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: