A large part of the growth of the worsted industry at the expense of the woolen is said to be due to change in fashion and taste, people generally preferring the smooth, smart-looking worsteds to the rough woolens. While this is, no doubt, true, the woolen-goods manufacturers assert that the change of fashion is only partly responsible for the decline of their industry. They insist that but for the unfair discrimination of the tariff against their industry in favor of the worsted it would continue to increase with the growth of population, since it alone can turn out an all-wool cloth that is within the means of poor people.
A feature which goes far to explain the superior advantage which the worsted industry has over the woolen is that the former is essentially the big capitalist’s field, while the woolen mills are still run to a large extent by people of moderate means. According to the last census report, in 1909 the average output per mill in the worsted industry was nearly one million dollars, which was more than five times as large as that of the average woolen mill. The prevailing type in the former is the large corporation, managed by high-salaried officials; in the latter, the typical mill is a comparatively small establishment, personally managed by the owner or owners, who form a partnership which in many cases has come down from earlier generations in the family and has not improved much on the old ways.
The great factor in the worsted industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899, and can boast of the largest and best-equipped mills not only in the United States, but in the entire world. Outside of the so-called trust are other large concerns, such as the Arlington Mills, largely owned by Mr. William Whitman, the most conspicuous figure in the industry, who has probably had more to do with the shaping of Schedule K than any other man in the country, and who has amassed a large fortune in the business, most of the capital invested in his mill having been built up from the profits of the business.
If the quarrel between the woolen and worsted manufacturers had no other consequences than to affect our fashions, the rest of us could well afford to let the rival forces fight it out among themselves. But it affects the consumer very vitally, and particularly that part of the consuming public that can ill afford to pay high prices for its clothes. For woolen is distinctly the poor man’s cloth, while worsted is the cloth of the well-to-do. As will be shown presently, our tariff on raw wool is designed to keep out of this country the cheap, short staple wools which our woolen industry could use to great advantage. The tariff thus artificially restricts the manufacture of woolens, while stimulating the production of worsteds, and, as the poor man cannot afford a genuine worsted cloth, it has to be adulterated with cotton to the extent of at least one half. Many of the “cotton worsteds” contain only a small fraction of wool, most of the material being cotton. It is this aspect of the effect of the tariff on the consumer that has made the family quarrel between the two branches of the wool manufacturing industry a matter of national concern.