Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

“Where is it?” I asked, looking in vain around the room for any contrivance which might seem calculated to advance matrimonial prospects.

“It is here,” and he gave his forehead a significant tap. Then he held forth didactically.

“There is force enough in existence to yield us a speed of sixty miles a minute or even more. All we need is the knowledge how to combine and apply it. The wise man will not attempt to make some great force yield some great speed. He will keep adding the little force to the little force, making each little force yield its little speed, until an aggregate of little forces shall be a great force, yielding an aggregate of little speeds, a great speed. The difficulty is not in aggregating the forces; it lies in the corresponding aggregation of the speeds. One musket-ball will go, say, a mile. It is not hard to increase the force of muskets to a thousand, yet the thousand musket-balls will go no farther and no faster than the one. You see, then, where our trouble lies. We cannot readily add speed to speed, as we add force to force. My discovery is simply the utilization of a principle which extorts an increment of speed from each increment of power. But this is the metaphysics of physics. Let us be practical or nothing.

“When you have walked forward on a moving train from the rear car toward the engine, did you ever think what you were really doing?”

“Why, yes, I have generally been going to the smoking-car to have a cigar.”

“THAT SHE HERSELF WAS NOT INDIFFERENT I SOON HAD REASON TO REGARD AS A SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH”]

“Tut! tut! not that! I mean did it ever occur to you on such an occasion that absolutely you were moving faster than the train? The train passes the telegraph-poles at the rate of thirty miles an hour, say. You walk toward the smoking-car at the rate of four miles an hour. Then _you_ pass the telegraph-poles at the rate of thirty-four miles. Your absolute speed is the speed of the engine, plus the speed of your own locomotion. Do you follow me?”

I began to get an inkling of his meaning, and told him so.

“Very well. Let us advance a step. Your addition to the speed of the engine is trivial, and the space in which you can exercise it, limited. Now, suppose two stations, A and B, two miles distant by the track. Imagine a train of platform cars, the last car resting at station A. The train is a mile long, say. The engine is therefore within a mile of station B. Say the train can move a mile in ten minutes. The last car, having two miles to go, would reach B in twenty minutes, but the engine, a mile ahead, would get there in ten. You jump on the last car at A in a prodigious hurry to reach Abscissa, who is at B. If you stay on the last car, it will be twenty long minutes before you see her. But the engine reaches B and the fair lady in ten. You will be a stupid reasoner and an indifferent lover if you don’t put for the engine over those platform cars as fast as your legs will carry you. You can run a mile, the length of the train, in ten minutes. Therefore you reach Abscissa when the engine does, or in ten minutes--ten minutes sooner than if you had lazily sat down upon the rear car and talked politics with the brakeman. You have diminished the time by one half. You have added your speed to that of the locomotive to some purpose. _Nicht wahr?_”

I saw it perfectly; much plainer, perhaps, for his putting in the clause about Abscissa.

He continued:

“This illustration, though a slow one, leads up to a principle which may be carried to any extent. Our first anxiety will be to spare your legs and wind. Let us suppose that the two miles of track are perfectly straight, and make our train one platform car, a mile long, with parallel rails laid upon its top. Put a little dummy engine on these rails, and let it run to and fro along the platform car, while the platform car is pulled along the ground track. Catch the idea? The dummy takes your place. But it can run its mile much faster. Fancy that our locomotive is strong enough to pull the platform car over the two miles in two minutes. The dummy can attain the same speed. When the engine reaches B in one minute, the dummy, having gone a mile atop the platform car, reaches B also. We have so combined the speeds of those two engines as to accomplish two miles in one minute. Is this all we can do? Prepare to exercise your imagination.”

I lit my pipe.

“Still two miles of straight track between A and B. On the track a long platform car, reaching from A to within a quarter of a mile of B. We will now discard ordinary locomotives and adopt as our motive power a series of compact magnetic engines, distributed underneath the platform car all along its length.”

“I don’t understand those magnetic engines.”

“Well, each of them consists of a great iron horseshoe, rendered alternately a magnet and not a magnet by an intermittent current of electricity from a battery, this current in its turn regulated by clockwork. When the horseshoe is in the circuit, it is a magnet, and it pulls its clapper toward it with enormous power. When it is out of the circuit, the next second, it is not a magnet, and it lets the clapper go. The clapper, oscillating to and fro, imparts a rotatory motion to a fly-wheel, which transmits it to the drivers on the rails. Such are our motors. They are no novelty, for trial has proved them practicable.

“With a magnetic engine for every truck of wheels, we can reasonably expect to move our immense car, and to drive it along at a speed, say, of a mile a minute.

