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mixture of wheat flour and cornstarch, and that the Congress of the United States in 1898 was a party to a commercial fraud and that it licensed adulteration under Government supervision?

Mr. LIND. Shall I answer that?

Mr. WAGNER. No; not just now. I am almost through, if you please.

We, as manufacturers of cornstarch, ask for the repeal of the tax, because we are a unit with the corn growers in demanding that the stigma placed upon a wholesome food product made from corn by the placing of a stamp tax upon the packages containing it be taken off, and in that way justice be meted out to our greatest cereal and its derivatives, which have served so well to carry the gospel of American corn into all corners of the globe, and the virtues of which inspired Gov. Oglesby to his celebrated eulogy:

Aye! The corn, the royal corn,

Within whose golden heart

There is of life and strength
For all the nations.

Now, I am ready to answer any questions, Gov. Lind, that you or any members of the committee may wish to ask me.

Mr. LIND. All I wish to say is this, so that you may understand our position on that point. The term "mixed flour" was created by Congress. We have no objection to the continuation of that term in the connection in which it was created-in continuation in this act. Mr. RAINEY. Let me ask, Mr. Lind, whom do you represent? I do not remember that you have stated.

Mr. LIND. I am speaking for the Millers' Association, the wheat millers.

Mr. RAINEY. Which association?

Mr. LIND. Several of the State and national associations. I will place that in the record definitely later on. I did not want to occupy the time of the committee at this time with that detail.

We do not object to the term "mixed flour" being used in that connection, but if it be the purpose of Congress to repeal the existing law and to put this industry, which they claim is nonexistent, under the pure-food act, put it there, and we have no objection. If you take any action, repeal the existing law, but do not modify the purefood act. By this proposed bill you would modify the whole theory of the pure-food act to this extent. Under the pure-food act as it now stands you could not mix flour and starch and call it flour.

Mr. WAGNER. It is not proposed to call it flour; it is proposed to call it mixed flour.

Mr. LIND. Under the existing law you could not mix flour and starch and call it mixed flour.

Mr. LANNEN. It could be manufactured and sold as "mixed flour." Mr. LIND. Well, I beg to differ with you. That is my position. Now, you would be making a new classification if you passed this bill. If you pass this bill, you make a new classification under the pure-food act, and that is the point we make.

Mr. WAGNER. That classification is 18 years old.

Mr. RAINEY. Your position is that you do not want the two laws? Mr. LIND. We prefer, and, in so far as we can insist, we insist upon the existing law. We certainly would not want both. We infinitely prefer the pure-food act intact.

Mr. WAGNER. There are a few remarks, Mr. Chairman, which I would like to make with reference to some matters that were discussed yesterday and day before to clear up in the minds of the committee some doubt, possibly, as to the manufacture of our product. I do not want to go into a detailed description of the process, but I would like to make just a few remarks, if I may.

The manufacture of starch is entirely a mechanical process. It is a milling process and differs from that of the flour millers or the white-corn millers only in that we grind with water instead of grinding dry. It is a well-known principle that if you have a product ground in water you can bring about a better separation of the component parts of the entire grain than by any dry method, and all that the dry-grain miller and we aim to do is to separate the corn into its component parts, that is, the hull and the starch and the germ and the gluten. Now, the white-corn miller goes as far as his machinery will permit him to go. We, employing the wet milling process, are able to go a little further, so that the distinction between the products made by the dry and wet milling processes lies primarily in their respective degrees of refinement. Our products are more refined than those obtained by the dry-milling process. That is no reflection, by any means, upon the dry-milling process. It simply means that we are enabled to extract, for instance, the starch in its pure state, and that we can offer to the various trades, be they manufacturing industries or producers of food products, a cornstarch in that pure form which the dry miller is not able to do because of the deficiencies of his process.

Mr. HELVERING. Will you state that in that product there is no chemical reaction takes place?

Mr. WAGNER. I had the manufacture of that product under my personal, direct charge for a number of years, and I state unqualifiedly that there is no chemical process employed in the manufacture of that product.

Mr. HELVERING. No chemical employed?

Mr. WAGNER. And there is no chemical contained, if that is the question in your mind, in that product. Gov. Lind referred to that product and said, as though trying to belittle the corn product, "You place it on the tongue and you will taste the corn."

Mr. LIND. That is when the flour is milled mechanically.

