that unless he was either quite drunk or quite sober it