“The forward end, having but a quarter of a mile to go, will reach B in fifteen seconds. We will call this platform car number I. On top of number I are laid rails on which another platform car, number II, a quarter of a mile shorter than number I, is moved in precisely the same way. Number II, in its turn, is surmounted by number III, moving independently of the tiers beneath, and a quarter of a mile shorter than number II. Number II is a mile and a half long; number III a mile and a quarter. Above, on successive levels, are number IV, a mile long; number V, three quarters of a mile; number VI, half a mile; number VII, a quarter of a mile, and number VIII, a short passenger-car on top of all.

“Each car moves upon the car beneath it, independently of all the others, at the rate of a mile a minute. Each car has its own magnetic engines. Well, the train being drawn up with the latter end of each car resting against a lofty bumping-post at A, Tom Furnace, the gentlemanly conductor, and Jean-Marie Rivarol, engineer, mount by a long ladder to the exalted number VIII. The complicated mechanism is set in motion. What happens?

“‘THIS IS THE TACHYPOMP. DOES IT JUSTIFY THE NAME?’”]

“Number VIII runs a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reaches the end of number VII. Meanwhile number VII has run a quarter of a mile in the same time, and reached the end of number VI; number VI, a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds, and reached the end of number V; number V, the end of number IV; number IV, of number III; number III, of number II; number II, of number I. And number I, in fifteen seconds, has gone its quarter of a mile along the ground track, and has reached station B. All this has been done in fifteen seconds. Wherefore, numbers I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII come to rest against the bumping-post at B, at precisely the same second. We, in number VIII, reach B just when number I reaches it. In other words, we accomplish two miles in fifteen seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving at the rate of a mile a minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to our journey, and has done its work in fifteen seconds. All the eight did their work at once, during the same fifteen seconds. Consequently we have been whizzed through the air at the somewhat startling speed of seven and a half seconds to the mile. This is the Tachypomp. Does it justify the name?”

“IN FRONT OF ME STOOD PROFESSOR SURD HIMSELF, LOOKING DOWN WITH A NOT UNPLEASANT SMILE”]

Although a little bewildered by the complexity of cars, I apprehended the general principle of the machine. I made a diagram, and understood it much better. “You have merely improved on the idea of my moving faster than the train when I was going to the smoking-car?” I said.

“Precisely. So far we have kept within the bounds of the practicable. To satisfy the professor, you can theorize in something after this fashion: if we double the number of cars, thus decreasing by one half the distance which each has to go, we shall attain twice the speed. Each of the sixteen cars will have but one eighth of a mile to go. At the uniform rate we have adopted, the two miles can be done in seven and a half instead of fifteen seconds. With thirty-two cars, and a sixteenth of a mile, or twenty rods difference in their length, we arrive at the speed of a mile in less than two seconds; with sixty-four cars, each traveling but ten rods, a mile under the second. More than sixty miles a minute! If this isn’t rapid enough for the professor, tell him to go on increasing the number of his cars and diminishing the distance each one has to run. If sixty-four cars yield a speed of a mile inside the second, let him fancy a Tachypomp of six hundred and forty cars, and amuse himself calculating the rate of car number 640. Just whisper to him that when he has an infinite number of cars with an infinitesimal difference in their lengths, he will have obtained that infinite speed for which he seems to yearn. Then demand Abscissa.”

I wrung my friend’s hand in silent and grateful admiration. I could say nothing.

“You have listened to the man of theory,” he said proudly. “You shall now behold the practical engineer. We will go to the west of the Mississippi and find some suitably level locality. We will erect thereon a model Tachypomp. We will summon thereunto the professor, his daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta as well? We will take them on a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall place Abscissa’s digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are to annihilate time and space. Perhaps you had better see your bankers.”

I rushed impetuously to the door. There should be no delay.

“Stop! stop! _Um Gottes Willen_, stop!” shrieked Rivarol. “I launched my butcher this morning and I haven’t bolted the--”

But it was too late. I was upon the trap. It swung open with a crash, and I was plunged down, down, down! I felt as though I were falling through illimitable space. I remember wondering, as I rushed through the darkness, whether I should reach Kerguellen’s Land or stop at the center. It seemed an eternity. Then my course was suddenly and painfully arrested.

I opened my eyes. Around me were the walls of Professor Surd’s study. Under me was a hard, unyielding plane which I knew too well was Professor Surd’s study floor. Behind me was the black, slippery haircloth chair which had belched me forth much as the whale served Jonah. In front of me stood Professor Surd himself, looking down with a not unpleasant smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Furnace. Let me help you up. You look tired, sir. No wonder you fell asleep when I kept you so long waiting. Shall I get you a glass of wine? No? By the way, since receiving your letter I find that you are a son of my old friend Judge Furnace. I have made inquiries, and see no reason why you should not make Abscissa a good husband.”

