The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913Various
History
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Various
Periodicals
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.
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