Mr. RANDELL. If with 35 per cent the revenue would not be increased, then your competition would not be increased and you would still have a monopoly in this market, as much so as now?

Mr. POUND. We would have?

Mr. RANDELL. Yes; if the revenue was not increased there would be no increase in the importations.

Mr. POUND. Well, it would take more importations to make up the difference.

Mr. RANDELL. The difference of 10 per cent?

Mr. POUND. Let me answer that question in this way, and see if I meet it, and this point is material: It is not necessary in order to affect a market that the importations should be a large percentage of the product used in this country. A very small percentage thrown in here will so disturb the market conditions that it would have a very bad effect.

Mr. RANDELL. It hurts your feelings?

Mr. POUND. It does not hurt our feelings, but our business.

Mr. RANDELL. If the instruments did not come in, then you would have no more competition than now, but if the instruments did come in it would increase the revenue?

Mr. POUND. There is very strong domestic competition now-625 factories in the country.

Mr. RANDELL. If the foreigner did not bring in any more instruments, that would not make the manufacturers go to Germany, would it?

Mr. POUND. If no more came in?

Mr. RANDELL. Yes.

Mr. POUND. No, sir; of course not.

Mr. RANDELL. The truth is that foreign competition is what holds the prices down?

Mr. POUND. Well, our competition is very strong.

Mr. RANDELL. The competition that holds you down is not from abroad but from home?

Mr. POUND. On the better class of instruments we can just about hold them out now.

Mr. RANDELL. Then you have a monopoly on the better class of instruments, just about, now, and if the tariff was lowered, you would cease to have a monopoly on that and only have a monopoly on the lower class?

Mr. POUND. No, sir; that is not right. We do not have a monopoly now. Within the past year one of the best of foreign instruments, that known as the Mignon, has made arrangements to strongly enter the American market. They are now, as I personally know, seeking American contracts here for their output.

Mr. RANDELL. Your worst trouble is with the higher-class instruments, is it not?

Mr. POUND. The trouble we now fear is of the higher-class instruments. In the lower-class instruments we can not compete.

Mr. RANDELL. You say that you have just about gotten the highclass instruments out now. Do you not call that a monopoly, when you have them "out?"

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Mr. POUND. I did not say we had them out, but we are just about able to hold our own.

Mr. RANDELL. To hold them out?

Mr. POUND. Well, I did not mean that. We are able to hold our own on the higher class of instruments, but on the lower class of instruments, where the cheaper form of labor is employed, we are not able to hold our own.

Mr. RANDELL. In the statement which you furnish will you please give the cost of all the materials that are used here and in foreign countries, as well as the cost of labor, and also show wherein it costs you 45 per cent more than it does the foreigner to manufacture instruments?

Mr. POUND. I think, honestly, it costs us at least 60 per cent more to manufacture our instruments than the foreigner, if not more than that.

Mr. RANDELL. Put those facts in your statement, please.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Has your material increased in cost in the last eight or ten years?

Mr. POUND. Yes, sir.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. How much has it increased?

Mr. POUND. For instance, our lumber has in many cases increased 200 per cent.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. What else do you use; brass?

Mr. POUND. We use brass and rubber.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Iron?

Mr. POUND. Some iron, some steel, some forgings; and we use a great deal of leather of a very fine kind.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Taking these materials generally, has there been a material increase in cost?

Mr. POUND. Yes, sir.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. A gradual increase?

Mr. POUND. Yes, sir; all the time.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Are those materials more expensive now than they were three years ago?

Mr. POUND. Yes, sir.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Do you know about the percentage of increase in the cost of materials that you use?

Mr. POUND. I can not give you the actual figures only as I have heard it discussed at business meetings.

