PARAGRAPH 23-GELATIN, GLUE, ETC. Imports into the United States of glue valued at not above 10 cents per pound, including glue improperly reported as gelatin under above valuation, etc.-Continued. A careful estimate regarding the foregoing indicates that 25 per cent of the importations of glue valued at not above 10 cents per pound are mostly used for one specific purpose and average in value about 9 cents per pound. Deducting from the above totals this 25 per cent shows: MY DEAR CONGRESSMAN: Referring to conversation on Saturday last regarding liquid fish glue, after careful investigation here in Boston, I find that the customs authorities do not keep a separate record of the importations of bone glue and liquid fish glue. I have, however, found that during the past four years there have been no importations of fish glue excepting what I imported myself from St. Pierre, Miquelon, to Boston amounting to 40 barrels, which was 1,627 gallons. I imported this glue to see what I could do in competition with manufacturers of liquid fish glue in the United States and have found that I could not compete. There has been no liquid fish glue imported in here from Canada; whether there has been any importations to other ports or not is a question. There have been no importations in from Newfoundland because there has been none PARAGRAPH 23-GELATIN, GLUE, ETC. manufactured there. The only other place that any liquid fish glue could come in from would be Norway. It is my opinion that there is no liquid fish glue in what I call bulk-that is, in 5-gallon kegs or 50-gallon barrels-imported into the United States from any place in the world, as the present duty is absolutely prohibitive. I find that the duty on glue is 2 cents per pound on glue valued at less than 10 cents a pound and 25 per cent ad valorem on glue valued at over 10 cents a pound. Prices are based on f. o. b. point of shipment. For instance, if I shipped any glue in from our factory at Burnt Islands, Newfoundland, the price would be based on f. o. b. Burnt Islands. With reference to duty, for example, a gallon of fish glue weighs 9 pounds 14 ounces, which makes the duty between 24 and 25 cents per gallon. If there was a duty, say of 1 cent per pound, which would be equal to about 10 cents per gallon on the cost of our manufacture, undoubtedly we would be able to ship many thousands of gallons of glue into the United States, whereby the United States Government would be receiving a revenue from shipments made from our factory into the United States, which would not only help them but would help the dealer and consumer, while at the present time there are no importations and they are getting no revenue whatever. I sent Mr. Gallivan, in confidence, a copy of a letter from one of the three largest liquid glue manufacturers in the United States, showing that they are not able and have not been able to supply the trade. I might say that the capital of $100,000 invested in our business in Newfoundland comes entirely from the citizens of the United States. I sincerely believe that allowing our glue to come into the United States with a reasonable duty will open up a very much larger field and give a number of dealers an opportunity of using liquid fish glue who are at present handicapped on account of not being able to get same in the United States. If there is any further information or any detail that I can give you, will be glad to have you advise me. I was given to understand that the Commerce and Labor Bureau, statistical department, at Washington had considerable information with reference to the glue business. Whether they have any information regarding liquid fish glue I do not know. I hope that you are quite well, and, with kind regards, JOHN B. ORR. BRIEF OF JOSEPH DICK, NEW YORK, N. Y. I am an American citizen, resident and voter of New York City, and engaged in importing German and Austrian bone glues in cake form. I have been engaged in this business as the general agent of a German and of an Austrian glue concern for the last four years. I have no experience in glue manufacturing. But in the course of my business dealings with American glue manufacturers and glue jobbers I have through them come into possession of a few elementary facts bearing upon the cost of making American glues which, second-hand though they be, derive their value from their source, whose authenticity can not be doubted. PARAGRAPH 23-GELATIN, GLUE, ETC. As an American citizen I respectfully ask to be allowed to submit to you the knowledge thus gained and some other facts and considerations showing that the present duty on glue is exorbitant. The cost of manufacturing an American glue is