thing more than this, "Will it wear well?" and if the tailor tells him it will, he would have a suit made from that, providing that the price was satisfactory. What is your opinion about that?

Prof. PLUMB. The men who go to a tailor are the most particular buyers of clothes, to start with. They are the people that can best afford to pay a good price, and the commercial tailor ordinarily does carry a good line of cloth.

Mr. STINESS. Now, the man who goes there relies on the tailor, does he not?

Prof. PLUMB. He certainly does.

Mr. STINESS. He asks, "Does this wear well?" and the tailor says "Yes." I have been wearing clothes a good many years, and I never in my life heard of virgin wool until this hearing. And I never asked whether it was all wool or not. The man who goes to a customs tailor does not want to get the last hour of wear out of his clothes. He gets tired of his suits. It gets shiny on the back, but it is not worn out.

We will go a step further. We will say he gets a suit of clothes from Parker, Bridget & Co. or such a store. How is it to be marked? Prof. PLUMB. The bill specifies.

Mr. STINESS. I have not it in my mind. I did not know but you had it.

Prof. PLUMB. It is to be marked with a strip of cloth with a statement of the percentage of virgin wool, shoddy, etc.

Mr. STINESS. And if the cloth is pinned on the suit it can be unpinned, can it not?

Prof. PLUMB. I presume so.

Mr. STINESS. And if they asked the same question of the salesman in the store, "Does it wear?" and he told the customer it would wear well, it would be taken by the customer, would it not?

Prof. PLUMB. I surmise that any requirement of the law relative to tagging or anything like that would be as vitally necessary in the case of a suit of clothes as it would be on a sack of fertilizer.

Mr. STINESS. In some departments such as the Shipping Board, take the average men employed there, do you think if they went into a store to buy a suit of clothes that they would ask these questions as to whether it was all wool or anything of the kind? Would not the first thing that they would do would be to ask whether the suit would wear well?

Prof. PLUMB. I should say if they do not ask those questions that the people from that group of laborers would represent a very small minority of the people who wear clothes.

Mr. STINESS. I think they are an average class of highly skilled laborers in that department.

Prof. PLUMB. If you were to go about among laboring people, we will say in Europe, you would find plenty of those people (or you would find it so at least before the war, and I speak from experience) all over Europe, just the commonest people, are very familiar with what is in our ordinary garment material. They can talk to you about linens, they can talk to you about woolens, and they have very pronounced views about the subject. It is just common everday information among the people. Now, I do not think we could keep in mind all of the various minute details of a certain brand of goods. We can take some types of goods that are made into clothes that may

vary in style, character, finish, and color, but they will always represent a type of cloth that can be classified in some group.

Mr. STINESS. I have heard it said frequently that to rest a suit of clothes adds to its efficiency of wear. For instance, if a man gets one suit and wears that out and then another, and then the third, he would not get so much wear out of his clothes as if he got three suits and changed them from day to day. That would rest them.

Prof. PLUMB. As a college professor I never had suits enough to experiment in that way. [Laughter.]

Mr. STINESS. Of course, if you do not have but one suit of clothes you are not qualified as an expert.

Prof. PLUMB. You had best call on somebody else.

Mr. STINESS. What other marks are put on a suit of clothes as to the cost to the consumer in the end? A man buys a machine for $1,500 for use in marking clothing. The man who wears the clothing has to pay for it in the end.

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir; he has. I went to see some oak flooring recently, and a friend told me that oak flooring that used to cost $80 was now $235, and I concluded that everything was in the hands of the lumbermen, but was not in the hands of wool producers.

Mr. STINESS. As a matter of economy you would fall through the floor rather than have a new floor.

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir.

Mr. WINSLOW. With that knowledge in your mind, what would you say to a lumberman if he said he could give you good oak for $100 a thousand?

Prof. PLUMB. I would want to see it first.

Mr. WINSLOW. You would think it was poor oak, would you not? Prof. PLUMB. I could tell better after I saw it.

Mr. WINSLOW. It is oak just the same.

Prof. PLUMB. Oak is the plain straight goods. A suit of clothes is not always what it seems.

