COMMENTS ON “SCHEDULE K”
IN the paper on the tariff as applied to woolen goods, by Mr. N. I. Stone in the May CENTURY, it was stated: “The great factor in the woolen 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.”
Mr. Winthrop L. Marvin, secretary of the “National Association of Wool Manufacturers,” in a letter to THE CENTURY says: “The American Woolen Company makes annual reports. Its capital stock in 1899 was $49,501,100 and in 1909 it was $60,000,000. The total capital of the woolen and worsted industry of this country, as stated by the Federal Census, was, in 1899, $257,000,000 and in 1909 it was $415,000,000. The output of the American Woolen Company in any given year has been at a maximum $51,000,000. The total output of the industry in 1899 was $239,000,000 and in 1909 it was $419,000,000. These figures controvert the assertion of ‘sixty per cent.’”
Mr. Marvin also states that while the Tariff Board mentioned duties on certain English cloths as being “from 132 to 260 per cent.,” it also made plain that those very high rates were not actually effective, since American competition operated to reduce the tariff cost to an average of 67 per cent., “embodying the higher cost of American materials and labor.”
—THE EDITOR.