said by domestic manufacturers to vary between 2 cents a pound to 3 cents on bone glues, and 3 cents to 3 cents a pound on hide glues. But this cost is not merely the cost of labor. It includes all overhead expenses and salaries, all chemicals, and the fuel used in manufacturing. In fact, the cost of labor is the smaller part. Thus take, for instance, one single operation, the only one in which each individual sheet of glue is handled by the worker. I mean the process of drying, which is the following: From vats the glue solution is drained into galvanized iron coolers, each holding about 100 pounds of glue jelly. Take 500 such coolers, with altogether 48,000 to 50,000 pounds of glue jelly. Six girls can spread this jelly upon nets, after it is cut, in one working day, producing altogether 9,000 pounds of dry glue. One girl, therefore, has handled jelly yielding 1,500 pounds of dry glue. The wages of the girls are between $6 to $8 a week. Taking them $7 a week as the basis, each girl receives $1.17 a day for spreading upon the drying nets enough glue jelly to yield, when dry, 1,500 pounds of dry glue. To spread glue jelly yielding, when dry, 1 pound of glue costs, therefore, less than two twenty-fifths of 1 cent. These figures apply to bone glues. Of hide glue, 500 coolers yield only about 7,200 pounds of dry glue for the six girls, so that the cost of labor of drying 1 pound of hide glue is, per pound of dried glue, not quite one-tenth of 1 cent. Yet drying is the only operation during which each sheet is handled by the worker. In all other operations the simplest mechanical contrivances make it possible to transform the raw material and to handle the finished product in bulk so that the cost of actual labor for each operation is barely appreciable in the value per pound of the finished product. The cost of pure labor, exclusive of overhead expenses, of chemicals and fuel, does not exceed 1 cents per pound, and is very often as low as 1 cent per pound, according to the quality of glue, and particularly according to the efficiency of the factory. If the duty on glues below 10 cents would be fixed even at only 1 cents, covering thus the whole cost of labor, it only could be done on the supposition that glue is manufactured in Europe without any labor cost. Yet the duty on glues valued at less than 10 cents is at present 2 cents per pound, covering not only the whole cost of labor, but all overhead expenses, chemicals, and fuel in addition. The dry glue produced by the drying out of jelly is, for bone glues, between 20 per cent and 35 per cent of the weight of the jelly, and for hide glues between 8 per cent and 20 per cent of the weight of the jelly. In taking as the basis of my calculation 9,000 pounds of dry glue, as resulting from 48,000 pounds of bone jelly, and 7,200 pounds of dry glue, as resulting from 48,000 pounds of hide jelly, I have figured with the very fair percentage of 19 per cent for bone glues and 14 per cent for hide glues. In order to forestall pointless quibbling that might obscure the real issue, I also want to state that the coolers are of different sizes. In some factories they hold 50 pounds of jelly, in others 100 pounds, and sometimes 150 pounds. But the essential PARAGRAPH 23-GELATIN, GLUE, ETC. fact that six girls handle during a working day 48,000 pounds of jelly remains unchanged. Labor, indeed, is a very small part in the value of the glue. There are glues in which the cost of labor does not amount to 10 per cent of the value of the finished product. Anybody entering a glue factory unawares, even when running at full capacity, is struck by the comparative absence of labor. Almost everything is done by natural agencies and machinery. Macerating, boiling, cutting, and drying are the chief operations and require almost no labor, but only occasional watching. The packers, tanners, and fertilizing manufacturers, with all of whom glue is only a by-product, manufacture certainly 60 per cent or more of the glue manufactured in this country. I inclose a complete list of American glue factories. I also inclose my sworn statement that never since I have been general agent for the European glue concern, nor ever before, has the importation of glues coming from that concern, whether sold direct or through me, reached 2 per cent of the glue consumption of the United States. I am ready to prove this by my books. Yet I sell considerably more than other foreign glue concerns and their agents. Sometimes the argument is being advanced by American glue manufacturers that so little glue enters into each individual piece of manufactured goods that the raised price of glue is hardly felt in the price of the