Still, I can see no reason why the Tachypomp should not have succeeded. Can you?

FROM THE PAINTING BY CARL MARR, IN THE MODERN GALLERY, BUDAPEST

(THE CENTURY’S AMERICAN ARTISTS SERIES)]

“SCHEDULE K”

THE EFFECT OF THE TARIFF ON THE WOOL-GROWER, THE MANUFACTURER, THE WORKMAN, AND THE CONSUMER

BY N. I. STONE

Formerly Chief Statistician of the Tariff Board

No part of our tariff has been more scathingly denounced in Congress and by the press than what is known as “Schedule K.” No schedule that has received half the attention bestowed on Schedule K has managed to withstand the fierce onslaughts of the united tariff reformers of both political parties so successfully as the schedule covering wool and its manufactures. Repeatedly raised during the Civil War, when the urgent need of additional revenue was the sole motive of frequent tariff revision, slightly reduced in 1872 and 1883, scaled down still more in the Democratic Wilson act of 1894, it managed in the intervals between these acts to recover lost ground and, since 1897, to eclipse all previous records for high-tariff climbing.

The secret of this exceptional record in our tariff history is not far to seek. It lies in the peculiar interlacing of interests between the sheep-grower of the West and the manufacturer of the East, which has no parallel in other industries. Most of the farm products are either left on the free list, like cotton, or, if protected by a duty, are not affected by it. Thus we have duties on corn, wheat, oats, rye, and meat, but no one familiar with the situation has ever seriously maintained that the duty has been more than a convenient embellishment of our tariff for the use of campaign spellbinders in farm districts. As long as we produce more cereals, meats, and other farm products than we consume, and send the surplus to the world’s markets, the prices of these products, under free competition at home, will be regulated by conditions of world supply and demand, leaving the duties a dead letter on the statute-books. Wool is a conspicuous exception in the list of American farm products. After half a century of exceptionally high protection, fixed by the beneficiaries of the tariff themselves, the American wool-grower still falls short in his output to the extent of more than one third of the domestic demand. The deficit must be covered by importation from foreign countries, the price of imported wool being enhanced by the amount of the duty. Under these conditions the duty on raw wool acts as a powerful lever in increasing the price of the domestic wool furnishing the remaining two thirds of our consumption. No wonder that the wool-grower has always been an enthusiastic advocate of a duty on raw wool.

On the other hand, the New England manufacturer, himself a believer in high duties on woolen goods, has been rather skeptical as to the merits of a duty on a raw material of which we have never been able to produce enough, and are producing an ever diminishing share. Hence the New England woolen manufacturer has been as enthusiastic for free wool as the New England shoe manufacturer is for free hides, without losing at the same time his faith in high duties on woolen goods. However, the manufacturers discovered at an early stage in the game that unless they were willing to acquiesce in a duty on their raw material, the representatives from the wool-growing States in Congress could not see any advantage in high duties on woolens. This is what led to the powerful combination of these two great interests to which the late Senator Dolliver, in his memorable speech in the Senate in the extra session of Congress in 1909, referred as “that ceremony when the shepherd’s crook and the weaver’s distaff were joined together in the joyous wedlock which no man has been able to put asunder.” At that joint meeting of the representatives of wool-growers and woolen-cloth manufacturers held at Syracuse in December, 1865, when it was supposed that, with the disappearance of the need for extraordinary revenue, the war duties would be reduced, “it was agreed between them,” in the words of the late John Sherman, who had a great deal to do with the shaping of the tariff, “after full discussion, that the rates of duty reported by the Senate bill should be given them, and they were satisfied with them, and have never called them in question.”

It remained for a long-suffering public finally to call those rates in question. And when a Republican President called Congress in extraordinary session in March, 1909, to fulfil the pledges of his party for a downward revision, he found, to use his own words, uttered in the now famous Winona speech, that “Mr. Payne, in the House, and Mr. Aldrich, in the Senate, although both favored reduction in the schedule, found that in the Republican party the interests of the wool-growers of the far West and the interests of the woolen manufacturers in the East and in other States, reflected through their representatives in Congress, was sufficiently strong to defeat any attempt to change the woolen tariff, and that, had it been attempted, it would have beaten the bill reported from either committee.”

