Give us cheap labor or adequate tariff protection and we can produce these goods. We have the honor to remain, THE ROGERS PAPER MANUFACTURING CO. (Incorporated), STRAWBOARD. [Paragraph 407.] THE CALIFORNIA PAPER AND BOARD MILLS, SAN FRANCISCO, ASKS A HIGHER DUTY ON STRAWBOARD. We are the only company left on this coast manufacturing strawboards, all the others having gone to the wall. We have been forced through foreign competition on strawboard to almost abandon the production of that important article. This board is made from straw produced by the farmer and with the use of lime and other products manufactured on this coast. The market is now being supplied with strawboard from Japan, Germany, and Holland. The lowest labor that we have in our employ is $1.75 per day, and this varies up to $5 per day. Our last figures on the cost of production show that it costs us $27.88 to produce a ton. The receiver of the United Boxboard Company, which failed in the East recently, in his printed report shows that it cost them East about $26, no doubt the difference being in slightly reduced common labor. A wholesale paper house here has lately contracted for 500 tons of strawboard from Holland at $28.50 per ton delivered in this city, duty and freight paid. As the raw material costs them very near as much as it does us, you will see the difference is almost entirely in the cost of labor. Deducting freight and the present tariff, they only receive about $16 for their boards at the mill, whereas it costs us at least $10 more per ton to produce the same board at our mill, which difference is represented in the increased wages we pay our help. Under the circumstances, not only should the duty not be reduced on strawboard, but, in order to keep this industry from entirely ceasing, it should be increased. If this were done we would be able to use more raw material produced by the farmer and other products of the producer in this State, keep our present help at their present wages, and our money on this coast, instead of sending it abroad. I am writing to you personally because of my old acquaintance with you, and also because this company is the only one on this coast engaged in this form of business, and it was impossible to join with any other interests in presenting the matter. Japanese strawboard is selling in this market, duty and freight paid, for $28 to $30 per ton, according to sizes. Thanking you in advance for any attention that you may give this request, and hoping to hear favorably from you in regard to it, I am, Very truly, yours, M. R. HIGGINS, President. SAMPLE BOOKS AND CARDS. Hon. SERENO E. PAYNE, M. C., CHICAGO, November 14, 1908. Chairman of Ways and Means Committee, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: We respectfully call your attention to the importation of sample books and sample cards from foreign countries, and in particular from Germany and Switzerland. We find the law governing sample books very slack, inasmuch as the law reads that samples of no value should enter our ports free of duty. This may be justice all right, or very desirable for the importer, but it is certainly a great injustice to the sample-book and samplecard manufacturers of the United States. Samples entering this country without a duty might be justified. but that sample books which contain samples should not be subject to a duty is an absolute injustice to the manufacturers of sample books and sample cards in this country, as well as to the bookbinders and printers employed in that trade. We have taken this matter up with the American Protective Tariff League of New York, of which we are, by the way, members, and they advise us that on the 25th instant the matter of pulp, paper, and books will come before your committee. We have reason to believe that the importation of sample books and sample cards are railroaded through the custom-house with a few samples in them, making them sample books of no value under the present law, and yet these books are filled for several seasons with new samples and carried by the various salesmen from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. We know, for instance, of firms who are importing certain sample books amounting to from $500 to $2.000 a year, and on all the bookbinding and printing not a cent of revenue is paid, because the claim is made that sample books enter this country free of duty. If it would be necessary for us to send a sample to you we shall gladly do so, or furnish you with any further information you might desire. As a rough estimate, and a very conservative figure, we believe at least $100,000 importations per year are made which are not paying duty. Very respectfully, yours, E. W. BREDEMEIER & Co., PAPER MATERIALS. GEORGE W. WHEELWRIGHT PAPER COMPANY, BOSTON, MASS., ADVOCATES REDUCTION OF DUTY ON ALL ARTICLES WHICH ARE USED IN PAPER MAKING. 95 MILK STREET, BOSTON, January 4, 1909. To the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatices: Respect fully represents the George W. Wheelwright Paper Company of Massachusetts, manufacturers of book and card papers, that it sent representatives to the hearing before your committee on November 21, 1908, and that lack of time prevented your committee from hearing these representatives, and the said company therefore asks leave to file this short brief. Your petitioner desires to call your attention to the fact that it, like other manufacturers, is a large consumer as well as producer. There has not been made to your committee any suggestion that the rates of duty on paper should be increased. In the general scheme of tariff revision it seems proper that with the idea of raising revenue and reducing the artificial scale of prices the duties of many imported articles will be considerably reduced. That such a reduction would be for the benefit of the community at large, and of the manufacturers in particular, seems to have been the opinion of both political parties in the last campaign, and it seems clear that it is only by reduction that the cost of the articles consumed in paper making, for instance, can be reduced for the benefit of the consumer as well as of the manufacturer. The experience of the past twenty years has shown that the consumer of paper has constantly benefited by the lowering of manufacturers' costs, and that the consumer has had almost the entire benefit of the savings of the manufacturers as represented in increased plants; the increased production, the essential element in the