Mr. WAGNER. Now, then, it was said that cornstarch was a byproduct. I would like to clear that up. When Thomas Kingsford first made this starch from corn, first ground corn, the only product that he manufactured was starch, and all such component parts of the corn as gluten, oil, and hull were allowed to run to waste. Now, it would seem hardly proper to call a product which is the only product obtained from a raw material a by-product. It was the only product made, and inasmuch as corn contains 70 per cent starch, it is difficult to see how you can call oil, for instance, which is present to the extent, say, of 4 per cent-how you can call that the principal product and call the starch a secondary or by-product. The fact is that cornstarch is the principal product of all starch manufacturers, and all the other products that I have named are known under the generic name of by-products.

I would like to call the attention of the committee to a very odd situation. There may be a mixed flour business going on in

this country, but it does not amount to anything. This tax practically prevents the employment of cornstarch in bread making because it can not be mixed with flour. At the same time the same products are used all over the country in the manufacture of bread. In fact, corn products are better products for certain purposes of bread making than any other. I refer to corn products such as were mentioned yesterday, frumentum, for instance, or products which we make under the trade name of Mazam. These are employed as yeast foods. The yeast that you add to your dough must have something upon which it can thrive, so these prepared corn products, be they frumentum or Mazam or corn sugar, are added to the dough and the yeast readily takes up those corn products and assimilates them, and thereby becomes active. Those products are used, usually to the extent of 5 pounds to the barrel of flour. That means, roughly speaking, 2 per cent of the flour employed, or the amount of corn product employed in bread making corresponds to about 21 per cent of the flour employed. Now, that is all right. There is no fault found with that. The Department of Agriculture and other competent people say those are good products to be used in bread making, but if you should go to work and take that 2 per cent of corn products and in order to save, let us say, the trouble of adding that 2 per cent to the bag of flour and selling it to the baker, you have got to pay a tax on it. Why? You have got to pay a tax on that product. It is taxed 4 cents a barrel, and it bears the stigma of not being a meritorious product. So we have this strange situation, that a baker may employ, with the indorsement of the authorities and recommended by them, corn products to the extent of 24 per cent or more (he is unlimited; he can use as much as he pleases) and yet he may not employ a mixed flour of, let us say, a 24 per cent content of cornstarch. That is the situation to-day, and all we ask is that you gentlemen will please enable us to sell that product on its own merits.

Mr. LIND. The products that you have just now referred to are not starch. That is a starch sugar, is it not?

Mr. WAGNER. Pardon me. Mazam is the purest starch known. That is about 99.7 per cent pure starch and not sugar. Frumentum is 76 per cent pure starch and not sugar.

Mr. FORDNEY. Mr. Wagner, let me ask you a few questions. Are you a manufacturer of cornstarch?

Mr. WAGNER. I am, sir.

Mr. FORDNEY. Mr. Wagner, you say that the industry has been put out of business; you can not get this mixed flour now?

Mr. WAGNER. Quite so; yes.

Mr. FORDNEY. Is there any other feature of the law except the 4 cents per barrel tax, that put that mixed flour out of business? Mr. WAGNER. It is the stigma placed upon the product. Mr. FORDNEY. Let me read you a portion of Mr. Wedderburn's report at the time this law was advocated in 1898:

Through the means of the circular letters that many makers of white corn flour, called “flourine," are sending out, we should judge the mixing of “flourine" with wheat flour is very extensively practiced. We inclose with this letter a circular setting forth the advantages to be derived--mainly, larger profit to the miller. We find it to be simply impossible to meet the prices that some millers are said to be quoting in the southern trade, and for this reason

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we consider that the adulterated article is making the price for the pure. We do not think the corn flour is injurious to the health of the consumer, but it is the means of greatly upsetting legitimate trade in a strictly pure wheat flour. Then, skipping a portion of his report which does not bear on the point I make:

The law can not be too strict or severe, nor too well applied to all who violate any of its provisions. Legitimate milling demands protection from the National Government in a good many ways, and this is one of them.

What have you to say about that report? After the adoption of this law you say that the mixed-flour business has gone out of business!

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Mr. WAGNER. Yes, sir. Mr. Congressman, now, please allow me to read into the record the paragraph that you omitted. It reads like this, and I am reading the part that you omitted:

In our opinion, unless there is a national law enacted to compel makers of the adulterated article to so brand it that it may be distinguished from the genuine, the miller who takes pride in offering a fancy flour will have to resort to the use of admixture in order to keep in business.

