shoddy, and that will put you in a class by yourself, with other people who manufacture all-virgin wool.

Mr. WALKER. We and all other manufacturers who use virgin wool exclusively will be in one class-and the opponents of the measure have said that 60 per cent of the manufacture is worsted.

Mr. JONES. It would be to the advantage of the people who manufacture all-virgin wool as against the people who are manufacturing shoddy now?

Mr. WALKER. You are taking for granted that the term is going to kill the sale of the shoddy. I do not concede that.

Mr. JONES. No; I do not think it will kill it. I think it will help it. Mr. WALKER. Then your own argument, I think, should be your

answer.

Mr. WINSLOW. What percentage of the cloth made in this country do you think is represented by the so-called worsted line?

Mr. WALKER. I will accept the figures of the opponents. Mr. WINSLOW. Are you going to accept their statement, as I understand it, that these worsteds are all made of virgin wool?

Mr. WALKER. I accept that statement, so far as this country is concerned. I do not think that we have yet ceased to be an inventive nation, and I believe that we are liable to have machinery invented some time-in fact it is reported that it is already invented on the other side-by which they will be able to use shoddy in worsteds. At this time we have no such machinery in this country.

Mr. WINSLOW. You would not want to invest in that?

Mr. WALKER. No; I would not want to go into any company at this time that was advancing that machinery.

Mr. WINSLOW. What percentage of the cloths made in this country, other than worsteds, are made of virgin wool?

Mr. WALKER. Well, Colonel, that is a nice question.

Mr. WINSLOW. Roughly, I mean.

Mr. WALKER. I would dispute the statement of the opponents that 80 per cent of the 40 per cent is manufactured of virgin wool, because in my experience with the mills of the country-and I know them fairly well-I know very few mills that use all virgin wool; so few that it is a joke in the business.

Mr. WINSLOW. What is the proportion of those that do use all virgin wool, including yourselves?

Mr. WALKER. I would say between 10 and 20 per cent of the 40 per cent.

Mr. WINSLOW. Were virgin wool?

Mr. WALKER. Yes.

Mr. WINSLOW. That would give about 20 per cent that were not? Mr. WALKER. Of the wool goods, yes, sir; and that would be very liberal.

Mr. WINSLOW. If 60 per cent are made as worsteds and are allvirgin wool, simon-pure, and only 20 per cent of the remaining 40 per cent which would be 10 per cent of the original, if my mathematics are right-are all wool, not made of virgin wool, the development of the virgin-wool cloth business, outside of worsteds, has not been very rapid, has it?

Mr. WALKER. That is a very simple thing to explain

Mr. WINSLOw. Would that not be a mathematical fact?

Mr. WALKER. No; they use the substitute because in our business there is no incentive to use pure virgin wool. There is no incentive for us to make virgin-wool fabrics. The only question the trade ask to-day-the only thing they want to know-is, "Is this fabric all wool, and what is the price?" They know they can get away with the public with that statement.

During hard times in this country-we have been through them in the woolen-manufacturing business, and all of us know what they are in our business-what happens? A mnaufacturer is forced not to compete on quality but on price. He pushes down and pushes down the price. We are trying to get out a fabric that is cheaper than Jones makes. We use more shoddy. The man next door wants to get out a cheaper fabric than we make, and he uses more shoddy than we do, and he gets away with it; and the tendency is to use more and more shoddy, and what happens? It promotes bad business all over the country, and that necessarily reacts on the sheepman. Flop goes the price of wool. There were times in this country when wool went down to 6 cents with a protective tariff of 11 cents. It went down to 6 cents because everyone was competing on the basis of price.

Mr. WINSLOW. I would like to return to that with you after we get this other matter fixed up.

Mr. WALKER. All right, Colonel.

Mr. WINSLOW. We will assume that there is a hundred per cent of woolen cloths produced. Sixty per cent of them we will agree are worsteds, all-virgin wool. That leaves 40 per cent. If I understood you correctly, not over 10 per cent of the 40 per cent would represent virgin-wool cloths.

Mr. WALKER. I think I said 10 per cent or 20 per cent.

Mr. WINSLOW. Ten or twenty per cent?

Mr. WALKER. I might say 10, 20, or 25. All right, 20 per cent.

Mr. WINSLOW. Twenty per cent of the remaining would leave, as I see it, 10 per cent of the 100 per cent that we started with. Mr. WALKER. No; I do not figure it that way.

