Miss HALL. We are very grateful to be able to come, Senator, and tell you what we feel about it.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Douglas.

STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL H. DOUGLAS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

Senator DOUGLAS. Senator Hayden, as a minor cosponsor of this bill, I am very happy to join Senator Gillette, who has been our leader in this matter, in urging that your committee give the resolution your most careful and, I hope, favorable consideration.

To my mind, the creation of such a select committee would greatly aid us in the Senate in dealing with one of the most neglected interests in America. Those interests are the over-all needs of the consumer. As we are all aware, one of our chief problems in legislation is the fact that the producing interests are highly organized and concentrated, while the consuming interests are diffused and therefore unorganized. It may be of great financial advantage to a particular group of producers that a given measure be enacted or a given set of administrative rules and procedures be adopted.

Since it does mean a great deal of money to them, they can afford to spend a fraction of the money involved to try to influence legislation by publicity, propaganda, and otherwise. On the other hand, though the loss to the consumers as a whole may be greater than the gain to the producers, each individual consumer will ordinarily suffer very little loss from such a measure because it will affect only a small fraction of the total income or total expenditures of a given family. Since a given measures affects each family to only a slight degree, it follows, therefore, that it is hardly worth the time-or is not worth the time for the average family to spend its energy, lose its earnings, undergo financial expense, and so forth, to acquaint themselves with the issue.

Furthermore, it is impossible for them to inform themselves on all the vast variety of issues which appear. They are busy making a living and spending a living, and they cannot become full-time public

servants.

The result is that the consuming interest, being diffused, frequently goes down in a contest with the producing interests. I think one of our main problems is to strengthen the consuming interest.

I have hinted that price considerations are involved. Now, let me say a word about quality and deal specifically with the question of bread, the staff of life.

When the country mill disappeared and wheat ceased to be ground by stone rollers and was ground instead by metal rollers, it was found that the wheat germ when crushed rancidified. Therefore the largescale millers devised a process in which they took the wheat germ out of the wheat and then produced a flour which was mostly starch and paste, selling the wheat germ then for feed to the hogs, so that the hogs are much better fed than human beings so far as the products of wheat are concerned. And to change their methods now would require a big investment of capital by the millers.

Senator SMITH of New Jersey. Is the Senator suggesting that the hog is one of the consumers being protected by the resolution?

Senator DOUGLAS. I would say the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration pay much more attention to the hog than to human beings on the question of flour and wheat. And the resolution would help us to correct this.

Incidentally, for a long time you could get appropriations to care for the health of hogs when you could not get appropriations to care for the health of children. I have seen legislatures appropriate large funds to prevent hog cholera and then turn down appropriations to prevent diarrhea in children.

Senator MORSE. Why do you say "for a long time"?

Senator DOUGLAS. We are beginning to catch up. We are not as bad as we were 20 years ago.

Now, let me come down to this bread question. There is a little cooperative up in Ithaca, N. Y., where they have had a Cornell physiologist working with them. They have developed a bread with a substantial content of the wheat germ, and this bread is also enriched with soybeans and with solids. It is probably one of the best breads on the market, if not the best bread. What did we find?

We found the Food and Drug Administration proposing to adopt. bread standards which by setting lower ceilings on these nutritive elements would in effect not allow the name "white bread" to be used for this bread, because they said it was so different from the average bread, and therefore you should not permit it to compete in the market for "white bread." We have had a most difficult struggle with the Federal Security Agency and with the Food and Drug Administration trying to get that proposed ruling reversed. In other words, there will be a ceiling on quality under these bread standards unless the consumer interest is brought to the fore.

It almost reminds me of the famous remark of Marie Antoinette that good bread must be called cake, and should not be allowed to usurp the name of bread. Well, that situation I think in itself indicates the power of the big millers-and that is what it is-the power of the big millers over the Food and Drug Administration, which originally was set up to protect the consumers.

I have had some experience with the Department of Agriculture on just this very point. There was a small mill in Illinois which developed a process, so competent physiologists tell me, which enables large-scale milling of wheat, retaining the wheat germ, but without causing the flour to rancidify. It was in production for about 2 years with this new type of process. We have evidence that during those 2 years it produced a very high type of flour.

Then there was an internal change. The possessor or discoverer of the process was frozen out. A new group came in which thought they had the process but did not have it. They produced, and the bread made from their incorrect formula lost prestige.

Now, I have been trying to get the Department of Agriculture to take some interest in at least starting or approving a pilot plant to see whether this genuine process could not be tried out, and I have had quite an experience with the Department, with the reports from the experts of the Department actually misrepresenting facts. I charge that openly; misrepresenting facts, and repeatedly slurring over favorable evidence and putting in unfavorable evidence.

And I regret to add that I have had a striking lack of success in dealing with the Secretary of Agriculture on this point. The forces of

inertia and the investments in the present milling process are so great, that there is tremendous opposition to allowing this new process to get under way.

This has convinced me, if I needed any further conviction, that there must be some place down here which will serve as a friend to the

consumer.

We have been all through this organizational problem in dealing with the Small Business Committee. I admit when Senator Murray first raised the question of a Senate Small Business Committee. I was very dubious whether we should have a special or select committee. I had thought that the Congressional Reorganization Act, which was certainly wise in most of its details, was right in trying to bar further select committees.

As a matter of fact, I think I was put on the Small Business Committee of Banking and Currency, which was trying to retain jurisdiction over this matter.

After about a year, however, I became convinced that a subcommittee of Banking and Currency could not deal effectively with small business, and that a select committee was desirable. I furthermore found that my office was being swamped with inquiries about the difficulties of small business. Mr. McCulloch, my administrative assistant, was spending much of his time trying to help out small business, and about all we provided was still another shoulder for small-business men to cry upon.

