Mr. HASKELL. I do not think there is any doubt about that. Whether they are as interested in this thing as I am or not, I do not know. Apparently not. But it is no more than proper to presume that white corn is the logical corn to use in the blending of all wheat flour.

Mr. MOORE. Is it not true that yellow corn would not blend with wheat flour, and therefore it does not enter into the controversy at all at the present time?

Mr. HASKELL. That is true.

Mr. MOORE. It would be detected at once, would it not?

Mr. HASKELL. Very readily detected; it could not help but be. Mr. MOORE. Therefore white corn is about the only corn that would have any chance of being successfully blended with flour? Mr. HASKELL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Any land that would grow yellow corn would grow white corn, would it not?

Mr. HASKELL. According to the Government report, the white-corn crop exceeded the yellow-corn crop by over 10,000,000 bushels.

Mr. FORDNEY. That does not answer the gentleman's question. His question was, "Would any soil that would produce white corn also produce yellow corn, or vice versa, in the same quantities?

Mr. HASKELL. I understand that that is not the case. There is a lot of land in many States where they can not grow very much white corn.

The CHAIRMAN. I am referring to where they grow corn in this country. They can grow just the same amount of yellow corn to the acre as they can white corn.

Mr. HASKELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. MOORE. Just one more question and I am through. If the Rainey bill should pass, permitting blending of the products of white corn with wheat, what would become of yellow corn as a food product?

Mr. HASKELL. It would still remain a food product, in my opinion. Mr. MOORE. But you would be giving a preference to white corn over yellow corn.

Mr. HASKELL. No, sir.

Mr. MOORE. Yellow corn would have no chance to be blended with wheat if we passed a bill of this kind, would it?

Mr. HASKELL. If they want to; if a flour mixer wants to blend yellow meal with flour he has that privilege.

Mr. MOORE. What chance would it ever stand with the consuming public when white corn was blended or mixed with wheat flour and yellow corn would show its color?

Mr. HASKELL. This is no burglar scheme of mixing white corn flour with wheat flour; we want to do it legitimately, and we believe

we can.

Mr. MOORE. But is it not the fact that the southern corn raiser would be out of competition with the white-corn grower?

Mr. HASKELL. All the States grow white corn that grow yellow

corn.

Mr. MOORE. But yellow corn would not stand in the same relation to wheat that white corn does; therefore that corn grown in the Southern States would probably be fed to the horses, while white

corn in the other States would have a fair chance to be fed to human beings as mixed flour. Is not that a fair interpretation of the situation?

Mr. HASKELL. I do not look at it in that way.

Mr. LANNEN. May I ask a question to clear up that situation? The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. LANNEN. The starch of yellow corn is just as white as the starch in white corn, is it not?

Mr. HASKELL. I know nothing about that. I am talking about what I am interested in and why the white-corn millers of this. country are interested in this Rainey bill.

Mr. FORDNEY. I have asked this question several times. Would you be satisfied if Congress should repeal the stamp tax and permit the balance of this law to remain?

Mr. HASKELL. Personally, no; no, I would not.

Mr. FORDNEY. Why?

Mr. HASKELL. You would put restrictions on the users of our product, and anybody should be permitted to use corn flour in mixing it with white flour or anything else as long as it makes a good, wholesome food product.

Mr. FORDNEY. You can do that under existing law.

Mr. HASKELL. You can do that under existing law with a certain amount of red tape and restrictions.

Mr. FORDNEY. You object to the red tape only?

Mr. HASKELL. No, sir; we object to the tax and penalty.

Mr. FORDNEY. But I say, suppose we repeal that tax and let the remainder of the law stand and subject the manufacturer of mixed flour to the same inspection law and restrictions, but relieve him of the tax.

Mr. HASKELL. No, sir; I would not accept that.

Mr. FORDNEY. Then the red tape is the thing you object to.

Mr. HASKELL. I object to the whole thing. It discriminates against corn. You are penalizing an industry simply because some of the flour millers at one time or other saw fit to put barytes in the flour, or whatever it was-some mineral composition-and the corn people have suffered for that.

Mr. FORDNEY. I do not want to be rude, but I am convinced right now that your remark a minute ago answers my question, that you want yourself in the place of a burglar; you want to get in

Mr. HASKELL. We do not. I do not stand here as putting myself in that position.

