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Show Wool Tariff as Sem By a Maoyfaduaw cott of prod tie I Ion is at the lowest point possible and in favor of the community at large, th- average profit w'.iK.h wc m.xnutaclurers secure on lh.. cloLh entering into a suit of r'othes docs not i-xt-cvd thirty-eight full on an ;ivvrai;e suit m' clothing., I read recently that the President of i in 1 iilti-ij states was wearing a suit of clothes for which iie paid llfty dollars. dol-lars. The American people may like to know that If that cloth were purchased pur-chased from our company, our share of thf profit jn Hint cult of clothes would be less than lifty cents, or less than one per cent of the entire suit. IVjos this sound as If schedule K was su very Iniquitous? "1 have heard It stated and I am willing to endorse. It, taat, as a matter of fact, the tariff on wool nnd woolens i'oos not actually cost the Amerlcun people a Singh1 cent. The tarltr on vnoi vitally alfects not only the raw Material of clothing, hut the food sui-ply sui-ply of the United States Mr. Theodore Theo-dore Justice of rh.ladelphia. an. able and exact student of the wool fjues-tl.n. fjues-tl.n. reminds us that during the fre-a v eol period of tho Gorman Wilson law, wc lost one-fourth of all the thcep in America. In a few yeare, and thnt If there had ncd been a cjulck change iu the tariff, sheep before long would have vanished from the country. coun-try. We hear much complaint today of the high price of mutton and lamb, but can you imagine what the price voiild be If the great American flocks were entirely destroyed and our lamb ond mutton supply had to be brought in refrigerator ships from the other side of the ecpjator.i:'! line irom South America. South Africa ami Australia? "The United Slates is by far tho greatest nicat-cating and w ool-w eai Ins country in the world. Our own sheep a'C. on the whole, increasing in numbers num-bers In this country, while In the world as a whole, they are decreasing. Last year our farmers and ranchmen furnished S.OOn noo pounds of wool and in addition, 263,h.io,i.hi0 pounds were Imported. Yet you will read In tho newspapers and magazines, heated heat-ed assertions by no-n who do not know or care what they ere talking about, that the American protective tariff is 'prohibitive' It is not prohibitive pro-hibitive in our industry on either wool or goods. i The following address In defense of S;;hedulo K ill the- Aldrkh-Paxne tar-lif tar-lif law ws delivered by Mr. William M. Wood, president of the American Woolen company, ut a complimentary I'inner given Mr. Wood by the officers I and agents of the Amerlcun Woolen j company, ut th Algomiuin club in l I -'ostein: f A DEFENSE OF SCHEDULE "K." i ... I have hesitated t, speak on the question of tne tariff and schedule K lest the fact of my belnK president of the American Woolen companv might be used by Ignorant or dlshon-tst dlshon-tst men against tho industry. So i w cub say at tho outset with all cui-pha.slsj cui-pha.slsj that tho American Woolen company is simply a large c.,r.orulio!i aid not a trust It owns all of its plants In fee simple, with tJie e-. ipUou of one In which it owns all tho shares, and It dcn.-s not own anv Iracllonal share In nny other woo! nanufacturiog corporation. The American. Woolen company lives In constant competition and thrives by competition, and tho Industry of wool manufacturers Is not dominated by ' an combination or monopoly. I "In all the numerous articles In ' newspapers and magazines attacking schedule K, I hav not been able to ', discover in a single Instance the work of any man w ho was honest and dis-interested dis-interested and really knew what ho -.wis ' writing about. These articles h ive been chiefly from mere amateur theorists or from iliticians whose knowledge of manufacturing Is confined con-fined to political capital. In one or two cases these adverse articles have : been w ritten by former woolen nianu- f.icturers, who were utter failures in ' tre trado and yet now presume to advise ad-vise strong and successful men how , to conduct their business, I "The American people want fair ! play. Thoy w ill not be misled by muckraking muck-raking articles in the newspapers and magazines If they know that these arc the work of either Ignorance or piejudlce. The history of wool man-I man-I uiacturo In America has been one of bitter struggle, and. excepting later years, of disappointment and disaster. : Tike the American Woolen compuny, for Instance; with the exception of the three new bills built under the I liigley tariff, every one of our thlr- j "In the last fiscal year ending June Hi'i, loin, covering eleven months of tho Aldrlch-Payne law, our gross imports im-ports of manufactures of wool were ! $L::t.532.173 a large Increase over the ?U.10J,lt;o of the year before. These j figures. It should be borne in mind, ' are the low foreign prices, made low ; often for deliberate undervaluation. 1 The Imports i 11)10 represent a total actual dutj-pald Arernlcan value not ftr from the total average value of the entire output of the American Woolen company A tariff which allows such j mi imfiort as this cannot right fully i e denounced as cilher prohibitive or excessive. 'Schedule K may have defects of detail no tariff law whether Con-jTess-mado or Commission made ever baa been or ever will be perfect. Put the preseut schedule as It stood in the I Dlngley law and stands now has wit- ncssed the most marked nealthy and vigorous growth of wool manufacturing manufactur-ing In the history of America Five I h-.ndred thousand people depend upon this industry for a sustenance, and Ihtre are hundreds of thousands of others dependent on the growing of wool The wages iu American woolen inMls are more than twice the wages In England and three times the wages in Germany or France. These American Ameri-can mills can supply the eutiic domes-tie domes-tie demand for clothing. If the protective pro-tective tariff is destroyed, we manufacturers, manu-facturers, with our command of capital, capi-tal, can go elsewhere and build our ! factories wherever lanor la cheapest, but. the American work-people cannot j do this. They tanuot go to England or Germany or France or China or , Japan. They have got to live here and lind their work here. This question ques-tion of the protection of American industry in-dustry Is fundamentally a question of the protection of American labor. Without prosperous workingmen, able to live In decent comfort and send their children to Hchool, there can be i.o self-government here and no republic." re-public." i ty oriii concerns hav bcn through l:nancial torture of one kin 1 and an-, an-, i tlicr; every single one of Uhmh had been readjusted or gone through bank-ri')tcy. bank-ri')tcy. Indeed, it was the very exl-K'.ncv exl-K'.ncv of the severe struggle which they had endured that forced tht-m to j combine for self-jireser atlou. Kxces-bive Kxces-bive cuinintiiloii uuder a shifting tariff tar-iff policy had nearly ruined these mills before the American Wonlon company was organized. Not one new important woolen mill Tiad been built ! in Massachusetts for a perioil of over lTty years until tie McKinly law ' was introdiK-t'd. Under that law the j industry got upon Its feet, only to he I struck down again lu 1894, by the 111-I 111-I starred Gorman-Wilson taiiff. "That Gorrnan-Vll6on law guve the wool- manufucturers ree wool and a protection of 40 nnd 10 ier cent ail va'oreni. The law, as Is well known, ! v.as disastrous to the industry. It .iosrd anl ruined scores of small, in-Vpi'iident in-Vpi'iident mllis. the mainstays of thriving communities in nearlv ever -'ate in the Union. Yet the ti'sent Alurieh-rayiic Ijw, like the Dlngley lnw before it, though savagely denounced de-nounced as excessive, gives Hie wool i-ia nu fact urer a protection of 50 lo 51 pi r ri-nt ad valorem above and beyond be-yond tho duty intended to compensate lil m for the duty oi wool. If 50 per cint protection witlufree wool proved incftettive and disa-strous, c;ui F.O and r3 " T cent be rightly regarded as excessive? ex-cessive? A margin of T or 10 per cent h surely not a great one between dis-1 ns;tT and moderate success. I 1 If it be urged that in some cases , the compensatory duly itself Is exces- t-ive, it nuv be replied that in those fabrics where competition with Europe Eu-rope is most keeu and difficult, as every man iu the trade knows, the curnpensatory duty Is no more than adequate. This thr- large and con stunt volume of Imports attests. "So long as tho greed of Kurope continues con-tinues lor the great Americau market, mar-ket, the richest in the world, so long will the American wool manufattur-t manufattur-t rs be assailed by violent mlsrepre-Mntatlon. mlsrepre-Mntatlon. Nearly eery false statement state-ment about schedule K can be traced directly back to unscrupulous foreign j Manufacturers or their representatives. representa-tives. It Is painful to see how eager-, )y these misstatements are caunht up and exploited for political purposes in this country. A few years ago ex-Altorney-Gencral Monett of Ohio repeatedly re-peatedly asserted on the stump that the Americau Woolen company fixed : the price .n the entire wool clip of the United States, and that every one was at the mercy of that monoxily. "Now at that time there, were fully a thounand woolen mills in the United States, of which about thirty were owned by the American Woolen company. In no ono of the other mills did this company have the Flightest Interest directly or indirectly indirect-ly In any way whatsoever. This statement state-ment by Mr. Monett was grotesquely fi.lse from beginning to end, and yet l.i wan echoed and re-echoed all over the United Slates by newspapers and nfn that were hostile to thla American Ameri-can Industry and hostile to the American Ameri-can system of protection. "An even moro regrettable case is that of Senator Heverldge of Indiana, a Republican who, lu si recent magazine maga-zine article, attacked the American Woolen company for undue Influence over the tariff revisions of isfl and "iSf7. As a matter of fact, the American Ameri-can Woolen company was not organized organ-ized or even thought of for several years afterward. It did not eonio into existence until 199. ' It may loferept tho people- to know-that know-that In our great business, where the |