be found that the tariff revision of 1894 chiefly affected the present price of clothing, not by the reduction in duties it effected, but by creating the industrial disturbance which has forced all prices down, irrespective of tariff duties. Cheap clothing we have to-day in abundance. It is not cheap because the duty was taken off wool, but because of an inopportune and ill-considered tariff revision which threw the Government finances into confusion and the country into chronic panic. The consumer, in the sense that he represents the largest number, has been the largest sufferer.

This two years' experience has demonstrated one thing satisfactorily, that the domestic wool manufacturers were not making inordinate profits under the tariff acts which existed prior to 1894. When they came to meet the new prices forced upon them by the reduced duties upon imported goods, it at once appeared that a margin of a very few cents on a yard of cloth was the factor which determined whether they could continue to manufacture or not. A properly adjusted tariff was essential to the preservation of that margin; but it had not been potent to push the prices of domestic goods above that margin.

The consumer has learned another thing about woolen goods which it is worth his while to know. He has learned that a tariff on wool does not tend to increase the consumption of shoddy and other substitutes by the manufacturer; and that, on the other hand, a revenue reform tariff, such as we now have, does tend to enormously increase the adulteration of goods.

The McKinley tariff, and those which preceded it, by fixing the specific duties on woolens according to weight instead of value, operated to exclude from importation all goods made from adulterated or revamped materials. This feature of the woolen schedule has always been described as its chief monstrosity by those who regarded it as a conglomeration of monstrosities. They called it a discrimination against the poor man's goods. They held, furthermore, that the wool duty drove the American manufacturer to make wholesale use of shoddy, by the high price it compelled him to pay for honest raw materials. Two years of experience have destroyed forever this thirty-year-old theory.

It has come about in a very simple way. So long as our manufacturers did not have to compete with foreign shoddy-made goods the tendency was rather away from its increased use, for every man's goods found and held a market on their merits; those who used shoddy did it at their own risk, and their goods passed for just what they were. When the Wilson tariff removed the barrier against the importation of shoddy and shoddy goods the situation changed in the twinkling of an eye. More shoddy goods are made in England than in all the rest of the world put together. They have learned there, by long experience, the art of utilizing to the best advantage every kind of refuse that comes from rags and wastes-let it have but two ends, they will find a way to spin it. These were the goods, among other varieties, which began to pour into the United States when the bars were let down. These were the goods with which American mills had at once to compete. In order to compete it was necessary to use the same kind of materials they use at Batley and Dewsbury. Cheap as wool was, it was not cheap enough to compete with English and continental rags. Deterioration in quality has been the distinguishing result, both as to imported and domestic woolens, of the tariff of 1894.

In closing this record we recur to our text to emphasize the difference between foresight and hindsight. If Mr. Springer could have foreseen how completely experience would falsify his oratorical pyrotechnics, the tariff act of 1894 would never have been passed.