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.