Mr. WINSLOW. I believe they testify that a suit of clothes made of simon pure wool is one thing, and, of course, shoddy is another, and when you come to feel it it is another.

Mr. COOPER. I believe it was stated by the opponents of this bill before the committee, when the question was asked by one of the members here as to whether or not a piece of fabric out of pure virgin wool would wear longer than a piece of fabric out of the best shoddy, they said undoubtedly the fabric out of the best virgin wool would be better than the fabric out of the best grade of shoddy. So if the people could understand that that fabric out of the best grade of virgin wool was better than the fabric made out of the best grade of shoddy, the chances are they would want to get the best.

Prof. PLUMB. I tried to bring out in my statement of the methods involved in the manufacture of shoddy that the process in itself really injures the fabric. That is what I tried to bring out.

Mr. COOPER. I was not going to go into that. I just wanted to make that point that it was not denied that pure virgin wool makes the best fabric that is made.

Prof. PLUMB. Of course we realize that there is a great deal of difference in the real value of clothing. The person who has a genuine virgin wool piece of broadcloth finds it is almost impossible to wear it out, but you can get, if you want to take a piece of tweed, a loose

coarse fabric, with plenty of the inferior class of wool in it, which you can easily see would break up and go to pieces in a relatively short

time.

Mr. JONES. It is conceded that there is not enough virgin wool in the United States to clothe the people of the United States? Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. So that all clothes must contain possibly more or less shoddy. Who is going to draw the line as to the percentage of the virgin wool in the cloth and the shoddy? How are they going to determine? The bill does not provide that.

Prof. PLUMB. The manufacturer, through the law, ought to give the consuming public a certain amount of protection on that point. Mr. JONES. I want to ask the same question I have asked other witnesses. Here are two pieces of cloth, one 80 per cent virgin wool and the other 80 per cent virgin wool. They are both made of virgin wool, but one happens to be an inferior grade of virgin wool. The law only provides for marking them virgin wool and shoddy wool, but the virgin wool of the one is a higher grade than the other. Is it not necessary to mark virgin wools according to the grade?

Prof. PLUMB. I doubt very much whether there would be a material difference if you take cloth of the same class. It is hardly a fair comparison to introduce evidence of that kind, because you are practically putting up against the one a very inferior quality of the other.

Mr. JONES. But they are both marked the same.

Prof. PLUMB. But the point I make I have already made it in the case of the comparison of broadcloth and a cheap tweed.

Mr. JONES. Yes; but you are depending upon the mark to convey information.

Prof. PLUMB. It will convey information to any housewife who has average intelligence.

Mr. JONES. Then she is not depending on the mark. She is depending on her average intelligence. The mark is of no help to her.

Mr. BARKLEY. I did not get in at the beginning of your testimony. Did you state the organization or the interest in whose behalf you appear?

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir.

Mr. BARKLEY. What was that?

Prof. PLUMB. I stated that I was representing the National Sheep and Wool Bureau, the Ohio Sheep and Wool Growers' Association, and the American Cheviot Sheep Society.

Mr. BARKLEY. The National Sheep and Wool Bureau-what function does that organization perform?

Prof. PLUMB. It is a national organization and it has been active in several ways. Its first work, in which it was pretty active, was during the war getting sheep men, and they had conferences at Chicago, in which a great effort was made to increase the number of sheep on the farms and therefore increase the amount of wool, and it played a part in the purchase of sheep and placing them on the cutover lands of Michigan, Wisconsin, and that section. And then following, after the war was discontinued, this work of endeavoring to do something to assist in clarifying the clothing situation was taken up.

1

Mr. BARKLEY. A sort of central organization for the benefit of the woolgrowers?

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir. There are very prominent men in the sheep business way out on the far western plains that are active in that association as well as those on the Atlantic coast.

Mr. BARKLEY. You referred in your testimony to a comparison which had been made with some of the witnesses with reference to marking oleomargarine.

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir.

Mr. BARKLEY. Do you or not make any distinction between oleomargarine and butter; do you make any distinction between the marking of that so as to show it is not butter, and the marking of any class of wool, one class of wool as compared with another class of wool?

Prof. PLUMB. I do not make any distinction when it deals with the fundamental purpose of truth.