I would say, if the committee pleases, that I think this is a point sometimes overlooked. It is not alone that the large percentage shall be with us--for instance, that the importations into the country shall constitute the large percentage of the goods produced in this country. Any percentage coming in which, in itself, is large enough to create a volume of trade has an absolute disturbing effect upon the markets. And another element of danger is this: That where there is overproduction in any particular locality, where there is depression in labor in any business, then the surplus stock is always thrown in on the market somewhere, and it is those things that disturb business conditions and have a greater effect than they would seem to have from the mere perusal of the statistics on imports.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. There are two piano factories in the district that I represent. The superintendent of one of them told me about two weeks before the last election that the business at his factory in the spring and summer of 1908 was the best they had ever had in all their

experience. They had to operate the factories day and night to meet their orders.

Mr. POUND. What do they manufacture?

Mr. CRUMPACKER. Pianos; the Hobart M. Cable Company, of Laporte, Ind.

Mr. POUND. Yes; they manufacture regular pianos. I am not cognizant of the straight commercial manually-operated pianos. It is a different business.

Mr. CRUMPACKER. He told me that all lines of production made to sell to farmers were prosperous during the panic, and referred particularly to his own.

Mr. POUND. I have heard the same argument made by the automobile people.

The CHAIRMAN. This has been a prosperous business, has it not? Mr. POUND. Not excessively so; no. The profits have not been large in the business. The fact is that the business has required constant development, new machinery being continually devised to meet this competition.

The CHAIRMAN. Have the profits been turned into construction? Mr. POUND. Entirely so.

The CHAIRMAN. And the profits have been large that have been turned into construction, have they not?

Mr. POUND. No; not excessively so.

The CHAIRMAN. Not too large. I never saw a manufacturer yet, or anybody else, who was willing to admit that his profits were too large.

Mr. POUND. Many of these companies that I have spoken of here have not yet paid a dividend.

The CHAIRMAN. I wish you would furnish us a brief showing the amount of original capital and the amount of improvements added to the business from year to year, and file such a brief later.

Mr. BOUTELL. It occurs to me that a good many of these questions, as you will see when you come to read this over, will be found to have been at cross purposes. I understood that Mr. Crumpacker was speaking exclusively of pianos without any automatic attachment. These questions have crept in right along as though you were talking about that branch of the business. I understand that you represent the automatic and mechanical instruments?

Mr. POUND. Yes. I do not profess to be able to talk intelligently upon what is known as the manually operated or commercial piano. Mr. BOUTELL. It is the automatic musical instruments that my questions have been directed to. Are we going to have a brief covering such musical instruments as flutes, oboes, trombones, and instruments of that nature?

Mr. POUND. I have no connection with any house which manufactures them.

Mr. BOUTELL. What are the brass goods that you spoke of as having been put out of business?

Mr. POUND. You have seen the large band organs, as some are termed-large organs 20 feet long perhaps and 10 feet high, where, facing you, you will see a large number of brass horns and brass parts, bell shaped.

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Mr. BOUTELL. You mean the orchestral instruments?

Mr. POUND. Yes. In all of those things our concerns have been absolutely driven out of the market. We do not make one.

STATEMENT OF MR. HENRY ALEXANDER, OF NO. 371 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSAL BRUSH COMPANY, OF TROY, N. Y.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I propose to restrict my argument to the removal of the duty on bristles, paragraph 411.

I appear here, as a manufacturer of toilet brushes, to request the removal of duties on bristles as specified in paragraph 411 of Schedule N. In this request I am joined by every manufacturer of brushes, of whatever kind, in this country, as the different briefs filed with your committee ably show.

The CHAIRMAN. The paragraph reads, "Bristles, sorted, bunched, or prepared 7 cents per pound." You are speaking of the sorted article?

Mr. ALEXANDER. That is, prepared bristles ready to enter the brush industries, as I will show you in a moment.

Now, gentlemen, the brush industry in this country is by no means a negligible quantity. We import and we consume over three and a quarter million dollars of imported bristles annually, and the output is certainly not less than $8,000,000 per year. And I want to say that there is a distinction between brushes and such articles as brooms, though I believe they are classed together by your bureau of statistics, so that the figures are perhaps not exactly as correct as I would like to see them. But the brush industry, such as the clothes brush, the paint brush, etc., amounts to about $8,000,000 to $10,000,000 a year. This industry employs thousands of American work men and women at living wages, though smaller than that paid in many other industries. It is scattered all over the country, is free from any combination of capital, is not in any trust, and it is entitled to your very earnest consideration. Brushes are an absolute household necessity in a civilized country like ours, and every one of you gentlemen has a toothbrush for himself and for all members of your family; you all have several hair brushes in your households, also a clothes brush, a shoe brush, etc.

