term "all wool" has worked a greater harm to them than to the public.

Under the term "all wool" there is no distinction, as far as the product on the merchant's shelf goes, between woolens costing $2 a yard and woolens costing $12 a yard. They are both all wool. They carry about the same weight. One appears as good as another, with the result that under this "all wool" term the $2 fabric comes into direct competition with the $12 a yard.

When we import woolens from England we import only the best. It would not pay to import the cheaper woolens, and by reason of that fact English woolens have come to be known as good woolens, yet I dare say that we make better woolens in America to-day than England ever produced, but we get no credit for our better merchan-. dise because our best woolens are sold in competition with our cheapest woolens under the general term "all wool."

This practice in the retail trade has, undoubtedly, brought the woolen industry in America into disrepute, and the action of the retailer in advertising all grades of woolens under the term “all wool" has made the public suspicious of woolens generally.

The situation was much the same at one time in the package remedy field. Many package remedies have merit, and yet the package remedy industry as a whole permitted such nostrums as Nuxated Iron, Tanlac, and Swamproot to prey on public confidence with the result that to-day many legitimate newspapers throughout the country refuse absolutely to carry any package remedy advertising. They say they can not take time to separate the good from the bad, and the package remedy manufacturer who has a legitimate product suffers because he did not see the situation and handle it in time, and now they have come to our association in an effort to get relief from their predicament.

In the oil industry we find a similar situation. For years fake promoters, dealing in oil stocks, setting out the wonderful earnings to be made in oil, have preyed upon the American public until they have brought the very word "oil" into such disrepute that a large number of legitimate American daily newspapers will not carry any piece of copy which has the word "oil" in it. The very name is odious. And but a short time ago the Secretary of State of Illinois issued an order to the effect that no oil company should be permitted to sell its promotional stock in the State of Illinois; and when we contended that such a move was not constructive, we met the answer that the oil industry was so rotten that he was unable to tell the good from the bad. Now, unless the thing is stopped the textile trade will drift into the same situation. We have tried to stop it. We have had a number of prosecutions of local merchants through our local better business bureaus in cases where they have misrepresented merchandise to be wool which was not wool, and in which we found other ingredients, but where the term "all wool" was used we found ourselves helpless if the product turned out to be all wool, regardless of its poor character.

As I stated the other day to some of these gentlemen who are present, if you were to put this proposition up to one hundred people to-day and tell them you had a bill like this measure to protect the public in buying textiles so that when wool was mentioned it would be mentioned intelligently and have some meaning, ninety-nine out of a

hundred would be for the bill. I have tried it myself. I have spoken to a number of persons and with 100 per cent results along that line.

To-day at noon I met one of the assistant solicitors in the Post Office Department. He asked what I was doing in Washington, and when I told him that I was interested in this bill, he said, "I hope they pass that kind of a bill because it is certainly needed. Here is a suit of clothes which I bought. I went to my tailor and he told me he would charge $100 for a suit, and, of course, that was beyond my means, but a friend of mine told me of a tailor who would make me a suit for considerably less and assured me that the tailor, whose name he mentioned, made his clothes of nothing but all wool. I went to this tailor and picked out my cloth, and he agreed to make me a suit for $55. I wore it about two weeks, when the seat wore out, and now the balance of it is just gradually disintegrating."

He told me that he had gone back to the tailor and had complained concerning this suit, but the tailor had reassured him that it was all-wool fabric; that he bought the cloth himself, and that it must be the fault of the textile manufacturer.

I saw the suit, and it was a good looking piece of cloth, and I have no doubt but that it was all wool.

I do not think that the textile manufacturers are entirely to blame. They sell the smartest buyers in America. These buyers know what they are buying. There can be no question about that. The trouble lies with the retailer who comes in direct contact with the public. He sells the cheapest of all-wool quality in competition with the best, under the blanket term "all wool".

Mr. WINSLOW. Does he charge the price that he gets for wool clothing?

Mr. LEE. In some instances it is as much as that and in other instances not.

Mr. WINSLOW. Does your experience represent a considerable proportion of dealers in clothes?

