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.