Norwich bulletin., 1914-11-10


 ture of fibre lengths, including large 1 proportion of. the relatively short l lengths. The wool for woolens is pre- l pared by carding, which does not re- fore, include cheaper, because shorter, wool than worsteds; more fibre ends project from the finished cloth, and this is consequently much rougher to the touch than a worsted- fl
 What the woolen people wanted of the new tariff, according to one ex- pert explanation, was that it. should remove from combing wools, used for the making of worsteds, the high protection they had had under the wool people, in other words wanted access to longer flores, so that they could lessen the gap between worsteds and woolens. What they got was free raw wool and a reduction of the duty on imported finished wool cloths to an average of about 2S per cent
 Smashing Little Mills
 How the tariff smashes little mills is shown by the very late experience of a is really above the small mill class, but which illustrates well enough
 what the small mill is up against. This mill has for years past sold to
 Marshall Field Co, Tn Ch1Gago, a certain line of dress goods. The busi- ness was such certainty that the mill often made up the goods amount ing to 50 or 50 thousand yards, with out waiting for a formal order from Chicago. The new tariff changed things. When the new rates were eS- abolished, Marshall Field sent to Eng land samples O. the goods the Massa- chusetts mill had been making for them and asked for prices from the English mills. When they got the prices, which were a number of cents a yard lower than tlIey had Leen paying the American mill they sent the. English prices to the Massachusetts mill with this message: We would. like to keep on doing business with yoIt, because you are American, and have always given us good service. Here are the foreign prices. We don't ask you to go
 below them; if you can meet them, we will give you the orders" Careful figuring at the mill showed that the
 bare cost of producing the goods was
 aboue five cents a yard higher than the price offered by the English bidder.
 That was the end of the Marshall Field orders for the Massachusetts mill, and the experience has been and will be duplicated for many other concerns.
 Difference in Wages
 The great disadvantage of the Am erican mill seems to be the higher wages paid here. The English woolen manufacturer like the English cotton manufacturer, differs from his Ameri- car competitor in that he shuns any considerable investment in modern machinery and plant. In woolens, | where the element of personal skill | is so important, the English maker has the advantage of the American mill in lower wages; probably, also, his workers, owing to the larger markets for which they work, are more adapt able and not unlikely more efficient than our rural New England mill l hands. In the small mills here. the plant investment is small, and the | burden comes mainly in the difference | in wages. If the small ma'ls cannot stand the competition, special orders will have to be filled by foreign mak- CTS, or buyers will have to take what ! they can get from foreign stocks inn ported for sale here on commission. Rise in Raw Wool Prices. With the duty on raw wool removed, 1 there has lately been a rise of from 10 to 15 per cent in the cost of foreign
 wool, and some explanations Tor tnls 1 rise furnish interesting commentaries l on the ways of the American. Putting | several explanations together, it would seem that the rise in foreign wool prices is a resultant of the fact that foreign wools are graded as to length of flores: that American buyers abroad l force the price up by unreasoning de- termination to buy specific lots when other lots would serve their purposes and could be had at lower prices, and the fact that American raw wool Is not graded but comes to the manufacturor of all lengths of fibre messed together, and with a large and expensive adul- iteration of plain dirt. As to the latter, it is said that many American shear CTS deliberately load with sand heeces which they think would pass muster with even more dirt in them than they hT-fn GhP1n
 skirts" on a well fieeced sheep natur- 1 ally get dirty, and the average shear CT is accused of maintaining an artt | ficial standard of dirtiness that is a | substantial fraud on the buyer.
 The American wool buyer abroad iE l charged with a perverse determination l to get particular lots of wool, running | the price up needlessly, while his for eign competitors stand back and let him put the price up. When he has bought at an advanced figure the for eign buyer, so it is said, calmly buys | his own supply of ''just as good" at an l appreciably lower price. If this charge | is true, the American is adding need
 lessly to the difference in wages which 1 Is the heaviest burden in competition l with. the foreign manufacturer. This | account of the matter may not be l wholly accurate. but it is put forward l by men who ought to know the real
 facts.
 l 1 can because it is only on the basis of 1 graded wool that the buyer knows at i all what amount of cloth of a specified | grade he can produce with a specified 1 expenditure for the raw material. The ungraded American wool. on the con. 1 trary, may spin anything from 6s to | 64s. There is no knowing in advan,'e e 1 at all what it will produce. and this .s | a bad basis for figuring the cost of 1 producing specified grades of cloth,
 The on-grading of American wool is
 a practice that does scanty credit to
 our national boast of fairness and | horse sense.
 A Pathetic side.
 | There is pathetic side to this irn- | ninent extinction of the small mill. In all New England there are said to be II perhaps 400 such small establishments and in something like 1E0 villages the 1 woolen mill is the only industry, and l the towns sole excuse, economically. for existing at all.
 In these small places the people do
 some small farming, but for genera tions tho mill has been the one source of employment at wages, The rising
 generation goes into the mill as a
 matter of course, as their fathers and
 mothers did before them, The mili