Mr. MARSHALL. Absolutely, in these particular commodities. Mr. MARSHALL. Once a month. It should be explained that they do not include the small distributing plants, say, of the large packers, such as you will find in the ordinary small town, which is simply a holding box, practically a cold-storage box or ice box, for holding the supply for a week. As a matter of fact, the meats which come in there, in so far as they are not cured meats, will not be frozen, but merely chilled meats, and in large measure those chilled meats come in at the beginning of the week and are sold out at the end of the week. So it is fair to explain that we do not include in our coldstorage reports all that great number of houses, although, if we had the means and the time, some information about those things would, of course, be very helpful. The CHAIRMAN. You could easily get that by arriving at the consumption per week, which would give you practically the total amount held in these ice boxes? Mr. MARSHALL. There would probably be no way to get at the consumption per week except through that means. The CHAIRMAN. You could get it by the shipments. Mr. MARSHALL. Yes. We do get the shipments to some extent, and a matter we expect to arrive at in the course of this discussion concerns the limitations that are placed upon us through lack of funds in getting additional information that we really ought to have. The CHAIRMAN. Right on that, if you got on the first on the week the amount of the shipments they would all receive on the first of the week, you would have then an inventory when the ice boxes were full? Mr. MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. And if you got it on a Saturday night, when the ice boxes were empty, you would have an altogether different result? Mr. MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. So, after all, your shipments would be just as good a basis upon which to work as taking an inventory either the first of the week or the last of the week, wouldn't they? Mr. MARSHALL. Whenever we have the means to follow it up, we will attack the problem in the best way possible. As I said, we are accomplishing some results; and at this time, when the subject is so much under discussion, our reports have been found to be of very great value. Two days ago two complete sets of our cold-storage reports were inserted in the Congressional Record, and just a month or so earlier, also, a set of reports was inserted. The value of the reports, I think, is better shown by some charts, of which I had hoped to have copies for the use of the committee, and shall submit later. I shall be glad to show them to you. These charts are taken from our printed bulletins. BUTTER AND EGGS. The first chart shows the cold-storage movement of butter. Creamery butter practically does not exist in cold storage on the 1st of May. It increases very rapidly through June and July and, to some extent, through August; so that by the 1st of September or the 1st of October we have the high point in creamery butter. Then it gradually goes out, particularly in the winter, when the produc tion from the dairies and farms is small, and by the next May it is entirely gone. The same is true of eggs, the supply of eggs abso lutely running out about the month of February or March, as appears from the second chart. COLD STORAGE O F HOLDINGS AMERICAN CHEESE --------00------ Base-100-Holdings on Sept. 1, 1916, and Oot. 1, 1917. FIG. III. 100 90 The third chart shows the result of our cold-storage reports with reference to cheese; it gives the picture of what happens each year. |