Free Wool, Free Lumber: Washington's Mill Towns Brace for the Tariff Shock

The Havemeyer tariff law is now in force and American manufacturers are busy studying its probable effects on industries, while their employees are anxiously estimating what reduction in wages will be caused in order to enable them to meet the invasion of cheap foreign products which will inevitably follow. The hardest blow is struck at two of the industries of this state—wool growing and lumbering—while coal and iron have had 35 cents a ton cut off the protection afforded them against the cheap coal of England and Australia, brought in ballast and thus having no freight to pay.

The principal competition in the lumber industry will come from Canada, which pays a duty of 20 per cent ad valorem on lumber and timber manufactured, and only admits free of duty lumber in the raw or half-manufactured state. Canada's free list includes among lumber products: timber hewn or sawed and fit for spars and in building; lumber square or sided; sawed planks, deals and other lumber, dressed on one side only; clapboards, spruce clapboards; laths, pickets and shingles. Thus while the American lumberman will be exposed to the competition of Canada on finished lumber, he will have to meet a duty of ... per cent if he attempts to carry the war into the enemy's country.

In order to ascertain the opinion of those best able to judge of the matter, a Post-Intelligencer reporter last week interviewed the leading men engaged in the industries chiefly affected by the new tariff. Their views are given below:

E. E. Anderson, of the Seattle Woolen Mill Company: 'I don't know yet the full effect it will have until we come in contact with the European goods under conditions made by the tariff bill just passed. I cannot tell yet what the effect will be on manufactured goods, because I have not yet scanned the bill. The effect of free wool, however, will be that it will ruin the wool industry in this country. It will hurt the sheep raiser, who will not hereafter raise the sheep which produce the finer grades of wool, but will raise those that are chiefly valuable for their mutton. We will in time have to depend on the foreign markets for our wool, and especially for the finer grades. In foreign countries they can raise sheep and wool and manufacture goods cheaper than we can here, because labor is cheaper. We cannot get men to work for 40 to 50 cents per day here and as a consequence we cannot compete with foreign countries in the matter of production. We cannot get into the foreign markets and as a consequence we have to meet foreign producers' competition in our own country, which is the best market in the world. England, Germany, Belgium, Russia, France and Austria are the foreign countries in which wool is most manufactured and where it is also worn. We cannot get a market in those countries because we cannot undersell them and yet with the tariff off they can come into our country and undersell us. In parts of South America there is a market for woolen goods, but the English and Germans have control of it and we cannot do anything there. We cannot sell in China or Japan, where cotton is worn, because there is no demand for woolen goods, and so the American manufacturer is confined to the home market. The situation here in Washington is favorable to the manufacturer. The wool used by us is the domestic article, and we have the cost of transportation to the East and the commission paid to middlemen in our favor. The wool sent East from this Coast is full of dirt and considerable has to be used for battling the dirt to the East. We have all this. Then water is plentiful and costs nothing. Fuel is cheap and labor is not high, and with all these advantages we can manufacture woolen goods at a profit.

'Our market is principally in the East, and we are building up a trade here at home and also in Alaska. The latter place promises to assume good-sized proportions. On the whole, I cannot see any advantage in free wool to the American manufacturer and I believe it will ultimately ruin the sheep raiser.'

T. K. Fleming, president and manager of the Fleming & Ayars Co., manufacturers of cedar lumber and shingles: 'In Chicago for many years the wholesale lumber buyers considered the agitation of the reduction of the lumber tariff as a distinctly bear proposition. During the opening of navigation, when they were in the market to buy, they talked reduction of the tariff, but they were always mum on this topic at the close of navigation, when they had made their purchases and had large stocks of lumber on their hands. The lumber manufacturers, however, were universally, without exception, for the tariff, and at heart the lumber dealers were likewise, save when in the spring they desired to demoralise prices to enable them to stock up. Free trade is not a business proposition. It may be altruism—philanthropy—to stop our own factories that those of Canada or Europe may keep going, but it seems to me it would be better to offer an asylum to the pauperism of Europe than to open wide our markets to its goods and pauperize our own workmen. At all events, the business of this country is not in as prosperous a condition as to enable it successfully to battle single-handed against protected nations, which pretty nearly include the whole world.'

Charles Hansen, of San Francisco, president of the Tacoma Mill Company and one of the leading members of the Pacific Pine Lumber Company, says: 'The men who own large timber tracts in Canada are the men who secured the removal of the $2 per 1,000 duty on lumber. I have met many of them, and they have told me off and on during the past four years that it was only a matter of time when they would get this duty removed. The advantage of the foreign lumber shipper on this Coast over the American is great, now that the tariff has been removed, for three reasons, the principal one of which is the ability of the foreigner to ship lumber in foreign bottoms to American ports, thus saving from $1 to $3 per thousand, according to the distance.'