Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1892 — Truth Win Out. [ARTICLE]

Truth Win Out.

At the hearings before the Ways and Means Committee, of which Major McKinley was Chairman, and which drafted and passed the tariff bill bearing his name, the woolen manufacturers whp testified claimed that there were used in the making of a pound of cloth at least four pounds of greasy wool. These men induced the Ways and Means Committee to adopt the above as the basis of the specific duties on goods to compensate the ; manufacturers for the duty of 11 cents per pound on wool. They did so, and during the debate declared over and over again that the 44 cents per pound duty on woolen cloth afforded no protection to the manufacturer but merely offset the wool duty. Truth cannot long be concealed. Now that the present Ways and Means Committee are considering the introduction of a bill putting wool on the free list, and at the same time taking off the pound duty of 44 cents on cloth and reducing the ad valorem rate to 40 per cent., certain manufacturers are opposing this on the ground that such a bill would deprive them of a great deal of protection. Says a writer in The Manufacturer, the organ of the high tariff manufacturers’ club of Philadelphia, who signs his article “One who sees only danger to manufacturers in free wool:” “Manufacturers under the McKinley bill pay 11 cents per pound duty on wool. By importing the light-shrinkage Australian wools, which are the kinds mostly imported, a manufacturer can get out of two pounds of unwashed skirted wool one pound of scoured wool, which is nearly the equivalent of one pound of cloth. It is claimed that it takes nearly four pounds of unwashed wool to make a pound of cloth. This maybe true of the faulty 75-per-cent, shrink wools used in Europe, but never imported; but it is not true of the light, open, shafty, skirted Australian woois that are im-

ported. The waste on the latter averages but slightly above 50 per cent. (A good deal is imported which shrinks only 48 percent.) This class of wool is so well skirted on the ranch as to require little or no further sorting in the mills. “The clear shafty wool is all that is imported by American manufacturers/ One pound of scoured, clear-sorted, wool, free from inferior bits and pieces,' as already stated, is almost the equivalent of one pound of cloth. The manufacturer imports two pounds of such wool in the grease, paying 11 cents per pound, or 22 cents on the one pound scoured. As the McKinley bill gives a specific duty of 44 cents per pound—which is in no way assailed by undervaluations, as may be the case with an ad valorem duty—manufacturers have a clear margin of nearly 22 cents per pound protection on every pohnd of cloth made of these light, fifty per cent, shrunk, skirted, Australian fleeces. “Assuming that fifty per cent, ad valorem duties wholly cover the difference in wages between the foreign and American mill labor for which purpose this fifty per cent, was imposed, we find that the only margin of real protection against undervaluation is the specific duty on cloth which the free wool advocates now propose to remove. “The only real margin of surplus protection which American manufacturers now have under the McKinley bill is the margin (be it 22 cents per pound more or less) which they now get as a compensatory duty for the duty upon wool. “The duty on cloth was fixed under the assumption that the manufacturer paid 44 cents per pound duty on the scoured wool needed to construct one finished pound of cloth. In point of fact he pays but little (if any) over 22 cents per gound on that wool, leaving him a margin of about 22 cents per pound. With free wool he loses this. Will he favor free wool and also favor being brought into closer competition with foreign manufacturers, with only an ad valorem rate on goods that can so easily be avoided by undervaluations and false invoices?” No wonder that certain woolen manufacturers who, during the last Presidential campaign, paid so much to get the permission of Congress, by a tariff law, to charge a clear bounty of 22 cents per pound on cloth over and above the bounty given them by the duly of 50 per cent, object, to being deprived of it so soon. The manufacturer who turns out in his factories legitimate woolen goods and the wool growers, who have the prosperity of the wool and woolen industry at heart, know that free wool will benefit both. It is such wool growers who hope to get political prestige from their labors^and such manufacturers as believe in a tariff for bounty, included with whom are the users of shoddy and other bogus materials, who believe in the McKinley tariff on wool and woolen manufactures.