The Tariff in Our TimesTarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
History
The Tariff in Our Times
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
Tariff -- United States -- History
These two duties vary with different grades of woollens. The schedule is
highly complex—a matter for experts only. Its results, however, are
simple—and hard—enough, for what they amount to is that the cheaper the
blanket or the dress goods, the HIGHER the duty! On many materials and
articles suitable for the slender purse these duties are so high that
none of the goods can be imported. On cloth, for instance, worth not
more than forty cents a pound, the duty averages over 140 per cent; on
cloth worth more than seventy cents a pound, it averages about 95 per
cent.
We shall notice here but one item of the taxes which bring about this
unjust discrimination, and that is the duty allowed to make up for the
higher cost of the raw wool. This duty is reckoned on the number of
pounds of wool in the grease supposed to be used in making a pound of
cloth. Where the goods are worth less than forty cents a pound three
pounds are allowed; where they are worth more, four pounds. As the duty
on this wool is eleven cents, the compensatory duty on a pound of cloth
is thirty-three or forty-four cents. Take the latter as an illustration,
it applying to the only grades imported in any quantity. This is an out
and out swindle, for the simple reason that few of them contain this
amount of grease wool.
When the discussion of the wool schedule was going on in Congress in
1909, the _Textile World Record_, a remarkably able, and fair-minded
Boston trade journal, published the result of a series of analyses of
cloth which its editor, Samuel S. Dale, had made personally, in order to
discover the actual protection each was getting under the Dingley law.
The estimate in each case was based on a large quantity, 10,000 yards.
Here are samples of the results. The first fabric was a worsted serge,
weighing 11,500 pounds. Mr. Dale found that 21,941 pounds of grease wool
had been used in this piece of cloth. Now, according to a rational and
honest application of the protective principle, one would expect the
compensatory duty, in case such a piece of cloth was presented for
import, to be eleven cents on each 21,941 pounds, or $2413.51; but as a
matter of fact, it would be $5060! That is, forty-four cents would be
charged on each pound of cloth; as if four pounds of wool had been
required to make it, while as a matter of fact, less than two pounds had
gone into it.
A cotton-warp dress goods was analyzed in which but a trifle over one
pound of grease wool had been used for each pound of cloth. Mr. Dale
calculated the compensatory duty on the 10,000 yards should be $496.65.
But that cloth actually receives $2595.63! In the case of a piece of
cotton warp casket cloth made of cotton, wool, and shoddy, the
compensatory duty under the law is reckoned at $4262.72, while actually
it should be $2238.15, and so it went. But two of the eleven fabrics
contained over half of the four pounds on which the duty would be
reckoned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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