Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1893 — RESORT TO SHODDY. [ARTICLE]

RESORT TO SHODDY.

HIGH TARIFF On WOOL ENCOURACES ADULTERATION. A Connecticut Manufacturer Tells of the Change for the Worse Which Has Been Wrought During the Past Twenty-five Years. A Manufacturer's Confession. It is interesting and instructive to hear the manufacturers of woolens tell how the duties laid upon raw wool by a paternal government have made their honest prosperity, which was once the wonder of the world, impossible, and compelled them, in order to continue business, to degrade it into a disagreeable imposition on the millions of American workingmen who must purchase their clothing in the “Protected Home Market”.

Mr. W. B. Estell, who, under the auspices of the New York Reform Club, recently investigated the effect of tariff duties on wool growers and woolen manufacturers, gives an interesting account of a conversation he had with one of the large manufacturers of woolens in Connecticut. Speaking of the change for the worse which has been wrought during the past twenty-five years, this manufacturer says: “Twenty-five or thirty years ago I was making as fine a grade of woolens as could be found anywhere in the world. I could import my foreign wool, which is absolutely necessary to the manufacture of good cloth, free of duty; this enabled me to pay a better price for the domestic wool, which is just as essential as the foreign article, and yet place upon the market, at a fair profit to myself, a grade of goods which defied ‘pauper made goods’ from abroad. In these days I was selling the products of my factory, not only in America but in foreign countries as well. I would be doing so to-day were it not for the insane duties on raw material. “The compensatory duties, which have been levied for the protection of myself and the workingmen I employ, have not borne'the good fruit promised, but have resulted in debasing the manufacturing of woolen goods until I venture to say there is not one manufacturer in America, who caters to the ordinary trade, who is not using more or less adulterants instead of the pure wool, and must do so if he wishes to continue in business. “When we could import our raw wool free of duty, we took delight in manufacturing the very best quality of cloth—indeed, we were compelled to do so because of the low duties on the foreign manufactured product. We would make a certain pattern of good quality, send samples of it to our customers with price list and always got good orders. Now all is changed. Instead of sending samples, the clothing manufacturer sends us a sample of the kind and weight of cloth they want to sell at a certain price, and to give the usual guaranty to show their customers that the cloth is warranted to be “all wool.” They know full well that we must adulterate with shoddy, perhaps to the extent of 50 or 60 per cent,' to reach the price named, but they prefer to rely implicitly on our guaranty. Sometimes, however, they excuse themselves by saying that after all shoddy is wool, and that, therefore, the goods are as represented. “The duty upon raw wool made the compensatory duties on manufactured woolens necessary in order to enable us to do business, but no sooner were we protected by a high duty upon the good's which competed with ours than we began to cast about for means to increase our profits. One

of the most effective means we found -to be the introduction of shoddy into our fabrics—not in place of the foreign wool, but to take the place of the high-priced American wools. Our large protits did not materialize, because the very high duties upon woolens gave the business an unhealthy boom. The result was that everywhere woolen mills sprang up, and the competition, instead of continuing in the healthy way in which the increased duties upon woolens found it, developed into a fight to the death. Every known adulterant was used and others were sought until the ti ade became thoroughly demoralized. It has never recovered and never will, until the old conditions are restored and the manufacturing of woolens is once more placed upon a sound business basis. “Give us free wool and take the duty off manufactured woolens, and I venture the prediction that no factory which deserves to live will die. Instead of free wool and free woolens injuring the employers and employes, and reducing wages, we will extend our markets, pay just as high wages, employ more hands, and give the American consumers the best article in the world.”