reduction of costs, being made possible only by increased facilities, requiring large investments. As an illustration of this reduction, the price of uncalendered book paper in 1888 was 6 cents per pound and is to-day 4 cents. per pound. The industry seems to have reached the point that, while some further reduction in cost of production may be arrived at by improved economical methods of manufacture, the only great reduction of cost possible would be from a reduction in the price of the articles consumed in manufacture. Below is appended the table of duties upon articles consumed in paper manufacture. Lumber, sawed boards, etc., planed on one side, $1 per thousand, and higher as further worked on, up to $2.50 per thousand. (Paper manufacturers consume large quantities of lumber in making packing cases, and a great quantity of heavy lumber is used in the construction of mills and works which have to be continually renewed.) Steel castings, etc., section 135 of the tariff of 1897. Steel beams, 0.5 of a cent per pound. Machinery, 45 per cent ad valorem. Coal, bituminous, $0.67 per ton. Wire cloth: The rate of duty imposed on wire, which is 45 per cent ad valorem, and in addition thereto 14 cents per pound. Felts valued at over $0.70 per pound, the duty per pound is four times the duty imposed by the Dingley bill on 1 pound of unwashed wool of the first class, that is $0.44 and 55 per cent ad valorem. Chemicals: Alum, duty one-half cent per pound, price 1 cent delivered our mill. Soda ash, three-eighths cents per pound, price 1.04 cents per hundred pounds delivered. Bleaching powder, one-fifth of a cent per pound, price per hundred pounds 1.35 delivered. Colors: Prussian blue, 8 cents per pound. Ocher, one-eighth of a cent per pound. Ultramarine blue, 33 cents per pound. Wood pulp chemical bleached, one-fourth of a cent per pound; unbleached, one-sixth of a cent per pound. Wood pulp ground, one-twelfth of a cent per pound. As far as your petitioner is aware, no request has been made your committee to increase the duties on any of these articles except upon colors. The manufacturers of coal-tar dyes have asked you for (a) the removal of the duty on all intermediate products, and (b) an increase from 30 per cent to 40 per cent ad valorem of the duty on aniline dyes. These manufacturers now import intermediate products, which may have reached the seventh, eighth, or ninth stage in a scale of ten steps in the process of manufacture, the object being to get as near the finished article as possible without subjecting it to the duty of the final resulting color. The conversion of these intermediate products into aniline dyes is very slight and simple. The manufacture of coal-tar dyes in their entirety from the raw material is an industry, but the buying of intermediate products and converting them into dyes is a business but not an industry. Your petitioner wishes to record its objection to the increase of the duty on aniline dyes. But your petitioner, thinking it probable that your committee will determine in their revision of the tariff upon a general lowering of duties, desires to make clear to you the great benefit which would accrue to it as a manufacturer were the burden of the tariff on the above articles lightened. Were this done, a reduction in the duties upon manufactured book paper could properly be made. Such a reduction, particularly of the duties on coal, iron, lumber and wood pulp, would tend to preserve the natural resources of the country, and to bring about a decided reduction in the cost of paper. (It is estimated that each ton of book paper manufactured is enhanced in cost some $3 by the duties upon the factors which go to make it.) The protection which is given to a manufacturer by cheapness of raw material and of articles consumed, aids him in all his transactions, domestic and foreign, and enables him to maintain a steady production. Particularly in regard to coal is a reduction or a taking off of the duty much to be desired; for example your petitioner makes about 15,000 tons of paper per annum, and consumes in so doing about 15,000 tons of coal. As its mills are situated in New England, it is at a disadvantage in the matter of the price of coal over mills in any other of the paper-making States outside New England. Even if the price of the coal now consumed is not increased by the whole amount of the duty on it, it is clear that there is some enhancement of cost. The matter of coal prices is largely a question of freights; New England's natural coal fields are in the maritime provinces, while western parts of Canada would naturally get their coal from the United States were it not for the tariff line. Esparto grass is a very valuable fiber for the manufacture of paper. This grass is not grown in this country in any commercial quantities, and should be put on the free list, and pulp made from this grass, which now is subject to a duty of 45 per cent, should certainly not pay a higher duty than chemically prepared wood pulp; but, as it is a pulp which can not be produced in competition with wood pulp, it would, however, be very desirable to place it on the free list. Esparto pulp is made in England to advantage, because the grass is brought back together with ores by the ships bearing coal to the ore-producing countries which also produce Esparto grass, such as Spain and Algiers. Our commercial arrangements do not permit this interchange. The cost of manufacturing book paper is not only increased by the above duties on the articles consumed in the process, but by the higher wages paid in this country. More than twice the daily wage is paid than in Great Britain, for instance. When these increased costs are considered, it is evident that the duty on the final product is moderate and just. In conclusion, your petitioner would state that it recognizes the necessity of the Government raising a revenue adequate for its needs, and it feels it to be just that the paper industry should, in common with the other great industries, bear its share of the burden. It believes that the tariff should be so contrived as to cheapen the raw materials of manufacture, to conserve the natural resources of the country, and to bring about a reduction of the artificial prices of all commodities which greatly increase the cost of living and have of late years made the burden of local taxes exceedingly heavy. Respectfully submitted. GEO. W. WHEELWRIGHT PAPER COMPANY, By GEO. W. WHEELWRIGHT, President. 61318- SCHED M-09- -33 |