However, the President thought that Schedule K should receive the attention of Congress after the newly created Tariff Board had made a thorough investigation of the woolen industry. Taking the President at his word, the country waited two years more with great impatience for the result of the findings of his board. But once more was the country baffled by the united beneficiaries of Schedule K in its efforts looking to the lowering of the rates. When a majority in Congress composed of Democrats and Republican insurgents laid aside party differences in a common effort to reduce the woolen duties, the same leaders of whose tactics President Taft had complained were able to persuade him that the revised schedule was so much at variance with the findings of the Tariff Board as to justify his veto. Thus the country is facing the new situation in the extraordinary session of the Sixty-third Congress, with Schedule K still proudly holding the fort on the pinnacle of the American tariff wall. The present is, therefore, just the time for an analysis of the situation in which the claims of the conflicting interests may be reviewed in the light of now well-established facts.

WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS

Any one who has traveled abroad or had occasion to compare foreign prices of cloths and dress-goods with those prevailing in this country knows that on the average they can be bought in Europe, particularly in free-trade England, at about half the price usually asked for similar goods at home. As the investigation of the Tariff Board has shown, there are many cloths on which the difference in price is not so great, particularly on the finer grades, while, on the other hand, the American price is more than double the English on some of the medium and cheap grades of cloth. But, on the whole, it is safe to state that our prices on woolen and worsted cloths are about double those in England. The difference in price represents largely the toll paid by ninety-odd million Americans for the support of the half-century-old infant worsted and the century-old woolen industry. We have all been vaguely aware of that fact, and yet have submitted to it for the ultimate good of creating a raw-wool supply and a fine woolen and worsted industry that would make us independent of the rest of the world and give employment to American labor at American wages. Not until the two wings of the industry, the woolen and the worsted, fell out among themselves, and the carded-wool manufacturers showed to an astonished public that the tariff, as it stood, throttled an important branch of the industry, instead of building it up, was the layman given an opportunity of getting a deeper insight into the workings of Schedule K.

The woolen industry in the United States is as old as the country itself. Carried on first as a household industry among the early colonists, it entered the factory stage with the introduction of mechanical power, first in connection with carding-machines in 1794, then with its application to spinning between 1810 and 1820, and later to weaving in the following decade.

Before the Civil War, all woolens were made by what is known as the carded-woolen process, which produces a cloth with a rough surface. Such cloths as tweeds, cheviots, cassimeres, meltons, and kerseys are among the best-known types of woolen cloth. Just before the Civil War the worsted industry made its appearance in this country. The worsted fabric differs from the woolen cloth in being made of combed yarn, as distinguished from the carded yarn which goes into the woolen cloth. The combing process involves, to a greater or less extent, the use of finer and longer grades of wool, and yields a fabric with a smooth surface, on which the weave is plainly visible. Among the best-known types of these cloths are the serges and the unfinished clay worsteds, which constitute the plain varieties, and the so-called fancy worsteds, showing a distinct pattern produced by the weave and the use of colored yarn.

How different the course of these two branches of the woolen industry has been, since the adoption of Schedule K substantially in its present form, is shown very strikingly by the figures of the United States Census. In 1859, the last census year preceding the adoption of Schedule K virtually in its present form, the value of the products of the woolen industry was nearly $62,000,000, while the worsted could boast of less than three and three quarter millions. In 1909, exactly half a century later, the woolen industry produced $107,000,000 worth of cloth, while the value of the worsteds exceeded $312,000,000. Put in another form, while fifty years ago the worsted industry was only one twentieth the size of the woolen, to-day it is three times as large as its older rival. Nor does this tell the whole story. The decline of the woolen industry has been not only relative, but absolute. Thus, after increasing from $62,000,000 in 1859 to $161,000,000 in 1879, it dropped to $134,000,000 in 1889, to $118,000,000 in 1899, and to $107,000,000 in 1909. On the other hand, the worsted industry showed a marked increase in each succeeding decade, beating all previous records in the first decade of the present century, when the value of its output rose from $120,000,000 in 1899 to more than $312,000,000 in 1909.

A large part of the growth of the worsted industry at the expense of the woolen is said to be due to change in fashion and taste, people generally preferring the smooth, smart-looking worsteds to the rough woolens. While this is, no doubt, true, the woolen-goods manufacturers assert that the change of fashion is only partly responsible for the decline of their industry. They insist that but for the unfair discrimination of the tariff against their industry in favor of the worsted it would continue to increase with the growth of population, since it alone can turn out an all-wool cloth that is within the means of poor people.

