This Day in 1913 in The Record: Jan. 4, 1913

Saturday, Jan. 4, 1913. Congress holds hearings later this month on proposed revisions to tariffs on imported shirts, cuffs and collars. Fearing the impact of lower tariffs, Troy's collar manufacturers are organizing a lobbying effort against revision.

Today's Record publishes a "review of the relations of present proposed tariffs to the principal industry of this community." The review was prepared by "a committee appointed by the collar manufacturers of Troy," and demands that "the citizens of Troy, Albany and vicinity should be aroused to the importance of this question, which is in no sense a political one, but one plainly of bread and butter for the major part of the population of Greater Troy."

Following the 1912 elections, Democrats will control Congress and the White House when Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated in March. Historically, Democrats have supported lower tariffs, arguing that workers and consumers don't benefit from them, while Republicans have supported higher tariffs to build the country's manufacturing sector and protect American jobs. Outgoing President William Howard Taft, a Republican, vetoed a tariff-reduction bill last year; Democrats failed to override his veto. With a Democrat taking Taft's place, Troy's dominance of the collar market may be in jeopardy.

"Greater Troy produces more than 90 per cent of all the collars and cuffs made in the United States, as well as more than 15 per cent of the shirts," the committee notes, "More than one-half of the population of Greater Troy depends for its livelihood on the pay rolls of the collar and shirt factories.

"The importation of every dozen of collars and cuffs from abroad means just so much less work for the operatives here in the United States. It means just so much less material to be bought by the manufacturer in this country to be used in the making of collars and cuffs and it means a general curtailment in all allied lines of the industry, such as the manufacture of paper boxes and the laundering of the product."

Troy will suffer in "free trade" competition with foreign collar makers, the committee explains, because "the weekly wage in the industry in foreign countries is about one-third of what it is in the United States." As well, "Here the hours of labor are limited by law to fifty-four per week, while abroad they are much longer."

Should the "Greater Troy" shirt and collar industry succumb to foreign competition, the consequences could be catastrophic for the local economy, since "there are no other lines of industry available where the help that would be [laid off] because of sickness in the collar trade in Troy could secure employment."

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