Part 16

In the second place, the law takes no account of the admixture of materials other than wool of which the cloth is made. A cotton worsted may contain cotton to the extent of one half or more of its total weight, yet the worsted manufacturer is allowed forty-four cents a pound “compensation” on the entire weight of the cloth. Mr. Dale, editor of “The Textile World Record,” quotes a typical instance of a cotton worsted. In turning out 8750 pounds of this cloth, 3125 pounds of raw wool were used, the remainder being cotton. Assuming that the price of the wool in this country was enhanced to the extent of the duty of eleven cents a pound, the manufacturer would be entitled to a compensatory duty of 3125 times eleven, or $343.75. But the law, on the four-to-one theory, allows a compensatory duty of forty-four cents per pound of cloth, or 8750 times forty-four, which is equal to $3850. The manufacturer is thus granted an extra protection of more than three and one half thousand dollars in the guise of compensation for the duty on wool which never entered the cloth.

In the discussion of the question in Congress, the stand-pat senators stoutly maintained that the four-to-one ratio was only a fair compensation to the American manufacturer. But the report of the Tariff Board, which no one has yet accused of being unfair to the manufacturers, has settled this point authoritatively by sustaining in most emphatic terms every charge made here against the system of levying duties under Schedule K.

In addition to the so-called compensatory duties, the tariff provides a distinct protective duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent. on cloths. High as this duty appears in comparison with protective duties in most of the European countries, it is not exceptionally high as compared with the rates under other schedules of our tariff. It is only when taken in combination with the compensatory duties, which the official report of the Tariff Board has shown to be largely protective, that the prohibitive character of the duties in Schedule K comes to light. The figures of annual imports published by the Bureau of Statistics throw an interesting light on this aspect of the case. They show, for instance, that the duties on blankets in the fiscal year 1911 ranged from sixty-eight to one hundred and sixty-nine per cent. of their foreign selling price; on carpets, from fifty to seventy-two per cent., being the lowest duties imposed on any manufactures of wool; on women’s dress-goods the duties varied from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty-eight per cent.; on flannels, from seventy-one to one hundred and twenty-one per cent.; on woolen and worsted cloths, from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent.; on knit fabrics, from ninety-five to one hundred and fifty-three per cent.; on plushes and pile fabrics, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-two per cent.

None of these rates tells the whole story: they all understate the duties to which foreign goods are subject under the law; for they represent the duties on goods that were able to get into this country over our tariff wall. In some cases the imports represent vanishing quantities, only a few dollars’ worth, being probably the personal purchases of returning travelers. The duties that are high enough to keep foreign goods out of the country naturally do not find their way into the returns of the Bureau of Statistics. An illustration of this feature is furnished by the report of the Tariff Board. The duties upon woolen and worsted cloths just cited from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are shown to vary from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent. The Tariff Board, in making a comparative study of the industry at home and abroad, obtained a set of representative samples of English cloths with prices at which they are sold in England, the duty they would have to pay if imported into the United States, and the prices at which similar cloths are sold in the United States. Sixteen of the samples, representing the cheapest cloths sold in England at prices of from twelve to fifty-four cents a yard, are not imported into the United States at all, owing to prohibitive duties ranging from one hundred and thirty-two to two hundred and sixty per cent. Thirteen out of the sixteen samples would have paid duties higher than the highest rate of one hundred and fifty per cent. given in the report of the Bureau of Statistics for cloths actually imported. This illustration will suffice to explain why the rates quoted above for various woolen products from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are understatements of the duties imposed under Schedule K.

An invariable feature of this schedule is that the duties rise in inverse ratio to the value of the commodities, so that the poor man’s grades pay the highest rates, while those intended for people who can best afford to pay the duties are subject to the lowest rates. In the set of English samples collected by the board, the cheapest cloth selling in England for twelve cents a yard would pay a duty in the United States equal to two hundred per cent. ad valorem, while the highest-priced fabric selling at $1.68 a yard would pay a duty of only eighty-seven per cent.

Small wonder that under the fostering care of Schedule K imports have been reduced to next to nothing. With a total domestic consumption of women’s dress-goods valued at more than $105,000,000, we imported six and one third million dollars’ worth of these goods in 1911. The imports of woolen and worsted cloth were only two and one half per cent. of the total domestic consumption. We imported blankets and flannels in 1909 worth $125,000 as against a domestic production of more than $10,500,000, making the imports only slightly more than one per cent. of our total consumption; even in carpets, which are subject to the lowest rates of duty imposed on manufactures under Schedule K, our imports were only $195,000 worth against a domestic production of $45,475,889, making the imports less than one half of one per cent. of our own production.

THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN WOOL INDUSTRY

After enjoying for nearly half a century a protection averaging forty-five per cent. and amounting to from one hundred to five hundred and fifty per cent. on the cheaper grades of wool, the American wool-grower is not able to satisfy as great a part of the national demand for his product as he was at the time of the Civil War. During the sixties we had to depend upon imports to the extent of little over one fourth (26.8 per cent.) of our total consumption of wool. To-day nearly one half of our needs have to be covered by foreign wools (about forty-five per cent. in 1910). When wool was placed on the free list under the Wilson Bill in 1894, it was charged that the abolition of the duty was responsible for the increase in our imports. But our growing dependence on imported wool despite the restoration of the duty under the Dingley Act, in 1897, goes to show that the tariff is no remedy for the shortage.

The wool-grower argues, however, that wool can be produced so much cheaper in Argentina and Australia that, if admitted free of duty to the United States, it would bring about the total disappearance of the American wool industry. The latest available figures given in the report of the Tariff Board show a world production of about 2,500,000,000 pounds of wool, of which the United States produces about one eighth. The world supply would furnish less than a pound of clean wool per head of population, not enough to give each of us more than one suit in three years. Of course the latter estimates are only approximate, but they are not far from the truth. If it were not for the plentiful admixture of cotton and shoddy to the annual stock of new wool, there would not be enough wool to clothe the people of the earth. Under these conditions, there is no danger of the world failing to make use of American wool. Any considerable curtailment in the production of American wool would have the tendency of raising the world’s price of wool to such an extent as to offer renewed encouragement to the American wool-grower. So much for that. But is it true that it costs so much to raise wool in the United States?

The Tariff Board reported that the average cost of production of wool in this country is about three times as high as in Australia and about double that in South America. On that basis our present duty is ridiculously low, and it is a wonder that our wool industry has not long gone out of existence. What is the secret of its miraculous escape from total extinction?

The Tariff Board average represents widely different conditions of production. A large part of the wool grown in this country--no less than eleven per cent. of the wool covered by the board’s investigation--is raised without any cost whatever to the wool-grower; in fact, he gets “a net credit,” to quote the board, or a premium, with each pound of wool coming from his sheep’s back. This is true of sheep-growers who are employing up-to-date methods in their business and have substituted the cross-bred merino sheep for the old-type pure merino. The cross-bred sheep is raised primarily to meet the enormous and rapidly growing demand for mutton. The price realized from the sale of mutton is sufficient not only to cover the entire expense of raising the sheep, but leaves the farmer a net profit, before he has sold a pound of his wool, which has become a by-product with him, and the proceeds from which represent a clear gain. It will be easily seen that the up-to-date mutton-sheep breeder can do very well without any duty on wool.

The mutton-sheep has come to stay, because we are fast getting to be a mutton-eating people. Despite the enormous increase in population, fewer cattle and hogs are being slaughtered to-day than twenty years ago, while the number of sheep killed has more than doubled in the same period. In 1880, for every sheep slaughtered at the Chicago stock-yards, four heads of cattle and twenty-one hogs were killed. In 1900 the number of sheep received at the stock-yards exceeded that of cattle, and in 1911, for every sheep slaughtered, there was only one half of a beef carcass and one and one quarter of a hog. The rapid increase in the demand for and supply of sheep out of all proportion to other animals is in itself the best refutation of the cry that sheep-growing is unprofitable. In his recent book on “Sheep Breeding in America,” Mr. Wing, one of the foremost authorities on the subject in this country, who investigated the sheep-breeding industry for the Tariff Board in every part of the country where it is carried on, as well as abroad, says that sheep-breeding is profitable despite the woefully neglectful manner in which it is conducted in the United States. Unlike some United States senators who have grown rich in the business of raising sheep, Mr. Wing remains cheerful at the prospect of a reduction of wool duties, and even their total abolition has no terrors for him. His attitude is very significant, when it is considered that he is a practical sheep-grower, still engaged in that business, in addition to writing on the subject, and that all his interests, both business and literary, are intimately wound up with the sheep industry.