Mr. OLDFIELD. What you want to do is to be placed on the same plane with the wheat flour people.

Mr. HASKELL. We want to put white-corn goods on the market so that they can be consumed in the bread-making industry in this country.

Mr. FORDNEY. The manufacturer of wheat flour is subject to the same law if he wants to mix his wheat with your corn flour that you are if you want to mix your corn flour with his wheat flour, and pays the biggest part of the tax

Mr. HASKELL. But the objection of the wheat millers to this is that if the tax is repealed it is going to put the country back into the same state of demoralization as to the flour business that occurred in 1895 to 1898.

Mr. FORDNEY. My opinion is-and I want you to set me right if I am wrong—that the manufacturers of mixed flour want to put an article on the market out of which they can make a greater profit or undersell the wheat flour and control more of the market, and, with a small profit and with a greater volume of business, make more money?

Mr. HASKELL. I am not interested in that. It is to take off this curse, if you please, this tax and the restrictions on the use of whitecorn goods with any other food.

Mr. FORDNEY. It is hard for us to get together, somehow.

Mr. HELVERING. You represent about a dozen different firms. Do any of those firms make corn flour?

Mr. HASKELL. They all make corn flour.

Mr. HELVERING. What sort of package do they put on the market? Mr. HASKELL. It is put up in different sized packages. As a rule, it is a 100-pound package, a jute package.

Mr. HELVERING. I understand that the main product of these companies which you represent is hominy?

Mr. HASKELL. No; white-corn goods. That consists of hominy, grits, meal, and corn flour, also feed.

Mr. HELVERING. Does this corn flour that you speak of consist of any by-products in making hominy?

Mr. HASKELL. No, indeed.

Mr. HELVERING. I do not suppose that you thought about bringing any of the packages in with you.

Mr. HASKELL. No, sir; I did not bring them here. They are contained in 100-pound packages; some of them 140, for export.

Mr. OLDFIELD. If this Rainey bill were enacted into law, would it or would it not place the corn millers of the country on the same basis and on the same footing as the flour people? Would you be on an equality so far as business conditions are concerned? Would you be under any more restrictions than the flour people?

Mr. HASKELL. No, sir.

Mr. OLDFIELD. There would be equality in it?

Mr. HASKELL. Yes, sir. We want corn to have its rights. It is placed on the market as a foodstuff.

Mr. HELVERING. Do you think that you are discriminated against to-day?

Mr. HASKELL. We can readily understand that you should put a tax on the mixing of wheat flour with brick dust or barytes or anything else that is not nutritious; but why you should put a tax on the mixing of wheat flour with corn flour, which is equally nutritious for human beings, I do not appreciate. This is a war tax of 1898, which still remains. We claim that it should be repealed, as long as the pure-food laws are in operation.

Mr. OLDFIELD. It was not placed on the books for a war-revenue act; it was for some other purpose.

Mr. HASKELL. It was put on at that time.

Mr. OLDFIELD. But that was not the reason. Somebody may have said that was the reason.

The CHAIRMAN. That is all, gentlemen. The committee will recess now until 10 o'clock to-morrow morning.

(Whereupon, at 4.35 o'clock p. m., the committee took a recess until to-morrow, Wednesday, February 2, 1916, at 10 o'clock a. m.)

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Washington, D. C., February 2, 1916.

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. Henry T. Rainey (acting chairman) presiding.

Present: The chairman and Messrs. Dixon, Hull, Collier, Dickinson, Conry, Oldfield, McGillicuddy, Allen, Crisp, Casey, Helvering, Fordney, Moore, Green, and Sloan.

Mr. RAINEY. The committee will come to order. The first witness this morning is T. B. Wagner.

STATEMENT OF MR. T. B. WAGNER, 17 BATTERY PLACE (NEW YORK CITY), REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS' ASSOCIATION OF PRODUCTS FROM CORN.

Mr. WAGNER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is T. B. Wagner. I reside in New York City, and am engaged in the manufacture of corn products.

Mr. RAINEY. Just give your residence address.

