ters if they show any capacity so to do, rather than absorb the entire subject. It would seem proper that an amendment be incorporated with or engrafted upon the law you propose to pass, which would permit the development of such commissions and such regulatory practices as we have in Minnesota rather than extinguish them.

Gentlemen of the committee, I want to thank you for permitting me to make this statement.

Mr. RIDDICK. Before you leave I would like to ask you a question: There is a certain territory from which shippers sometimes ship to Milwaukee and sometimes to South St. Paul and sometimes to Minneapolis and perhaps sometimes to Kansas City. Out in that territory there are men traveling nearly every day representing these different receiving points, asking the shippers of stock to ship to their particular place. I was wondering if the great benefits exist as are claimed for your stockyards, why the natural flow of stock would not be to your place unless corresponding benefits are given at other places.

Mr. SULLIVAN. You see all the benefits we are talking about must to some extent give way to price. Price is regulated very largely by freight rates. There is a natural territory tributory to South St. Paul. Then there is a certain territory where price prohibits shipment there. If there is not much difference they might ship to our market, but if there is much difference in the freight rate that would prohibit it.

Mr. RIDDICK. Is there a very considerable territory from which stockmen sometimes ship to one market and sometimes to another? Mr. SULLIVAN. As Mr. Wells has stated, there has been a very large increase in the number of stock shipped to South St. Paul. I suppose it is because of the conditions existing there. However, I am only a member of the Legislature of Minnesota, and came to talk to you about this legislation, the way it was enacted. And this legislation was enacted at the request of the farmers and shippers of Minnesota, who are very much pleased with it and do not want any Federal legislation that will deprive them of the benefits they know about now in return for a rainbow of promises from which they may get no benefits-Federal regulation. We would rather have what we are sure of than to trade it for something we are not sure of.

Mr. TINCHER. Of course there are 47 other States in the Union that are to be considered.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Very well, I think this amendment is so worded that you can regulate the stockyards all you want to in other States, but please let us regulate our own stockyards. Mr. Anderson did not think there was any difficulty about that matter, and he is familiar with the bill.

Mr. TINCHER. I am just wondering if some State were to pass some legislation, like your grain bill, that was not satisfactory to the people, and had a joker in it, if the Federal Government should let it go. Or, to go further, suppose some stockyard company could control some legislature of its State instead of the people, and that legislature should pass a regulation regulating the stockyards in a way that was unsatisfactory to the people, what about that?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Let me answer your question by reading the amendment proposed rather than in any other way. This proposed

amendment contains drew it:

a proviso, and Representative Anderson

Provided, That this section shall not be held to limit the application of Title III to any stockyard owner, market agency or dealer in respect to any matter of regulation not within the authority of such agency.

I think it is the design of the language, even if it has not been carried out by the words thereof, that no phony regulation bill could prevent the exercise of the jurisdiction of the United States under this particular bill.

Mr. TINCHER. I take it the confidence you have in the regulation of your stockyards by law is improved by the fact that you have good regulation at home, and, further, that as to this class of legislation you would highly recommend it to any legislative body.

Mr. SULLIVAN. I certainly would. I will say, more than that, of course there is no doubt in the world, and I think the gentlemen of the committee will agree with me, that we placed the administration of this law in the hands of a gentleman like Mr. Wells, who had had many years' experience with farmers and also with legislators and public men, who understood how to handle these matters, a man of great tact, is a reason why we were correspondingly successful in the actual carrying out of the law.

In a Federal proposition we frequently get men from Georgia to come up and try to do something in Minnesota or vice versa. I do not particularly say from Georgia, but I will use that as an illustration. A man might be sent up from Texas just as well. But our law is executed by men who live right there, who understand the business and understand our prople and their problems and who understand how to get at the solution of those problems; and, furthermore, our legislature is near at hand and is responsible to the local demands of the people.

Mr. PURNELL. I might remind you that of course there is less probability of somebody from Texas or Georgia regulating your affairs in the next few years than there was in the past.

Mr. SULLIVAN. It has been so proclaimed, but I do not know anything about performance. You know I am from Missouri on some things.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am very much obliged to you.

The CHAIRMAN. And the committee wishes to thank you for the information you have given.

The committee will now stand adjourned until 10 o'clock to-morrow morning, except for the hearing to be given to the Secretary of Agriculture at 7 o'clock this evening on grain futures.

Mr. VEEDER. Mr. Chairman, as I understand the situation, the proponents of this bill were to have to-day and to-morrow and Friday afternoon, and the opponents were to have Wednesday and Thursday and Friday morning. Will this adjournment affect our time?

The CHAIRMAN. No, sir. You will still have Wednesday and Thursday and Friday forenoon.

Mr. VEEDER. I thank you.

(Thereupon at 1 o'clock and 10 minutes p. m. the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Tuesday, May 3, 1921, at 10 o'clock a. m.)

MEAT PACKER.

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Tuesday, May 3, 1921.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. Gilbert N. Haugen (chairman), presiding.

There were present: Mr. Haugen, Mr. Purnell, Mr. Voigt, Mr. McLaughlin of Nebraska, Mr. Riddick, Mr. Tincher, Mr. Williams, Mr. Sinclair, Mr. Hays, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Gernerd, Mr. Clague, Mr. Clarke, Mr. Aswell, Mr. Kincheloe, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Ten Eyck. The CHAIRMAN. We will hear from Mrs. Costigan first this morning, if she is ready to proceed.