Not all growers, it is true, have adopted modern methods. The report of the board shows five additional groups of farmers whose cost of production of wool varies from less than five cents a pound to more than twenty. Accepting these figures at their face-value, although they are only approximate, and assuming that a raw material like wool of which we cannot produce enough to satisfy our needs is a proper object of protection, the question still remains whether the tariff is to be high enough to afford protection to every man in the business, even when the results obtained by his neighbors show that he has his own inefficiency or backwardness to blame for his high costs, or whether the duty is to measure the difference between the cost of production of our efficient producers and that of their foreign competitors. If the former be taken as a standard, then the present duty on raw wool is not sufficiently high, and should be greatly increased; if the latter be accepted as a basis in tariff-making, then, there being no cost in raising wool on up-to-date American ranches, there seems to be no valid reason for any duty, except possibly one of a transitory nature, to allow sufficient time to the sheep-growers who need it to adjust themselves to modern conditions of business.

MILL EFFICIENCY

The same general considerations which apply to raw wool hold good as to its manufactures. There is no such thing as an average cost of production of woolen cloth in the United States. The enormous variety of cloths produced in the same mill proved an insuperable obstacle to the Tariff Board, which gave up the attempt to ascertain the actual cost of production. Instead, it undertook to obtain estimates from manufacturers of the cost of producing cloths, samples of which were furnished to them by the board. Assuming that all the estimates were made in good faith and that the agents of the board were all competent and equal to the task of checking them with the meager means at their command, the average costs even by the board represent widely differing conditions of industrial efficiency.

Industrial efficiency depends on a great many conditions an adequate discussion of which would take in far afield. One fact, however, stands out preëminently, and must be emphasized until it is seared into the consciousness and conscience of the American citizen, and that is that industrial efficiency, which is synonymous with low-labor cost, does not mean, or depend upon, low wages. Yet the lower wages in Europe constitute the stock argument in every plea for protection that is dinned into the ears of Congress.

Not being in a position to make a comprehensive inquiry into the efficiency of American mills in the woolen industry, the Tariff Board made a study of labor efficiency in the various process of wool manufacture in connection with output and wages paid. Almost invariably the mill paying higher wages per hour showed lower costs than its competitor with lower wages.

Thus, in wool scouring the lowest average wages paid to machine-operatives in the thirty mills examined was found to be 12.16 cents per hour, and the highest 17.79. Yet the low-wage mill showed a labor cost of twenty-one cents per hundred pounds of wool, while the high-wage mill had a cost of only fifteen cents. One of the reasons for this puzzling situation was that the low-wage mill paid nine cents per hundred pounds for supervisory labor, such as foremen, etc., while the high-wage mill paid only six cents. Apparently well-paid labor needs less driving and supervising than low-paid labor.

In the carding department of seventeen worsted mills the mill paying its machine-operatives an average wage of 13.18 cents per hour had a machine labor cost of four cents per hundred pounds, while the mill paying its machine-operatives only 11.86 cents per hour had a cost of twenty-five cents per hundred pounds. This was due largely to the fact that the lower-cost-high-wage mill had machinery enabling every operator to turn out more than 326 pounds per hour, while the high-cost-low-wage mill it turning out less than forty-eight pounds per hour.

The same tendency was observed in the carding departments of twenty-six woolen mills. The mill with the highest machine output per man per hour, namely 57.7 pounds, had a machinery-labor cost of twenty-three cents per hundred pounds, while the mill with a machine output of only six pounds per operative per hour had a cost of $1.64 per hundred pounds. Yet this mill, with a cost seven times higher than the other, paid its operatives only 9.86 cents per hour, as against 13.09 cents paid by its more successful competitor.

These examples could be repeated for every department of woolen and worsted mills, but will suffice to illustrate the point that higher wages do not necessarily mean higher costs. They show that mill efficiency depends more on a liberal use of the most improved machinery than on low wages. Thoughtful planning in arranging the machinery to save unnecessary steps to the employees, careful buying of raw materials, the efficient organization and utilization of the labor force in the mill, systematic watching of the thousands of details, each affecting the cost of manufacture, will reduce costs to an astonishing degree. When the board, therefore, states that the labor cost of production in this country is on the average, about double that in foreign countries, we must bear in mind the difference in costs in our own country, and the causes to which high costs are due. The fact is that the woolen industry, being one of the best, if not the best, protected industry in the country, shows an exceptional disposition to cling to old methods and to use machinery which long ago should have been consigned to the scrap-heap. That is where the chief cause of the comparatively high cost of production in a large part of the industry is to be looked for.

