If all the wool that is grown in the world were made into all-wool raiment and distributed equally among the people living outside the tropics, all of us in the frigid and so-called temperate zones would be running around in public clad like runners at a race. That is, if we all wore all-wool with no admixture of wool waste or shoddy.

Man would take to abbreviated athlete's breeches, ending at the knees. There would be no sleeveless shirt to match, no woollen jacket, vest or overcoat.

Woman? The boldest Parisian designer never dared approach the extreme style she would, perforce, flash upon society. Eve herself, in all her glory, was ne'er arrayed as one of these, her daughters.

For, equitable distribution of all the wool grown in the world each year would allow each man, woman and child living outside the tropics a piece of light-weight all-wool about 44 inches square.

In the tropics, where Eve lived, if our teachers taught us aright about Eden, that might be enough for comfort all year round. There are some summer days in Boston when it would be more than enough-for comfortbut there are zero days and belowzero days. B-r-r-r! We would not need a coal shortage to shut down inIdustries then.

And yet there are men and women

who always ask for "all-wool" garments and shudder at the thought of shoddy.

Just now there are Congressmen who are crying "shoddy" at the uniforms Uncle Sam is furnishing his fighting men in olive drab and navy blue, and who are demanding "allwool" uniforms, meaning all new wool. They have raised the cry that uniforms worn by our soldiers are inferior to those furnished the fighting men of our allies.

They have aroused the shoddy manufacturers, a large part of whom are located in New England, to rise up and make reply. This is what the shoddy makers say:

If our army and navy wore allwool-that is, all new wool-uniforms, there would be a serious shortage of new wool in the country for civilians' clothing, including the raiment of Congressmen. We would all wear shoddy; perhaps all-shoddy or cotton.

On the other hand, if civilian suits were made of all new wool materials, the average person could not afford a new one oftener than every five years, provided distribution of the world's wool supply were ever so inequitably distributed that a whole suit of virgin wool could be made in modern style.

The trouble is, say wool shoddy manufacturers, few people know that all that is shoddy is not cotton; do

not know that all of the shoddy used in military and naval uniforms nowadays is all wool.

The reclamation of woolen rags and tailors' clippings is a scientific conservation measure, rendering the product an all-wool material of strictly sanitary properties reduced to its original fibre.

Not all of the wool shoddy is reclaimed from old rags. Much of it comes from tailors' clippings, the little squares and triangles and rectangles of cloth left over from new garments and once thrown away, though never worn. The wool shoddy that comes out of the rags and old clothes gathered all over the country by the ragmen is combed out, not ground up like fine-cut tobacco; becomes thoroughly sanitary in the carbonizing process by which the cotton in it is removed; is assorted, redyed and worked into fabrics with new, long-staple wool off the sheep, the new wool giving the garment strength and added wearing quality.

There is some poor shoddy made today, but it doesn't go into army or navy uniforms and blankets.

Figures are dry, but they are necessary to prove arguments. Let us look at a few figures to see if the shoddy manufacturers are right:

The sheep of all countries yield approximately 1,468,000,000 pounds of wool each year-that is, wool scoured of the dirt, sand and grease picked up on the ranges. There is a loss of about 30 per cent in manufacturing scoured wool into cloth, so that the yearly amount of wool made into clothing would be about 1,027,600,000 pounds.

The people living outside the tropics number approximately 1,169,000,000. If the 1,027,000,000 pounds of wool cloth were divided equally among them, each person would receive 14 ounces a year or a piece of lightweight cloth 44 inches square. It would tax the ingenuity of a greater than Eve to make a gown out of that. Infants might be fully clad, but adults must needs emulate the athlete or natives of the tropics in dress.

Compare each individual's share of the world's wool under equitable distribution, which would be 14 ounces. with the approximate weight of the wool portion of man's clothes today.

And you see that at the rate the world's flocks produce wool a man would have to wait four years for enough wool cloth to make a suit of 20th century clothes.

When you consider the large amount of wool materials used for other purposes, it is plain that the existence of most of the people living in cold and temperate climates depends on a supply of wool material in addition to that which comes direct from the sheep's back each year.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that if wool were not reclaimed it would be more expensive than silk.

But to get back to wool and military uniforms. In the pre-war period, we produced in this country each year 135,000,000 pounds of wool-scoured.

We imported about 105,000,000 pounds, making the total available 240,000,000 pounds per year, or an average of about 2 1-2 pounds per capita. On April 1, 1917, we were using wool at the rate of about 350,000,000 pounds a year or 3 1-2 pounds per capita. We made up the addition through increased production at home and larger imports from South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. U-boats have cut down the number of ships that could bring wool from those countries, yet, now we need more wool than ever.

It has been carefully figured out on the basis of losses in the European armies that the soldier needs per year about 66 2-3 pounds of wool per capita. That means about 200,000,000 pounds would be required for our army and navy alone with the fighting force at 3,000,000 men.

When it came to making millions of uniforms for our fighting men, the government foresaw that if its soldiers and sailors were clothed in new all wool, its civilians would suffer. So the government specified the use of wool shoddy in an amount recommended by the committee on supplies of the Council of National Defense in conjunction with the woolen committee of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers of the United States.

It specified that 35 per cent of wool substitute, or wool shoddy, could be used in soldiers' overcoats and in army and navy blankets.

It specified that only 2 1-2 per cent of foreign substance, like cotton, could be contained in the wool shoddy. As a matter of fact, the wool

shoddy makers say, the percentage has been lower, as low as 1-2 of I per cent.

If these army goods were made of all virgin wool, they would cost one-third more, be no warmer and really no more serviceable, say the shoddy makers. Wool shoddy does not decrease the warmth and reduces the wearing quality very little if at all, they claim.

The wool shoddy makers declare that the extra amount of wool needed in clothing the armies of the world in 1918, over and above what the soldiers would wear as civilians, would be enough to clothe the entire population of the United States for a year in all-wool garments.

The wool shoddy manufacturer claims he is one of the greatest conservationists in the world. He would rather call his product reclaimed or reworked wool, as Uncle Sam does. He thinks it describes it better.

Anyway, unless we all intend to move to the tropics and unanimous consent to transfer the battle grounds of the world to its warmer climes is secured, we'll have to stop "cussing” shoddy and get better acquainted with its uses and benefits to mankind.

Forty-four inches of cloth might have been enough to clothe Adam and Eve. It might be enough for the native of the tropics. But how warm would it have kept an American when it was 14 below zero a spell back?

It's rather queer, in view of all that's been going on, to read an advertisement declaring that "Bakers" are needed for the navy.

resulted in the defeat of the bill, through limitation, when the Fiftyninth Congress ended on March 4, 1907.

On February 26, 1907, Representative Grosvenor of Ohio, the Republican leader, opened the prolonged debate in the House with a statement setting forth the unconcealed and extreme hostility of the great German. steamship companies to all American interests, both commercial and national.

Two great foreign steamship companies, said Mr. Grosvenor, which have bitterly fought the encouragemen of American shipping, are the Hamburg-American company of Hamburg and the North German Lloyd company of Bremen; the latter subsidized for $1,350,000 a year for a 15-knot mail service to the East Indies and Australia.

The New York manager of the Hamburg-American company, Mr. Emil Boas, published in the New York Herald a few weeks ago a violent attack upon the American shipping bill.

Both of the great German steamship companies owe their wealth and their power chiefly to the patronage of American merchants and travelers. Yet in the crisis of our war with Spain, in 1898, both companies took fast ships out of the New York service-ships built for and supported by American patronage-and transferred them to the Spanish Government. Some of these ships were used to reinforce Admiral Camara, who sailed from Cadiz to attack Admiral Dewey at Manila, but was halted at the Suez Canal by the news of the destruction of Cervera's ships off Santiago and our threatened attack upon the coast of Spain.

A. G. Maginnis, in "The Atlantic Ferry," published by Whitaker & Co. (London, 1900), speaks of the Ham

burg-American company and its transatlantic service, and says:

Two of these vessels were named the Columbia and Normannia, and were sold to the Spanish Government, in the spring of 1898, for 450,000 pounds, and were renamed the Rapido and the Patriota. In 1889 the Normannia was purchased from the Spanish by the French Compagnie Transatlantique for the New York express service, and was renamed L'Acquitaine, and in the same year the Columbia was bought back by the Hamburg-American line. In 1898 also the Havel, of the North German Lloyd Line, was sold to the Spanish Gov

ernment.

Mr. Grosvenor continued:

The real head and front of opposition in this country to the protection and encouragement of American shipping always has been, is, and always will be, the rich and powerful steamship companies, most of them subsidized by their own foreign governments. This fact has time and again been freely admitted.

The foreign steamship companies that do not want this ocean mail bill (that is, the ship subsidy bill) to pass-like the foreign shipowners who monopolize our trade through a foreign combine, or trust, between New York and South America-tell the representatives of the Middle West that the West has no interest in an American merchant marine; that this bill is only "graft" for the benefit of New England, New York and Pennsylvania, and that the Mississippi Valley and the prairie States, ought to join with this foreign steamship combine and with the subsidized companies of foreign countries to defeat in this House all legislation for the protection and encouragement of American shipping.

That is what they tell you in the marked copies of their newspaper organ that they are constantly sending to you from New York.