AMERICA AS A WOOL MARKET.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 8, 12 May 1911, Page 4

AMERICA AS A WOOL MARKET.

OPPONENTS OF TARIFF REDUCTION.

In view of the interest being taken in the proposal to revise the United States wool tariff, the annual meeting of the Rational Association of Wool Manufacturers, which was held at Washington, was of special interest. At the meeting (according to files which have come to har>d) it was a generally-expressed sentiment that an aggressive campaign should be undertaken for the education of the public and to present the association's side of the tariff case with full publicity in reply to the criticisms which have been so freely directed at the wool tariff schedule. There did not appear to be any evidence of compromise. In the course of the annul report the following occurred : " The year just closing is one that goes without regret on the part of the wool manufacturers of America. It has witnessed a long, severe depression. There have been times during the year when probably one-half of the woollen machinery in the United States was idle. At present, perhaps, a somewhat better condition prevails, but the existing rate of production is altogether unsatisfactory, and the outlook is exceedingly uncertain. There is one main cause for all this — and that is the persistent political agitation of which the wool and woollen industry has been the devoted target. During the year 1909, in the middle of which the Aldrich-Payne tariff was enacted, our industry as a whole enjoyed a fair degree of prosperity. But a change came at the beginning of the present year. Schedule K was singled out for a particularly vicious attack by widely-read magazines and newspapers, encouraged by interests opposed to the protective system. . . . . Though an effort will undoubtedly be made in the next Congress by the leaders of the anti-protec-tion majority in the House of Representatives to re-construct Schedule K, this cannot succeed without the co-operation ot the Senate and the President. It would be most unjust to reduce the duties on wool and the manufacture of wool without making a proportionate reduction in the duties on the indispensable supplies and materials of the industry contained in other schedules of the tariff. The plan of schedule by schedule revision, though earnestly favoured now by many sincere men, will have far fewer friends next year when the process has been more searchingly considered. But to frame a hostile Tariff Bill is one thing and to secure its complete. enactment is another. In order to succeed, the anti-protection leaders of the House must win the assent of the Senate, where the majority will remain at least nominally protectionist. Inasmuch as all of the so-called progressive Senators of the Middle West insisted on the maintenance of the present rates of duty on the raw wool of their constituents throughout the framing of the Aldrich-Payne law, it is improbable that a majority can be secured in the Senate, as it will be constituted in December next, for any tariff revision measure which radically reduces the protection now given to either wool growers or wool manufacturers. The people of the West will be quick to understand that inadequate protection to American mills and a consequent flood of imported goods from Europe would be as disastrous to the wool-growing interest as if wool were put upon the free list. This is a fact which the National Association can profitably impress upon the conscience of the whole United States."