Mr. FORDNEY. Let me read the balance of it:

For this reason we think the practice is extending rapidly. State laws may control the trade in those States that have such laws only, as a shipment to go to another State that has no such law can be adulterated,

Mr. WAGNER. Is it not strange, Mr. Congressman, that the opponents make the argument in the opposite direction? They say, "Well, if you have a national law, it is all right to ship it in interstate commerce," but what of the product that is made in a State and sold within the State? Mr. Wedderburn says it is all right.

Mr. FORDNEY. You say the 4 cents per barrel tax would put you out of business. It will put you out in the States as well as in interstate commerce, if there is nothing else to the law that is detrimental to the mixed flour but the 4 cents tax per barrel.

Mr. WAGNER. It is that 4 per cent tax coupled with all that goes with it-the restrictions, regulations, and the stigma that has served to kill or at least to strangle. I think was the expression used by counsel, to strangle that industry. It is not the tax alone, but all that goes with it, that makes it so obnoxious and unfair.

Mr. FORDNEY. Would you be willing to repeal the tax of 4 cents. per bariel and permit the remainder of the law to stand?

Mr. WAGNER. That is a very interesting proposition. Mr. Congressman. That is interesting, but I have not heard that advanced before. Mr. FORDNEY. There is just one other statement in here by that same man, where he mentions a manufacturer of flourine, writing to a manufacturer of flour and calling his attention to the fact that, if you will purchase my flourine and mix it with wheat flour you will obtain a profit of $400 to $1.600 on each carload you use.

Mr. WAGNER. That was long before the Federal food and drugs act was enacted.

Mr. FORDNEY. Yes; that was before the enactment of the food and drugs act, and before this law was adopted. It was before we had

this law.

Mr. WAGNER. We all admit that was a bad practice in those years prior to 1898. There is no question about that. I would not stand here and make an argument in favor of the sale of an adulterated or misbranded article. I should say not.

It stands to reason that if Congress legalizes the production of mixed flour and requires that that product shall be sold as mixed flour the trade will readily recognize that condition and there will be added to the various commercial grades of flour now on the market another one called "mixed flour," and you will find in the daily quotations of the flour market not only the quotations on straight, patent, and fancy flour, but on mixed flour, and the jobber and the retailer will know exactly what that product is worth and no manufacturer could palm off or try to get for his mixed flour the price that the miller gets for his straight flour. Commercial practice, commercial usage, commercial knowledge makes such a condition as that impossible.

Mr. CONRY. Is it your opinion that the repeal of this law will bring to the consumer and the poor people of the country cheaper bread and bread as nourishing as the bread made from wheat flour?

Mr. WAGNER. Mr. Congressman, if that were not my firm and honest conviction I would not stand before you and make a single argument for the Rainey bill.

Mr. RAINEY. The wheat-flour mills would get a benefit from it out of an increased consumption of flour?

Mr. WAGNER. They certainly would; and if the wheat millers would only take the right view of this matter instead of their narrow, selfish, limited view, they would really see that this whole agitation would eventually lead to an advance in the consumption of wheat flour, and in that way those trade rivalries are usually adjusted, or, rather, adjust themselves.

Mr. SLOAN. I think maybe you are under a misapprehension there. This bill does not affect the per cent of the mixture, does it?

Mr. WAGNER. No: it may contain 90 per cent or 95 per cent.
Mr. SLOAN. Only that there should not be more than 50 per cent?
Mr. LIND. There is no limitation.

Mr. SLOAN. No limitation?

Mr. WAGNER. Oh, yes; there is a limitation.

Mr. LIND. They may make it 90 per cent starch and 10 per cent flour.

Mr. WAGNER. You understand, of course, that the Rainey bill uses the same language, as to what should be mixed flour, as the old law, which these gentlemen had enacted, and they recognized at that time that to make a leavened bread you have got to have at least so much of wheat flour in that dough, or in that bread, whatever that percentage may be.

Mr. SLOAN. The bill itself does not fix any percentage or any limitation?

Mr. WAGNER. No; but if a baker should put in an order for "John Doe's mixed flour," and John Doe was fool enough to put in 49 per cent of cornstarch, Mr. Baker would try to make bread and would make heavy cakes instead. and Mr. John Doe would not get another order from that bread baker; he would say, "I do not want your flour." That is the way those matters are adjusted. It does not take any law for that, you know.

Mr. COLLIER. How much of this corn flour can be mixed with wheat flour and make such a mixture as will produce good bread?

Mr. WAGNER. That depends. I am very glad, Mr. Congressman, you brought up this point, because I want to correct the idea, if it

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