A feature which goes far to explain the superior advantage which the worsted industry has over the woolen is that the former is essentially the big capitalist’s field, while the woolen mills are still run to a large extent by people of moderate means. According to the last census report, in 1909 the average output per mill in the worsted industry was nearly one million dollars, which was more than five times as large as that of the average woolen mill. The prevailing type in the former is the large corporation, managed by high-salaried officials; in the latter, the typical mill is a comparatively small establishment, personally managed by the owner or owners, who form a partnership which in many cases has come down from earlier generations in the family and has not improved much on the old ways.

The great factor in the worsted industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899, and can boast of the largest and best-equipped mills not only in the United States, but in the entire world. Outside of the so-called trust are other large concerns, such as the Arlington Mills, largely owned by Mr. William Whitman, the most conspicuous figure in the industry, who has probably had more to do with the shaping of Schedule K than any other man in the country, and who has amassed a large fortune in the business, most of the capital invested in his mill having been built up from the profits of the business.

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.

In the second place, the law takes no account of the admixture of materials other than wool of which the cloth is made. A cotton worsted may contain cotton to the extent of one half or more of its total weight, yet the worsted manufacturer is allowed forty-four cents a pound “compensation” on the entire weight of the cloth. Mr. Dale, editor of “The Textile World Record,” quotes a typical instance of a cotton worsted. In turning out 8750 pounds of this cloth, 3125 pounds of raw wool were used, the remainder being cotton. Assuming that the price of the wool in this country was enhanced to the extent of the duty of eleven cents a pound, the manufacturer would be entitled to a compensatory duty of 3125 times eleven, or $343.75. But the law, on the four-to-one theory, allows a compensatory duty of forty-four cents per pound of cloth, or 8750 times forty-four, which is equal to $3850. The manufacturer is thus granted an extra protection of more than three and one half thousand dollars in the guise of compensation for the duty on wool which never entered the cloth.

In the discussion of the question in Congress, the stand-pat senators stoutly maintained that the four-to-one ratio was only a fair compensation to the American manufacturer. But the report of the Tariff Board, which no one has yet accused of being unfair to the manufacturers, has settled this point authoritatively by sustaining in most emphatic terms every charge made here against the system of levying duties under Schedule K.

In addition to the so-called compensatory duties, the tariff provides a distinct protective duty of from fifty to fifty-five per cent. on cloths. High as this duty appears in comparison with protective duties in most of the European countries, it is not exceptionally high as compared with the rates under other schedules of our tariff. It is only when taken in combination with the compensatory duties, which the official report of the Tariff Board has shown to be largely protective, that the prohibitive character of the duties in Schedule K comes to light. The figures of annual imports published by the Bureau of Statistics throw an interesting light on this aspect of the case. They show, for instance, that the duties on blankets in the fiscal year 1911 ranged from sixty-eight to one hundred and sixty-nine per cent. of their foreign selling price; on carpets, from fifty to seventy-two per cent., being the lowest duties imposed on any manufactures of wool; on women’s dress-goods the duties varied from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty-eight per cent.; on flannels, from seventy-one to one hundred and twenty-one per cent.; on woolen and worsted cloths, from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent.; on knit fabrics, from ninety-five to one hundred and fifty-three per cent.; on plushes and pile fabrics, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-two per cent.

None of these rates tells the whole story: they all understate the duties to which foreign goods are subject under the law; for they represent the duties on goods that were able to get into this country over our tariff wall. In some cases the imports represent vanishing quantities, only a few dollars’ worth, being probably the personal purchases of returning travelers. The duties that are high enough to keep foreign goods out of the country naturally do not find their way into the returns of the Bureau of Statistics. An illustration of this feature is furnished by the report of the Tariff Board. The duties upon woolen and worsted cloths just cited from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are shown to vary from ninety-four to one hundred and fifty per cent. The Tariff Board, in making a comparative study of the industry at home and abroad, obtained a set of representative samples of English cloths with prices at which they are sold in England, the duty they would have to pay if imported into the United States, and the prices at which similar cloths are sold in the United States. Sixteen of the samples, representing the cheapest cloths sold in England at prices of from twelve to fifty-four cents a yard, are not imported into the United States at all, owing to prohibitive duties ranging from one hundred and thirty-two to two hundred and sixty per cent. Thirteen out of the sixteen samples would have paid duties higher than the highest rate of one hundred and fifty per cent. given in the report of the Bureau of Statistics for cloths actually imported. This illustration will suffice to explain why the rates quoted above for various woolen products from the report of the Bureau of Statistics are understatements of the duties imposed under Schedule K.

