with it. If protection is to be only for manufacturers, and not for farmers as fully as for manufacturers, I care not how soon free trade comes. The farmers are patient, but the Farmers' Alliance looks to a future when they will not be so patient. It must become political to the extent of claiming for farmers the benefits of protection.

In this view, Mr. President, I concur, although as the bill stands I regard such construction as is attributed to the Department in advance of the passage of the bill, by the Boston Journal, above quoted, as wholly strained and unwarranted by any of its provisions. But that any such an outrageous construction may be prevented beyond the possibility of doubt, I trust the Finance Committee will consent to such an amendment of the section as will not leave its meaning open to construction. If we are to have protection, then let it be dealt out with an impartial hand. Let the balances be held with a steady nerve. Let it be meted out to the farmer of the West and South in equal measure as to the manufacturer of the East, to the wool-grower as well as to the woolen manufacturer.

The truth is, Mr. President, justice to the producers of all wools, and of all coarse wools in particular, in this country demands that a specific duty of at least 4 cents per pound be imposed on wools of the third class, valued at 12 cents or less per pound, and of 8 cents per pound if of the value of over 12 cents, and from two and a half to three times these rates if scoured. The fact is, wool has never had its full and just share of protection under any of our tariff laws. This is essentially so in so far as combing and carpet wools are concerned.

The act of 1867, while extending adequate protection to clothing wools, withheld it unjustly from combing and carpet wools, while the act of 1883 kept up the unjust discrimination, aggravating instead of relieving against it, by reducing the rates on coarse or carpet wools onehalf and one cent per pound, according to value, while a less reduction, compared with the relative duties under the act of 1867, of about 3.3 cents per pound was made in the duties on the clothing and combing wools. The claim that has been persistently made for years by the manufacturers and importers that certain kinds of coarse, hairy, kempy wools, used in making carpets, are not, can not, or will not for some reason be raised in this country, and that certain qualities of lustrous Australian wools are required to mix with our American wools in order to impart to our delaines a peculiar luster which, it is alleged, can not be obtained from our product, is not well founded, and has in recent years been completely exploded and dissipated by the most accomplished experts and statisticians.

It is true there has these recent years been a larger falling off in the production of carpet wools in this country than in the other grades, but this can be traced with almost mathematical accuracy to the lack of adequate protection. The Bureau of Statistics estimated the production of carpet wools in the United States in 1883 at 22,000,000 pounds. Hon. William Lawrence in a recent address estimated the wool product of the United States for 1889 at 240,000,000 pounds, 10,000,000 pounds of which he estimates as belonging to the class of carpet wools. Bearing upon the question of our capacity to produce under proper economic conditions all grades of wool required for any purpose in this country, whether of carpets or the finest of delaines, I quote the following from this same able and instructive address of Mr. Lawrence. He says:

Under proper conditions all the needed wools can be produced in the United States. We have the lands, the labor, the skill, and among our people the will to produce all. The tariff acts of 1867 and 1883 classed wool as clothing, combing, and carpet wools. Since 1867, by improvements in machinery, merino

wools can be combed as well as the long wools, so that the distinction between them has practically ceased. Of these classes clothing and combing wools beyond question can all be produced in this country. The distinguished president of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, William Witman, esq., in his letter of November 22, 1889, to another eminent manufacturer, Jessie Metcalf, esq., of Providence, said:

"The American staple wools are better adapted for the fabrication of satisfactory clothing for the American people than any other wool grown. We may invoke the teachings of Darwin in support of the same view. The environments which determine the character of wools are chiefly breeds of sheep, soil, climate, food, and husbandry. Within our borders we have substantially every variety of these to be found on the globe. * **The carpet-wool product of the United States is almost exclusively the fleece of sheep of Mexican origin, which are raised chiefly in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and certain of the Territories of the mountain region of the country situated between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Slope."

The Boston Wool Reporter, in its issue of September 26, speaking on this subject, says:

We not only grow carpet wools in New Mexico, Colorado, and parts of Texas, but wherever one-fourth blood wools are grown we have the breech and belly wool, which is carpet stock. And the skins of the coarser grades of sheep are excellent for the manufacture of fine gloves.

The statistician of the Department of Agriculture, in a letter to Mr. Lawrence, of November 11, 1889, says:

The grasses of the South, many of them peculiar to this region, are numerous and valuable. ⭑* * Especially should this region undertake at once the supply of all the carpet-wool required by the manufacturers, which is now almost the only foreign wool manufactured in the United States. Indeed, not an ounce of any sort of wool need to be imported.