You are distinctly wrong there. Let us take the production of woolens in yards. Mr. WINSLOW. No; it is 8 per cent rather than 10. Of that amount 60 per cent is worsted?

Mr. WALKER. Yes.

Mr. WINSLOW. And that leaves us 40 per cent to consider, and you say 20 per cent of that

say

Mr. WALKER. No; I do not say 20 per cent of 40 per cent, but I 20 per cent of the total amount produced. If we had 200,000,000 yards of woolen fabrics produced in the United States, 80 per cent of them would be shoddy fabrics and 20 per cent virgin wool fabrics. Mr. WINSLOW. Out of that 40 per cent remaining what per cent do you say would be virgin wool production?

Mr. WALKER. I say of the 40 per cent remaining 80 per cent of that quantity would be shoddy materials and 20 per cent of that quantity would be virgin wool materials.

Mr. WINSLOW. Twenty per cent of the 40 per cent left

Mr. WALKER. I do not say 20 per cent of the 40 per cent. Do not misunderstand me. If 40 per cent constituted 100,000,000 yards, for the sake of argument, 80 per cent of that-800,000 yards-would be shoddy, and 200,000 yards would be virgin wool.

Mr. WINSLOW. You are probably right, and I am a bonehead. However, suppose we had 1,000,000 yards as the total production. Mr. WALKER. Yes.

Mr. WINSLOW. Sixty per cent of that is worsted. That would be 600,000 yards, would it not?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. WINSLOW. What number of yards out of the 400,000 yards remaining would be woolen with the virgin wool thread in them? Mr. WALKER. Four hundred thousand yards? Eighty per cent of that would be 320,000 yards of shoddy fabrics and 80,000 yards of virgin wool fabrics.

Mr. WINSLOW. That would be 20 per cent, would it not, of the 40 per cent remaining, where we started?

Mr. WALKER. Yes; you are about right.

Mr. WINSLOW. I guess I am right.

Mr. WALKER. You are quicker than I am, Colonel.

Mr. WINSLOW. Now, that would give us 10 per cent of the remaining amount not made of worsted and not worsteds, made of virgin wool?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. WINSLOW. What do you think that amount was in percentage 10 years ago, roughly?

Mr. WALKER. Ten years ago?

Mr. WINSLOW. Yes.

Mr. WALKER. Shoddy has increased steadily. Shoddy has been increasing every year-the use of shoddy. I could not answer that.

Mr. WINSLOW. Now, if you only turned out 10 per cent of these cloths of the 40 per cent remaining which are virgin wool cloths, it would not seem as if that end of the manufacturing had developed very rapidly.

Mr. WALKER. There is nothing to develop about it. We can all do it.

Mr. WINSLOW. I mean in the eyes of the public; the trade has not increased at all.

Mr. WALKER. In the eyes of the public?

Mr. WINSLOW. Yes.

Mr. WALKER. That is why I state that the woolen manufacturers are not looking far enough ahead. The great cry all over this country is for better fabrics. I have been all over the United States, and have addressed convention after convention, not at my own solicitation in any case, all on the subject of unworthy fabrics. What is the cause of it? What is the reason for it? I would like, in that connection, to bring to your attention certain letters of retailers where they commend this legislation.

Mr. WINSLOW. I will accept them. I would like to follow these matters out, because I think they bear on the subject.

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. WINSLOW. If after your advertising of virgin wool cloths and as the result of the various associations, in favor of virgin wool cloths, it has come to pass after 10 or 20 years that you did not produce of that quality of goods over 3,000 yards out of a total of 1,000,000 yards that are used, it seems to me that the cry from the public must have been very light.

Mr. WALKER. Excuse me, Colonel; that has nothing to do with it. The demand this season is your answer to that. In the first place, when you state that we have been advertising virgin wool cloths all over the country, we have not done any consumer advertising at all. We have only done trade paper advertising. I will take Mr. Clark's statement so far as that is concerned. The trade do not want the cheaper fabrics. They can not sell them.

Mr. WINSLOW. Is that true solely of woolens, then? Is it not so of everything.

Mr. WALKER. I would not say it is so in everything. There is a certain fabric made by all manufacturers, that is, the plain weave fabric, which if it is properly made, made of the correct stock and properly manufactured, will give better service than any twill cloth, and it can be made cheaper than a twill cloth, and yet to-day the trade says, "No plain weaves." It is not fashion that dictates that. This condition has been caused by the poor satisfaction shoddy fabrics have given. The plain fabrics have been full of shoddy. You can not sell them. They say, "We do not want them.