An invariable feature of this schedule is that the duties rise in inverse ratio to the value of the commodities, so that the poor man’s grades pay the highest rates, while those intended for people who can best afford to pay the duties are subject to the lowest rates. In the set of English samples collected by the board, the cheapest cloth selling in England for twelve cents a yard would pay a duty in the United States equal to two hundred per cent. ad valorem, while the highest-priced fabric selling at $1.68 a yard would pay a duty of only eighty-seven per cent.

Small wonder that under the fostering care of Schedule K imports have been reduced to next to nothing. With a total domestic consumption of women’s dress-goods valued at more than $105,000,000, we imported six and one third million dollars’ worth of these goods in 1911. The imports of woolen and worsted cloth were only two and one half per cent. of the total domestic consumption. We imported blankets and flannels in 1909 worth $125,000 as against a domestic production of more than $10,500,000, making the imports only slightly more than one per cent. of our total consumption; even in carpets, which are subject to the lowest rates of duty imposed on manufactures under Schedule K, our imports were only $195,000 worth against a domestic production of $45,475,889, making the imports less than one half of one per cent. of our own production.

THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN WOOL INDUSTRY

After enjoying for nearly half a century a protection averaging forty-five per cent. and amounting to from one hundred to five hundred and fifty per cent. on the cheaper grades of wool, the American wool-grower is not able to satisfy as great a part of the national demand for his product as he was at the time of the Civil War. During the sixties we had to depend upon imports to the extent of little over one fourth (26.8 per cent.) of our total consumption of wool. To-day nearly one half of our needs have to be covered by foreign wools (about forty-five per cent. in 1910). When wool was placed on the free list under the Wilson Bill in 1894, it was charged that the abolition of the duty was responsible for the increase in our imports. But our growing dependence on imported wool despite the restoration of the duty under the Dingley Act, in 1897, goes to show that the tariff is no remedy for the shortage.

The wool-grower argues, however, that wool can be produced so much cheaper in Argentina and Australia that, if admitted free of duty to the United States, it would bring about the total disappearance of the American wool industry. The latest available figures given in the report of the Tariff Board show a world production of about 2,500,000,000 pounds of wool, of which the United States produces about one eighth. The world supply would furnish less than a pound of clean wool per head of population, not enough to give each of us more than one suit in three years. Of course the latter estimates are only approximate, but they are not far from the truth. If it were not for the plentiful admixture of cotton and shoddy to the annual stock of new wool, there would not be enough wool to clothe the people of the earth. Under these conditions, there is no danger of the world failing to make use of American wool. Any considerable curtailment in the production of American wool would have the tendency of raising the world’s price of wool to such an extent as to offer renewed encouragement to the American wool-grower. So much for that. But is it true that it costs so much to raise wool in the United States?

The Tariff Board reported that the average cost of production of wool in this country is about three times as high as in Australia and about double that in South America. On that basis our present duty is ridiculously low, and it is a wonder that our wool industry has not long gone out of existence. What is the secret of its miraculous escape from total extinction?

The Tariff Board average represents widely different conditions of production. A large part of the wool grown in this country--no less than eleven per cent. of the wool covered by the board’s investigation--is raised without any cost whatever to the wool-grower; in fact, he gets “a net credit,” to quote the board, or a premium, with each pound of wool coming from his sheep’s back. This is true of sheep-growers who are employing up-to-date methods in their business and have substituted the cross-bred merino sheep for the old-type pure merino. The cross-bred sheep is raised primarily to meet the enormous and rapidly growing demand for mutton. The price realized from the sale of mutton is sufficient not only to cover the entire expense of raising the sheep, but leaves the farmer a net profit, before he has sold a pound of his wool, which has become a by-product with him, and the proceeds from which represent a clear gain. It will be easily seen that the up-to-date mutton-sheep breeder can do very well without any duty on wool.

The mutton-sheep has come to stay, because we are fast getting to be a mutton-eating people. Despite the enormous increase in population, fewer cattle and hogs are being slaughtered to-day than twenty years ago, while the number of sheep killed has more than doubled in the same period. In 1880, for every sheep slaughtered at the Chicago stock-yards, four heads of cattle and twenty-one hogs were killed. In 1900 the number of sheep received at the stock-yards exceeded that of cattle, and in 1911, for every sheep slaughtered, there was only one half of a beef carcass and one and one quarter of a hog. The rapid increase in the demand for and supply of sheep out of all proportion to other animals is in itself the best refutation of the cry that sheep-growing is unprofitable. In his recent book on “Sheep Breeding in America,” Mr. Wing, one of the foremost authorities on the subject in this country, who investigated the sheep-breeding industry for the Tariff Board in every part of the country where it is carried on, as well as abroad, says that sheep-breeding is profitable despite the woefully neglectful manner in which it is conducted in the United States. Unlike some United States senators who have grown rich in the business of raising sheep, Mr. Wing remains cheerful at the prospect of a reduction of wool duties, and even their total abolition has no terrors for him. His attitude is very significant, when it is considered that he is a practical sheep-grower, still engaged in that business, in addition to writing on the subject, and that all his interests, both business and literary, are intimately wound up with the sheep industry.