As bearing on this feature of the subject, I beg also to incorporate into my remarks the very able and conclusive letter of our present Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. J. M. Rusk, of date February 28 last. It is as follows:

Letter from the Secretary of Agriculture upon the possibilities of wool-raising in the United States.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, Washington, D. C., February 28, 1890. SIR: Your letter is received, making inquiry whether "our country lacks conditions of soil and climate for producing every variety of wool, and that, too, in commercial quantities, and as a fairly remunerative branch of agriculture."

This inquiry is suggested by the following quotation from the Providence Journal of a recent date: "We have tried all sorts of wool tariffs in years past, and never yet have they caused the production here of certain kinds of wool that are absolutely necessary to give the required finish to woolen and worsted fabrics and to make carpets. We never can accomplish the feat. It is physically impossible. Certain wools require for their production conditions of climate and soil which we do not possess, and that settles it."

This country possesses a marvelous range of climate conditions, having twenty-four degrees of latitude between twenty-five and forty-nine degrees, with altitudes compassing levels from the semi-tropical to those of perpetual snow, and ocean currents modifying the climate of both coasts. Soils range from those of geological formations of the early geologic ages to the alluvium of the present day. A continent so broad, so varied in soil and climate, is properly designated as the Western World, and the United States compasses all its possibilities, except those of strictly tropical and absolutely polar areas.

It can therefore produce, with no limitations of practical importance, all the races and breeds of sheep in the world. The families of the merino race, originating in Spain, all thrive in this country, and include a large proportion of existing flocks. All the mutton breeds of Great Britain, the breeds producing medium and long wool, flourish here, and are to be found scattered throughout the regions on which sheep husbandry is fostered almost exclusively for the wool production. The coarse-wool type is also represented by the Spanish varieties, which went first to Mexico and then to all our Southern domain, and formed the foundation to most of the flocks in all the territory of the arid region beyond the Missouri. There have also been importations of Asiatic and African sheep in the South. We actually possess the flocks and produce the wools of the three groups in the customs wool classification, namely, the carding, the combing, and the carpet wools. The supply of each class, it is true, is not equally pro

portioned to the manufacturing demand, for very obvious reasons, which have nothing to do with soil or climate or impossibility of adaptation to the physical conditions prevailing on the Western continent.

Our manufactures of wool have had a natural development. Two generations ago the domestic manufacture was very generally distributed through the districts then settled. The rise of the factory system destroyed the hand manufacture of wool throughout the world. The development of manufacture by machinery was slow, beginning with coarse fabrics. For many years the carding processes only were in vogue. A single generation ago there was little combing or worsted manufacture and fine cassimeres were unknown. Few carpets were then made here. Both industries have since had a remarkable development, nearly supplying the home demand, and no demand for foreign carpets exists, except to supply the fancies and whims of the fastidious, who want a particular pattern or a foreign name.

Our patented machinery is now sought abroad, with which to manufacture the supplies of other countries. Thus our progress in manufacturing, apparently slow and by steps from lower to higher forms, has been really rapid, and every stage of progress has created demand for greater variety of wool, which there was before no inducement to produce. The Saxon Merinos, for instance, bearing the finest wool in the world, were imported and bred when our manufacturers were pressed to supply the requirements of the country for cloths of medium fine wools, and were not yet ready to produce fine broadcloths, and therefore could not offer prices that would foster increased supply of that grade. But there is no climatic difficulty in their production.

As to carpet wools, the principal reason why they have not been produced in sufficient quantities is because they have been discriminated against in tariff rates. For instance, the imports of clothing wool in 1888-'89 paid an average duty of 49.03 per cent., worsted wools a duty of 42.5 per cent., and carpet wools a duty of only 26.16 per cent. The average duty per pound was 10.55 cents for clothing wools, 10.09 for worsted, and 3.18 for carpet wools. This is not all of the discrimination. The classification which includes in the third class all wools except English and Merino is a drag-net for all other wools of the world, covering a range of quality and style wide enough for a very extensive variety of manufactures. Besides, there is admitted in this class a valuable line of incidentals or so-called waste products of manufacture, worth very much more a pound in its cleansed state than the imports of clothing wools. Naturally. under these discriminations the carpet wools constituted 75 per cent. of all im ports. Thus the third class is a loop-hole for the admission of a great variety of wool through which the barrier for the protection of wool-growers is practically broken down.

Very respectfully,

RECIPROCITY.

