have a surplus. They ought to be in a position to buy what they need. As it is they have to buy the roughage in order to get the concentrates, and that adds to the cost of living.

Representative LEVER. Were you ever connected with the Food Administration?

Mr. LASATER. I was; yes, sir.

STATEMENT OF DR. HERBERT W. MUMFORD, PROFESSOR OF ANIMAL HUSBANDRY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

Dr. MUMFORD. Mr. Chairman, we find that there is an increasing sale of these mixed feeds. I wish to call attention to three or four questions which have been raised here, and which I think have not been directly answered. The extent to which there is an increase in the sale of these mixed feeds can best be answered by the gentlemen who represent the American Feed Dealers' Association. Those statistics are in the possession of these gentlemen. It has been repeatedly stated here, I believe, that in the State laws and in the purefood law there is ample protection for the producer.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean the consumer?

Dr. MUMFORD. I mean the producer of live stock. Notwithstanding that fact, we find that it was stated at the convention of the American Feed Manufacturers' Association at Buffalo, June 7 and 8, that there was considerable dissatisfaction.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, June 7 and 8, this year?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The convention of the Feed Manufacturers' Association?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir. It was stated that there was a good deal of dissatisfaction among the manufacturers with these laws. As I understand it to-day they are quite well satisfied with these laws. Notwithstanding the fact that they tell us that these laws have been working very satisfactorily, Mr. Chapman, representing the Food Administration, stated at this same meeting

Reports now in the hands of the Food Administration show many instances of profits ranging from $10 to $23 per ton on these mixed feeds.

He also states that these profits are out of reason and will not be tolerated.

Representative LEVER. That has absolutely nothing to do with this proposition; this is not a price-fixing bill.

The CHAIRMAN. It is this selling of this worthless stuff for feed. Mr. CHAPIN. I was at that meeting; may I correct that statement? I heard those remarks, and they referred solely to retail profits on bran, not on mixed feeds.

Representative LEVER. Let me say this: I am afraid my attitude may be misunderstood here. I am trying to help in this matter, but I do not see the use of clogging this record with a lot of explaining things, and I tried to lay down a formula here that would be helpful to us. If they are going to bring in a lot of extraneous matters we can not clean up these hearing in three or four days.

Dr. MUMFORD. I shall undertake to show, Mr. Chairman, exactly what the increased sale and manufacture of mixed feeds does to the producer.

Representative LEVER. That is all right.

Dr. MUMFORD. And I think it is competent to know that there are abuses where profits ranging from $10 to $43 per ton obtain.

When I first read the reports of this amendment as it came out I said to myself: "Now, there is a proposition upon which all honest feed manufacturers and the producers of livestock can join." I find there is very great opposition on the part of feed manufacturers to this amendment. I believe that the increased sale of mixed feeds-we will say adulterated mixed feeds-is a menace to the live-stock interests for this reason: The live-stock producers of this country have come to look upon the experiment stations of this country for their guidance and their help. I ask you what these experiment-station men can do to help the live-stock producers of this country when they are asked to pass upon the merits or demerits of some 4,500 brands of mixed feeds. You will find, if you care to look it up, in a bulletin published by the Indiana Experiment Station May 1, 1918, that there are listed there something between 4,500 and 5,000 mixed feeds.

Representative LEVER. That is an interesting point. Let me ask you this on that point, as a practical matter: You say it is a very hard matter for you experiment-station people to pass upon these various mixed feeds, and yet here you are asking the Secretary of Agriculture to pass upon four or five thousand of them before this law can become operative.

Dr. MUMFORD. No; my motion is this, Mr. Chairman: If this amendment goes into effect it will cut down by about 75 per cent the number of these brands that are offered on the market.

Representative LEVER. Before any of this stuff can go into interstate commerce the Secretary of Agriculture, under this amendment, must issue a license or permit showing certain things to be facts. Now, the Secretary of Agriculture, if he is the kind of Secretary I think he is, is not going to issue these permits without the facts, and he can not get the facts without an investigation. How long will it take him to make such an investigation?

