The root of all the evils springing from Schedule K is the specific
duty of eleven cents a pound on all clothing wools used by the woolen
industry and most of the wools used by the worsted industry. Wools
differ greatly in value. They may be long or short, fine or coarse,
comparatively clean, or so full of grease and dirt, which the sheep
accumulates in its shaggy coat while roaming in the fields, as to
shrink to one fifth of its purchased weight after it has been washed
and scoured in the mill.
Yet all of these wools, when brought to the gates of the United States
custom-house, would have to pay the same duty of eleven cents per
pound. On fine English wool, which contains only ten per cent. of
grease and dirt, this is equivalent to a little over twelve cents a
pound of clean wool. On a wool shrinking in weight, in the course of
scouring, to only one fifth of its raw weight, the eleven-cents duty
is equivalent to fifty-five cents per pound of clean wool, a figure
which no manufacturer can afford to pay, and which, therefore, keeps
the wool out of this country. Taken in connection with the price of
wool, the discrimination against the coarse, heavy-shrinking wools used
primarily by the woolen industry appears even more striking. Thus, on
the finer grades of wool quoted in London at forty-seven cents per
pound, the duty of eleven cents would be equivalent to twenty-three
per cent. ad valorem; while on the lower-priced wools, the only kind
that is available for the poor man’s cloth, the eleven-cents duty would
be equivalent to the prohibitive figure of anywhere from one hundred
to five hundred and fifty per cent. The result is that the durable,
weather-proof, and health-protecting cheap woolen cloth which the
English and Continental working-man can afford to wear, must give way
to the short-lived but dressy cotton worsted, which leaves the American
workman, compelled to work outdoors in all sorts of weather, poorly
protected against its inclemencies.