now. sitting around this table for 50 years dealing with these matters. We have had some variety of experiments, and some of them have been very useful indeed. What could be more useful than the pure food law, the inspection of cattle for tuberculosis, and the whole long series of life-saving legislation which your predecessors enacted-perhaps some of them are still here. I remember that it took 20 years, or something like that, 16 or 18 years, to get the pure food law passed and working satisfactorily, but nobody would undo that There was doubtless the same objection to that as there is to this legislation. I remember that the only other attack that the Consumers' League ever suffered was from the brewers, when we were helping to pass the pure food law. I do not wish at all to evade the question which was asked by the Representative here. I do not fear at all that Congress will attempt to interfere with advertising which runs counter to the legislation, but I think they will perceive the absence of a certain kind of publicity attending their own activities, and that they will be very much interested in the coincidence between the advertising and the silence. I do not know whether that answers your question satisfactorily. Mr. CLARKE. Yes. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Nebraska. I should like to ask you a question. I see that you have given a great deal of study to this question and undoubtedly have a personal opinion as to the agency that should be created for the enforcement of a law such as we are contemplating, if any law is passed. Some of the bills which have been introduced propose to make the supervising agency the Department of Agriculture, others select the Federal Trade Commission, and others propose the creation of an entirely new commission to handle this subject alone. It seems to me if any legislation is to be had at all, if it is needed, that we want an enforcement agency or supervisory agency that will be the most capable possible and that will be able to devote all of its time to the study and consideration of the subject. It has seemed to me that the influence and scope and the great volume of this industry is such and of such vital importance to the entire people that it is going to necessitate, if any legislation is to do all we want it to do, the creation of a commission to deal with this subject only. If you have an opinion, I should like to have it. Mrs. KELLEY. I should say, sir, that my organization has not voted on that particular matter, but my own personal opinion, which, I think, weighs somewhat with our organization, is this: When the Federal Reserve Board was created the Treasury Department was already in existence and operating. I do not know how much Congress discussed the propriety of placing the functions of the Federal Reserve Board with the Treasury, but in the end, I think, no one would wish to have that done, and least of all the Secretary of the Treasury. I think it is considered that there ought to be a Federal Reserve Board by itself to deal with an activity so great as the activity of the banking interests of the country. I should think there ought to be an organization entirely outside of the Agricultural Department, not to interfere with what the Agricultural Department already does but to supplement its activities and to deal distinctly with the transportation aspect and with all the ramifying aspects that have nothing whatever to do directly with the guidance or the immediate super vision of the farmer on his farm. I do not see how we could ask the Department of Agriculture to go out into fields that are alien to its past experience. The Secretary of Agriculture automatically changes every four years or every eight years. I should think that the commission ought to be so arranged as to have a continuing personnel. Mr. ASWELL. Do you think that the Federal Trade Commission could better handle it? Mrs. KELLEY. If I personally had to choose, with my limited knowledge, I should say that I think the Federal Trade Commission should be given these powers. It might need to expand its present activities, or perhaps it might be relieved of some of its present activities, but it seems to me that the Federal Trade Commission' would be well adapted to this work. If there are no other questions, I thank you, gentlemen, very much. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Nebraska. Mr. Chairman, I should like to call Mrs. Costigan to state briefly what her convictions are on the question which I have just asked Mrs. Kelley. The CHAIRMAN. Certainly. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Nebraska. Mrs. Costigan, please just give us your personal convictions. Mrs. COSTIGAN. I agree with Mrs. Kelley. The packing industry has become very great. I think it would take the entire time of a commission to regulate it. If it does not seem wise to appoint a new commission, probably the Federal Trade Commission could set up the machinery to look after it. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Nebraska. I thank you. The CHAIRMAN. The Secretary of Agriculture has notified us that he can not appear before the committee before Thursday. Mr. VEEDER. Of course, we have some men that could be heard. The CHAIRMAN. Certainly, some arrangement can be made; we want to make it absolutely agreeable. Mr. VEEDER. We will not have any opposition. We had figured on going on to-morrow morning. I have two or three gentlemen here, but they will only take 15 or 20 minutes apiece. They want to follow instead of leading. I think that we will go on to-morrow and Thursday, and whenever the Secretary comes in we will give way. I do not see any other way to do that. Mr. TINCHER. Will you run over Friday? Mr. VEEDER. We may run Saturady or Sunday, as you say. Mr. TINCHER. If you do, I am going to work Sunday. Mr. VEEDER. If we have some witnesses we might sit a little later in the evening. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, arrangements will be made to hear the Secretary on Thursday. (There was no objection.) The CHAIRMAN. We will now hear Mr. Atkeson, the representative of the National Grange. STATEMENT OF MR. THOMAS C. ATKESON, REPRESENTATIVE, NATIONAL GRANGE, PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY, WASHINGTON, D. C. Mr. ATKESON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, to those who have been members of the committee for some years past I do not need any introduction, and to the newer members of the committee I will say, by way of introduction, that I represent the oldest farmer organization in the country. It is now 55 years of age, and if it has not learned something in that time it should have been chloroformed when young. So, we are largely a conservative farm organization, with a membership of something like 800,000. This organization is maintaining in Washington an office, which I happen now to be in charge of, with two assistants. I think I might say that the expenses of this office fall entirely upon the producing farmers of the country and it does not cost the farmers to exceed 1 cent apiece a year for the total expense of our office in this city. We have sent a little booklet to all the Members of Congress, which perhaps some of you have done us the honor to read. If you have read this booklet, a copy of which I hold in my hand, you know something about why we are here. I think I will read a single paragraph: For more than half a century the Grange has been speaking for the best interests of its members, who are engaged in the business of farming. Its representation at the National Capitol is not "a lobby" in the commonly accepted meaning of that term, and never has been. There are no doubtful or ulterior interests to be served by the representative of the National Grange and no unclean dollars to pay for such services as are rendered. The interests which the Washington representative of the National Grange speaks for are those of the industry of agriculture, the industry upon which rests not only the economic structure of American business, but the political structure of American democracy and the welfare of all the people. It is our purpose to present to Congress the desires and the necessities of the farmers of this Nation and the sociological and economic facts from which these desires and necessities arise and, as fairly and as fully as possible, the views of the real working, producing, substantial farmers, not as a selfish or class interest, but to protect this basic industry against misunderstanding and exploitation which must inevitably result in serious injury to all classes. Now, dealing with this packer question, I have made so many statements before this committee and the committees of the Senate that I feel at a loss to take your time for any considerable length of time in repeating the things I have said heretofore. For 10 or 12 years, as I recall, the agitation for some sort of control of the great packing industry has been going on in the country. It seems to me the time has come, in the fullness of time, when Congress should definitely put on the statute books some constructive legislation dealing with the packer problem, not for the purpose of injuring the packers or injuring anyone else but for the sole purpose of protecting, as far as may be done safely by statute, the interests of all the people, the great consuming public, against possible exploitation by this large problem of distributing the meat of the Nation to everybody's breakfast table, dinner table, and supper table. I think, perhaps, not many people realize as fully as I do the enormous proportions of that undertaking. When we take into account that we have more than 100,000,000 people and that every family in this Nation, so far as I know, if they have the price, can have pork chops to-morrow morning for breakfast delivered at their back door in time for breakfast, or beefsteak for breakfast, or lamb chops, to take these meat products from the 7,000,000 farms, more or less, and off the plains of the West and take them through all the processes of manufacture and distribution and delivery to the doors of the consumers of this country, 365 days in the year, is an enormous undertaking, requiring a tremendous capitalization, a tremendous machinery of distribution, and the packers in some measure have accomplished this large undertaking. It is possible they might have accomplished this with less profit to themselves and greater profit to the public. Some people think that it is demonstrable that they might easily have accomplished this tremendous service, the importance of which we all recognize, with less profit to themselves and more profit to