finished merchandise; but this is misleading. The United States consumes yearly about 50,000 tons of glue of a conservatively estimated value of $12,000,000. One million dollars of this saved to the people of this country by the imposing of a duty, the purpose of which would be to insure revenue, or at most to cover the real difference in the cost of labor, but not to artificially boost prices for the benefit of a class, will be part of the many millions similarly saved in other lines of industry. Please to consider that there is literally no article manufactured in any line into whose composition glue does not enter at some stage. Glue is the one universal requisite in all industries. But supposing even that, for instance, the value of glue entering into a piano does not exceed $2; that is still no argument for the maintenance of an excessive duty. The value of celluloid, of felt, or of wood filler and stain, or shellac, rubber, or gilding used in the manufacture of a piano is less than 50 cents. As the manufacturers of all of these materials also want to be "protected," the aggregate protection thus loaded on the consumer is very considerable. And then while glue is being used in the manufacture of a piano it has also been used in the manufacture of most of the materials out of which a piano is made. The felt has glue in it; the wood filler is prepared with glue; the metal parts of the piano are polished on wheels, an important part of which is glue. The varnishing of the piano can not be done without the use of sandpaper, which is also made with glue. Altogether, there is considerably more glue used than appears on the surface. I have submitted here some technical considerations in favor of the reduction of duty on glue; but there are some considerations whose weight is much greater. As a revenue measure a tariff law has a warranty in the Constitution; but as a means of keeping on their feet at public expense industries that might stand by them PARAGRAPH 23-GELATIN, GLUE, ETC. selves if they were driven to it, the tariff law is justified neither by the Constitution nor by moral law. There is one hard fact less weighty than abstractions, but proving more. American glue manufacturers are selling their glues in Europe. Several of them have resident agents in different European countries. And they are selling their glues in spite of the duties in Europe. They are selling their glues either at prices prevailing here, in plain contradiction of their assertion that they can not compete with the foreign goods, or they are selling their glues at lower prices than here, thus following the rule generally observed by our "protected" manufacturers of giving the lower price to the foreigner and piling it upon their compatriots. Will these ever be allowed to do with their dollar as they please, or will they always be compelled to give it to needy interests that must be "protected"? STATE OF NEW YORK, City of New York, County of New York, ss: Joseph Dick, being duly sworn, says that he resides at No. 1058 Southern Boulevard, city of New York, and that his place of business is at No. 198 Broadway, in the Borough of Manhattan, city of New York. And upon oath declares that the importation of glue to the United States of America coming from European concerns whose general agency he has, whether such glues are sold directly or whether the same are sold by him as representative of such European concerns, has at no time exceeded or reached 2 per cent of the entire glue consumption in the United States. JOSEPH DICK. Sworn to before me this 31st day of December, 1912. SAMUEL ZUCKERMAN, Jr., Commissioner of Deeds, New York City. BRIEF OF W. E. MILLER, NEW YORK, N. Y. COIGNET & Co., 17 State Street, New York, N. Y., January 4, 1913. The COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. GENTLEMEN: As per your postal of the 3d instant, giving me an appointment to appear before you on the 7th instant, I beg to file with you the following brief, as per your suggestion: No. 1. I recommend a change in paragraph 23, Schedule A, from the present rates: A duty of 1 cent per pound on gelatins, glue, isinglass, fish glue, etc., valued at and under 10 cents per pound, 1 cent per pound duty instead of 24 cents, for the reason that the domestic manufacturers do not need this protection any longer, inasmuch as Messrs. Armour & Co. are now selling one of their low grades of glue to the house of Pervilhac Silk Finishing, of Lyon, France, at a lower price than they sell the very same grade in the United States. Their price in Lyon includes the cost of transportation to the city of Lyon, and I recommend a change from 25 per cent to 15 per cent on |