The statement that the transportation charge borne by the material entering into an ordinary pair of men's shoes averages one and a quarter cents is the result of a definite calculation made by one of the largest shoe manufacturers of the country. A leading woolen manufacturer estimates that the price of wool at Boston will average perhaps 30 cents a pound "in the grease," including a transportation charge that will average one cent a pound. The loss in cleaning and scouring is about forty-five per cent., and the price of a pound of scoured wool will average about 63 cents at the mill. Of this about two cents is chargeable to transportation. One hundred pounds of wool will make about seventy pounds of straight woolen cloth, on which the transportation charge has therefore been a fraction less than three cents a pound. On cloth that is mixed with cotton the transportation charge is less. The rates on woolen goods from any of the New England mills are so low that a yard of cloth which will sell from $1.50 upwards in any of the western markets will not have paid the railroads more than five cents from the sheep's back in Colorado to Massachusetts and back again to the Mississippi River. The following information as to the extent of the transportation charge borne by divers materials of various industries has been obtained in each instance from an authority in that industry. The transportation charge on raw cotton to the mills in Massachusetts will average from one-half to two-thirds of a cent a pound, not exceeding one cent per pound even from plantations so remote as those of Texas. Cotton loses from fifteen to twenty per cent. in the cleaning, one hundred pounds of cotton making from eighty to eighty-five pounds of cotton goods. As ordinary calico will run about six yards to the pound and sell for about five cents, the cotton that has paid a freight rate of from 50 cents to $1 is woven into $24 worth of calico. The transportation charge on a pair of rubber overshoes, including the rubber from South America, the cotton stock, and the shipment to the western markets, averages about two and one-half per cent. of the cost of those markets. That is, a pair of rubber overshoes retailing for 75 cents will have paid for transportation, all told, less than one and nine-tenths cents. In no one of these examples, which, perhaps, are typical of the entire clothing industries in so far as the use of leather, wool and cotton are concerned, is the transportation charge an appreciable factor in the price either of the material to the manufacturer or of the finished article to the consumer.