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.