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representative of the Oldham Cotton Spinners' Association, before the Royal Commission.

Q. Are there any special causes which tend to prevent our producing either as cheaply or as well as our foreign competitors? A. I do not know that there are any special causes. I could not allege any for the moment. I believe that they certainly get cheaper labor abroad. Q. To what countries are you alluding? A. In the old city of Venice, and in the immediate neighborhood, I have been told that there have been several large cotton spinning mills and manufactories established within recent years, and I am told that in those mills they work all the hours that it is possible to work, 132 hours a week; but I may tell you that I have returns from one of those mills showing the hanks produced per spindle. I have had the counts given to me and I know that there is no spindle made in England that can produce such a number of hanks in the time that it has to work here in England. For instance, I find that in Venice they are producing thirties counts, and they are producing fifty and sixty hanks per spindle per week. That is more than we can do, for we think ourselves well off if we produce about twenty-eight. That must have a very great influence upon the cost of production. It is the pace that kills, and if these people are producing at a larger rate than we can do on account of our number of hours being limited, that is an element of danger to our trade, so far as it goes.

Q. Do you think that the duties charged upon our goods in foreign countries has any effect upon our trade? A. No doubt it has to some extent, because we have been seeking all along for a great number of years to get such tariff charges reduced. There can be no doubt that our trade is suffering very greatly from over-production, but it is not that we are producing more than the world really requires, but that we are producing more than the world can really afford to pay for, and this points to the importance of lessening the cost of production to the last possible degree.1

Protection looks to the welfare of the consumer by preserving home industries, maintaining good wages, thereby enhancing the purchasing power of the masses; while free trade seeks to reduce the cost of production by cutting wages, thereby diminishing spendable incomes and making the buyers poor. If English manufacturers would pay more attention to the home market by protecting and increasing the wealth of Englishmen, there would be less necessity for reducing wages to compete with the Continent, and less complaint of the poverty of customers.

The witness further said:

Within the past few weeks we have been making an effort to reduce wages, and the cause of our making that stand has been the very unremunerative state of the trade, and that as the wages, notwithstanding that they have been reduced to some extent, have not been reduced in anything like the proportion in which the profits of the manufacturers have been reduced. We consider that it is one of those things which the operatives should consider more favorably than they have considered it up to the present. Q. Is there any other means of reducing the cost of production? A. I do not think there is at present. I believe that everything has been done in the shape of economy in the cotton mills.

Everything has been done to reduce the cost of production to reach a degree of cheapness to undersell competitors. Profits have been surrendered, wages have been reduced, and yet they must be driven down

1 Report II., Part I., p. 143.

Competi tion of

Venice.

Necessity of reducing wages.

Depression of cotton industry.

still lower. To whom is such an industry profitable? Not to the capitalist, not to the wage earner, and if not to these, certainly not to the nation. The witness continued:

Q. Is there any competition at Oldham between one company and another? A. Practically there is no competition, because the lines that enter Oldham agree not to outbid each other. They agree to charge a certain price from a certain point, whichever company is to bring the traffic.

So it appears that even in the cotton industry, protection in the United States is not the "mother of trusts." Free trade in England has not relieved the people from combinations of this character.

The following evidence of numerous experienced cotton manufacturers, upon the various phases of the question of competition, and the growth of industries in other countries, will lead the reader at once to conclude that it will be wise for the people of the United States to preserve their home market, rather than to subject their industries to the life-and-death struggle which has raged in England since the advent of free trade. The very existence of the cotton industry in Great Britain, with all her vast facilities for production is threatened. It is absolutely certain that the people of the United States paying much higher wages, could not exist for a single moment under free trade; exposed to an inundation of foreign fabrics, such as would be absolutely certain to take place upon the removal of protective tariffs. The evidence is so pointed and clear, that comment is scarcely necessary.

Thomas Stuttard, member of the firm of James Stuttard & Son, cotton spinners, carrying on business at several large mills, gave the following evidence before the Commission:

Q. Would you say that the business is now in a condition of prosperity or depression? A. Last year it was certainly in a state of great depression, at the present time one-half of it is in very great depression, that is, the spinning branch. It has manifested itself by the falling off in the demand for goods and by the fact of the enormous number of looms which have been stopped by the bad prices and by the unprofitableness of the work. The Manchester papers mention that 50,000 to 100,000 looms had been stopped at various times during the year 1885. The number of men employed has diminished. There has been a reduction in wages in spinning of 5 per cent at Oldham. Two or three years ago there was a reduction in the wages paid for weaving. There has been a greater falling off (in trade) in the home market than there has been in the foreign market. Q. How do you account for that? A. In the home trade, by the impoverishment of the land-owning class and farming class.1

"By the impoverishment of the land-owning class." What an admission from a cotton manufacturer ! Less than forty years ago it was by the impoverishment of this class that the cotton lords were to be made rich. The farmers were to be drummed out of the country. Now they are needed for customers to sustain a decaying industry.

