Microcosm

In Stevens Point, Wis., deertail is twisted & tied, glued & dyed by fine-fingered workers. Sometimes a finger jerks back, with blood oozing from a tiny puncture. Quite hidden in the satin grey of a Silver Doctor and the flaring shaded brown tufts of a Whisker Bug are barbed hooks with needle points. For in Stevens Point is the Weber Life-Like Fly Co., to whose Grizzly King, Parmachenee Belle and other lures many a fisherman entrusts his reputation.

To Washington last week went President 0. L. Weber, himself, to grumble in behalf of the U. S. fishing-tackle industry. Flies, leaders, and snell hooks, said he, are made in many a humble European home. Unlike those in Stevens Point, Wis., foreign manufacturers are not oppressed by minimum wage and factory condition laws. Foreign flies, furthermore, are smuggled in, clandestinely, in first-class letter mail. Raise the duty on fishing-tackle imports, suppress smuggling, demanded Life-Like Flyman Weber.

Many another U. S. industry made similar complaint and demand in tariff hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee. Through the Committee room passed a striking microcosm of U. S. business. Told was the tale of eggs, fake antique furniture, razor blades, papier-mache clothing dummies, cast-iron pipe. The Texas Cottonseed Crushers' Association appeared, spoke its piece. Then the Pyroxylan Plastic Manufacturers' Association, the American Fish Oil Association. All asked higher protective tariffs. Typical or important or both were the following points:

Autos. Unwary tourists who buy a U. S. automobile abroad and try to bring it home with them find to their sorrow that reimport duty is 25% ad valorem. Abolish it, pleaded the American Automobile Association, thus encouraging sales of U. S. cars abroad.

Antiques produced "more than 100 years prior to the date of importation" now enter duty free. Organized furniture makers claimed that 60% of imported antique furniture is newly made, so expertly that its newness cannot be detected; that not more than 25% of such furniture has genuine educational or historical value. Full furniture duties (33 1/3% ad valorem) were sought for antiques.

Knitting Needles. Young folk, old folk, everybody knitted. Presently machines appeared. Doughboy oaths softened. Neat and regular became stitches in scarfs, stomachers, socks, helmets sent overseas. Now the new knitting-machine needle industry is sorely pressed by foreign competition. "Save our knitting needles!"

Metals. Iron and steel interests indulged in perfervid oratory, conjured up statistics to show an emergency calling for government action. Shortly appeared a Department of Commerce statement of U. S. foreign trade in 1928, showing that while iron and steel imports had slightly increased since 1927, exports of those commodities had increased by a much greater proportion. Observers murmured to themselves.

Domestic manufacturers quaked & quavered over foreign competition in uniform buttons; cut steel ornaments (shoe buckles, hat trimmings); swords; bandsaws; anvils (domestic consumption is rapidly falling off); sprocket chains; scythes, sickles & grass hooks.

Watches. Emile Zola* is the spokesman for the American Watch Importers' Association and therefore opposed to high tariffs. Said he: "There is no such thing as an imported watch." Imports consist largely of parts. Assembling is done in the U. S. Hence U. S. labor costs enter the problem. Nevertheless, makers of main-springs and other parts complained that keen competition from Switzerland had blighted home industry.

Wood. Loudest of all lamentations, louder even than the iron and steel moans, were those of lumber and furniture men. Lumber now enters duty free, chiefly from Canada. The American Northwest lumber industry, it was argued, faces complete bankruptcy owing to a market flooded with free cedar shingles, saw logs and lumber in general. The $700,000,000 furniture industry claimed that existing duties of 33 1/3% ad valorem on foreign furniture were totally inadequate. Cabinet work from France and Italy, plywood from the U. S. S. R., chairs from Czechoslovakia, wood carvings from Austria and Switzerland--all are set down in New York cheaper than they can be produced in the U. S. Therefore Grand Rapidians demanded higher tariffs.

Miscellany. Robert N. Kastor, Manhattan cutlery importer and retailer, bewailed smuggling of 1,000 dozen pocket corkscrew knives from Canada. They received nation-wide distribution, presumed he, along with smuggled whiskey. "Protection," cried Matthew Woll, vice president of the American Federation of Labor, "for our wage-earners!" Swords after tomato paste, worn-out steel tools (containing tungsten) next to plate glass, children's bicycles riding close upon upholsterer's nails, day after day unrolled the panorama of business to the patient inquisitors of the Ways and Means Committee.

*Not to be confused with Emile Zola (TIME, Jan. 21), French writer of sensual novels and apostle of Naturalism. Myopic, corpulent, bearded, he swayed the society of his time, died in 1902 of asphyxiation by carbon monoxide in his own bedroom.