Show The Wool Industry The injuries which have afflicted the wool industry in the United States and which threaten it in tho future do not arise from foreign wool producers coming into our market in competition with our own wool growers The reason why the wool Industry has been less prosperous since iSO when a high protective t rU I was placed on wool has been because the high tariff has kept out in needed quantities ties the foreign produced wool necessary to mix with our home grown wool in order to manufacture certain grades of woolen goods The tariff so enhanced the cost of the raw material to the manufacturer that he could not compete in the markets mar-kets of the worla The restricted market rendered the demand for the domestic und foreign wool much less than it otherwise would have been j and when the demand is small the product Is cheaper The foreign wool we needed to mix with ours either being excluded or rendered very dear by the high tariffs necessarily nec-essarily makes tho demand for our domestic domes-tic product much less and the manufacturer manufac-turer is unable to engage to any very great extent in producing tho kinds of goods which but for these circumstances would be the most profitable for him Meantime a comparatively new Industry has bean brought into existence the manufacture manu-facture of shoddy It consists I according accord-ing to the statement made by c government govern-ment statistician of castoff woolen clothes rags stockings carpets and all soft woolen and worsted articles reduced by powerful machinery to their original flocculent state to be respun and woven either alone or mixed with new wool into a variety of articles These shoddy clothes on account of their cheapness and deceptive appearance have boon very 1 u > f i much used in the United States to the injury in-jury of our cloth manufacturers Being in some respects better adapted to produce a I close short nap than American wool this material has also entered into our domestic manufactures of late years I The same authority gives the following statoment as tho condition of the industry I in 1800 f I Number of establishments 30 Capital invested 123000 I Cost of yaw material t 227925 Male hands employed 141 Female hands employed H9 Annual cost of labor n S 54121 I Annual value of products 402590 So far the census returns for 1S90 in respect re-spect to tills industry are incomplete But from reliable sources it is learned that the I number or these shoddy establishments in the United States In 1890 was 94 and the value of their product was 9203011 This j I material which can be manufactured for I six or eight cents per pound enters into competition com-petition with our homo produced wool and it is this and not the competition of foreign wool which has rendered the wool industry leSs prosperous than It would have been but for our high tariffs The American wool grower has been frightened by the cry of cheap wool and has been demanding higher and higher duties for the benefit of his industry and meantime there has grown up under the high protection walls an industry whichproduces a substance that comes in competition which while it cheapens the product also cuts down the amount needed by the manufacturer Thus the wool producer pro-ducer Is injured by the high tariff the consumer con-sumer is injured by having to purchase at a higher price woolen goods that are not wool but a mixture of wool and shoddy We have tried high tariff and low wool long enough let us now have low tariff and high wool and honest goods for the consumer |