Dr. MUMFORD. That is a matter of detail of administration which I am not supposed to pass upon.

Representative LEVER. I think it is very important.

The CHAIRMAN. As I understood you, it is very hard for you to pass on these samples. After they have passed through interstate commerce and come into the hands of the farmers it is difficult for them to examine them. :

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, there are a million farmers needing these things, and don't you think it would be easier for the Secretary to stabilize the industry and issue the rules and regulations in accordance with which the business should be carried on and take hold of it in its incipiency instead of at the end.

Dr. MUMFORD. I most certainly do.

Representative HAUGEN. It would result in the standardizing of the business, would it not?

Dr. MUMFORD. Yes, sir.

Representative HAUGEN. And instead of having 4,000 or 5,000 different standards you will have it reduced to only 50 or 100.

Dr. MUMFORD. Another fact which is not generally known, but which experiment stations come in contact with, is the fact that two

different brands of feed have absolutely and exactly the same chemical composition, while they are sold under two different brands. The amusing part of it is, as some of you gentlemen know, that both these feeds can be sold in the same community under two different trade names, although they might have come out of the same bin so far as anybody can tell and the farmer will drop the use of one of those feeds and take up the other and swear that it is better than the first

one.

Representative LEVER. As a practical proposition, Dr. Mumford, how would you handle that? Would you prohibit the use of trade names in commerce?

Dr. MUMFORD. No, sir.

Representative LEVER. How would you get at it?

Dr. MUMFORD. I do not believe any manufacturer ought to be allowed to sell the same product under two different brand names. Representative LEVFR. How about two different manufacturers selling cottonseed meal, 43 per cent, one calling it "Mississippi Red" and the other "South Carolina Blue "? Do you believe in that? Dr. MUMFORD. That would not be the same proposition.

Representative LEVER. That is the same article sold under a different trade name.

Dr. MUMFORD. It is the helplessness of the farmer and the producer that I want to bring out. I believe it is a fact that the commercial feedstuff business in this country depends solely upon you gentlemen being able to produce a straightforward product, all wool and a yard wide, and every one of you sticking to it and helping to put these men out of business who are trying to do a crooked business and you know there are plenty of them.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you a State law in Illinois against the adulteration of feeds?

Dr. MUMFORD. I understand there is. I understand also it is the general feeling among the manufacturers that it is more or less of a joke. Is there anybody here that has had very much trouble with the administration of the food law in the State of Illinois. (No response.)

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions? If not, I would like to hear Dr. Wing, of Cornell.

STATEMENT OF DR. HENRY H. WING, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y., PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK GRANGE EXCHANGE.

Dr. WING. Mr. Chairman, I am here at the request of Mr. S. J. Lowell, master of the New York State Grange, who, I believe, had an invitation from yourself.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir. Now, Doctor, I would like to hear you discuss this amendment from the standpoint of the farmer and the consumer of grain.

Dr. WING. I would say, first, that I indorse everything that Dr. Jordan had to say in regard to the law in his remarks this afternoon. and that the Grange would fully indorse those statements.

I do not know that at this late hour I have very much further to add, except to give some impressions with respect to the statements that have been made in regard to some of these feeds that are said

to have and probably do have some feeding value. We have to take into consideration not only the composition of the food but the condition in which it comes to us and the way the animal takes it.

A good deal has been said about the cottonseed hulls. I feed animals myself, some 150 a year, not a great number, but I have purchased the feeds for them for the last 20 or 25 years. Some cottonseed hulls came into my hands, straight hulls, about two years ago, with the request that I see if they were available for feed in New York State. The animals would not eat them. alone. You could not put enough butter on them or sugar to make them go down, as you could on a small boy's bread.

Now, I have been conversant with the mixed feed situation for about the same length of time. My experience and the experience of many others has led us to believe that the chief object in making these patented feeds, to use Dr. Jordan's term, is to make a feed that otherwise would be rejected, or nearly completely rejected by animals to make them eat it. The object is to sell a feed in combination that would not sell on the market on its own merits at anywhere near the price that is asked for it in a mixed feed.

