Part 15

“Number VIII runs a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reaches the end of number VII. Meanwhile number VII has run a quarter of a mile in the same time, and reached the end of number VI; number VI, a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reached the end of number V; number V, the end of number IV; number IV, of number III; number III, of number II; number II, of number I. And number I, in fifteen seconds, has gone its quarter of a mile along the ground track, and has reached station B. All this has been done in fifteen seconds. Wherefore, numbers I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII come to rest against the bumping-post at B, at precisely the same second. We, in number VIII, reach B just when number I reaches it. In other words, we accomplish two miles in fifteen seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving at the rate of a mile a minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to our journey, and has done its work in fifteen seconds. All the eight did their work at once, during the same fifteen seconds. Consequently we have been whizzed through the air at the somewhat startling speed of seven and a half seconds to the mile. This is the Tachypomp. Does it justify the name?”

[Illustration: Drawn by Reginald Birch

“IN FRONT OF ME STOOD PROFESSOR SURD HIMSELF, LOOKING DOWN WITH A NOT UNPLEASANT SMILE”]

Although a little bewildered by the complexity of cars, I apprehended the general principle of the machine. I made a diagram, and understood it much better. “You have merely improved on the idea of my moving faster than the train when I was going to the smoking-car?” I said.

“Precisely. So far we have kept within the bounds of the practicable. To satisfy the professor, you can theorize in something after this fashion: if we double the number of cars, thus decreasing by one half the distance which each has to go, we shall attain twice the speed. Each of the sixteen cars will have but one eighth of a mile to go. At the uniform rate we have adopted, the two miles can be done in seven and a half instead of fifteen seconds. With thirty-two cars, and a sixteenth of a mile, or twenty rods difference in their length, we arrive at the speed of a mile in less than two seconds; with sixty-four cars, each traveling but ten rods, a mile under the second. More than sixty miles a minute! If this isn’t rapid enough for the professor, tell him to go on increasing the number of his cars and diminishing the distance each one has to run. If sixty-four cars yield a speed of a mile inside the second, let him fancy a Tachypomp of six hundred and forty cars, and amuse himself calculating the rate of car number 640. Just whisper to him that when he has an infinite number of cars with an infinitesimal difference in their lengths, he will have obtained that infinite speed for which he seems to yearn. Then demand Abscissa.”

I wrung my friend’s hand in silent and grateful admiration. I could say nothing.

“You have listened to the man of theory,” he said proudly. “You shall now behold the practical engineer. We will go to the west of the Mississippi and find some suitably level locality. We will erect thereon a model Tachypomp. We will summon thereunto the professor, his daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta as well? We will take them on a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall place Abscissa’s digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are to annihilate time and space. Perhaps you had better see your bankers.”

I rushed impetuously to the door. There should be no delay.

“Stop! stop! _Um Gottes Willen_, stop!” shrieked Rivarol. “I launched my butcher this morning and I haven’t bolted the--”

But it was too late. I was upon the trap. It swung open with a crash, and I was plunged down, down, down! I felt as though I were falling through illimitable space. I remember wondering, as I rushed through the darkness, whether I should reach Kerguellen’s Land or stop at the center. It seemed an eternity. Then my course was suddenly and painfully arrested.

I opened my eyes. Around me were the walls of Professor Surd’s study. Under me was a hard, unyielding plane which I knew too well was Professor Surd’s study floor. Behind me was the black, slippery haircloth chair which had belched me forth much as the whale served Jonah. In front of me stood Professor Surd himself, looking down with a not unpleasant smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Furnace. Let me help you up. You look tired, sir. No wonder you fell asleep when I kept you so long waiting. Shall I get you a glass of wine? No? By the way, since receiving your letter I find that you are a son of my old friend Judge Furnace. I have made inquiries, and see no reason why you should not make Abscissa a good husband.”

Still, I can see no reason why the Tachypomp should not have succeeded. Can you?

