smaller the piece the more expensive in handling and care in preparation for packing, etc. This basis is the same abroad as it is here, therefore a more equitable tariff to be more uniformly protective would be a flat rate on all sizes, irrespective of dimensions. The reports show that during the enforcement of the Dingley tariff the glass at 8 and 10 cents duty has increased very largely, and further, that the imports in the 24 by 60 inch brackets paying a duty of 223 cents per foot has likewise grown very considerably; hence our product is not on a fair competitive basis with foreign-made glass at that rate, and that a revision of the tariff imposing a flat rate, should not be less than 25 cents per foot. We are willing to concede a reduction in the 35-cent rate if the flat-rate principle is adopted. This would result in the American manufacturer receiving a fair average price for all of his product, which he certainly is entitled to instead of the condition existing at present, whereby he is compelled to dispose of more than 60 per cent of his output on which he has never realized a profit. Should the new tariff, as suggested, result in a decreased amount of imports, this still would produce a very considerable revenue to the Government. If the changes which we suggest are adopted, a corresponding one should be made in paragraph No. 102, covering cast, polished silvered, cylinder, and crown glass plates. And a portion of paragraph No. 112, covering mirrors not exceeding 144 square inches, this in order to prevent importers from evading the proposed tariff by bringing in large quantities of glass under these paragraphs. The American manufacturer is compelled to dispose of his products in his home market, it being impossible for him to export and meet the prices of the foreign manufacturer with his smaller cost of production, and the benefit of trade agreements, sanctioned by his Government, which enable him to keep up prices on his product for his home market and other countries outside of the United States, so that he can dispose of his surplus in the United States and other competing markets at low prices, enabling him to run his plant at a profit. It is a fact that during the last six or eight years, whilst the American manufacturer was operating at a loss or no profit, the foreign manufacturers have made more money than at any prior period of their existence as an industry, paying their dividends, laying by large surplus, improving and modernizing their works from profits earned, while the American manufacturer ran his plant at a loss and, when finding it necessary to make improvements, was and is yet compelled to do so with new money furnished by the stockholders, who in many cases have never received their first dividend. Out of the eleven companies, seven have never paid any dividends, one has paid three 1per cent dividends, and the remaining three have paid moderate dividends at intervals. The investment of plants in this country is very much greater per square foot production than it is abroad. The maintenance more expensive, and, altogether, we feel that we are safe in saying that no other staple American product has had so long a struggle to arrive at a profit basis in reasonable keeping with the capital invested and the necessities of their business. If we can secure for the American manufacturer at least a reasonable portion of the business heretofore and up to the present time going abroad, we hope to secure the advantages to which we are entitled. Mr. BOUTELL. You stated the rate from Pittsburg to Chicago and from Antwerp to Chicago? Mr. KANN. Yes, sir. Mr. BOUTELL. Two or three other witnesses who have given comparative rates have stated those same figures. What is the present rate from Alexandria, Ind., where your works are, to, say, Madison, Wis.? Mr. KANN. Really, I can not answer that. Mr. BOUTELL. Can you take any other place within a radius of 200 miles of Alexandria, Ind., and give us the rate? Mr. KANN. The rate from Alexandria to Chicago is about— Mr. BOUTELL. I mean outside of the places you have given me there already? Mr. KANN. I was talking about Alexandria. The rate mentioned here is from Pittsburg to Chicago. Mr. BOUTELL. Yes, I understand; from Pittsburg to Chicago and from Antwerp to Chicago. I want to get a rate from Alexandria, Ind., to some other point. Mr. KANN. What other point? Mr. BOUTELL. I suggested Madison, Wis. I just happened to think of that place, I do not know why. Take Cairo, Ill. Mr. NEEDHAM. Or take it to Pacific coast points. Mr. KANN. The rate from Alexandria to Pacific coast points is 50 cents a hundred; but they make those rates from all points east of the Mississippi the same to the Pacific coast. Mr. BOUTELL. I wanted to find out whether there was the same comparison between your points of shipment that there was between Antwerp and Chicago. Mr. KANN. Yes; I can relieve your mind about that; the tariffs we will sumbit to you will give you the tariff from the factory districts to those other points. When you speak of Cairo, that is scarcely a fair illustration, because there is no jobber located there and no tariff is established. The distributing points at which they would try to arrive from abroad would be such points as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Chicago, or St. Louis, or places where there is a large consumption of glass, or distribution. Mr. BOUTELL. Yes. Mr. KANN. To all those points we will give you the rates from the Pittsburg district, where there are 11 factories, and we will give you the same rates from Alexandria, which is an equalizing point, and one from the Michigan factory, and that will give you an idea how those rates compare with the foreign rates. Mr. BOUTELL. State it in general terms if you can not answer it specifically. Take the rate from your factory at Alexandria, Ind., to Madison, Wis., which was the first illustration I gave. Should you say that your rate from Alexandria, Ind., to Madison, Wis., was greater than the rate from Antwerp to Madison? Mr. KANN. Without making a positive answer on something that I am not posted on, I would say, on the general proposition, I think it would be greater. Mr. BOUTELL. You are at a disadvantage? Mr. KANN. Yes, sir. Mr. BOUTELL. You spoke of selling to jobbers. Is that the customary method of selling by the first-class factories? Mr. KANN. The 11 companies which are represented by the committee of which I am a member do the bulk of their business selling to the jobbers of the United States. Mr. BOUTELL. So that when an architect gets bids or a builder gets bids on a small scale he gets them not from the factory, but from the jobber? Mr. KANN. As a rule; yes, sir. Mr. BOUTELL. In the shipment of glass from the factory to the jobber where does the shipper's risk for breakage terminate and where does the consignee's risk for breakage begin? Mr. KANN. The custom is to ship glass at the consignee's risk. Mr. KANN. Yes; but it is a question of whether you are released. There is a form on the general bill of lading which makes it obligatory for the shipper to either release, which means that the rate is that much less, or take the risk himself, as the case may be. It sometimes is an insured risk. So it is a question of agreement more than anything else. Mr. BOUTELL. What is the practical thing that shippers try to bring about? Mr. KANN. That the risk is on the manufacturer. Mr. BOUTELL. That the risk is on the manufacturer? Mr. KANN. Yes. Mr. BOUTELL. And you try to put it on the consignee? Mr. BOUTELL. I was trying to state what you said. Mr. KANN. If we make a delivery, of course the risk would go with the shipper, but we have tried to be a little more specific because we compete from different centers. We have tried to sell our goods f. o. b. shipping points from the factory, but from the fact that a factory like ours located in the Middle West is compelled to compete with a factory located in the Pittsburg district for shipments and trade located in Newark, N. J., or in New York, or in Boston we have found that the only way we could arrive at quotable prices without knowing what the rate was would be by having centers, and people shipping into the plate-glass company's district in St. Louis, Mo., would make their rate equalize at our point at Alexandria. Mr. BOUTELL. If you succeed in selling f. o. b the factory, that is at the consignee's risk? Mr. KANN. Yes, sir. Mr. BOUTELL. Where does the shipper's risk in Belgium terminate, in selling goods from Belgium to New York? Mr. KANN. The custom years ago was that they got their money before they shipped the goods; and they took no risk, no shipping risk, and no credit risk or no risk of any kind; but to-day they will put that glass into a warehouse in Cincinnati or Chicago, put it there at their own risk, and pay the duty. Mr. BOUTELL. So now outside of the freight and the duty there is the shipper's risk on breakage. Is not the risk on breakage from Belgium to that warehouse a great deal greater than the risk the American manufacturer undergoes? Mr. KANN. No. Mr. BOUTELL. In selling goods f. o. b. the factory? Mr. KANN. No; and that is the point I want to make. Mr. BOUTELL. I thought when I asked that question it would answer itself. Mr. KANN. I am afraid if I were to take that as a categorical question it would not be explanatory. The glass which comes from abroad in large quantities is small glass, and that is packed in cases low down, perhaps lower down than that desk [indicating], on the average. That glass can be handled pretty safely, while the glass that is shipped from the local points through the country is shipped in all sized cases, from that size up, and it is unloaded at all points, at many of which they have not unloading facilities and things of that kind. Of course where it is a shipment of a car load, they pack it at the factory, and of course the railroad company takes very little risk and the consignee takes very little risk; but the foreign glass that comes over here is at their risk, and their risk is less. If there is any risk it is minimized, because it goes right into the warehouse on the dock. Mr. BOUTELL. You heard the testimony of Mr. Clause that the increase which the plate-glass manufacturers were asking for would not, if his wishes prevail, be carried forward entirely to the laborers in the factories. Do you also agree with that view? Mr. KANN. I did not quite catch that, if you will pardon me. Mr. BOUTELL. He said that if we increased the duty, the whole of the increase in the price which the American producers could charge would not inure to the benefit of the