It has continued to suffer by foreign competition in the cotton trade generally, to the extent, probably, of one tenth part of the whole consumption. Foreign goods come

1 Second Rep., Part I., p. 167.

into the home market in competition with us. Gray and bleached calicoes, dyed, printed and fancy fabrics, and especially cotton velvets, they come from France, Belgium and Germany. A few have come from America, but not to any great extent. The goods which we used to make for Germany have lessened in sale year by year, and we only sell comparatively small quantities, and those go mostly to Hamburg, a free town.

Q. Are there any classes of goods that you are acquainted with, with regard to Foreign competiwhich the foreigner, either German or French, can send the same article into this tion. country cheaper than it can be made in this country? A. If the manufacturers in any part of the Continent, say either Germany, France or Belgium, were placed in the competitive circumstances in which the Lancashire manufacturers have been placed the last twelve months, with the necessity that they would be under to sell at a slight loss the same as we do in Lancashire; and if they were to sell their goods without any profit or any return toward the capital invested in the business, I have but little doubt but what those foreign makers could easily send goods into Manchester itself at lower prices than the Manchester manufacturers can make them. Foreign competition will undoubtedly grow each year with increasing force. Q. Then I understand that you consider that the foreign manufacturer probably is in better condition to turn out cheaper goods than we are in this country? A. He is in a very much better condition for fighting us. If I, for example, want to make an impression in a neutral country and have to fight opponents there, I can fight them a great deal better if I am tolerably well off than if I am not. Under the present system many of the manufacturers in this country are getting poorer and poorer; they have not the backbone; and when we are told to improve our style and employ new designers, and all that sort of thing, it is only a very limited few of us who can afford to indulge in that luxury. The foreign manufacturers are better off than English manufacturers. In the first place, they have a certain market in their own country for their own goods.

Yet this was the advice the Anti-Corn Law League gave to the farmers in 1854, to adopt more scientific methods. It failed there as it will fail now. This is the only remedy the professional free trader offers. The witness, speaking of the strength of foreign manufacturers, said:

There is no outside competition of any moment, and if they choose to send any of their surplus goods into Great Britain or into neutral markets, they are sure almost to present some little variations from the current British work, and may thus command a sale.

Q. Are you in favor of anything being done in this country to place duties on Need of foreign manufactures that come into England? A. Personally, most decidedly. I protection. should simply do it not only as a matter of justice, and not to create a monopoly for the manufacturers, but simply to place the foreigners on a basis of equality with our native manufacturers. The workers of this country have to find the taxes of the country and that sort of thing, and it is only right and just that the foreigners should pay on imported foreign labor just as much as would equal that amount. If we can keep within our own domains employment for our work people, by a small 10 per cent duty, that is a thing to be much desired. I have conversed with many of our operators and they would be quite willing to pay a farthing more a loaf for their bread and have constant employment, and thus have a little more money.

In full work we employ between 1000 and 1100 work people, but latterly about 800 to 850. Q. At the present moment are the weavers in your own mills earning an average of 205. a week? A. No. Q. Would it be 155. a week? A. I think so, though we have a good deal standing more or less, for lack of work. Q. (Chairman.) I think

Impose duties on competing products.

you have a letter you wish to lay before the Commission? A. I was requested by one of our customers to read this letter. It is from George Morris, a merchant who trades to the West Indies, South America, the Mauritius and elsewhere. With regard to the cotton trade depression he says:

"What Lancashire is suffering from mostly now is the smallness or absence of profits altogether; this is best illustrated by a case of actual fact. A manufacturer of fine shirtings, cambrics, etc., told me that twenty or thirty years ago we used to make half a crown a piece profit regularly, but then our goods went to the United States, Germany, Russia, and even Spain; now they are nearly all shut out, except the finest qualities which are used by the rich people in these countries and where the duty is no object. Now nearly all our stuff goes to the far East, and we often do not make even a penny a piece on them. The duties imposed in this country are, unfortunately, nearly all on the productions of our best customers, such as coffee, tea, wine and tobacco, coming from countries where 'they spin not neither do they weave,' but our policy is driving them to both. The feeling is decidedly growing that such duties should be taken off, and even the total abolition of the tea duty is advocated, because China is one of our best customers. Duties should rather be put upon the productions of our competitors, of which a striking example is shown in the great injury done to the Lancashire trade by the free importation of beet root sugar. This has seriously curtailed the demand for our goods from the sugar-cane producing countries, such as the West Indies, Brazil, Mauritius, Java, Manilla, etc., where the proportion of colored and printed goods taken is largely in excess of gray goods; whereas the exports to India and China consist of a very large proportion of gray goods, and consequently find less labor and profit for our people. The government of this country must have a revenue of some £90,000,000 or £100,000,000 per annum, and this can only come out of the labor, profits and rents of the people, consequently, any fiscal system which diminishes the incomes of the people must certainly tend to diminish the revenue. The diminution in revenue from the excise is steadily going on, which shows that the condition of the working classes is not nearly so good as it was twelve or twenty years ago, and this is owing to reduced wages and short time working, some factories and works not having done more than three or four days a week during the whole of last year, and a good many mills being totally closed for a part of the year. The diminution in commercial salaries in this city is very marked, being generally 25 or 30 per cent, and in some cases even 40 per cent less than twelve years ago. The decrease in the large number of men who formerly enjoyed salaries of £1000 a year as buyers, salesmen, cashiers, or managers of departments, is strikingly illustrative of the decline in the cotton trade."

The foregoing facts are strikingly illustrative of the principle that a policy having for its chief end "cheapness" cannot reduce its wageearners to that free trade basis of bare subsistence, without dragging every phase of social life and branch of employment down toward the same. level. The warfare of competition under free trade strikes at every household, every trade, industry and profession; it spares no one, and operates not only as a blight on enterprise and a check on industrial progress, but in its leveling process dooms every one to share in its miseries and to contribute to its ultimate end.

James Mawdsley, representative of the Amalgamated Association of Operatives Cotton Spinners, of the District of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire, was examined and said:

Q. Suppose we in England adopted the same hours as they have in Germany and

France, and the same wages, do you think we should make our goods cheaper than we do at the present moment? A. I think that is a simple truism. Q. Then to that extent there is no doubt that the foreigner being free to work longer hours, and having a lower rate of wages, has a clear advantage from these circumstances in the price of the article he turns out? A. Yes, that is clearly so.

I have objection to men working as long hours as they like. It is a physical and moral objection, and not an economical objection.1

rivals

William Schulze, merchant and manufacturer at Galashields, having England's business connections with the whole of Europe, the United States, and protected. South America, also to a small extent with India and Australia, was examined and said:

Trade is not flourishing, manufacturers are not nearly sufficiently employed, we can get no profits; there is a considerable falling off in demand. It is due in my opinion, partially to foreign countries advancing considerably in their capacity of producing, and also it is due to the high tariffs which we are paying for sending our goods into other countries. But with the advancing capacity for production the tariff has not been gradually reduced; on the contrary, I know of no case where tariffs have at all been reduced. Whenever there has been a change it has gone against us. I am speaking of Germany, Austria, Russia, Spain, Italy and the United States. I think those are the principal countries. In other countries there is no production to speak of, and consequently we are not under the same difficulties with regard to them. Q. With regard to the increased production of goods in other countries, which have been displacing ours, is it a production founded upon fair and equal competition, or a production artificially nourished by their tariffs? A. It is artificially nourished by their tariffs.2

"Artificially nourished," that is shielded from destruction by the laws of the land. A foreign rival is required to pay a certain sum at the custom house for the privilege of invading the country, and attacking the life of a home industry; and the sum to be paid, called duty, is fixed at such an amount that the undertaking is made unprofitable. If this is an "artificial" regulation, then the laws which protect a man's property against the outlaw are also artificial. If British industries had a little of the same kind of nourishment, they might have more strength, live longer and flourish.

Why should not a nation favor its own citizens against strangers in trade as well as in everything else? The witness further said:

tionist

countries

stronger in markets.

neutral

They could not compete with us on equal grounds; there may be exceptions, but Protecas a rule not. The cause of the increased production in these foreign countries is the maintenance by them of heavy tariffs against our goods, under which their own industries are artificially fostered and ours discouraged. The longer a protective tariff is maintained against us by any country, the stronger its manufacturers become to compete with us on equal terms. Germany and France, and perhaps one or two other Continental countries, are competing more with us in neutral markets than they were some few years ago. They are competing with us successfully. That is on equal terms, of course, in neutral markets, because of their growing capacity. Q. It has been, as you are aware, asserted by a certain school of political economists, that a nation maintaining a protective system cannot compete on equal terms in neutral 1 Second Report, Part I., p. 172. 2 Id., p. 190.

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