Now, it is the aim of the American manufacturer to make these brushes in this country, and the first obstacle that greets him is the tariff on his most necessary raw material, bristles.

The CHAIRMAN. There is a tariff of 8.03 cents-8 per cent. Mr. ALEXANDER. I think I can enlighten you upon that. The CHAIRMAN. And there are $3,000,000 worth imported? Mr. ALEXANDER. Three and a quarter million dollars' worth, and that turns out about $8,000,000 to $10,000,000 worth of brushes.

The CHAIRMAN. Three million dollars' worth of bristles, sorted and prepared, paying a duty of 8 per cent-that is a low duty?

Mr. ALEXANDER. If you will allow me to go on with my argument, I think I can show that it is a high duty. With the exception of an insignificant quantity, all bristles that enter into the brush industry have to be imported from abroad and do not come at all in competition with the domestic article. We have none at all, because the

hogs are usually killed at the age of 6 to 8 months, and they are killed for the tenderness of their meat and not for their bristles.

Paragraph 411 places the uniform duty of 73 cents per pound on bristles, irrespective of their cost and length.

It may not be known to your committee that bristles such as enter into brush making run all the way from the low price of 17 cents per pound to $6 per pound and over. All the cheap grades of bristles are brought in here from Chinese ports, and the figures of the Bureau of Statistics show that in 1907 out of a total of 3,433,941 pounds of bristles brought into this country, 1,195,390 pounds were brought in here from Asia, or slightly over one-third of the quantity of all the bristles imported, leaving 2,238,183 pounds from Europe. In other words, for every 2 pounds of bristles that Europe exported into this country China exported 1 pound to us.

When we turn, however, to the value of these bristles, a very much more striking picture is presented to us. The two million and odd pounds of European bristles were valued at $2,571,805, averaging $1.10 a pound, whereas the one million and odd from China were valued at $684,546; or an average of about 57 cents a pound, just about one-half the value of the European bristles per pound.

This, however, is not yet a fair statement of the cost of these Chinese bristles, inasmuch as bristles are sold by lengths, and the longer bristles are comparatively very much higher than the shorter lengths.

Now, the great bulk of Chinese bristles consumed by the brush makers consists of the short lengths of 2-inch, 24-inch, and 24-inch, such as I am showing here by samples before me. These short lengths are bought here duty paid at an average of 25, 26, and 27 cents per pound; or, in other words, they are bought in the markets of London and Hamburg, to which ports all these China bristles are originally consigned, at 17, 18, and 19 cents per pound. Your committee will therefore readily see that the actual duty on these short-length bristles, which form 40 per cent of all the Chinses bristles used by the brush makers in the United States, is no less than 45 per cent and 40 per cent on their cost in Europe, or fully an average of 42 per cent on the above three leading lengths. And this is the hardship and handicap of which the manufacturers ask your honorable body to relieve us.

I shall now apply a few minutes of my time to the particular branch of the brush industry which I represent, and which is almost an exclusive user of short Chinese bristles.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. You say that all of the bristles used in the brush manufactories of this country are imported from abroad?

Mr. ALEXANDER. All the bristles that are used in the toilet brush, the paint brush, the shoe brush, and the clothes brush industry are imported bristles. We do not make any distinction in this country upon articles using bristles--we call everything a brush. We call the little brush with which we clean the lamp chimney a " brush," while it really is not a brush. That may have a soft bristle in it which does not enter into our industry at all.

The CHAIRMAN. The finer bristle comes from North Poland, the north of Russia, Finland, does it not?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes: from the coldest countries in the world; the colder the country the stiffer the bristle. The Siberian bristle is a very good one.