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.