Not all growers, it is true, have adopted modern methods. The report of the board shows five additional groups of farmers whose cost of production of wool varies from less than five cents a pound to more than twenty. Accepting these figures at their face-value, although they are only approximate, and assuming that a raw material like wool of which we cannot produce enough to satisfy our needs is a proper object of protection, the question still remains whether the tariff is to be high enough to afford protection to every man in the business, even when the results obtained by his neighbors show that he has his own inefficiency or backwardness to blame for his high costs, or whether the duty is to measure the difference between the cost of production of our efficient producers and that of their foreign competitors. If the former be taken as a standard, then the present duty on raw wool is not sufficiently high, and should be greatly increased; if the latter be accepted as a basis in tariff-making, then, there being no cost in raising wool on up-to-date American ranches, there seems to be no valid reason for any duty, except possibly one of a transitory nature, to allow sufficient time to the sheep-growers who need it to adjust themselves to modern conditions of business.

MILL EFFICIENCY

The same general considerations which apply to raw wool hold good as to its manufactures. There is no such thing as an average cost of production of woolen cloth in the United States. The enormous variety of cloths produced in the same mill proved an insuperable obstacle to the Tariff Board, which gave up the attempt to ascertain the actual cost of production. Instead, it undertook to obtain estimates from manufacturers of the cost of producing cloths, samples of which were furnished to them by the board. Assuming that all the estimates were made in good faith and that the agents of the board were all competent and equal to the task of checking them with the meager means at their command, the average costs even by the board represent widely differing conditions of industrial efficiency.

Industrial efficiency depends on a great many conditions an adequate discussion of which would take in far afield. One fact, however, stands out preëminently, and must be emphasized until it is seared into the consciousness and conscience of the American citizen, and that is that industrial efficiency, which is synonymous with low-labor cost, does not mean, or depend upon, low wages. Yet the lower wages in Europe constitute the stock argument in every plea for protection that is dinned into the ears of Congress.

Not being in a position to make a comprehensive inquiry into the efficiency of American mills in the woolen industry, the Tariff Board made a study of labor efficiency in the various process of wool manufacture in connection with output and wages paid. Almost invariably the mill paying higher wages per hour showed lower costs than its competitor with lower wages.

Thus, in wool scouring the lowest average wages paid to machine-operatives in the thirty mills examined was found to be 12.16 cents per hour, and the highest 17.79. Yet the low-wage mill showed a labor cost of twenty-one cents per hundred pounds of wool, while the high-wage mill had a cost of only fifteen cents. One of the reasons for this puzzling situation was that the low-wage mill paid nine cents per hundred pounds for supervisory labor, such as foremen, etc., while the high-wage mill paid only six cents. Apparently well-paid labor needs less driving and supervising than low-paid labor.

In the carding department of seventeen worsted mills the mill paying its machine-operatives an average wage of 13.18 cents per hour had a machine labor cost of four cents per hundred pounds, while the mill paying its machine-operatives only 11.86 cents per hour had a cost of twenty-five cents per hundred pounds. This was due largely to the fact that the lower-cost-high-wage mill had machinery enabling every operator to turn out more than 326 pounds per hour, while the high-cost-low-wage mill it turning out less than forty-eight pounds per hour.

The same tendency was observed in the carding departments of twenty-six woolen mills. The mill with the highest machine output per man per hour, namely 57.7 pounds, had a machinery-labor cost of twenty-three cents per hundred pounds, while the mill with a machine output of only six pounds per operative per hour had a cost of $1.64 per hundred pounds. Yet this mill, with a cost seven times higher than the other, paid its operatives only 9.86 cents per hour, as against 13.09 cents paid by its more successful competitor.

