large plate glass, about 10 feet, about where they are now and putting up the prices of smaller pieces, would it not? Mr. CLAUSE. Some smaller pieces; not all of them. Mr. CLARK. That would be making an increase of the price on that which ought not to have an increase of price, would it not? Mr. CLAUSE. I do not think it would work out that way. That may seem contradictory to you. I think you have reference to the question whether this will advance the price of glass to the poor man. Mr. CLARK. To the consumer. I do not care whether he is poor or rich; the average consumer of glass. Mr. CLAUSE. This will have the effect of advancing the price on the very highest grades of plate glass under 5 feet. Mr. CLARK. My understanding of the proposition is that it would be a general raise, and that the raise would come on the smaller pieces of glass. Mr. CLAUSE. Of course it would have to be on the smaller pieces of glass, because it is only glass under 5 square feet that is affected by this advance. There is no advance from 5 to 10 feet, and from 10 feet to 250 feet there is a large reduction. Mr. CLARK. How big a piece of glass is it that goes into the average show window of an average retail store, in towns of from 500 up to 10,000 population? Mr. CLAUSE. Most of that glass is from 50 to 100 square feet; you might say from 25 to 100 square feet. Mr. CLARK. If the committee or Congress should take a notion to grant this request of yours for an increased duty, is there any way that the laboring men-the men who labor in the factories can get the whole of that increased duty? Mr. CLAUSE. I never heard of any plan that was devised by which it was all divided up to one man. It does not work out that way. Mr. CLARK. If the tariff is for the benefit of the laboring man, then the laboring man ought to get all the tariff, ought he not?" Mr. CLAUSE. We are not so philanthropic as that. Mr. CLARK. I am not asking whether you are philanthropic or not; I am asking whether that would not be a matter of ordinary justice? Mr. CLAUSE. I do not see why it would be. Mr. CLARK. If the consumer is taxed to raise the price of glass for the benefit of the laborer, then I can not see that anybody else ought to get any part of the raise. Mr. CLAUSE. That was not our proposition. Mr. CLARK. I know; but that is the general proposition that is thumped into our heads all the time. Mr. CLAUSE. That is not what we are advocating. Mr. CLARK. You want a part of that raise yourself? Mr. CLAUSE. Yes; we need it. Our stockholders want it; they demand it; and they are crying for it. Mr. CLARK. You have testified very frankly all day. I want to ask you another question. This committee is trying to ascertain the facts. We want to find out all about this glass competition in Europe, and the difference in the cost of labor and materials in Europe, and all the rest of it. I will ask you if, in view of that fact, you ought not to have figured out this whole thing to an absolute nicety in this brief that you are going to file here, so that you would give a man that does not know much about the technicalities of the glass business the entire statement of the situation? Mr. CLAUSE. Mr. Clark, I had this in mind in preparing this brief. I would just as soon continue to be frank as I have been thus far. Mr. CLARK. Very well. Mr. CLAUSE. There are certain facts that you will accept on their face, because you know the source from which they come and the conditions surrounding them-and those are about these imports. Mr. CLARK. Yes. Mr. CLAUSE. Those imports are there to speak for themselves. You know as a good, level-headed man, and I know as a business man, that if that glass could have been produced here at a profit it would not have been brought in. Mr. CLARK. No; I do not know that. Mr. CLAUSE. Well, I do. Mr. CLARK. I think that maybe you would want too much profit. Mr. CLAUSE. No. Mr. CLARK. And that might keep it out and have the same effect. Mr. CLAUSE. No. The kind of profits we have made, and the dividends we have paid, and the records of the company from start to finish show that we have had a very modest profit, and if there was a chance to get a penny's profit out of it, if we could have furnished. that glass even at cost to ourselves, it would not have come in here. I speak of that because you can see the rates of duty that the Government collected on this glass; and that I take it as good tangible evidence to you that the importer would not have paid that duty if he could have bought the glass here and have saved it. Mr. CLARK. Why, no; of course he would not. Mr. CLAUSE. And that duty indicates the kind of a protection we have got to have if we are to meet foreign competition. Mr. CLARK. What you really want is a prohibitive tariff, is it not? Mr. CLAUSE. I do not think this tariff would be prohibitive. Mr. CLARK. I did not ask you that; I asked you if that was not really what you wanted. Mr. CLAUSE. Well, if I could have everything I wanted, probably I would take a prohibitive tariff. I do not think any man in any business would object to being put in the best possible position in his business. But, just the same, I think foreign glass would continue to come in here, and I do not think that the price of glass-the cheaper grades of glass to the poor man, the lower qualities-is going to be materially affected. He will be somewhat affected-I do not pretend to say that he will not be somewhat affected-but we feel that neither he nor anybody else has a right to ask us to furnish him at a loss. Mr. CLARK. There is no prohibitive tariff? Mr. CLAUSE. No, sir; there is glass coming in continuously at 221 cents a foot-that is, 5 to 10 foot bracket-and that will remain unchanged. The larger sizes will come in here at the same price. We do not suppose they will come in here and flood us; otherwise we would not accept it. But we have come in here with this in the nature of a compromise. We understand that this committee has undertaken to get up a tariff that is better than the old one, and that 75941-H. Doc. 1505, 60-2-vol 2- -8 they will make reductions where they can be made, and that is why we are proposing this reduction in glass over 10 feet. Mr. CLARK. I know, but in the net result you raise it. Mr. CLARK. You have spoken of the promise in the Republican platform as a persuasive argument, at least, why this, that, and the other should be done. Have you any knowledge that that platform promise during the last campaign was construed into a promise to revise the tariff down? Mr. CLAUSE. I did not suppose that Republican declaration would appeal to you, Mr. Clark. Mr. CLARK. Not a particle; but I was trying to use that on these Republicans. Mr. CLAUSE. No; I will tell you, I was using that Republican argument because it is logical that the duty should be based measurably as much as possible upon the cost of manufacture in the two countries, and the reasonable way and the only way you can do that is to abandon the schedules that now exist and adopt a flat schedule. Mr. CLARK. My question is logical, too. Have you heard during the campaign that this promise in the Republican platform was construed in certain parts of the country to be a promise of a revision down instead of up? Mr. CLAUSE. Yes; but we are reducing down on glass from 10 feet up to 250 feet. Mr. CLARK. But you are reducing up on the other. Mr. CLAUSE. Yes; we need it. Mr. CLARK. Now, nobody has asked you this question. Your plant at Pittsburg is more happily situated with reference to being able to take advantage of water rates than any other plate-glass company in America? it. Mr. CLAUSE. We do not use water rates at all. Mr. CLARK Why do you not? Mr. CLAUSE. Because I suppose there has never been any money in Mr. CLARK. You take the Ohio River and the Allegheny, and what is the other one, the Youghiogheny? Mr. CLAUSE. No, there are the Ohio and the Allegheny and the Monongahela. Mr. CLARK. Well, you take those two other rivers, and they would not amount to so much for transportation; but you take the Ohio River, and that gives you transportation to the Gulf on the one hand and to the Falls of St. Anthony on the other. Mr. CLAUSE. We do not ship a foot of glass by water; so far as our factory is concerned we do not. Whether our jobbing houses occasionally use river boats for small river shipments I will not undertake to say. Possibly they may. Mr. CLARK. Why do you not? Mr. CLAUSE. Because plate glass is a fragile product. Mr. CLARK. Yes. Mr. CLAUSE. And we load the cars ourselves right in our factory. We do not allow the railroads to load them. The glass is placed very carefully on the car in the works where we have every facility, and the cases are handled and packed so that there is no jar at all; they are put on the cars and are blocked in there both ways so that they can not shift, and they are braced so that they can not be thrown off, because we want these shipments to go through without break, and they do go through without break. Where you ship by water you have to break shipments and transfer, and that is dangerous, always. Mr. CLARK. What proportion of the entire plate-glass output would have the tariff raised by your proposition, and what proportion would have it lowered? I am talking about money values now. Mr. CLAUSE. That is pretty difficult to answer, and I will tell you why. Mr. CLARK. I do not expect you to give it accurately, of course. Mr. CLAUSE. NO. I will tell you why it is difficult to answer. I said this morning that about 25 per cent of the product naturally developed into glass under 10 square feet. The better grades of glass are nearly all cut out of large sizes. It is one of the incidents of the business that you get a better finish-and the finish on the surface is the important thing with regard to a mirror-on the larger sizes than on the small pieces, invariably. The plaster that is in the joints has this effect. This glass all has to be embedded in plaster such as they were talking about this morning, to be held on the grinding table, and that plaster drags out some on the glass and sometimes interferes with the character of the polish. The smaller the size you have-in other words, the more joints through which the plaster can come out― the more your trouble is with regard to finish, and the best finish is almost invariably in the large glass. So the small sizes of fine quality are almost invariably cut out of large sizes, and you have to cut it out wherever the defects will permit you to cut it out. You cut out the defects in cutting the glass. In doing that you make a lot of other small sizes, invariably, and the tendency that way all the time is the reason why you are getting so much of that. All of your tendency is to get so much of it that the competition to sell it keeps the price down, and that is why we are not to-day availing ourselves of the present duty on those small sizes-some of them. Now, this is to explain why nobody could foretell just how this problem is going to work out as to how much of an advance we would get, or what percentage of our product it will cover, because that is a practical problem that will vary from day to day right in the warehouse of a factory, according to the character of the glass that is coming in. Mr. CLARK. I want to preface this question with one statement of my own, and that is that I do not care how much money a man makes provided he makes it honestly and is entitled to it. That is the statement. Now the question is: You state that your profits in the glass industry are in the neighborhood of 4 per cent. Mr. CLAUSE. No; I did not state that the profits in the plate-glass industry were 4 per cent. I stated that the dividends paid during the years since 1895 had averaged, for the whole period, 4 per cent, or just a fraction under. I did not state that that was made out of the manufacture of plate glass. I did state that the greater part of all our profit had come from auxiliary sources. Mr. CLARK. I know, but the auxiliary sources only brought it up to 41 per cent. Mr. CLAUSE. That is right, so far as the payment of dividends were concerned. Now, we had a slight profit beyond that. Mr. CLARK. You earned 8 per cent? Mr. CLAUSE. Yes. Mr. CLARK. The question I want to ask you is this: We have been cross-examining witnesses here and hearing them testify for two weeks now on every kind of conceivable manufacturing industry in America, and it has been with the extremest difficulty in the world that we have found more than three industries that pay more than 5 or 6 per cent. If that is true, I want to know how the manufacturers in the United States, so many of them, amass large fortunes? That is a fair question, too. Mr. CLAUSE. I will tell you one thing, Mr. Clark. The people who come down here are the people that need relief, for the most part. Mr. CLARK. To hear them tell it, they all need it. Mr. CLAUSE. I dare say. There are lots of them who do not come. Mr. CLARK. If I believed that, I would send out a search warrant for some of them. That is all. Mr. CLAUSE. A moment ago I was speaking about the polishing operation on glass. That reminds me of one of the statements made by a gentleman here this morning. You would have inferred from the statement he made that glass was inspected before it was polished to know whether it was worth polishing or not. As a matter of fact, you can not see defects in glass at all before it is polished. The glass is taken in what is termed the "rough" originally, which is double the thickness of the finished product, and it has to be ground on both sides, and that obscures the glass so that you can not see through it. You know what ground glass is like. That is what the glass looks like then, and it is impossible to inspect it. The CHAIRMAN. When it is polished, then, it takes just as much labor to make a defective sheet of glass of a given sort as a perfect one? Mr. CLAUSE. Yes, exactly; we do not know whether it is defective or not until we get it polished. Mr. Pou. I would like to know the comparative difference in the profits of your Belgian glass factory and your factories in America? Mr. CLAUSE. We bought that Belgian works five years ago, and it has paid for itself. Mr. Pou. Twenty per cent a year? Mr. CLAUSE. Yes. Mr. Pou. Where do you sell the output of that Belgian factory! Mr. CLAUSE. All over Europe, in China and Japan, and in the Mediterranean ports. Some of it goes to South America and some of it to England. Mr. Pou. Do you import any of it into the United States? Mr. CLAUSE. Šome of it. Mr. Pou. What proportion of it? Mr. CLAUSE. It is rather a small proportion, and of course all of it is small plates. Mr. Pou. Do you ship any of your manufactured products from your factories inside the United States abroad? Do you export any of it? Mr. CLAUSE. No, sir. Mr. Pou. Not a bit of it? Mr. CLAUSE. No, sir; practically none. I think one or two small shipments may go to Cuba now and then, possibly because the steamer is going and they want it quick. I could not say that never a foot had |