Mr. WINSLOW. I think in normal times your point would be good; but in these times, when people kick on a $5 article because it does not cost $7.50, the logic is now sound. Everybody knows, who has had anything to do with trade and commerce, that the trade of the country has been revolutionized in respect to spending, and that the spending has been profligate, and that it has been running high regardless of everything except the capacity to spend money. Now, there would be the same development in cloth, I fancy, that there would be in everything else, right straight down the line.

Mr. WALKER. But I understand from the opponents of this measure that the public does not know anything about cloth; so that, why, on that principle, should not a man take a cheap cloth and price it away up, if he simply wants to spend his money?

Mr. WINSLOW. I think you could if you go on the basis that every merchant in the country is dishonest. I have never found it so, and I do not believe it is so. There may be a few here and there, but generally speaking the merchants of the country are honest; and I think as they go up in price they are pretty apt to advance the quality all the time. But as compared with previous days, they would get a higher price for the same article, grade for grade, all down the line. This is not dishonesty.

Mr. WALKER. I agree with you to an extent there; but how does the retailer know anything about cloth?

Mr. WINSLOW. I do not know whether he does or not.

Mr. WALKER. He does not.

I

Mr. WINSLOW. I am not arguing that just at the moment. wanted to find out, if I could, whether or not during these years when virgin wool has come to be known as an article apart from all wool, the trade in virgin-wool production has materially increased. Mr. WALKER. I can answer that more plainly this way. I know of one-well, I will not say two or three, but I do know of onewho was a shoddy manufacturer, who has changed over entirely to a virgin-wool basis.

I do not know the construction of the American Woolen Co.'s fabrics. I do not know whether they are showing more virgin-wool fabrics this season than others.

Mr. WHITMAN. I can possibly answer that. In this country for the last 20 years back there has been more and more worsted produced. The worsted looms of the country to-day are not quite, but nearly, double what they were 20 years ago. The woolen goods are less to-day than they were 10 years ago.

Mr. WALKER. Are we going to drive the woolen manufacturers out of business because of poor fabrics?

Mr. WHITMAN. Probably not; but the fact is that this country has become somewhat more familiar with the use of worsted goods, and owing to certain conditions in the decade between 1900 and 1910, a very large number of looms were thrown onto worsted goods. This country likes the worsteds, apparently. We wear very light goods in this country compared to what they wear in England. Our fabrics to-day run 12 to 14 ounces where they ran formerly 18 to 23 ounces, and the country, as I say, is more and more getting into the habit of using the lighter sort of goods, and a harder weave goods, besides worsteds. The country likes worsteds, and it is now practically going to the worsted fabrics.

Mr. WALKER. In connection with Mr. Whitman's statement, I would like to see the figures of the 1919 woolen production in the United States. I think those figures would surprise you. We have not got them. All we have is back to 1914, and I think you will be greatly surprised when you see those figures.

The CHAIRMAN. What will be the nature of the surprise?

Mr. WALKER. The increased production of woolens.

Mr. WINSLOW. Do you expect that those figures will segregate the cloth made for the military institutions of the country?

Mr. WALKER. I am talking of last year.

Mr. WINSLOW. Yes.

Mr. WALKER. Yes; I think they will. I hope so; if they are going to be of value.

Mr. WINSLOW. Now, you raised some question about the prices running down in bad times.

Mr. WALKER. Yes.

Mr. WINSLOW. Will you kindly make that point over again? Mr. WALKER. In bad times in our industry there is no incentive to make good merchandise. We have to compete to-day on the basis of price. We have to compete with Mr. John Jones; he puts in 40 per cent shoddy. Then we will probably have to put in 50 per cent shoddy, and the next fellow puts in 60 per cent. There is no incentive to make good fabrics. If the public knew the difference virgin wool fabrics would then be competing with virgin wool fabrics. We would not have to lower our quality in any way, because there would be enough people in the country that would want pure virgin wool fabrics. The sheep industry would not go to the devil. The shoddy manufacturer would be doing business, and so would the virgin wool manufacturer.

Mr. WINSLOW. What is the most expensive cloth to make, one manufactured of all virgin wool, or one mixed with shoddy, from the manufacturer's point of view?

Mr. WALKER. That is too big a question. I could not answer you that. It all depends on the fabric.

Mr. WINSLOW. I will put it another way. I may not be intelligible from a manufacturer's point of view; I realize that. Assum