Mr. LEE. No, I would not say that it represents a considerable proportion. As far as the use of the term "all wool" goes, I think that represents approximately 100 per cent, but I think the range of price on all wool products merely as such does not run quite as high. Mr. WINSLOW. Suppose that had been marked all wool or shoddy. Do you think he would have expected to buy at less than $55 ? Mr. LEE. Not at all. I can tell you of a case in point. Shoddy is despised merely because it is commonly sold as all wool.

Gimbel Bros. in New York have maintained a store there for a number of years. Prior to April 1, 1918, I rode the street cars, the surface cars, the subway cars, and the elevated cars in New York. At that time I was secretary of the New York Tribune, and we had a $1,000,000 libel suit on our hands, brought by Gimbels. I was interested in that suit, and as I rode the cars I would sit down beside sone well dressed lady or gentleman and suggest that I was a stranger in New York, which was true, because I had just come to New York from Cleveland, and that I was about to do a little shopping; that I had thought of going to Gimbels, and each of them said to me, be careful of Gimbels.

The libel suit which Gimbels had brought against the New York Tribune arose from an article which they thought to be libelous in

which the Tribune had accused Gimbels of misrepresenting their merchandise, and I finally had a talk with Mr. Isaac Gimbel, and I told him of my experience in riding the cars in New York. We talked over the whole situation, and particularly talked over the question of merchandising in a retail store. Finally Mr. Gimbel and myself worked together to find a solution of the problem.

Greenhut's store was then operating on Fourteenth Street in New York with perhaps the rottenest stock of merchandise ever gathered under one roof. Mr. Gimbel purchased that stock and removed it to the Gimbel store. About 20 per cent of it was thrown out as worthless and junked. Much of it was put in the basement and labeled, "these goods are not fit to be sold on the floors above, therefore the basement and the price." On the floors above handkerchiefs were labeled, "these handkerchiefs are not as good as they look; they are not linen; there is not a piece of linen in the Greenhut stock.' Silk ribbons were labeled, "these ribbons look like silk, but they are not; there are no silk ribbons in the Greenhut stock." Gowns were labeled, "these gowns are soiled and they will not wash." Other gowns were labeled, "these gowns are defective; if you can not find the defect ask the clerk." That sale was advertised just as I have given it to you. The truth was told about every piece of merchandise in that sale. When the doors opened on April 1, 1918, there were approximately 3,000 people waiting to get into that store. The sale ran on for more than a month. As popular lines ran out they were filed from the Gimbel stock, and then adverised that that line had run out; that they had filled the stock with their own goods which they considered to be equal to the Greenhut goods if not better, but they wanted the public to know when they were buying Greenhut goods and when they were buying Gimbel goods. I am informed that that sale was the biggest ever held in the history of retail merchandising.

After the sale was over I again rode the street cars, the elevated, and the subways, and again I sat next to well-dressed men and women and told them I was thinking of doing a little shopping and had thought of going to Gimbel's, and almost without exception they told me that Gimbel's was a safe place in which to shop; that I could get good merchandise there, and I could get cheap merchandise there, but that whatever I bought Gimbel's would tell me the truth about it. The same thing is true of shoddy. Shoddy can be sold to the public if it is labeled as shoddy, and sold at a fair price for shoddy. If the public know they are buying shoddy they will be satisfied with shoddy, and when grades of shoddy have shown their wearing qualities under the term "shoddy," shoddy will get the credit, and will cease to be a despised word, but as long as you sell shoddy under the term "all wool," every piece of all-wool fabric which goes bad will be believed, at least by the public, to be shoddy.

I think there is a keen necessity for some such law as this. I think the law ought to be built along the constructive lines which have been discussed here, but I have not much patience with the argument that you can not take the public into your confidence in matters of this sort. I believe you can. I believe it is entirely possible to create standards in textiles and that the public will learn to know

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them, and learn to appreciate their value in merchandising much faster than some of us may think.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you connected with the Fair Trade League? Mr. LEE. No; I am not.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know of its work?

Mr. LEE. I know something of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Have the prosecutions which it has started in various parts of the country, and convictions it has secured in some places, developed any keener sense of business honesty than heree tofore existed?

Mr. LEE. I do not know that the Fair Trade League have accomplished so much, but there is a general movement throughout the country for better advertising and better merchandising, and in my opinion the merchandising situation in America is cleaner to-day than ever in the history of this country. I think business men are inclined to be more honest. I am absolutely sure that this is true in the field of advertising, because when we started this movement several years ago there was not a newspaper in America that came out outspokenly for us. To-day we have hundreds of newspapers supporting this movement.