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE LANDSCAPE-PAINTER

FROM THE PAINTING BY CARL MARR, IN THE MODERN GALLERY, BUDAPEST

(THE CENTURY’S AMERICAN ARTISTS SERIES)]

[Illustration]

“SCHEDULE K”

THE EFFECT OF THE TARIFF ON THE WOOL-GROWER, THE MANUFACTURER, THE WORKMAN, AND THE CONSUMER

[Illustration]

BY N. I. STONE

Formerly Chief Statistician of the Tariff Board

No part of our tariff has been more scathingly denounced in Congress and by the press than what is known as “Schedule K.” No schedule that has received half the attention bestowed on Schedule K has managed to withstand the fierce onslaughts of the united tariff reformers of both political parties so successfully as the schedule covering wool and its manufactures. Repeatedly raised during the Civil War, when the urgent need of additional revenue was the sole motive of frequent tariff revision, slightly reduced in 1872 and 1883, scaled down still more in the Democratic Wilson act of 1894, it managed in the intervals between these acts to recover lost ground and, since 1897, to eclipse all previous records for high-tariff climbing.

The secret of this exceptional record in our tariff history is not far to seek. It lies in the peculiar interlacing of interests between the sheep-grower of the West and the manufacturer of the East, which has no parallel in other industries. Most of the farm products are either left on the free list, like cotton, or, if protected by a duty, are not affected by it. Thus we have duties on corn, wheat, oats, rye, and meat, but no one familiar with the situation has ever seriously maintained that the duty has been more than a convenient embellishment of our tariff for the use of campaign spellbinders in farm districts. As long as we produce more cereals, meats, and other farm products than we consume, and send the surplus to the world’s markets, the prices of these products, under free competition at home, will be regulated by conditions of world supply and demand, leaving the duties a dead letter on the statute-books. Wool is a conspicuous exception in the list of American farm products. After half a century of exceptionally high protection, fixed by the beneficiaries of the tariff themselves, the American wool-grower still falls short in his output to the extent of more than one third of the domestic demand. The deficit must be covered by importation from foreign countries, the price of imported wool being enhanced by the amount of the duty. Under these conditions the duty on raw wool acts as a powerful lever in increasing the price of the domestic wool furnishing the remaining two thirds of our consumption. No wonder that the wool-grower has always been an enthusiastic advocate of a duty on raw wool.

On the other hand, the New England manufacturer, himself a believer in high duties on woolen goods, has been rather skeptical as to the merits of a duty on a raw material of which we have never been able to produce enough, and are producing an ever diminishing share. Hence the New England woolen manufacturer has been as enthusiastic for free wool as the New England shoe manufacturer is for free hides, without losing at the same time his faith in high duties on woolen goods. However, the manufacturers discovered at an early stage in the game that unless they were willing to acquiesce in a duty on their raw material, the representatives from the wool-growing States in Congress could not see any advantage in high duties on woolens. This is what led to the powerful combination of these two great interests to which the late Senator Dolliver, in his memorable speech in the Senate in the extra session of Congress in 1909, referred as “that ceremony when the shepherd’s crook and the weaver’s distaff were joined together in the joyous wedlock which no man has been able to put asunder.” At that joint meeting of the representatives of wool-growers and woolen-cloth manufacturers held at Syracuse in December, 1865, when it was supposed that, with the disappearance of the need for extraordinary revenue, the war duties would be reduced, “it was agreed between them,” in the words of the late John Sherman, who had a great deal to do with the shaping of the tariff, “after full discussion, that the rates of duty reported by the Senate bill should be given them, and they were satisfied with them, and have never called them in question.”

It remained for a long-suffering public finally to call those rates in question. And when a Republican President called Congress in extraordinary session in March, 1909, to fulfil the pledges of his party for a downward revision, he found, to use his own words, uttered in the now famous Winona speech, that “Mr. Payne, in the House, and Mr. Aldrich, in the Senate, although both favored reduction in the schedule, found that in the Republican party the interests of the wool-growers of the far West and the interests of the woolen manufacturers in the East and in other States, reflected through their representatives in Congress, was sufficiently strong to defeat any attempt to change the woolen tariff, and that, had it been attempted, it would have beaten the bill reported from either committee.”

However, the President thought that Schedule K should receive the attention of Congress after the newly created Tariff Board had made a thorough investigation of the woolen industry. Taking the President at his word, the country waited two years more with great impatience for the result of the findings of his board. But once more was the country baffled by the united beneficiaries of Schedule K in its efforts looking to the lowering of the rates. When a majority in Congress composed of Democrats and Republican insurgents laid aside party differences in a common effort to reduce the woolen duties, the same leaders of whose tactics President Taft had complained were able to persuade him that the revised schedule was so much at variance with the findings of the Tariff Board as to justify his veto. Thus the country is facing the new situation in the extraordinary session of the Sixty-third Congress, with Schedule K still proudly holding the fort on the pinnacle of the American tariff wall. The present is, therefore, just the time for an analysis of the situation in which the claims of the conflicting interests may be reviewed in the light of now well-established facts.

WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS

Any one who has traveled abroad or had occasion to compare foreign prices of cloths and dress-goods with those prevailing in this country knows that on the average they can be bought in Europe, particularly in free-trade England, at about half the price usually asked for similar goods at home. As the investigation of the Tariff Board has shown, there are many cloths on which the difference in price is not so great, particularly on the finer grades, while, on the other hand, the American price is more than double the English on some of the medium and cheap grades of cloth. But, on the whole, it is safe to state that our prices on woolen and worsted cloths are about double those in England. The difference in price represents largely the toll paid by ninety-odd million Americans for the support of the half-century-old infant worsted and the century-old woolen industry. We have all been vaguely aware of that fact, and yet have submitted to it for the ultimate good of creating a raw-wool supply and a fine woolen and worsted industry that would make us independent of the rest of the world and give employment to American labor at American wages. Not until the two wings of the industry, the woolen and the worsted, fell out among themselves, and the carded-wool manufacturers showed to an astonished public that the tariff, as it stood, throttled an important branch of the industry, instead of building it up, was the layman given an opportunity of getting a deeper insight into the workings of Schedule K.

The woolen industry in the United States is as old as the country itself. Carried on first as a household industry among the early colonists, it entered the factory stage with the introduction of mechanical power, first in connection with carding-machines in 1794, then with its application to spinning between 1810 and 1820, and later to weaving in the following decade.

Before the Civil War, all woolens were made by what is known as the carded-woolen process, which produces a cloth with a rough surface. Such cloths as tweeds, cheviots, cassimeres, meltons, and kerseys are among the best-known types of woolen cloth. Just before the Civil War the worsted industry made its appearance in this country. The worsted fabric differs from the woolen cloth in being made of combed yarn, as distinguished from the carded yarn which goes into the woolen cloth. The combing process involves, to a greater or less extent, the use of finer and longer grades of wool, and yields a fabric with a smooth surface, on which the weave is plainly visible. Among the best-known types of these cloths are the serges and the unfinished clay worsteds, which constitute the plain varieties, and the so-called fancy worsteds, showing a distinct pattern produced by the weave and the use of colored yarn.

How different the course of these two branches of the woolen industry has been, since the adoption of Schedule K substantially in its present form, is shown very strikingly by the figures of the United States Census. In 1859, the last census year preceding the adoption of Schedule K virtually in its present form, the value of the products of the woolen industry was nearly $62,000,000, while the worsted could boast of less than three and three quarter millions. In 1909, exactly half a century later, the woolen industry produced $107,000,000 worth of cloth, while the value of the worsteds exceeded $312,000,000. Put in another form, while fifty years ago the worsted industry was only one twentieth the size of the woolen, to-day it is three times as large as its older rival. Nor does this tell the whole story. The decline of the woolen industry has been not only relative, but absolute. Thus, after increasing from $62,000,000 in 1859 to $161,000,000 in 1879, it dropped to $134,000,000 in 1889, to $118,000,000 in 1899, and to $107,000,000 in 1909. On the other hand, the worsted industry showed a marked increase in each succeeding decade, beating all previous records in the first decade of the present century, when the value of its output rose from $120,000,000 in 1899 to more than $312,000,000 in 1909.

A large part of the growth of the worsted industry at the expense of the woolen is said to be due to change in fashion and taste, people generally preferring the smooth, smart-looking worsteds to the rough woolens. While this is, no doubt, true, the woolen-goods manufacturers assert that the change of fashion is only partly responsible for the decline of their industry. They insist that but for the unfair discrimination of the tariff against their industry in favor of the worsted it would continue to increase with the growth of population, since it alone can turn out an all-wool cloth that is within the means of poor people.

A feature which goes far to explain the superior advantage which the worsted industry has over the woolen is that the former is essentially the big capitalist’s field, while the woolen mills are still run to a large extent by people of moderate means. According to the last census report, in 1909 the average output per mill in the worsted industry was nearly one million dollars, which was more than five times as large as that of the average woolen mill. The prevailing type in the former is the large corporation, managed by high-salaried officials; in the latter, the typical mill is a comparatively small establishment, personally managed by the owner or owners, who form a partnership which in many cases has come down from earlier generations in the family and has not improved much on the old ways.