I personally have found the Select Committee on Small Business to be of appreciable aid to small business, certainly of great aid to Senators, and I think it has justified its existence. If that is true of small business, I think it can also be true of the consumer.

There is a cartoon series which came out some time ago entitled, "When a Feller Needs a Friend." I would say that the two groups which need friends most are small business and the consumers. And Senator Gillette's resolution will help provide friends for the latter group of "fellers."

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you for your statement, Senator Douglas. Senator Smith?

STATEMENT OF HON. H. ALEXANDER SMITH, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Senator SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you. I became one of the cosponsors of this resolution because I was very much interested in the subject.

I have had misgivings about the creation of additional committees. Under our reorganization plan I realize we can't sprawl too many committees all over the Senate, bnt here is an area which, as Senator Douglas said, has been neglected. I don't see any way to deal with this very important consumer interest without having a resolution of this nature, which I am glad to support, to set up a special committee.

For the record, Mr. Chairman, I have a brief statement here which I would like to read. I regret that I have another committee meeting at the present time which I must go to in just a minute.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my support for Senate Resolution 169 which calls for the creation of a Select Committee on Consumer Interests.

We are today living in a period of big business, big labor, and big government. These three groups are highly organized and each plays a tremendous role in influencing legislation. About the only major group which is not organized to make its interests known is that of the

consumer.

I might interpolate here that, as Senator Douglas has said, the small-business group also is being represented by a special committee, so I must modify my statement to that extent.

The result is that all too frequently the interest of the poor consumer is squeezed between that of the other contending groups. Poor Mr. Public is ignored.

A Select Committee on Consumer Interests could do much to remedy this situation: (1) It could serve as a forum before which the consumer could air his complaints and make known conditions, which may demand remedial action, or, as Senator Douglas said, it would offer a shoulder on which the consumer in the first instance could at least weep and get his weepings heard.

(2) Such a committee could collect, organize, and present data which could be of help to consumers in facing and attacking the prob lem of inflation. And, of course, it would go further in developing facts on which intelligent and sound legislation might be drafted to protect the consumer interests.

So, Mr. Chairman, I support this resolution because I believe that it is high time that we developed machinery to aid the poorly represented consumers in presenting their case before our Government. I will be glad to submit that statement for the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Smith.

Senator Morse, you are a cosponsor.

STATEMENT OF HON. WAYNE MORSE, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

Senator MORSE. I have a very brief statement to make, Mr. Chairman. First, I would say that I think under the reorganization plan the presumption is against the creation of such committees as called for by Senate Resolution 169, of which I am one of the cosponsors, but it is a rebuttable presumption.

If a showing can be made that there is a justification for such a so-called special committee, then I don't think the reorganization plan can justifiably be used as a reason for disallowing the creation of such a committee, and I want to speak for just a few minutes to that rebuttable presumption.

It is very important that we have a committee in the legislative set-up in the Senate that can do not only some barking but some biting in protecting the interests of the American consumer, and I think we need a watchdog committee on Senate committees.

The committee contemplated under Senate Resolution 169 would be a watchdog committee in the consumers' interests, watching Senate committtes, because I hold to the point of view that, knowingly or unknowingly, the record of too many Senate committees shows that the consumers' interests are pigeonholed and legislation is devised and passed which carries out the will of too many pressure groups other than consumer groups.

After all, legislation ought to be passed, motivated primarily by the intent to promote the general welfare, and the general welfare is to be found among the consumers of the country.

So I am very frank about what I think such a committee as this could do about this resolution. I think it could put the heat on Senators on standing committees, and I think they need to be roasted now and then to do a better job in protecting the consumer interests.

It is to be noted that this resolution does not give any legislative power to this committee. It makes it a fact-finding committee.

It makes it, frankly, a committee that seeks to focus public opinion on the interests of consumers as those interests are involved in legislative problems presented in bills before standing committees or not presented in bills before standing committees. As I see it, the negative is as important as the affirmative in this matter.

I am not going to bore this committee with a great many specific examples of what I think this committee could do, but I will name three or four. You see, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I think the American people are living in an economic dream world right now. I think they are pretty unrealistic as to what is ahead.

If anyone thinks that we can continue to travel the economic road that we are traveling without putting some checks in the way of the inflation runaway that is tearing down the highway these days, I say they are unrealistic.

I think we are headed right into an economic collapse a few years years ahead if we follow the road that we are following. I think it is the duty of committees of the Congress, and it will be one of the duties of this committee, to make the investigations and come forward with the facts that will show the effect of certain pieces of legislation that powerful economic pressure groups are able to get through the Congress of the United States upon the economic interests of the

consumers.

The work that the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Gillette, was doing with this subcommittee of his in Agriculture in bringing to light consumer problems in this whole field of food prices was a great public service, and the fact that the committee did not continue and the full Agricultural Committee did not continue to press on that matter, is no fault of the Senator from Iowa, but they did not.

But if you had a committee such as this existing with the jurisdiction to undertake research into this whole question of food prices and why they are getting where they are, I think you would get some attention paid to their findings by the Agricultural Committee, by the Banking and Currency Committee, and by the Appropriations Committee, by the Labor Committee and all the rest.

Inflation, not only in relation to food prices but to prices generally, if we don't stop it in this country, is going to have a tremendous effect on international relations within the next decade.

The direct relationship of American inflation to foreign policy is not fully appreciated, I think, by the American people these days. I would like to have at least some committee with no legislative ax to grind at all, not subject to any pressures at all as far as any particular bill is concerned, perfectly free to function as a check on other committees by saying, "But here are the facts."