J. M. RUSK, Secretary.

In view of the vast interests involved in the wool industry of this country, in view of the fact that must be apparent to the most casual observer that any measure of domestic legislation, as proposed by the Democratic party, looking to the placing of wool on the free-list, or any international reciprocal arrangement, as has been suggested in certain quarters, which would as a part of the project open our ports to the wool either of all nations or those of South and Central America alone, could but result, and that too in a brief time, in the absolute destruction of this great industry in the United States, as also in the serious crippling, if not destruction of many others fostered by and depending on it for existence, it does not seem possible that either of these proposed schemes, and to my mind the one is as irrational and objectionable as the other in so far as free wool might be made a factor, is sufficiently pregnant with compensation in any possible view, in respect of trade advantages or otherwise, either domestic or foreign, to justify a sacrifice of the almost immeasurable interests involved in the sheep industry of this country by a total surrender of the rights and interests of this great producing class, either to the rapacity of the manufacturers of our own country or to the greed of the syndicate representing the owners of a hundred million sheep in the Argentine Republic.

In 1864 that Republic had but 23,000,000 head of sheep. Twenty years later, in 1884, it had over three times that number, or over 70,

000,000, and to-day the number is rapidly approaching and soon will be over 100,000,000 head. Reciprocity of trade, if established on a basis of opening our ports to such necessaries as we do not produce here, or only in quantities far short of home consumption, in exchange for free foreign ports for our surplus products, is commendable and has my hearty support, but reciprocity which would strike down any of the great industries of this country is something not to be thought of.

LEGISLATION ALREADY ENACTED THE PRESENT SESSION IN THE INTEREST OF

WOOL-GROWERS.

Already has the present Congress placed upon the present statutebooks two acts-one, known as the Dingley worsted bill, making worsted cloths dutiable the same as woolen cloths, and the other, the administrative bill, checking frauds upon the part of importers-that have been and will continue to be still more in the future of immense value to the wool-growers of this country. The effect of the passage of these acts, especially the one known as the Dingley bill, which, among other things, classifies these worsteds as woolens, was to cause an advance of about 2 to 3 cents per pound in the price of fine delaine wools in this country, while it immediately took the breath out of about thirtyfive hundred looms in England that had been engaged in making worsteds to be shipped to this country, and the result will be the starting up of a corresponding number of American looms, which will give employment to thousands of operatives in this country, increase the home market for agricultural products, and upon which these goods will be manufactured in the future.

The effect of this enactment, together with certain rulings of the Treasury Department since the present Administration came into power, has been further to reduce the importation of worsted coatings from 21,400 pieces brought in during the month of May, 1889, to 11,340 pieces imported during the month of May, 1890, or a reduction in the importation of this quality of goods of nearly 50 per cent.

WAGE-WORKERS.

The wage-workers, the laboring classes of this country, like the farmers, are vitally interested in the maintenance of a protective tariff that will increase the demand for labor in this country and advance the rate of wages. T. V. Powderly, the great leader in the interest of labor and of the laboring classes, understands this question fully. Here is what he said, among other things, in a recent address:

I am a tariff man and a protectionist, and for the reason that I am an American and a friend of American laborers. No workingman has ever called for a reduction and no reduction should be made until it is demanded by the people. We need no tariff tinkering. We want protection from one end of the country to the other. Touch not the tariff; raise the tariff so high that not a single article of foreign manufacture can come to it.

WAGES.

It is insisted by our Democratic friends that a protective tariff is in principle and practical effect hostile to the interests of the wage-workers. If this is so, then it would follow as a logical sequence that wage-workers, the employés in the various kinds of factories and mills in free-trade England, would be higher and better than are those of this country or at least certain portions of it, for instance, the State of Massachusetts, in the special interest of which State it is claimed the protective tariff has been engineered and where its influence has been most powerfully felt.

The following article, however, taken from a recent issue of the

American Economist-and its statistics are accurate-will show that in the different mills of cotton, woolen, worsted, and linen, the rates of wages of men, women, boys, and girls range from 84 per cent. in cotton mills to 121 per cent. in woolen mills, 139 per cent. in worsted mills, up to 142 per cent. in linen mills higher in the State of Massachusetts than in these same character of mills in the United Kingdom. The table is as follows:

WAGES IN GREAT BRITAIN AND MASSACHUSETTS.

Consul Brown, of Glasgow, has lately furnished the State Department with fresh statistics, prepared under the auspices of the British Board of Trade, concerning the rates of wages of men, women, boys, and girls in the cotton, woolen, worsted, and linen mills of the United Kingdom. It is interesting to compare these figures with those of Mr. Wadlin, chief of the Massachusetts bureau of labor statistics, in his latest report for similar industries in the United States. The average yearly wages of men, women, boys, and girls in the United Kingdom and in the United States are as follows:

In this connection I beg to submit and incorporate in my speech the following, taken from the columns of the Daily Press, of New York, in its issue of October 5, 1888, which gives at a glance the difference in wages in this country and in free-trade Great Britain:

Below we print a telling talk by Nathaniel McKay in the shape of a tabular statement of wages per week in England and the United States: