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lease of opportunity for those groups of lawbreakers who have done violence to every sound principle of trade in their efforts to crush competition, to restrict production, and to impose upon the people a monopoly of an article that is essential to the dissemination of knowledge? I am not willing to believe that an American Congress will give heed to any such proposition. On the contrary, I believe that this committee would approve of any plan by which a solution of this situation would be reached. In the recent political campaign in Canada it was announced that the government would refer the proposition for an export duty on pulp wood to a commission for adjustment. Why not utilize the information and studies of your Select Committee on Paper and Pulp which has been digging into this matter for six months and arrange through the State Department for informal conferences? I am confident that, as a result of such action, you will recommend the plan outlined in H. R. 22237, introduced by Mr. Mann upon request, providing for reciprocity with Canada. That bill was prepared in the State Department and was passed upon in the Treasury Department. Its language is that of section 3 of the Dingley bill, with the substitution of pulp and paper for argols,

It follows the recommendation of President Roosevelt to Congress, and it adopts the safeguards and precautions suggested by the report of the majority of the Select Committee on Pulp and Paper Investigation, whereby American paper makers will be insured protection from hostile action by Canada in the event of the removal of any duty by you. In short, that Canada will not attempt to impose any export duty on pulp and paper and pulp wood in the event of the abolition of our import duty on pulp and paper.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that the bill introduced by Mr. Mann, of Illinois, by request?

Mr. NORRIS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. By request?

Mr. NORRIS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I could draw a good deal better bill than that. Mr. NORRIS. You will have to reframe the Dingley bill, then, because it is absolutely the language of section 3 of the Dingley bill, which I think you had some part in, and for which you are measureably responsible, certainly as to its phraseology.

The CHAIRMAN. I could make a bill that would insure much more protection against Canada than any provision of that kind.

Mr. NORRIS. But that means a trade war, and I doubt if even the chairman of this committee wants to invite or precipitate anything of that sort. I am quite sure he has no such disposition.

The CHAIRMAN. As to do what?

Mr. NORRIS. As to invite or precipitate a trade war with Canada. The CHAIRMAN. Certainly not.

Mr. NORRIS. Certainly not.

The CHAIRMAN. We are agreed on that entirely. I do not think there is any danger of that.

Mr. NORRIS. Well, we must carry the load, if there is danger. With your ideas about it, if you should so decide, we must bear the

consequences.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not know what my ideas are about it.

Mr. NORRIS. I have no doubt that before we get through to-night you will be for free pulp and free paper.

Mr. UNDERWOOD. The suggestion was made to-day that when this bill comes out of the committee it will probably come out in the shape of a maximum and minimum tariff bill. What have you to say on that subject, in the light of that statement?

Mr. NORRIS. Will you permit me first to take up the division of "labor," and of "wood and forestry," and then of the tariff, and then of combinations, so that I may cover the points which I understand were deep in the chairman's mind, that labor must be protected and that the cost of production must be insured?

Mr. UNDERWOOD. Certainly.

LABOR.

Mr. NORRIS. Simple arithmetic will determine the question whether or not the paper makers have given to labor any share of your tariff benefaction. In New York State, which is the largest paper-making State in the Union, the state bureau of labor (p. 359) gathered reports in 1906 from every branch of organized male labor in that State, and the figures showed that 2,786 organized workers in "paper and paper goods" received less than any other class of organized labor (exhibit). Paper workers received an average of $10.94 per week, or $1.82 per day, for skilled and unskilled labor combined. The proportion of skilled labor receiving $3 per day was less than 9 per cent of the total number employed.

In the State of Massachusetts in the year 1905 (see p. 371) 13,364 persons engaged in the paper industry received an average of $9.06 per week, or $1.51 per day, and in the year 1906 they received an average of $1.53 per day.

In the State of Wisconsin (p. 703) 44 establishments, employing 5,384 persons, reported that the average yearly wage was $162.01, equaling $1.48 per day, and for 1907 the pay was less than in any one of the three years preceding.

The Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor at Washington, for July, 1907, on page 3 (pp. 372 and 719 of Hearings) shows that of 41 industries employing 334,107 persons whose earnings were reported the only industry in which the pay of labor had been reduced in 1906, as compared with 1904 and 1905, was paper. The hours of labor in that industry were also increased in that year.

The census report for 1905 shows (p. 372) that 65,694 persons employed in the paper trade received an average of $9.32 per week, or $1.55 per day.

The paper makers based their increase in price of news print paper to $50 per ton in 1907, upon the representation that the cost of labor had been increased 50 per cent by reason of the change of tours from twelve hours per day to eight hours (p. 733). It now appears by the records of the American Paper and Pulp Association (p. 1743) that only 29 mills had changed to the three-tour eight-hour system and that 215 had continued on the twelve-hour basis.

The data submitted by various paper companies throws an interesting side light on the relative pay of labor. At the Hudson River mill of the International Paper Company the cost of labor per ton of paper produced was $1.13 per ton less under the eight-hour system than under the twelve-hour system, and that fact taken in conjunction with others found in the reports of the paper companies would

confirm the belief that better paid labor is the cheaper labor in the long run.

The Remington-Martin Company figures of labor cost for the year 1907, while approximating those of the International Paper Company for the same year were less than in the year 1906, when the twelve-hour system prevailed. The total cost of labor in all of the mills of the International Paper Company in the year 1907 under the 3-tour system increased only 34 cents per ton over the cost of 1903, and only 66 cents per ton, or 8 per cent (not 50), over the cost of 1905, when the twelve-hour system prevailed (p. 1977).

The cost sheets submitted by various paper companies to the Mann committee for the year 1907 showed extraordinary discrepancies, as follows:

Labor cost

per ton.

$8.53

11.57

10.56

8.53

Gould (New York) mill, 12-hour system_
Cloquet mill (Minnesota), 12-hour system_.
Park Falls (Wisconsin), 12-hour system__.
Remington-Martin (New York), 8-hour system__
International Paper Company (New York and New England), 8-hour
system

8.52

It would appear from these figures that the western paper mills could not make paper as cheaply as eastern mills, and the eastern mills, working on the eight-hour system could show a saving of from $2 to $3 per ton in the comparisons. It is possible that the excessive labor cost of the western paper mills is due to the fact that they employ boys to operate their paper machines. The Mann committee in its visits to over 19 paper mills in Wisconsin and Minnesota found very few grown men. It saw many 15-year-old boys who were working thirteen hours for six nights. At one mill, Combined Locks (p. 2103), the night force worked fourteen hours. Two 15-year-old boys at one mill in Neenah, Wis., were working as members of the crew on a paper machine at the rate of 8 cents and 10 cents an hour, respectively. Workers in George A. Whiting's mill at that place received pay varying from 90 cents to $1.10 per day. Women, who were sorting rags, were paid $4.50 per week by men who pose as leading citizens. Paper-mill workers in the Fox River Valley were paid 141 cents per hour for sixty-five hours per week, or $9.52 per week.

Mr. Cowles, the president of the American Paper and Pulp Association, had declared to Congress that the cost of labor in the paper mills had increased from 30 to 70 per cent in ten years, and that a large part of this increase had taken place in past two years; but when the labor cost figures of his own mill were dissected it appeared that the labor cost was 12.21 cents per 100 pounds in December, 1906, under the twelve-hour system, and 12.68 cents in December, 1907, under the eight-hour system, an increase of less than 4 per cent (not 30 nor 70) in his mill. Comparative tables printed in the Paper Mill of July 6, 1907, showing the operations of a typical paper mill in the West, disclosed the fact that its labor cost had increased less than 2 per cent in ten years. There were numerous factors that contrib uted to keep down the cost of producing a ton of paper. The width of machines had increased in ten years from 100 and 120 to 150 and 160 inches; their speed had increased from 350 and 400 feet to 550 and 600 feet. The daily product of a paper machine had been increased from 20 tons to 45 tons. The labor mill workers contend, and

with some justification, that the pulp mill will grind more pulp when the men work eight hours than when they work twelve hours.

Upon the question of the comparative pay of paper-mill labor in the United States and Canada, I refer you to the statement of George Chahoon, jr., manager of the Laurentide Paper Company, of Canada (p. 805), and of Mr. Carl Riordon, of the Riordon Paper Mills, of Merriton and Hawkesbury, Ontario (p. 805), and of Mr. F. B. Lynch, of Minneapolis, who testified in October, and of Mr. Cowles, president of the American Paper and Pulp Association (p. 908), all of whom said that the Canadian mills pay as high and higher wages than are paid in the United States. Practically all skilled labor in these mills comes from the United States, and the inducement of higher pay must be made to attract them there.

In comparing relative pay with Canada, Mr. Cowles said: "If anything, I should say that labor is higher in Canada than it is in the United States."

The CHAIRMAN. Do you mean skilled labor?

Mr. CowLES. I mean skilled labor and cheap labor, both. That was not formerly so, but it is so to-day. That is my own experience and my own observation.

Consul Worman, of Three Rivers (p. 1991), reported to the State Department that "labor in the Canadian mills is as high as in the United States, yea, oftentimes even higher. The skilled mechanics are Americans who receive higher wages as an inducement to leave their home and country."

More than 100,000 newspaper employees have sent appeals to Congress and the President asking for the abolition of the duty on pulp and paper. Upon what theory can you claim to give protection and benefactions to paper-mill employees who do not treat their labor properly, while you refuse it to newspaper publishers who pay to their employees an average wage that is about three times the amount paid by the paper makers? The entire amount paid to paper-mill labor producing news-print paper will not exceed $9,000,000 per annum. Yet the paper makers who profess such anxiety for their labor ask you to add to the losses of compositors, pressmen, and stereotypers, and photo-engravers, whose enforced idleness in the last year, partially because of the high price of paper and its reduced consumption, will more than equal the total pay of these paper-mill employees. Instead of giving to labor the rewards which protection was designed to confer, the paper makers have treated their labor worse than any other industry has done. Since the 1st of August, 1908, a protracted struggle was carried on between the International Paper Company and its employees over a question of a reduction of 5 per cent in wages-the contest entailing a loss in labor and other items exceeding $1,000,000, all of which must ultimately be borne by the newspaper publishers, under the provisions of your tariff schedule.

WOOD.

I now approach the subject of wood and forestry.

In presenting estimates of standing timber in the United States, I do so with misgivings of the accuracy of every government estimate in that direction. Two recent experiences of the worthlessness of such statements make me incredulous of all of them. Subject to this

reservation, I state that spruce constitutes 70 per cent of the wood used in paper making. Government reports of 1906 declare that the State of Maine supplied over one-third of the spruce used, and more than double the quantity furnished by its closest competitor, the State of Washington. The spruce of New York State has fallen off recently, and that of New Hampshire and Vermont has decreased about one-half since 1899. These four States in the Northeast furnished 60 per cent of the timber, Washington and Oregon 20 per cent, the Virginias 10 per cent, and the rest of the country 10 per cent. The State of Minnesota, about whose supply of spruce much has been said, supplied only one-sixtieth of the total cut. About three-fifths as much spruce was used for pulp as for lumber in the United States in 1906. Paper makers cut over 1,830 square miles every year to provide wood for pulp and paper mills. We import from Canada for the same purpose the timber from 338 square miles, so that our paper mills strip altogether 2,168 square miles every year. Of this stripping, approximately one-third, or 700 square miles, is for mechanical ground wood and two-thirds, or 1,400 square miles, is for chemical pulp.

New York State consumes over a million and a quarter cords of wood in the manufacture of pulp, or more than twice as much as Maine, which ranks next. The amount of pulp wood used in the United States in the calendar year 1907, reported by 250 mills, was approximately 4,000,000 cords. Forty-five per cent of this quantity was domestic spruce and 23 per cent spruce imported from Canada. Fifteen per cent was hemlock, 9 per cent poplar, and 8 per cent was said to be made up of pine, cottonwood, balsam, and other woods.

The Census Bureau has pointed out (Bulletin 77) that the inroad into the remaining supply of spruce is rapid, and that the concentration of much of the stand into extensive holdings of pulp manufacturers explains a substantial rise in the cost of lumber stumpage. hesitate to give estimates of standing spruce, because estimates and conditions vary widely.

I

The fact that the principal users of spruce have bought over 12.000 square miles of timber tracts in the Province of Quebec alone would indicate their fear of a shortage, though evidences of a gigantic speculation in woodlands are numerous and strong. The International Paper Company, with approximately 7,000 square miles, or four and a half million acres, of timber lands under its control, turns out about 1,600 tons of paper per day. The vice-president of the Great Northern Paper Company has laid it down as an accepted formula of the trade that 1,000 acres of spruce will produce perpetually enough wood to turn out one ton of paper per day. Forester Pinchot was inclined to look upon this basis of computation as correct. Applying the formula to the International Paper Company's holdings, it would appear that that company has acquired about three times the area necessary for a perpetual supply on the basis of its present production. If the company should cut its pulp-wood supply from its own lands, there might be some justification for a contention that that immense acreage was necessary to safeguard its future supply. But it cuts from its own lands only 25 per cent of the wood it uses, buying 75 per cent upon the market. It therefore cuts only onetwelfth of that which its acreage would permit, and it is obviously engaged in the business of speculating in woodlands instead of making paper. A confirmation of this view of its methods is shown

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