laborers in the factories; that the stockholders themselves wanted some of it, and, if I caught the last words of his sentence, he said that they were crying for it. Mr. KANN. That they needed it very badly; yes, sir. Mr. BOUTELL. We have been listening to testimony for nearly three weeks of people who have come here voluntarily. Nobody has been sent for. All those who have come here have come voluntarily, and I think that the testimony taken uniformly shows that no increase of duties would inure to the laboring men, and no decrease of duty would inure to the benefit of the ultimate consumer; so that it appears that whatever we do to the tariff, whether we raise it or we lower it, there is just one class of people for whose benefit we are asked to do it, and you belong to that class. Mr. KANN. That is, the poor manufacturers. I do not believe that that is quite a logical deduction. In the first place, the American laborer in our industry has discounted that condition for quite some time. He has participated to quite a large extent in the increase paid to the American laborer. We do not begrudge him that, of course, but we are getting tired of carrying the whole burden of that ourselves. The consumer has gotten a very fair share of the burden we have carried, because he has been gradually getting the benefit of the lower prices on products for himself. As Mr. Hitchcock says, when he first went into the business the public were paying for glass $2.50 to $3 a foot. It has come down until it is within the reach of every man who wants to buy it to-day. There must be something that was instrumental in bringing about that condition, if we are paying the average fair wage to our employees, and I think we are doing that. Mr. BOUTELL. When we go into the view on the subject you have now, we are going a little far afield from the subject. I not only concede, but I maintain, that the consumer in this country is benefited by the protective system, and it seems beyond peradventure that the workingman has benefited by the protective system in this country; but what I want to call attention to now is the intensely practical question as to who is to be benefited by the tariff revision that we are to make at the present time. There is almost what you might call a clamor for a revision for the benefit of the consumer, and I have simply directed attention to the fact that witnesses who have come here voluntarily have so far been unable to make out that there would be any benefit from any reductions that have been asked for, to the ultimate consumer or the user of the product, and it now appears that in any increases that are asked there would not be that benefit to the laboring men that has followed the policy of the protective system in the past. What I wanted to direct attention to was the practical contention not as to what the protective system has produced in the past, but as to what this special revision is to accomplish; and, of course, so far as you are concerned the question only relates to what you expect to accomplish by a revision. Supposing you get the exact changes that you ask for, what in your opinion will be the change that will take place? Mr. KANN. That can not be answered by yes or no. I believe firmly, from my standpoint, and I have been connected with the industry for some years and know the business fairly well, that the demand for plate glass is growing very rapidly. We are getting accustomed to knowing that it is not a luxury, and it is down in price to where it can be had for almost any kind of a building. There are a great many collateral uses, such as for mirrors and things of that sort, and I believe we are going to have quite some increase, and a natural one. I believe under the suggestions that come here of this change the imports are not going to cease; I believe there is going to be a very wholesome import, and I will tell you why, if you ask me, I believe there will be a revenue to the Government. I believe that it will not be as great as it is now, perhaps, but it is going to be very material. I believe that if we can get a portion of this business which has been going abroad, just as we state in that statement, it will employ two or three more factories, and it will keep these factories running full time. One gentleman said this morning that his factory had been running full. Our company had their factory idle five months this year. There has not been one that has not been shut down 30, 40, or 50 per cent of its production, and notwithstanding this stuff was coming in from the other side. If we could have taken that business it is very natural that we would, because the factories had the capacity and they had that surplus that would have supplied it. They could have made it. So I believe that it is not going to raise the price to the consumer. It is just going to allow us to get a profit, if it is possible, or a difference of price enough over what we have been getting on the small glass to prevent a loss, if we can get to that point, which does not come out of the consumer nor the United States Government, and we will be put in a position where we can run our business fairly profitably, and we will not have to come along and make a poor mouth. But I can see myself that I am not clear in my mind as to whether any sort of duty would |