Mr. BARKLEY. Your position, then, is the fact that oleomargarine is not butter and is marked so as to show that it is not butter is based upon this same principle as that involved in this legislationthat wool shoddy is wool, it has the character of wool, but ought to be differentiated as against pure virgin wool?

if

Prof. PLUMB. I would like to say this, gentlemen, and that is you will study the history of agricultural legislation of the United States, if you will go back to Massachusetts and Connecticut and New Jersey, you will find that there were movements begun there relative to legislation which would give protection to the farmers in the use of fertilizers, in protection from the adulteration of feeding stuffs and various other things, and now to-day we are arriving at a point where we are taking up the adulteration of wool. You might say that reworked wool is not adulterated wool. Technically it is not, but honestly speaking, as it is now used, it is, so to-day we are before you, and just as in the past conferences and hearings have been held in Congress, this is all for the main purpose of getting a square deal.

Mr. BARKLEY. Do I understand you to say that there is only one concern in the United States that makes a speciality of manufacturing cloth from virgin wool?

Prof. PLUMB. There may be others. I do not know of any others. So far as manufacturers of cloth are concerned I know of one mill. I have been all through their mill, have been in touch with them, and know something of their wools, and I have no reason to believe that they use a particle of wool shoddy in their cloth.

Mr. BARKLEY. What house is that?

Prof. PLUMB. The Cleveland Worsted Mills. I presume the same thing would apply to other mills. In fact, there is relatively little shoddy used in worsted. It does not make any difference whether shoddy is used in worsteds or not; the whole cloth is more or less damned by the trouble which exists in certain directions.

Mr. COOPER. I believe it was stated here before this committee that 60 per cent of all the fabrics made in this country are made out of pure virgin wool.

Prof. PLUMB. I so understand.

Mr. BARKLEY. I understood you to say that there was only one concern that was interested in making virgin wool cloth, and I wondered if that was true, and if so what concern it was.

Prof. PLUMB. I would not stand here to pass judgment on the individual producers of cloth in this country.

The CHAIRMAN. The French bill is practically a criminal statute, is it not?

Prof. PLUMB. I think so; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now under a criminal statute you can only convict when the guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt. Are you so sure in your science of chemical analysis that you would not convict malefactors of using shoddy when in fact they only used short staple virgin wool?

Prof. PLUMB. Well, I should be very much inclined to doubt it. The CHAIRMAN. It only goes to the practicability of the plan involved in the bill.

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, sir.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. So far as you know is there any State legislation covering the subject matter of this bill, patterned after this bill or after which this bill is patterned?

Prof. PLUMB. Not that I am aware of.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. So far as you know is there any legislation in any country regarding the sort of label with reference to shoddy and virgin wool?

Prof. PLUMB. I understand there is legislation. I am not familiar with it. Certain factors of this type of legislation are now being established in Australia, and also Japan.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. Requiring the labeling of virgin wool and requiring the labeling of shoddy?

Prof. PLUMB. Yes, I believe so.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. Have those acts been made a part of these hearings?

Prof. PLUMB. No, sir.

Mr. FRENCH. I am not familiar with that.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. Have they been incorporated in the hearings?

Mr. FRENCH. I do not know.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. How recently has there been an agitation for truth in fabric legislation? How recent is this agitation? Has it covered a number of years?

Prof. PLUMB. I should say that this subject was taken up by the National Sheep and Wool Bureau about 15 months or perhaps two

years ago.

Mr. FRENCH. May I suggest that the first bill introduced in the Congress that involved this matter was by Gen. Grosvenor 18 years ago.

The CHAIRMAN. In 1902.

. Mr. FRENCH. Yes, and Gen. Grosvenor reintroduced the bill in the 58th Congress, and since that time in one way and another it has been introduced in various other successive Congresses.

Mr. SANDERS of Indiana. You say the subject of this bill. Did those prior bills require the labeling as to whether it was virgin wool or shoddy?

Mr. FRENCH. The expression that Gen. Grosvenor used was "pure wool." I think he defined pure wool as wool that had never been used in manufacturing in any way. I have a copy of his bill. The expression "virgin wool" has been thought to be an expression that