STATEMENT OF MRS. EDWARD P. COSTIGAN, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mrs. COSTIGAN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have no intention this morning of discussing the merits of the different bills before you or of going into the need for this legislation, but I want to bring to the attention of this committee in this Congress what we have brought to the attention of other committees in other sessions-that large organizations of women are enthusiastically supporting Federal legislation for the regulation of the meat-packing industry. Among these organizations is the National Consumers' League, of which Mrs. Florence Kelley is the general secretary. Mrs. Kelley is here to represent the National Consumers' League. Other organizations supporting this legislation are the Womens' Trade Union League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. I represent here to-day the National League of Women Voters.

For two years and more the National League of Women Voters has been supporting legislation looking toward Government regulation of the meat-packing industry. We include in our indorsement the separation of the stockyards from the control of the packers, the making of refrigerator and special-equipment cars part of the common-carrier system of the country, and the assuring properly regulated live-stock and other food markets open alike to producers and consumers. We are anxious that there shall be some governmental agency specially delegated to investigate and supervise this very important industry that has become so large that it is affected with a public use. We are particularly anxious that there shall be a strong publicity department, so that the producers and the consumers will know, as they have a right to know, the conditions

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that surround this highly-important industry, particularly relating to the supply, demand, and price conditions.

We feel that public opinion is back of this legislation and the public should know what the facts are. We are therefore anxious for a strong publicity department.

I have come this morning particularly to bring the latest indorsement of the National League of Women Voters. In the annual convention which met in Cleveland from April 11 to April 16, the food supply and demand committee presented recommendations which were overwhelmingly adopted by the whole convention representing the women from all the States in the Union. These recommendations, as adopted, are as follows:

The food supply and demand committee, as a result of its investigations, is convinced

That the high cost of living is in large measure caused by unorganized and wasteful methods in the distribution and use of food;

That unfair manipulation and private control by large food organizations and combinations of markets and the facilities for trade and distribution are discouraging production and increasing prices to consumers; and

That our Nation is morally obligated to make it possible for nourishing food to be brought and kept within reach of every home and especially all growing children. Therefore the committee recommends: The continued indorsement of prompt and effective legislation by Congress providing Federal regulation for the meat-packing industry.

Mr. Chairman, I have come to assure this committee of the support of many, many thousands of women of effective legislation to regulate the meat-packing industry, and to express the hope that this committee will very speedily report out some such bill to Congress. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you very much, Mrs. Costigan. We will hear Mrs. Kelley next.

STATEMENT OF MRS. FLORENCE KELLEY, GENERAL SECRETARY NATIONAL CONSUMERS' LEAGUE, NEW YORK CITY.

Mrs. KELLEY. Mr. Chairman, my name is Mrs. Florence Kelley, and I come here from New York City. I am the general secretary and have been for more than 20 years, of the National Consumers' League, of which the former Secretary of War, Mr. Newton D. Baker, has for five years been president.

At our annual meeting in 1919 we adopted a 10-year program. Before that we had worked for 10 years with growing success to obtain in the States commissions known as minimum-wage commissions or as divisions under the industrial welfare commissions of the different States which should establish rates of wages such that women and minors who worked for their living could be assured a wage that would "maintain them in health." That is the wording of the bill which Congress passed and which is in force here in the District of Columbia at the present time.

There are now 10 of those commissions at work, and we have found, as one after another of them has set up one wage rate after another intended to enable the people who work in the humblest occupations to live while they worked without having recourse to charity while they worked, that the cost of living arose so that apparently the

gains which were nominally made for the workers really accrued to the distributors of food and to the sellers of shoddy clothing and to the housing profiteers. It was rather in the nature of kitty chasing her tail for the Consumers' League to spend so large a part of its time getting minimum wage rates established, only to have this unforeseen result.

Therefore, in 1919, we adopted, as a part of our 10-year program, the effort to get goods, textiles, etc., branded, so that the people might know what they were paying for out of their wages, and to promote and cooperate with all those who were striving to promote regulation of the great organized producers and distributors of foods, and also to cooperate with the people who were promoting cooperation in the distribution of foods by wholesale and retail.

A year and a half of that 10-year period has now passed and we have undergone some experiences and have made some observations which can not fail, I think, to be of interest to the members of this committee. The principle we adopted underlying our 10 years' activity was this, that the banks have by no means been put out of business by the creation of the Federal Reserve Board. On the contrary, both the public and the banks have profited by having that valuable, new organization within the Government at work in this crucial time of reorganization. Very few people, we believe, seriously would consider it desirable that the Interstate Commerce Commission should be done away with, although, as Mr. Anderson showed yesterday, owing to the legislation under which it has had to function, it has not given entire satisfaction, perhaps, to any great part of the public. Still, we all recognize that so long as railroads are administered as they are in this country by private capital, there has to be regulation and there has to be a responsible organization within the Federal Government charged with the duty of regulation under the laws of Congress.

When any large industry is so great and so firmly organized that it can produce such results as we constantly see produced within the meat industry, we can not see why that great industry should continue to play the rôle of Robin Hood and be without the law.

We do not want to put the food industry out of business. That is too preposterous even to suggest, but we do believe that the present situation is an entirely untenable one.

I have lived for about 30 years among very poor, working people, first on the west side of Chicago, and now for more than 20 years, on the lower east side in New York. Last year, for the first time, the greatest and richest city in the Western Hemisphere created, by vote of its city government, a fund to pay for nourishing foods, of which meat should be a considerable element, to be given to the public-school children, in order that they might be enabled to do the work which the city compels them to do in the schools which it compels them to attend.

It was found that very large numbers of school children in New York and in Chicago, and in other cities, were compelled to go to school, compelled to complete a curriculum, and they can not leave school until they do complete that curriculum, and yet they were found by the city physicians to be incompetent from lack of proper nourishment to do the work that the law requires them to do. So