The absurdity, even criminality, of these methods, which have persisted so long, was completely demonstrated in the course of the Payne-Aldrich Bill in the making of the schedule which for twenty years has been the most important in our tariff, from a doctrinal and a political point of view, and that is K, the wool schedule. When the late revision was undertaken duties were in operation which had been forced from a reluctant Congress in 1897, solely by the political power of the combined Wool-Growers Association and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers. In the decade following the adoption of the Dingley Bill the power of the former organization waned. The members of the “wool trinity” who had held so strong a whip over Congress were dead. Ohio, which had been their headquarters, no longer felt the life-and-death interest it once had in prohibitive wool duties. But the second association was as alive and ready for action as ever, and in the fall of 1908, when Mr. Taft’s promises of tariff revision became reasonably convincing, the head of the Association, Mr. William Whitman of Boston, called together those in the business whose interests were identical with his, and they sought counsel with the growers of wool in the far West. In October of 1908 the two interests met in Chicago. Mr. Whitman says that this conference was called at the suggestion of the wool-growers. For people who had taken an initiative the wool-growers were very modest. They said frankly they were not prepared to talk extensively on tariff questions, that they had come to listen. Mr. Whitman did the talking, and to such good effect that the conference decided: “it is the sense of this meeting that in the coming revision of the tariff the present duties on wool and woollen goods be maintained without reduction.” Some two months later Mr. Whitman appeared before the Ways and Means Committee with an elaborate argument for preserving the wool duties. He made a particular point of defending the duty on raw wool. “Fair Play for All Interests” is the subhead under which Mr. Whitman asked that the tax on his raw material be continued. The Bulletin of the Wool Association puts the principle this way: “The traditions of the association all condense themselves into the Golden Rule”—“Do unto others as you would have others do to you; between grower and manufacturer and as between one manufacturer and another, that has always been the guiding principle.”