But, disregarding the question of efficiency, let us accept the figure of the Tariff Board, which found the labor cost in England to be one half that here, taking the manufacture from the time the wool enters the mill until it is turned out as finished cloth. The entire labor cost varies from twenty to fifty per cent. of the total cost of making cloth, according to the character of the cloth, and but seldom exceeds or approaches fifty per cent. If the protective duty is to measure the difference in labor cost, it should be fixed at not above twenty-five per cent. of the cost, that being the highest difference between the American and English labor cost. As against that, we now have a duty of about fifty-five per cent. of the selling price of the foreign cloth, in addition to the concealed protection in the so-called compensatory duty.

For decades we have been assured that all the manufacturer wanted was a duty high enough to compensate him for the higher wages paid in this country. In 1908 the Republican party laid down the formula that the tariff is to measure the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad, including a “reasonable profit to the manufacturer.” To-day the party has advocates of all kinds of protection, from those who wish the tariff to measure the difference in labor cost of the most efficient mills in this and foreign countries, as advocated by Senator LaFollette, to those who wish a tariff high enough to keep out foreign importations.

Whatever may be done with Schedule K by the Democratic Congress, it is time that we dismiss the hoary legend that the duties are maintained solely in the interest of the highly paid American working-man. The assertion comes with specially poor grace from the woolen and worsted industry, the most highly protected industry in the United States, paying the lowest wages to skilled labor. With the earnings of the great bulk of its employees averaging through the year less than ten dollars a week, while wages are about double that figure in less protected industries; with its workmen compelled to send their wives and children to the mills as an alternative to starvation on the man’s earnings; with the horrors of living conditions of the Lawrence mill-workers still ringing in our ears, it is time that we face the situation squarely and, whatever degree of protection we decide to maintain, that we frankly admit that it is primarily for the benefit of the capital invested in our industries.

Russia, Germany, and France do so frankly, and free-trade England manages to compete with them in the markets of the world, while paying higher wages to its employees. In turn we beat these nations, in their own and in the world’s markets, in the products of the very industries in which we pay the highest wages.

THE WINE OF NIGHT

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Come, drink the mystic wine of Night, Brimming with silence and the stars; While earth, bathed in this holy light, Is seen without its scars. Drink in the daring and the dews, The calm winds and the restless gleam-- This is the draught that Beauty brews; Drink--it is the Dream....

Drink, oh my soul, and do not yield-- These solitudes, this wild-rose air Shall strengthen thee, shall be thy shield Against the world’s despair. Oh, quaff this stirrup-cup of stars Trembling with hope and high desire-- Then back into the hopeless wars With faith and fire!

“THEM OLD MOTH-EATEN LOVYERS”

BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

Author of “In the Tennessee Mountains,” “Where the Battle was Fought,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY GEORGE WRIGHT

Hair snow-white, the drifts of many a winter, eyes sunken amid a network of wrinkles, hands hardened and veinous, shoulders bent, and step laggard and feeble, the old lovers were as beautiful to each other, and as enthralled by mutual devotion, as on their wedding-day forty-five years before. They were beautiful also to more discerning eyes--to a wandering artist in quest of material, who painted them both in divers poses, and carried off his canvases. As a recompense of some sort, he left a masterly depiction of the god of love burned in the wood of the broad, smooth board of the mantelpiece above the hearth, where the fickle little deity, though furnished with wings for swiftest flight, had long presided in constancy.

Doubtless some such sentiment had prompted the pyrography, but its significance failed to percolate through the dense ignorance of the old mountain woman.

“Folks from the summer hotel over yander nigh the bluffs air always powerful tickled over that leetle critter,” she was wont to reply to an admiring comment, “but he ‘pears ter me some similar ter a flying-squirrel. I never seen no baby dee-formed with wings nohow, an’ I tol’ the painter-man at the time that them legs war too fat ter be plumb genteel. But, lawsy! I jes hed ter let him keep on workin’. He war powerful saaft-spoken an’ perlite, though I war afeared he’d disfigure every plain piece o’ wood about the house afore he tuk hisself away.”

Years before, the romance of the old couple had been the idyl of the country-side. They had indeed been lovers as children. They had made pilgrimages to their trysting-place when the breadth of the dooryard was a long journey. They had plighted their vows as they sat in juvenile content, plump, tow-headed, bare-footed among the chips of the wood pile. As they grew older it was the object of their lives to save their treasures to bestow on each other. A big apple, a chunk of maple-sugar, a buckeye of abnormal proportions, attained a certain dignity regarded as _gages d’amour_. They were never parted for a day till Editha was seventeen years old, when she was summoned to the care of a paralytic aunt who dwelt in Shaftesville, twelve miles distant, and who, in the death of her husband, had been left peculiarly helpless and alone.