$7,981.81 short, and 200,000 pounds of wool in the warehouse.[1] 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."[2]
In this English venture John Brown showed one weakness of his character: he did not know or recognize the subtler twistings of human nature. He judged if ever from his own simple, clear standpoint and so had a sort of prophetic vision of the vaster and the eternal aspects of the human soul. But of