These examples could be repeated for every department of woolen and worsted mills, but will suffice to illustrate the point that higher wages do not necessarily mean higher costs. They show that mill efficiency depends more on a liberal use of the most improved machinery than on low wages. Thoughtful planning in arranging the machinery to save unnecessary steps to the employees, careful buying of raw materials, the efficient organization and utilization of the labor force in the mill, systematic watching of the thousands of details, each affecting the cost of manufacture, will reduce costs to an astonishing degree. When the board, therefore, states that the labor cost of production in this country is on the average, about double that in foreign countries, we must bear in mind the difference in costs in our own country, and the causes to which high costs are due. The fact is that the woolen industry, being one of the best, if not the best, protected industry in the country, shows an exceptional disposition to cling to old methods and to use machinery which long ago should have been consigned to the scrap-heap. That is where the chief cause of the comparatively high cost of production in a large part of the industry is to be looked for.

But, disregarding the question of efficiency, let us accept the figure of the Tariff Board, which found the labor cost in England to be one half that here, taking the manufacture from the time the wool enters the mill until it is turned out as finished cloth. The entire labor cost varies from twenty to fifty per cent. of the total cost of making cloth, according to the character of the cloth, and but seldom exceeds or approaches fifty per cent. If the protective duty is to measure the difference in labor cost, it should be fixed at not above twenty-five per cent. of the cost, that being the highest difference between the American and English labor cost. As against that, we now have a duty of about fifty-five per cent. of the selling price of the foreign cloth, in addition to the concealed protection in the so-called compensatory duty.

For decades we have been assured that all the manufacturer wanted was a duty high enough to compensate him for the higher wages paid in this country. In 1908 the Republican party laid down the formula that the tariff is to measure the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad, including a “reasonable profit to the manufacturer.” To-day the party has advocates of all kinds of protection, from those who wish the tariff to measure the difference in labor cost of the most efficient mills in this and foreign countries, as advocated by Senator LaFollette, to those who wish a tariff high enough to keep out foreign importations.

Whatever may be done with Schedule K by the Democratic Congress, it is time that we dismiss the hoary legend that the duties are maintained solely in the interest of the highly paid American working-man. The assertion comes with specially poor grace from the woolen and worsted industry, the most highly protected industry in the United States, paying the lowest wages to skilled labor. With the earnings of the great bulk of its employees averaging through the year less than ten dollars a week, while wages are about double that figure in less protected industries; with its workmen compelled to send their wives and children to the mills as an alternative to starvation on the man’s earnings; with the horrors of living conditions of the Lawrence mill-workers still ringing in our ears, it is time that we face the situation squarely and, whatever degree of protection we decide to maintain, that we frankly admit that it is primarily for the benefit of the capital invested in our industries.

Russia, Germany, and France do so frankly, and free-trade England manages to compete with them in the markets of the world, while paying higher wages to its employees. In turn we beat these nations, in their own and in the world’s markets, in the products of the very industries in which we pay the highest wages.

THE WINE OF NIGHT

BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

Come, drink the mystic wine of Night,
Brimming with silence and the stars;
While earth, bathed in this holy light,
Is seen without its scars.
Drink in the daring and the dews,
The calm winds and the restless gleam--
This is the draught that Beauty brews;
Drink--it is the Dream....

Drink, oh my soul, and do not yield--
These solitudes, this wild-rose air
Shall strengthen thee, shall be thy shield
Against the world’s despair.
Oh, quaff this stirrup-cup of stars
Trembling with hope and high desire--
Then back into the hopeless wars
With faith and fire!

“THEM OLD MOTH-EATEN LOVYERS”

BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

Author of “In the Tennessee Mountains,” “Where the Battle was Fought,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY GEORGE WRIGHT

Hair snow-white, the drifts of many a winter, eyes sunken amid a network of wrinkles, hands hardened and veinous, shoulders bent, and step laggard and feeble, the old lovers were as beautiful to each other, and as enthralled by mutual devotion, as on their wedding-day forty-five years before. They were beautiful also to more discerning eyes--to a wandering artist in quest of material, who painted them both in divers poses, and carried off his canvases. As a recompense of some sort, he left a masterly depiction of the god of love burned in the wood of the broad, smooth board of the mantelpiece above the hearth, where the fickle little deity, though furnished with wings for swiftest flight, had long presided in constancy.

Doubtless some such sentiment had prompted the pyrography, but its significance failed to percolate through the dense ignorance of the old mountain woman.

“Folks from the summer hotel over yander nigh the bluffs air always powerful tickled over that leetle critter,” she was wont to reply to an admiring comment, “but he ‘pears ter me some similar ter a flying-squirrel. I never seen no baby dee-formed with wings nohow, an’ I tol’ the painter-man at the time that them legs war too fat ter be plumb genteel. But, lawsy! I jes hed ter let him keep on workin’. He war powerful saaft-spoken an’ perlite, though I war afeared he’d disfigure every plain piece o’ wood about the house afore he tuk hisself away.”