The great factor in the worsted industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899, and can boast of the largest and best-equipped mills not only in the United States, but in the entire world. Outside of the so-called trust are other large concerns, such as the Arlington Mills, largely owned by Mr. William Whitman, the most conspicuous figure in the industry, who has probably had more to do with the shaping of Schedule K than any other man in the country, and who has amassed a large fortune in the business, most of the capital invested in his mill having been built up from the profits of the business.

If the quarrel between the woolen and worsted manufacturers had no other consequences than to affect our fashions, the rest of us could well afford to let the rival forces fight it out among themselves. But it affects the consumer very vitally, and particularly that part of the consuming public that can ill afford to pay high prices for its clothes. For woolen is distinctly the poor man’s cloth, while worsted is the cloth of the well-to-do. As will be shown presently, our tariff on raw wool is designed to keep out of this country the cheap, short staple wools which our woolen industry could use to great advantage. The tariff thus artificially restricts the manufacture of woolens, while stimulating the production of worsteds, and, as the poor man cannot afford a genuine worsted cloth, it has to be adulterated with cotton to the extent of at least one half. Many of the “cotton worsteds” contain only a small fraction of wool, most of the material being cotton. It is this aspect of the effect of the tariff on the consumer that has made the family quarrel between the two branches of the wool manufacturing industry a matter of national concern.

THE DUTIES ON RAW WOOL

The root of all the evils springing from Schedule K is the specific duty of eleven cents a pound on all clothing wools used by the woolen industry and most of the wools used by the worsted industry. Wools differ greatly in value. They may be long or short, fine or coarse, comparatively clean, or so full of grease and dirt, which the sheep accumulates in its shaggy coat while roaming in the fields, as to shrink to one fifth of its purchased weight after it has been washed and scoured in the mill.

Yet all of these wools, when brought to the gates of the United States custom-house, would have to pay the same duty of eleven cents per pound. On fine English wool, which contains only ten per cent. of grease and dirt, this is equivalent to a little over twelve cents a pound of clean wool. On a wool shrinking in weight, in the course of scouring, to only one fifth of its raw weight, the eleven-cents duty is equivalent to fifty-five cents per pound of clean wool, a figure which no manufacturer can afford to pay, and which, therefore, keeps the wool out of this country. Taken in connection with the price of wool, the discrimination against the coarse, heavy-shrinking wools used primarily by the woolen industry appears even more striking. Thus, on the finer grades of wool quoted in London at forty-seven cents per pound, the duty of eleven cents would be equivalent to twenty-three per cent. ad valorem; while on the lower-priced wools, the only kind that is available for the poor man’s cloth, the eleven-cents duty would be equivalent to the prohibitive figure of anywhere from one hundred to five hundred and fifty per cent. The result is that the durable, weather-proof, and health-protecting cheap woolen cloth which the English and Continental working-man can afford to wear, must give way to the short-lived but dressy cotton worsted, which leaves the American workman, compelled to work outdoors in all sorts of weather, poorly protected against its inclemencies.

THE DUTY ON CLOTH

So much for the raw wool, which does not concern the consumer directly, but which he must consider in order to understand the conditions under which the woolen manufacturer is laboring.

When we come to cloth, the discrimination against the woolen manufacturer and the burden imposed upon the consumer is no less striking.

On the theory that all wool in this country is enhanced in price to the extent of the duty,--a theory, by the way, which every protectionist stoutly combats when discussing the effect of the tariff on domestic prices,--the manufacturer of cloth is allowed not only a protective duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent. of the value of the imported cloth, but, in addition to that, a “compensatory” duty on account of the duty on raw wool. This compensatory duty is fixed at forty-four cents per pound of cloth on most of the cloths imported into this country.

It is based on the assumption that it takes four pounds of raw wool to make one pound of cloth. This compensatory duty adds to the discrimination against the woolen manufacturer in favor of the worsted manufacturer in several ways.

In the first place, as already explained, the wool used by the worsted manufacturer does not shrink as much as that which goes into the cloth produced by the woolen manufacturer. Yet the compensatory duty is fixed at a uniform rate for both cloths, which is equivalent to giving to the worsted manufacturer about twice as much “compensation” as to his less fortunate rival, and giving him, in most cases, compensation for a greater loss than he actually sustains.