Mr. Whitman’s defence of the amount of compensation allowed manufacturers for the duty on grease wool was interesting also. It will be remembered that this duty on wool worth over 40 cents a pound is 44 cents; that is, it is reckoned as if four pounds of grease wool were used in making a pound of cloth. Mr. Whitman defends this ratio, so rarely correct, by using the same argument with which Mr. Aldrich met the attack upon it in 1890 when the McKinley Bill was making.
“It is true that certain wools do not shrink so much, but _whether they do or not is not the point_. The American manufacturer must be reimbursed on the basis of the shrinkage of wools used by his foreign competitors or _available for the latter’s use_.”
This is as hard to follow as the long-standing consolation offered to the complaining consumer that “_the foreigner pays the tax_.” However, it is hardly more away from the point than Mr. Whitman’s second defence of the 4 to 1 ratio, which, in essence, is that it must be right because it was so fixed in 1867! Curiously enough, while Mr. Whitman defends the 4 to 1 ratio because it was decided on by the compact of ’67, he insists that 55 per cent ad valorem on cloth is none too much, although in 1867 the manufacturer considered 25 per cent sufficient!
But the carded wool men were not the only branch of the industry which disputed the soundness of Mr. Whitman’s “fair play for all” schedule. A few weeks after his hearing, it came out that one great branch of the woollen industry, the carpet manufacturers, had left the National Association in a body. They had wakened up to the fact that for some twenty years or so they had been serving largely as cat’spaws for the worsted makers’ chestnuts. They had refused to contribute further to the organization, and frankly bolted Schedule K, asking for a common-sense adjustment of the duty on carpet wools.
The most sensational and serious attack on Mr. Whitman’s testimony was made, on the very day he appeared, in a pamphlet distributed to the committee. It bore an ugly title, “How an exorbitant duty on wool tops was concealed in the Dingley law by the cunning manipulation of S. N. D. North and William Whitman.” The name attached to the pamphlet as author was that of a man well known in wool circles, the editor of the _American Cotton and Wool Reporter_, Frank P. Bennett. In proof of the charges he made, Mr. Bennett offered documentary proof of the first order. Nothing less than extracts from letters which had passed between Mr. North and Mr. Whitman at the time of the “cunning manipulation.”