In the early days of the movement there were very few manufacturers who were willing to get behind the movement for Truth-inAdvertising because they feared that the public would not be able to discriminate; but to-day we have approximately 600 big national advertisers standing behind this movement and more than 16,000 merchants and local business men, members of local advertising clubs, who are behind the local movements throughout the country.

Mr. SIMS. May I ask the gentleman a question? Do you think anybody who wanted to buy cotton fabric would refuse to buy it because it was labeled "all cotton"?

Mr. LEE. Not at all.

Mr. SIMS. Then who would refuse to buy wool if it was labeled "all wool" or "all new wool" or "all reworked wool"?

Mr. LEE. They would not.

Mr. SIMS. And the fight would go along with the kind of goods they thought they were buying?

Mr. LEE. You must establish a standard in order to establish a

price. The manufacturer must know what is in the product and how the product is made up before he can put a price on it. If he knows how to arrive at a price he knows how to arrive at a merchandise value.

Mr. SIMS. After all, honesty is the best policy in manufacturing and merchandising as well as in everything else?

Mr. LEE. That is not a trite phrase by a long shot. It is one of the most stable statements that I know of.

Mr. WINSLOW. Do you find much dishonesty and misrepresentation by manufacturers?

Mr. LEE. Very little. We find a lot of this due to inefficiency and poor salesmanship. Many salesmen do not know what the product is themselves. They have not the slightest idea, but if they know what you want to buy and the goods are not marked, they will call it anything they think you will purchase and some buyers are just as bad, and when they have purchased a bad lot of merchandise and find themselves in the hole, they offer it as something else in order to

move it at a price that will keep them from getting into trouble with the head of their house. This is one of the hardest matters we have to handle inefficiency on the part of employees, but when the goods. are labeled much of that will be removed.

The CHAIRMAN. We are much obliged to you, Mr. Lee.

Is Mr. Marston ready to proceed?

STATEMENT OF MR. TROWBRIDGE MARSTON, REPRESENTING THE KAUMAGRAPH CO., NEW YORK CITY.

Mr. MARSTON. Mr. Chairman, I am here at your request to give what information I can in regard to the process for marking these goods. The Kaumagraph Co. manufactures a transfer which is used in connection with the Parks & Woolson Kaumagraph attachment. The transfers are tissues upon which a brand or trade-mark has been printed by our process, and then are wound into rolls of about 8 inches in diameter, similar to a ticker tape. These rolls are put into the machines and the tissue is brought against the cloth by means of a rotating pad, which brings them against the hot iron. The result is that the brand or transfer comes off the paper and attaches itself to the fabric. I believe the booklet which you hold in your hand states that they can be put on at the rate of about 40 yards per minute. That is the approximate speed, although I believe they sometimes are put on as fast as 45 or 50 per minute, under best conditions.

In regard to the cost of our transfers, we are selling them now in large quantities-that is, a million or over-at $1.04 per thousand, roughly one mill per transfer. This is for a transfer of sufficient size to include all the necessary data which is specified in this bill. It would be a transfer approximately 2 by 3 inches. As I said, that would cost 1 mill per impression. It is our intention if possible-and I believe it will be possible-to reduce the cost of the transfers because of the increased production. At the present time we have a good equipment and we could start making delivery of transfers in two weeks; in six months we would be able to supply all the transfers that were needed. Of course, that would mean the building of additional machinery, but we could start delivery in two weeks from to-day if it were necessary.

I was out at the Cheney Silk Mill a short while ago and Mr. Frank D. Cheney told me that he had figured that the cost of application of transfers amounted to about 1 mill per yard; therefore it would mean that under the present price standard it would total about 2 mills per impression. This includes the cost of transfers, interest on investment, depreciation, and cost of operation. I can not speak for myself as to the accuracy of those figures. They were given to me by Mr. Cheney.

Something was said this morning in regard to the marking of delicate light-colored fabrics. I was not able to see the samples close up, but looking at them from a distance I judged that they had been marked with gold transfers. It would be my suggestionthis is entirely personal-that in marking goods of that character a transfer of a light shade-that is, a light yellow, probably, would present a mark which would be more translucent. In other words, it would not show up as plainly through the goods. Of course, if