Of course, the McKinley rates on raw wool meant the McKinley rates on woollen goods, that is, if the National Association could get them. In principle, they were those of the compact of 1867, between the two wings of the wool industry, which rates have already been explained. They provided for compound duties; that is, one set of duties which made up to the manufacturer for the tax he paid on his raw material—the aim being, of course, to put him on the same basis as his foreign rival—and a second set which was purely protective. In estimating the first class of duties, the National Association demanded that four pounds of wool should be reckoned to a pound of cloth. It had been shown again and again that it was only “sometimes” that this amount of wool was required for a pound of cloth, that the effect of the ratio was to make all of the heavy-shrinking wools for which four or more pounds were needed too dear to be imported, and at the same to give an entirely unnecessary compensation to cloth goods made from wools which shrink but slightly. When the point was made, the National Association raised a hue and cry, and Congress was warned to respect its influence as it had been in 1890. When it came to the duties for protection the Association which had protested against the greed of the wool-growers in demanding high duties showed themselves equally greedy and more successful; for the wool-growers, except in the case of carpet wools, which we do not produce, had to content themselves with the McKinley rates, while the woollen manufacturers were able to raise the duty on the goods which are chiefly imported to the highest point it had ever touched, 55 per cent. It is interesting to note that in the compact of 1867, to which the Association constantly appealed in the making of the Dingley Bill as it had in earlier bills, 25 per cent was considered a proper protection for the goods on which the Association now asked and received 55 per cent. When the bill finally passed the Conference it carried the same puzzling provision for a duty on wool tops as had been put into the McKinley Bill on the suggestion of the then president of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, Mr. William Whitman. As we have seen, this was not a clearly stated figure: tops were to carry the duty of the basket clause of the schedule. Figured out, this amounted to a higher duty on tops than the bill provided for yarn, which is the more advanced stage of wool on its way to cloth. There was opposition to this duty and grumblings of manipulation, but it was many years before the truth about it became public property.