Lace Under Umbrella

Virtually all lace today is made on machines. Handmade lace, so dear to old ladies, is an insignificant item in world trade, and most of it is made not in Europe but in China. France and England are the leading machine-lace producers but the U. S. also has a lace industry. It represents about $25,000,000 of invested capital, employs 8,000 workers and last year turned out $8,000,000 worth of lace and lace goods.

Godfather of the U. S. lace industry was the late Senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich of Rhode Island, where 41% of the industry is now located. He it was who wrote into the Tariff Act of 1909 a 70% ad valorem duty on. imported lace. Because the U. S. could not easily build the amazingly complex lace-making machines that British manufacturers had been making for a century, the famed Rhode Island protectionist thoughtfully included a provision that machines might be imported duty free for a period of 18 months. Hundreds of machines were hastily installed. Because U. S. labor could not run the machines, the New England entrepreneurs had to import skilled French and British operatives. Whenever the lace industry has one of its infrequent booms, it still suffers from a shortage of trained labor. Much of the special yarn required was, and still is, imported. Most lace design ("inspiration" to the trade) was, and still is, imported.

In the Underwood Tariff of 1913 lace duties were cut to 60%, and the whole industry nearly went bankrupt. However, it was saved by the War, which shut off imports from Europe, and in the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922 the duty was boosted to the present rate--90%, highest ad valorem duty in the law.

Last week this classic case of a hot-house industry was desperately trying to forestall a tariff cut in connection with the proposed reciprocal trade pact with France. Pleading in Washington before a special tariff committee which acts as a buffer between irate industrialists and State Department negotiators. President Hugo N. Schloss of the American Lace Manufacturers Association solemnly asserted: "I have endeavored to demonstrate to your committee that the machinery of the lace manufacturing industry is a potential arm of the national defense." President Schloss's point was that lace machinery can be used to weave mosquito netting for the Army.

No one questioned the U. S. lace-makers' contention that they could never compete on anything like equal terms with the lace-makers of France. U. S. wages are as much as 300% higher than French wages. Their argument was simply that, having raised an umbrella over a domestic lace industry 26 years ago with special tariff treatment, the Government should continue to protect it. If the Government closed its umbrella, capital would be lost and thousands of workers thrown on Relief. The industry has always outdone itself in keeping its workers employed in slack times for fear of losing what few skilled lace-makers there are in the U. S. And wearing gay lace boutonnieres, 500 of them appeared in Washington to join their employers in protest. Spokesman for lace employees, however, was not a labor leader: but Executive Director Clement J. Driscoll of the American Lace Manufacturers Association. Said he:

"Let me point out that during the World War American lace-workers marched side by side with the soldiers of France in France's dark hour of despair, and many made the supreme sacrifice. . . . When they succeeded in obtaining employment, they were required to contribute, through taxes, from their wages, toward the support of this Government, made necessary partly because France . . . not only defaulted but indeed refused to pay to this country the monies loaned her by America during her dark days. . . .

"Not content with all these sacrifices . . . France will . . . call upon our workers to again rally to her economic relief by giving up their own jobs and going on relief payrolls that the lace-makers of Calais and Caudry may be happily employed."

Then lofting his economic arguments to an even less factual plane, Director Driscoll submitted to the committee a batch of photographs so that the French trade pact negotiators "may be able to visualize by actual observation the contented, happy look of our people."

"I am frank to admit that the presentation of these photographs is quite unusual at a hearing of this kind," cried Director Driscoll. "In my zeal and desire to adequately place before the negotiators the problem confronting my fellow-workers, I am eager that the negotiators . . . shall first of all be given reasonable opportunity to gaze upon the countenances of the army of workers whose happiness, contentment and prosperity is in their hands."

Only stony stares greeted U. S. lace importers, who argued in behalf of a tariff reduction. They pointed out that devaluation of the dollar had in effect nearly doubled the barrier to French imports. If the 90% duty on French lace were halved, domestic lace-makers would still enjoy more protection than they did three years ago. What the trade pact negotiators must ponder is whether concessions to France, where lace-making is a major industry employing 50,000 people, will gain markets for enough U. S. exports to compensate for unemployment created in the U. S. lace industry.

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