PARAGRAPH 416-BOOKS. TESTIMONY OF PETER J. BRADY. The witness was duly sworn by the chairman. Mr. BRADY. Mr. Chairman, I have nothing to add to what President Carroll of the New York Allied Printing Trades stated here. We are both down here on the same mission, and all the data we have in connection with the case will be filed here for use of your committee when you come to make up your schedule. The CHAIRMAN. We will be very glad to receive it. BRIEF OF THE ALLIED PRINTING TRADES COUNCIL OF GREATER NEW YORK. Hon. OSCAR UNDERWOOD, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. NEW YORK, January 29, 1913. DEAR SIR: On behalf of all the printing trades unions, composed of photo-engravers, compositors, stereotypers, electrotypers, bookbinders, and pressmen, I desire to submit to you, for the consideration of your committee when making up their schedules on printed matter, the following reasons why there should not be any reduction in the present tariff rate: When the present rate for books and printed matter was adopted, proper protection was given to the American workman because at that time, and up until a short time ago, the foreign manufacturers did not have the up-to-date machinery now in use. This machinery is of American manufacture and has been sent to Europe and installed in the establishments there, and owing to the low wage and longer hours, with the advantage of the improved machinery, the foreign establishments are enabled to turn out all printed matter at a lower labor cost than it is possible to produce the same product in the United States. The printed matter is shipped over here, and a duty of 25 per cent is paid on it. Notwithstanding this fact, it can be sold at a lower price than it is possible to produce the same article for in the United States. Any further reduction in the present rate will mean a severe loss to the entire printing industry. It has already been clearly shown before your committee that the manufacturers of books and printers are not to be confused or classed with publishers. Publishers are those who place the article on the market and have it manufactured in some establishment which is not their own. The manufacturers are the people whom we are pleading for, as it is they who employ the members of our unions; and we know from the condition of our trade during the past few years that there has been 30 per cent of our membership unemployed, and we feel that the cause of this is that the publishers, instead of having their product manufactured in the United States, are sending it to Europe. Your attention has been called to the fact that on an encyclopedia with an edition of one million and a quarter volumes, and also on books by standard authors which are given away by magazines as an inducement for the people to subscribe to the magazine, while the first edition has been printed here, the plates for the second and following editions have been shipped to Europe, where they can be produced much cheaper. We are of the opinion that the publishers are only now beginning to realize the advantage that the cheap foreign labor is giving them over the American workman and manufacturers, and that if something is not done to rectify this abuse in the immediate future there will be a much larger percentage of our people out of employment than at the present time. Another matter which we desire to call to the attention of your committee is the duty on post cards. It was thoroughly demonstrated to the Payne-Aldrich committee that the tariff on this class of printing was not sufficient to fully protect the American photo-engraver, with the result that they increased the rate, and now three-quarters of the post cards which were previously imported are being manufactured in the United States. We believe that your committee should continue this rate. As for the bookbinding industry, on account of the low tariff on extra-bound and other books, this is a lost art in the United States, and men and women who formerly received high wages at this industry have been compelled to seek other means of employment and at a much lower wage than that formerly received. PARAGRAPH 416-BOOKS. There is still another abuse recently called to our attention, and one which will become a very dangerous one unless some method is adopted to prevent it, and that is that the manufacturers of patent articles who do a large amount of advertising in leaflet or pamphlet form are now having this done in Europe, bringing their mailing lists over there and doing their printing and mailing from the other side. I believe they even have the advantage of a lower postage r. te than they can secure here. If something is not done to curb this abuse, it will become an exceedingly dangerous menace to the future of the printing industry in this country, which is now classed as the sixth largest industry we have. Our members and people, mainly through power of organization, have been able to secure fairly decent working conditions and, in most branches of the printing industry, a living wage. In one branch of it, however, where a large number of women are employed, at least one-half of the women employed in the industry do not receive what is supposed to be the lowest wage possible for a woman to support herself on properly in this country. All of these matters are distinctly up to your committee, and while we appreciate that the last election by its vote for the pledges of the Democratic Party went on record for a revision of the tariff, we believe that it was a revision which would give better protection to the American workman and an opportunity not only to enjoy the conditions he may have at the present time, but that it would give him greater opportunities to secure better conditions in the future. In some industries there have crept in some very flagrant abuses on account of the tariff, but we are absolutely sure that this is not so of the printing industry; and we believe that while your committee no doubt will reduce the tariff in some instances where these abuses have been shown to exist, that they will commit a serious error and an irreparable injury to the printing industry in this country if there is any reduction in the present tariff rates. We are of the opinion that if it is the desire of your committee to protect this great industry, the tariff should be raised in some of its branches. It may be safely assumed that the larger proportion of our membership have voted the Democratic ticket, but when doing so they had no intention of voting for a reduction on a tariff which would work an injury to themselves, and we trust that your committee, when arriving at its conclusions on this vital question, will take all of these matters and the foregoing statements into consideration. This organization is ready at all times to cooperate with and assist your committee in every way in arriving at its conclusions, and we would appreciate very much your informing us as to what your decisions are likely to be on this question before same are finally adopted. Yours, respectfully, PETER J. BRADY, Secretary. TESTIMONY OF JAMES L. FEENEY, WASHINGTON, D. C. The witness was duly sworn by the chairman. Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Chairman, I have been requested to appear here for the International Brotherhood of Bookbinders, which is an organization which has in its membership the bookbinders of the United States. They will file a brief later on in the session, and I simply want to speak on one particular part of the tariff act, and that is regarding that clause in the free list allowing books printed over 20 years to be admitted free of duty. My belief is that when that act was passed by Congress it was the intent of Congress to include the binding of the book as well as the printed book. Mr. HULL. How long has that provision been in the tariff law? Mr. FEENEY. I believe for a number of years. But up to 10 years ago it was interpreted by the customs officials so that no book could come in if it was rebound without paying a duty; I think that was in 1902. I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that up to 10 years ago we had over 1,000 men in New York City engaged in what is called art binding— that is, the extra binding-and when that decision was rendered by the Treasury Department those books were sent from America to PARAGRAPH 416-BOOKS. England and France, and brought back here, and came in duty free. The result is to-day that we have not got 200 men in that class of work in New York, and a great many of them had to get out of their trade and take up other businesses, even becoming, some of them, car conductors and motormen-high-class skilled men. In the city of London there are a great many of those binderies called art binderies. I made a visit there a few years ago and I was astonished to find in one bindery nearly all the customers were Americans. I saw a set of books costing $100 apiece, bound for one of our noted bankers in New York, and also in another bindery which I visited I found almost all their customers were Americans. In fact they claimed that without the American trade they could not exist. Now, if that is granted-I do not think it is either an increase or a decrease of the tariff, but I think it is merely righting a wrong in the law. I think Congress meant, in the passage of that law, that books should be printed and bound over 20 years and the word "bound" was not put in the act. A book printed I would consider an unbound book; putting a cover on it makes it a bound book. And when it comes into this country printed only five or six years ago, there is a duty put on it; there is a 25 per cent duty on it. The law reads "over 20 years." But what we find fault with under that act, more than anything else, is that an immense number of books are sent from our country abroad to be rebound, and then come back here and are admitted duty free. American bookbinders lose all the labor on that work. Mr. HULL. Does that embrace a large amount of the cheaper leather-bound books. Mr. FEENEY. Not so much in the cheaper grades, as it is in the high-class leather books, and what we call art books, that is, high-class finishing on those works where it takes from 5 to 100 hours to bind a book; it takes the same number of hours in New York to bind a book as in London, but the labor there in London is cheaper, and the result is they bring in the books cheaper. We have a man in this country now, an Englishman, who has come over here to get our library books; I believe he has got on his staff somewhere around 150 libraries. And he gets the books and takes them to a little bindery which he has in Brooklyn, and then he ships them to his big bindery in Bath, England, and they are bound and brought back to this country, while our binders walk the streets, and a great many libraries in the different towns and cities have their books bound by him, and our citizens are taxed to support those libraries, and the money goes to enrich those foreign binders while our own workmen walk the streets. That is the fact in the city of New York. In the city of New York he had the contract, I believe, for the city library, and the books were going abroad until the unions of New York City took the matter up and had an act passed by the New York board of aldermen preventing the city library books from being sent abroad to be bound. My union does not ask this committee or Congress anything, except simply that little amendment of the law, which is simply righting a wrong which was unintentionally put into the statute. I do not PARAGRAPH 416-BOOKS. consider it either increasing or decreasing the tariff. The provision that all books bound over 20 years may be admitted free of duty-we do not object to that. Let them come in 50 or 100 years old, with their original covers on, but when they are sent abroad to be bound and then come back and have on them an imprint that they have been printed over 20 years, we do not consider that proper. We also suffer a good deal from the foreign-language books admitted free of duty. But we have no objection to that, with the exception of sending back the foreign books to be rebound in Germany, France, and England, and we simply lose the labor of doing that. I want to tell the committee now, that in the city of New York our trade is extremely dull and a large number of men are out of work, and no doubt they would be all employed if that one clause was inserted in the tariff act; and we simply make that as a request. And in closing, Mr. Chairman, I will say that the international president and secretary of our organization will file a brief here, giving more details, regarding that one particular clause and what we want done. Mr. HULL. Do you agree to the amendment that was proposed by Mr. Brassel, in his statement? Mr. FEENEY. I think it is a very good one; yes, I do. Mr. HULL. Would that cover the situation? Mr. FEENEY. Yes, that would cover it. That was a very excellent amendment-and I paid a good deal of attention to it while he was reading it. Mr. HULL. Well, the cheaper bound books of this class can be bound almost as cheaply here as they could there, could they not? Mr. FEENEY. The cheaper bound books, we have not had a great deal of trouble with. It is mostly with the leather-bound books that we have had trouble. Of course, the salaries are higher here than they are abroad. The average wages of a bookbinder in New York run from $18 to $23, while the scale of wages in England runs from 30 shillings to 32 shillings a week, which is about $8 to $8.50 of our money. I made a particular study while I was abroad, and I want to tell the chairman and the gentlemen of the committee that the men in our craft live better here in this country than what I saw in the city of London, and I am proud of that condition of affairs. Therefore we want that clause in. We do not want to deprive the American people of getting the educational books, and we only ask a fair deal in this matter, so that that work that can be done in this country should not be sent abroad for the sake of saving a few pennies to the owner of the books while at the same time depriving our workmen of this work. Mr. HULL. The sending of these works abroad to be bound in this way is not on account of the design or the particular binding so much as it is the difference of cost; is that true? Mr. FEENEY. That is it. You have got it right. A few pennies in cost, because they simply go below the American bookbinders' price. Where the American bookbinders would charge $1.50, they would do it for $1.30, and just go below that price; the rate of freightage is very low, and the binders of London and other European cities are now busy, while work in our binderies is slow. PARAGRAPH 416-BOOKS. We had an organization which ranged up to several hundred members, a flourishing organization of highly skilled men; and I would like to make the statement right now, in answer to what Mr. William Parker Cutter said four years ago, giving one reason why he sent books abroad, as being because he could not get them bound as well in this country. I want to deny that, Mr. Chairman, and say that we have just as highly skilled bookbinders in America to-day as can be found in any city or any country in this world. We have the advantage, if I do say it, of other countries, because we have all nationalities in our country, and we have in the city of New York alone, city of Chicago, and other cities men of great skill. But, like all other classes, they have got to keep in practice. Where there is no work to practice their skill on, why no doubt they will go down. Of course we have some shops in New York where we have American citizens who do not mind the increase of cost in price and give the work to the American bookbinders; and then we have the other class, that want to save the pennies and the dollars, and they send the books to the other side of the pond, and back they come to this country bound, and their money goes over there and we lose that. TESTIMONY OF R. E. MAGILL, SECRETARY AND TREASURER, PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION, RICHMOND, VA. The witness was duly sworn by the chairman. Mr. MAGILL. Mr. Chairman, I recognize it is somewhat unusual for a representative of a church institution to appear before a committee of this kind in a discussion of what seems to be purely financial matters, but as we are directly interested in some of the articles affected by the tariff laws, we ask permission to make a statement, and I think I can make it within the time allotted, with your permission. May I say further, that in presenting this statement, I am speaking for myself and the particular publishing house I represent. I also have in support of my statement letters from representatives of other publishing houses. I shall therefore ask the privilege of filing their original letters as a part of my presentation. The CHAIRMAN. You have that privilege. Mr. MAGILL. Mr. Chairman, the publication boards and agencies of the churches are charged with the duty of furnishing to their constituencies Bibles, works discussing theological questions, books of an educational and inspirational character, dealing with present-day problems, and supplies of every kind for Sunday-school work. Believing that the present tariff rates add unnecessarily to the cost of much of this material, the undersigned respectfully petitions for legislation that will remove entirely, or materially reduce, the existing tariff on the items I shall name. First, Bibles. Prior to the War Between the States a tax of 8 per cent was levied on Bibles, but a rate of 25 per cent was fixed by the exigencies of the war period, and it has stood unchanged for a period of about 50 years. This tax, in the judgment of your petitioner, should now be entirely removed. The amount derived from this source does not materially |