Business & Finance: Goats Into Upholstery

Barbers who are restrained by professional ethics from shaving their customers with anything more than polite firmness would turn green with envy at the forthright way Mexican goat-shearers shear goats. A goat is taken, brusquely by the scruff of its neck and thrown to the ground. The shearer holds it down with his knee while he clips its belly. Patient old goats who have outgrown their tick-lishness lie still; young goats squirm. The goat’s four feet have meanwhile been bunched together and tied. The shearer clips as much of its back as he can reach, flops it over like a griddle cake, clips the rest. As the rapacious electric clipper slides over its head and down its nose even an old goat wriggles deliciously.

Thus relentlessly concluded last week was the fall clip of Texas mohair. Twice a year, in October and February, the 3,000,000 Texas goats which supply four-fifths of the nation’s crop of mohair are rounded up to be clipped. Every year they grow some 12,500,000 Ib. of hair which sells for around 60¢ a Ib. to people who turn it into upholstery.

Shearers are mostly nomadic Mexicans, who sleep in the open and travel in groups with their own Mexican cook. With electric clippers a good shearer can strip 140 goats a day. For each goat he is given a token which at the end of the week he turns in for about 4¢. Shearers who have bad luck during the week at gambling may never get paid at all.

The vegetation of west central Texas agrees with the Angora goats who grow the best quality mohair and every bush and tree is nibbled clean as high as goat can reach. A huge fortune from Texas mohair was made by Charles Schreiner, a French immigrant who started as a merchant, turned to banking, prospered as a goat rancher when a 34¢ a Ib. tariff began keeping out Turkish and South African mohair. At one time he owned a goat ranch twice as large as Rhode Island. At his death a few years ago, Louis Schreiner —known to Texas goat herders as “Mr. Louie”—succeeded to his father’s goats. Few Texas Angoras have not been fed or financed with Schreiner money. Kerrville, in the heart of the goat country, is a Schreiner town. If any rancher wants to raise goats Mr. Louie’s bank will give him credit, Mr. Louie’s stores will sell him equipment and to Mr. Louie’s warehouse he may bring his product.