“One mill which, while independent, used to make $400,000 worth of thread per annum now makes $600,000, and another which made $250,000 now makes $400,000, an increased turnoff of about fifty per cent, and this without hiring an additional hand. This, of course, lessens the cost of manufacturing considerably. When the four mills were selling independently on this side, each of them carried stock in New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco, and each had travelling men going over the territory. But with the advent of the combination all the stores in the various cities were turned into one, and a much smaller force is used to sell the products of the various mills.” Now of course if the theory of the trust is sound, we should get some benefit from this combination on shoe thread, the only one of its products which we consider here. But what happened to shoe thread? In the last few years every variety has advanced rapidly. Increase in cost of materials—increase in rents—rapacious dealers—the trust people tell you. But the facts are these according to an expert authority: the linen thread trust were selling their shoe threads in 1909 for at least 50 per cent more on an average than they cost them, and they were able to do this almost entirely because of the duty which protected them from foreign competition. The cost of producing in Ireland a shoe thread known in the trade as No. 1 is 40 cents a pound. In the United States it is 47 cents. The duty on this thread was 19¾ cents a pound—12¾ cents more than was necessary to cover difference in cost—and the trust sold the thread 71 _cents net_ a pound! No. 4 shoe thread cost 53 cents to make in Ireland. It cost 64 cents here. There was a duty of 25 cents a pound on it, and it sold at $1.20 a pound, nearly _twice what it cost!_ In two years (1907–1908) its price jumped _three_ times. And what is the attitude of the Linen Thread Trust toward the protective tariff? Its members signed a petition to the Ways and Means Committee in 1909 in which they prayed that the duty be kept on flax. They wished to “encourage the fibre-producing industry,” they said—although they knew, nobody better, that no flax fibre for thread has ever been grown here, in spite of more than thirty years of tax-paying. Of course they asked that the duty on thread be untouched!