If the maker of woollens had a sufficient supply of free wool—that is, if the price of his raw material was not raised by a duty—all the protection he could rightfully ask against his foreign rival would be the difference in the cost of production here and abroad. But his wool costs him more than his foreign rival’s. If he is to meet him on a level, he must be protected against wool as well as production; that is, there must be two duties on cloth which is imported—one a duty to make up for the higher price he has had to pay for his raw material, the other for the higher price of manufacturing.
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.