Some statements have been made here with respect to the possibility or impossibility of consumers getting straight, good feeds, socalled, in the markets at the present time. The conditions in New York State are quite different from what they are in the Central West and producing States. The retailing of commercial feeds is almost wholly in the hands of small retail dealers in small towns, where the dairymen and other consumers drive up to the store and take away a few hundred pounds or a few tons of it at a time. Those men do not like to handle but one kind of feed, and they will naturally take the brand that they can make the most money out of and that they can recommend or that they can get the farmers to use.

In the last 5 or 10 years while, as Dr. Jordan says, we have no figures on the tonnage basis, common observation shows an increase in the use of these feeds. The percentage Dr. Jordan gave; 69 per cent or something like that. Sometimes they all contain more or less of these worthless or semi-worthless articles, or articles of low value, to use the best term, which has been identified by the inspection in New York.

The law in New York undoubtedly has afforded some protection, but under the operation of the law in the State of New York Dr. Jordan showed, you conclusively that the number of brands and the proportion of mixed feeds, as compared with straight goods, has been constantly increasing in the nearly 20 years of the operation of that law.

Representative LEVER. To what do you attribute that increase, Dr. Wing?

Dr. WING. To the reason I just pointed out a few moments ago. Particularly in these last years since prices of feed have risen the retail dealers do not want to handle more than one kind of feed. They can take the agency for a mixed feed and do not have to put so much capital into it as they would if they kept a stock of four or five or a dozen different kinds of straight feeds. In the larger markets you can buy cottonseed meal or straight gluten, distillers' grainsuntil they were shut out-and things of that sort; but in the small

markets, the towns that have only 1,000 or 2,000 inhabitants, where there is only one feed dealer, or only two or three, you can not do that.

Representative LEVER. What would be the effect on the retail dealers all over the country if we pass a proposition like this which would compel the sale of the straight goods?

Dr. WING. They would sell straight goods.

Representative LEVER. In other words, they would rather go out and get some cottonseed meal

Dr. WING (interposing). Or they could make a mixture of straight goods that would not contain these things. You can make a mixture that does not contain these objectionable things. You can make a mixture of wheat bran and cotton seed or lin seed in varying proportions, and it will not contain any one of these objectionable articles. The CHAIRMAN. Is the grange organization in New York undertaking to put into operation some cooperative system of doing that? Dr. WING. Yes; they just have it in process of organization at the present time. They expect to open offices in Syracuse the 1st of October.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope you will report to us how it fares.

Dr. WING. That will depend very largely on the amount of business we can get and the amount of money.

Mr. STORY. Mr. Chairman, have you considered what disposition the manufacturers will make of their stock on hand?

The CHAIRMAN. I will say, Mr. Story, that it was an oversight that there was not a time limit written into this bill. They ought to have the time of their ordinary turnover written into the bill.

Mr. STORY. I was asking for information, because many of our dairymen and poultrymen in Massachusetts are interested in the amendment, inasmuch as practically all of the poultry feeders are using damaged feeds-damaged wheat and mill run of screeningsand as they understand the bill it would bar most of the so-called standard feeds.

The CHAIRMAN. Do they object to damaged grains mixed up with other feeds?

Mr. STORY. Yes. They are small operators-both of our herds are small-and it is difficult for them to secure the materials and to mix them for the small herds. They do not like to bother with it, and it is a serious matter at this stage of the season, which they will have to do if those feeds are all barred or held up subject to thorough investigation by the secretary. It was with that in mind that I asked the question.

The CHAIRMAN. You are right about that, and that will be allowed, if agreed upon.

STATEMENT OF MR. HARRY CASADAY, ALFALFA MILLER,

DENVER, COLO.

Mr. CASADAY. Mr. Chairman, I am of Senator Shafroth's constituency, and represent the National Alfalfa Millers' Association. We are largely farmers as well as manufacturers of alfalfa meal. In fact, I had the privilege of practically building the first alfalfa mill. The CHAIRMAN. You do not want alfalfa meal included in the inhibited stuff?