SHALL THE SPECIAL INTERESTS RULE?
Kittle, William
Shall the Special Interests Rule? By WILLIAM KITTLE IV. The "Joker" in the Woolen Schedule of the Tariff. 1. What is K? 2. The Making of K. 3. A Battle Royal for Wool. By Richard W. Child and...
...Schedule K taxes the carded wool manufacturers for the benefit of the worsted manufacturers...
...The tariff rates are ingeniously contrived to benefit two comparatively small classes and to plunder the great mass of the American people...
...By Richard W. Child and others in the February, March and May, 1910, numbers of Everybody's...
...William Whitman, the President of this Association, and Senator Aldrich, both representing the Trust, combined with Senators Reed Smoot of Utah, Warren of Wyoming, and Carter of Montana, to tax the rest of the American people...
...Their national association is strongly opposed to Schedule K. 4. The American consumers who wear woolen clothing or buy woolen blankets, rugs or carpets...
...SCHEDULE K is the wool schedule of the tariff...
...it fixes the degree of warmth in the coat of the laborer...
...This wool is used in making carpets and is not grown at all in the United States except on one flock of about two dozen black-faced sheep in West Virginia...
...The "Joker" in the Wool Schedule THE Woolen Trust in the manufacture of worsted goods has formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the growers of heavy shrinking wool of the far West, against the growers of light shrinking wool, against the carded wool manufacturers and against the American consumers...
...This Committee framed Schedule K. A long list of letters fro?i North to Whitman shows that this clerk was serving the Trust well on that Committee...
...Senators La Follette and Dol-liver, representing two great commonwealths of the Middle West, also represented the interests of 95 per cent, of the American people when they attacked in the Senate the injustice and the Special Privilege so carefully guarded by the joker in Schedule K. The "joker" in the tariff on wool consists of different duties on three arbitrary classes of imported wool...
...It is on every man's back...
...The Making of K SCHEDULE K was practically unchanged by the Payne-Al-drich tariff of 1909...
...Whitman himself styled, "a solemn compact" to stand pat on Schedule K. The standpat senators who led in defense of K in 1909 were Aldrich, Smoot, Warren and Carter...
...Is there any connection between the activity of these great special interests seeking legislative grants of privilege and the financial operations of campaign committees...
...Schedule K increases the cost of living and forces shoddy into clothing...
...The American Woolen Company,—the Trust, dominates the Association...
...It raises the price and lowers the quality of clothing...
...The climate of the United States is not adapted to producing this kind cf wool...
...it comes on the winter wind to whisper fear into the consumptive's ear...
...16, was made—to enable a powerful, organized combination of capital to exploit the American people...
...The American Wool and Cotton Reporter stated later that, "after this interview, Mr...
...These duties bear heavily cn the American consumer who is compelled to pay enhanced prices for every suit or yard of cloth, &r carpet, or rug, or blanket purchased...
...Under the title, "Shall Alaska Become a Morganheim Barony...
...One defender of this schedule recently "admitted" that an American family of four paid "^nly" $7.66 more a year for suits on account of the tariff...
...It was made to establish a special privilege...
...Schedule K must be about as bad as possible' for the President to condemn it...
...McKinley...
...They are represented by the National Association of Wool Manufacturers...
...It is the new and radical doctrine of Aldrichism, alias CanNONISM, alias a government of, by, and for the SPECIAL INterests...
...The chief power of this compact for privilege is the National Association of Wool Manufacturers...
...It was made just as the joker, Dutch Standard No...
...In 1896, Mr...
...Is a campaign financed for profit...
...Whitman, the President of the National Association of Woolen Manufacturers, went r.ll the way to Canton, Ohio, to see the candidate for President, Mr...
...The next year, his confidential clerk, S. N. D. North, secretary of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, became a clerk of the Finance Committee of the United States Senate...
...it is under him when he walks about in his home...
...These "noils" are the short fibres resulting from combing the wool and can be used only by the carded woolen industry...
...He stated in the same speech that "the woolen schedule is indefensible...
...This forces one industry to pay tribute to another...
...In the next-installment, Mr...
...In fact, the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, according to the sworn testimony of Whitman, paid North $5,000 for his work on the Committee...
...2. The manufacturers of worsted woolen cloth...
...Schedule K was really made outside of Congress by Special Interests...
...Whitman, for all his work at Washington, may well be called "The Maker of K." On October 15, 1908, three weeks before the national election, a committee of five from the National Association of Wool Manufacturers met at Chicago a committee from the growers of heavy shrinking wool in the far West and entered into what Mr...
...The high duty "protects" an industry which does not exist...
...Is this a "snake" or a "joker" in Schedule K? The duty on wool of Class III is from 4 to 7 cents per pound, according to value...
...Kittle describes the relation between the house of Guggenheim and the house of Morgan, and their joint efforts to secure from Congress the control of this vast territory in the far North.—EDITOR's note...
...By a reciprocity agreement or understanding, between the great special interests of sugar, wool, steel, oil, beef products, railroads and others, each one gets the "Profit of Privilege...
...It was framed up ly two powerful special interests in 1897 in the Dingley tariff...
...The four great economic interests affected by Schedule K are as follows: 1. The growers of heavy shrinking wool in the far West of the United States...
...It prohibits by a high duty the importation of the wool needed by the carded manufacturers and forces them to purchase from their competitors,— the worsted manufacturers,—the by-products, "the noils" which cannot be used in the manufacture of worsted goods...
...But the duty is kept there because, "the Woolen Trust is afraid that carpet wools might be used in making clothing...
...3. The manufacturers of carded woolen goods...
...Whitman interested himself in securing Republican contributions in New England...
...TV.is is not the old doctrine of Protection as advocated by Hamilton, Clay and Blaine...
...It was made on the theory of exploitation, not protection to American industries...
...Both the duties and the classes of wool have been carefully devised to benefit the manufacturers of worsted goods and the wool growers of the far West...
...or to buy flimsy cotten-adulterated goods...
...President Taft said at Winona in 1909: "The interests of the wool growers in the far West and the Interests of the woolen (worsted) manufacturers in the East were sufficiently strong to defeat any attempt to change the woolen tariff...
...Kittle will take up a series of articles published in Hampton's and MeClure'H, telling about the attempt now being made to turn Alaska, with its vast natural resources, over to the Special Interests...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 25
