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BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS

OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SIXTIETH CONGRESS.

FIRST PRINT, No. 22.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1908.

WASHINGTON:

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

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THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS,

Monday, November 30, 1908.

(The committee this day met, Hon. Sereno E. Payne in the chair.)
The CHAIRMAN. We will first take
up the subject of rope this morn-

ing and we will hear Col. E. D. Metcalf.

STATEMENT OF MR. E. D. METCALF, REPRESENTING THE COLUM-
BIA ROPE COMPANY, AUBURN, N. Y.

Mr. METCALF. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, you had the pleasure of listening to another constituent of Mr. Payne Saturday, and I am one of the men in his district who has been troubling him for some time past. I have prepared a short brief and the subject is not such as to take very much of your time.

Agreeable to the request of your committee that only one person should represent a given industry, I have been asked by the manufacturers using vegetable fibers, covered by paragraph 566 of the Dingley law of 1897, manufactured into binding twine and rope, to present their views and submit suggestions for your consideration.

We are interested not only in 566, covering raw material, but 329, 491, and 573, covering binding twine, rope, and cordage made from various vegetable fibers.

In considering how any new tariff would affect an industry it is well to investigate what has been the result under former tariff bills. Our raw material has been upon the free list, a large part of our production is on the free list, and a small portion protected by a small duty insufficient to equalize the wages paid in Europe with those paid in this country.

The manufacture of rope and binding twine as a whole has been one of the most unfortunate industries in the United States for the past twenty years, and there are strewed from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico manufacturing plants dismantled and many unoccupied for years which were once prosperous industries. Very few, indeed, have had any degree of apparent prosperity.

This condition, however, is not due to tariff laws, for this country has exported their product as well as imported manufactured articles in our line, but it has been due largely to the small margin of profit between raw and finished product, fluctuations in the price of raw material, cost of labor, which is at least 33 per cent higher than it was ten years ago, and the gradual and increasing use of wire rope in the equipment of vessels.

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