TEXTILES AND CLOTHING 
9i 
The term English broadcloth was applied to a cotton shirting; 1 
and certain cotton cloths were sold as pongee. 
Generally speaking, only the consumer is deceived by such 
labels. Buyers for manufacturers and dealers rarely need pro 
tection against their own ability to judge the quality of cloth. 
And the consumer oftentimes may be deceived as readily by a 
truthful label as by one which is clearly inaccurate. Thus a suit 
of clothes of low-grade “virgin wool’” may be decidedly inferior 
in quality to a suit containing reworked wools (or shoddy) ; and, 
in any case, the “virgin wool” label offers no positive assurance 
that either yarn or cloth are of strong construction. The con 
sumer, however, has in mind certain properties of the fabric—such 
as warmth, softness, smoothness, or durability—and associates 
these properties with certain fibers, or with the name used to 
describe them. Thus there is a prejudice in favor of virgin wool 
(and perhaps rightly) because of what the term suggests—not 
because of the actual construction of a fabric. 
TRADE CHANNELS 
Textiles in general are marketed progressively through (1) 
commission agents of various types, acting for the manufacturers, 
(2) merchant converters, (3) jobbers, and (4) retailers. The 
fabrics may reach the consumer either as piece goods or as gar 
ments and finished articles; hence there is considerable variation 
in the trade channels followed. The development of the cutting- 
up business (the manufacture of ready-to-wear garments) has 
had an important bearing on the problems of marketing. 
Selling Agents.—A distinct type of commission agency exists 
in the textile trades largely for historical reasons. This type of 
concern is referred to variously as the selling house, commission 
house, commission agent, and selling agent. In addition, the term 
factor is sometimes applied to a concern devoted primarily to 
financing the production and distribution of textiles. These terms 
1 It was said in 1923 that a manufacturer was offering as silk shirts of 
English broadcloth (at $24 per dozen) goods which had not a thread of silk 
ln them, which were not English, and which were not broadcloth in the original 
sense of the term.