Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

The readjustment of wages to existing conditions is, therefore, of the first importance and should be first to receive serious consideration, with a view to harmonizing both sides, and a prompt settlement. Half a loaf is better than no bread, for both Labor and Capital, and it is not to the interest of either to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Their interests are mutual, but Labor is posing as if they were antagonistic. It has often done this before, but never more conspicuously than now.

With respect to our foreign market for cotton goods, there is plenty of room to widen it, but our exports of these, in competition with England, Germany and other countries, are more or less checked by the high price of labor here, and its comparatively low price there. Hence we should constantly endeavor to overcome this disadvantage by keeping ahead of the rest of the world in labor-saving devices, and improvements in machinery and manufactures. We should try to surpass all Europe in the quality, as well as the cheapness of our goods.

As we are the most inventive of all nations, and the quickest to adapt ourselves to new or altered conditions, we shall doubtless find this feasible, if not an easy task, whereas England, our greatest competitor in manufacturing, is proverbially slow in changing machinery.

I once asked Mr. Andrew Carnegie what was the mainspring of his phenomenal success as a manufacturer of iron and steel, and he replied:

“I always kept foremost in making improvements in my machinery and methods of manufacture. Whenever a new invention that I could use was patented, I secured it at any cost, and so kept in advance of all my competitors.

“At one time I had two million dollars’ worth of new machinery that I was about to install, but a man came to me with an improvement in it that he had just patented, and I bought his patent and adopted it. In doing this, I had to cast aside, as old material, the two millions’ worth of new machinery. But the improvement recompensed me many times over for what I had sacrificed to make the change.”

It is in promoting improvements in manufacturing processes and machinery that this Association, apart from its general utility, can be of great and permanent value to the cotton mill industry and kindred manufacturing enterprises. Ready adaptability of means to ends is as important in manufacturing cotton sheetings, and the other products of the loom, as in every other business and everything else.

I remember that in conversation with Admiral Sir Charles Beresford, of the British navy, when he was visiting New York, he told me of an instance of American adaptability to circumstances, that he noticed while in China. The Chinese had been long complaining of the want of sufficient width in a certain grade of British cotton fabrics that they were using and they had asked the English agents from time to time if they would increase the width. But nothing came of their expostulations and requests, as the agents, after writing home, told them the Manchester manufacturers said they would have to alter their machinery in order to give them the desired width, and this could not be done.

But the agent of a large American dry goods house, with extensive cotton mill interests, arrived at Shanghai, and hearing the complaint of the Chinese, he said: “Give me your order and you can have whatever width you want,” and he got the order. Sir Charles added: “So, you see, you people are smart and give them what they want; besides, you make your cotton goods heavier than we do and the Chinese like them better because they wear longer, for when the Chinese put on such clothes they never come off until they rot off.” Here was an instance of ready adaptability to the occasion and market needs by an American, which the English lacked.

An illustration of the importance of scientific investigation with a view to the discovery of new elements and processes in manufacturing, is found in silkine, a fabric closely resembling silk, which has come into popular use. It resulted from the discovery that the mulberry and other trees on which silk worms feed possess properties that could be extracted and utilized, to a certain extent, in the production of a silky fibrous material which in combination with fine Egyptian cotton, made a cloth so closely resembling silk as to be possibly mistaken, except by experts, for the silk of the silk worm. Here theoretical and practical science were happily combined with mechanical skill to produce an entirely new material, and doubtless there are many similar opportunities awaiting discovery. This Association by stimulating such investigation in mechanical science may achieve even greater results than it anticipates.