Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/15

Rh Labor does not produce the pine, nor does it gain any great proportion of its market value.

The American people are clothed very expensively. They import about half their woolen goods, and pay thereon an enormous tax to the Government, amounting in 1885-1886 to $35,600,000. The other half of their clothing they buy of domestic manufacturers, and may be assumed to pay an unnaturally high price to about the same extent. We may say, then, that in twenty years the people have paid a bounty of about $700,000,000 to domestic manufacturers and about the same amount in taxes to the Government,

The average wage of Americans is, as is well known, considerably higher than that of the English; yet Mr. Mulhall estimates that the American works forty-nine days in the year to supply himself with clothing, while the Englishman accomplishes the same thing in thirty-four. This result has been brought about by the wool tariff of 1867, which imposed a heavy duty on an article not made or greatly added to in value by labor, wool, and also on woolen clothing. The history of the effect of this duty is interesting and even ludicrous. Foreign wools are needed to mix with American wools to make good cloth. Accordingly, when the tariff was put on wool the manufacturers found that the people would not buy the high-priced product, but bought foreign goods. Then they began to adulterate their woolen goods with shoddy and cotton. But, in spite of everything, the woolen industry was depressed, and the price of wool refused to go up. Some of them saw the moral; but only the other day I was talking with one who expressed his opposition to the Mills bill by saying, "We do not think it will hurt our business; we know it." On being asked if he did not think free wool and a duty of thirty-eight per cent a fair equivalent for the present duty, he started and clearly showed he had no accurate idea of what the