the public. This seems to me to be, in brief, the problem that Congress must consider or should consider, whether in fairness to the packers and in fairness to the producers and the consumers, this tremendous service which they have rendered should have been rendered more economically, more efficiently, and at less cost to the consumer; that is, whether, so far as they are concerned, they could have taken out of this problem of feeding the people some part of the spread, as we sometimes say, between the producer and the consumer. I have been interested in that spread problem. Somebody has to be paid, of course, for this tremendous service that is rendered in distributing these products; but two years and four months or thereabouts ago, when I came to Washington, we sold a flock of pretty high-grade sheep for $16 a head. A short time before that we could have sold them for $20 a head, and now we could not sell them for $4, and yet I am paying the same price for lamb chops in the same restaurant now that I paid two years ago. I get my lunch down in the city every day, and I am pretty fond of lamb chops and once or twice a week I order lamb chops at the same restaurant, and with the same service, and when I actually sold sheep at $16 a head I paid the same price that I am paying now when I could not get $4 a head for those same sheep on my farm down in West Virginia; and I am wondering what I would pay for lamb chops if I did not get anything for sheep. It is my firm belief that if the farmers of this country did not get a single cent for their meat products it would make precious little difference in a Washington hotel or restaurant. Now, something happens to these farm products after they leave the farm, and it is up to these city people to find out what it is. The farmers are certainly not to blame for whatever occurs after it leaves their feed lots and their railroad stations, or after it leaves their hands. Maybe, they are profiteers. Some people seem to think so, but after the commodity leaves the hands of the farmer, like my lamb chops, it does seem to me that when the price of sheep has decreased in these two years three-fourths of their former value, it ought to manifest itself somehow or other in the price I pay for lamb chops in Washington, but I know it has not done so. I know that is not so this week. Mr. TINCHER. Maybe the decrease is in the price of the tallow. Mr. ATKESON. Possibly, I do not know. I am raising these questions for my lady friends and other friends in the city to answer. Mr. TEN EYCK. You stated a while ago that if perhaps the farmer really gave his sheep away there would be no difference. Not over 60 or 90 days ago a man sent some sheep out to the stockyards at Chicago and his return was 10 cents a head. That is a fact. He came pretty near giving them away. Mr. ATKESON. I just raise that question simply as an illustration to show that in this matter of distribution and in this matter of spread, about which much is said, between the producer and the consumer, that there is a very intricate question, and it seems to me it is more the city man's question than it is the farmer's question. Mr. PURNELL. You have a pretty definite idea as to just what does happen, and I think you ought to give the committee the benefit of your judgment on that. Mr. ATKESON. As to what I think the committee should do? Mr. ATKESON. Well, we are going now into the philosophy of a large question, when we undertake to tell what happens. Mr. ASWELL. Do not give us the philosophy, but tell us just what happens. Mr. ATKESON. I think I know what happens. Mr. ASWELL. That is what we all want to know. Mr. ATKESON. And I think I know what has got to happen. Mr. CLAGUE. Tell us just those two things. Mr. ATKESON. But maybe I am mistaken. Mr. PURNELL. You know this is the buck-passing age. Mr. ATKESON. To begin with, this thing I do know, that the average wage on present prices that the farmer can pay on the average, does not exceed $1 a day for a 10-hour day. After 50 years of digging into soil and wrestling with this problem, based on the present price of farm products, the average farm wage-in harvest, and at other times, you can pay more that the farmers can pay is $1 a day for a 10-hour day. They can not pay more than that and prosper. Mr. CLARKE. A dollar a day and board? Mr. ATKESON. A dollar a day and board, and in some cases, perhaps, without the board. I could give all sorts of figures and evidence to prove that proposition. Mr. ASWELL. We accept that statement. I think you are right about that. Mr. ATKESON. Now, that being true, you can not maintain for any considerable length of time the present spread between what the farmer is getting and what he is able to pay his hired man and feed this Nation, with somebody getting 10 or 20 times that much for less skill and less labor. Mr. CLARKE. And with no invested capital. Mr. ATKESON. Somebody must settle that question. Either the prices of farm produce in this country must go up or the prices of what the farmer buys and what the public generally buys must go down or calamity is not far ahead of this Nation. It is safer to write history than it is to write prophesies, so I do not undertake to prophesy, but I made an investigation last summer bearing on this question. Down in one of the prettiest valleys in my State, where |