Mr. WAGNER. 160 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. I represent at this hearing the American Manufacturers' Association of Products from Corn, which has its headquarters in the First National Bank Building, Chicago, Ill.

We appear before you to-day for one purpose only, namely, to ask for fair play for corn; nothing more, but nothing less. I use the term "corn" advisedly, for I shall undertake to speak not only for the manufacturers of products made from corn, but in a measure for the growers of corn as well-for the farmers. Our interests are the same. The members of the association, together with those of the National Association of White-Corn Millers, are the heaviest buyers of cash corn. Prosperity for us spells prosperity for the farmer, and any unfair dealing directed at the products made from corn injures the grower of corn as much as the manufacturer.

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The long and short of all the testimony given yesterday and the day before is that the imposition of the tax upon mixed flour containing a product of the corn is a discrimination against corn. What else does the reference by Gov. Lind to cornstarch as glucose starch" mean? I have been a manufacturer of cornstarch for 17 years and never heard of this term before. Why does he go out of his way to coin this name? Does he wish to intimate that cornstarch is a product made from glucose? If so, let me tell him that Thomas Kingsford built his famous cornstarch factory at Oswego long before glucose was manufactured in this country.

Mr. LIND. Since you have spoken of me personally, did Thomas Kingsbury make an ounce of starch by the process that you are making it to-day?

Mr. WAGNER. Yes, sir; by identically the same process; by the wet milling process.

Mr. LIND. Oh, are you making this by the milling process?

Mr. WAGNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. LIND. You are not making your starch by the wet process? Mr. WAGNER. We are. It is a wet milling process, a common, well-known manufacturing operation, not typical of our industry particularly, but practiced by a good many industries.

Again, please look at the list of members of the American Manufacturers' Association of Products from Corn, and you will find the Douglas Co., of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are not manufacturers of glucose, but grind daily not less than 18,000 bushels of corn into cornstarch.

Likewise, Piel Bros. Co., of Indianapolis, Ind., produce only starch and not 1 pound of glucose, and the same is to be said of the Huron Milling Co. and others. Why, then, apply the name "glucose starch" to a product that is in no way related to glucose, and the manufacture of which, as I have shown, is carried on in factories where no glucose is produced? Dwelling on the subject of glucose for one moment, which has nothing to do, however, with the issue before this committee, we have the greatest authorities on our side in stating that there is no food product on the market, either in this country or abroad, more wholesome than glucose, or, as it is known in this country, corn sirup. Starch, flour, or any other product that is consumed in the household daily is in no way superior to corn sirup, and that fact, again, is testified to by the enormous consumption of corn sirups in the households of the country. I believe I am right in stating that every one of you gentlemen has seen the propaganda carried on for Karo sirup, the sales of which reach into the hundreds of millions of cans every single year, and why should that product be referred to by the learned counsel for our opponents as though it were something that carried the odium of inferiority about it?

Mr. GREEN. Do the manufacturers of that sirup also make cornstarch?

Mr. WAGNER. Oh, yes.

Mr. GREEN. Is the manufacture of the two products kept entirely separate and distinct?

Mr. WAGNER. Entirely distinct.

Mr. LIND. Is not glucose all made from the wet process starch? Mr. WAGNER. It is made from what we call green starch. That means the raw starch.

Mr. LIND. Undried?

Mr. WAGNER. Undried, yes. That is a different product from the Kingsford starch.

Mr. LIND. The difference is that the Kingsford starch has been dried and mechanically ground?

Mr. WAGNER. That is an assumption on your part, Gov. Lind.
Mr. LIND. Well, what are the facts?

Mr. WAGNER. The fact is, that the Kingsford starch is a more highly refined starch than the starch as it obtains in the corn; all that starch in the corn is the starch as our good Lord made it in the plant, but man has improved upon it by removing these impurities of that starch; when he gets through with that process he obtains the product known as Kingsford starch, which, deducting the amount of moisture, is at least 99.6 to 99.7 per cent pure starch.

Mr. LIND. That is not as I understand it.

Mr. WAGNER. I am glad to be able to correct you.

Mr. GREEN. I understand, then, that the difference between the Kingsford starch, and the cornstarch, as shown in these small packages here before the committee, and the corn flour, is that this cornstarch that comes in packages is more pure and more highly refined?