The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-07
IDA M. FARRELL
 ON THREAD TRUST

In the March American Magazne, Ida M Tarbel writes an article which she calls Where Every Penny Counts" It is an article which shows how the tariff has increased the cost of livng-espe- cially for the poor. Here is the story of the Thread Trust, as Miss Tarbell tells it:
 The poor woman of today not only sees herself cut off from wool clothing and covering, she finds herself pinched by the steady increase of the price of everything which goes into keeping the scanty articles she can buy in order. She must have thread. Spool cotton is as necessary an article of daily con sumption in the household as fuel or cloth. Many women with families, on $500 year, many shop and factory girls on S6 or sS a week, make their own clothes. Not infrequently these women Tn their work are obliged, when not protected by a union, to furnish their own thread. Miss Ainslee found one cap-worker in New York last year spend ing an average of 75 cents a week for thread for her work out of an average wage of $8 week. For many years the price of the ordinary 2OO-yard spool cot ton had been cents, twelve spools for 50 cents, when suddenly in 1900 it was ad- Vanced to cents, about double the price 1t was selling for in England. The cause Of the advance offers one of the incest studies we have had of the beneicent enects on prices of tariff combined with trust.
 ''The leading brand of thread which has been selling at cents in New York and about half that in England is made by J. x P. Coats, Limited, of Paisley, Scotland, and by the Coats thread com bination in this country The Coats house is the oldest and most progressive thread house in the world. It early saw the advantage of establishing a factory in the United States and competing for the American trade upder the protection of the tariff. Other English firms also saw the advantage, chief among them the Clarke Mile End Spool Cotton com pany of Newark, New Jersey. A few years ago the Coats realized that a com bination of the English concerns doing business here would be profitable and one was brought about, the products of the amalgamation being handled by the Spool Cotton company of New York City. That is, the English concerns in the United States trustified themselves to all intents and purposes. In 1897 some 16 of the English competitors of the Coats con- cern combined In $l0,0OO.OO trust, called the English Sewing Cotton trust. The J.
 & P. Coats company took $1.OOO,OOO of the stock and at least once since has helped the organization out of trouble by lending it $2,O0O,0OO Thus the two concerns are working together. The next year after the English combination was formed-1S9S-an American Thread Trust company was formed. It was made up of the 13 leading American concerns all, indeed, but one of the large domestic companies went into it. No sooner was this done than the English trust bought the majority of the trusts stock. Here then was an English trust owning and controlling the American trust and dic- tating its policy from the other side of the water. And this British trust was affiliated and partly owned by the still larger concern, the J. & P. Goats com pany. It comes down to this, that the | $4S, 000,0O0 Coats concern controls practi- cally the thread business of England and America. No sooner was the English con- cern complete here than thread was ad- | vanced.'