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 We claim that it should be repealed, as long as the pure-food laws are in operation.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. 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. 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? Mr. WAGNER. Yes. It is all in the degree of refining. This reference, it would seem, was made solely for the purpose of creating a prejudice in your minds against cornstarch as being something quite inferior, in the same manner as the tax on mixed flour is intended to create a prejudice in the public mind against that product, as Gov. Lind so eloquently pointed out in referring to the poor, ignorant darkey whom the tax stamp on the package of mixed flour is supposed to warn not to purchase that article, as it is not what he thinks it is. We take fully as much pride in cornstarch such as you see before you in the package marked "Kingsford's Oswego Cornstarch" as any miller may take in his flour and the purity of our product is testified to by the fact that notwithstanding the thousands of convictions secured by the Government against violators of the Federal pure food and drugs act, in not a single instance has the purity of cornstarch been questioned. However, I do remember one prosecution against a retailer in the State of Pennsylvania, who was charged with selling cornstarch containing nitrites. The State chemist, during the trial, explained that he was led to conclude from the presence of nitrites in that particular sample of cornstarch that it had been bleached (I am quoting the State chemist) in the same manner as many millers bleach wheat flour, namely, by chemical agents, such as nitric oxide, and other things. The testimony developed the fact that the presence of nitrites, infinitesimal as the amount was, was not due to the chemical process employed in bleaching flour, but was due to the absorption of the nitrites from the air while the packages containing starch were on the shelves of the retailers or in the warehouses of the jobbers, and the result of that trial was that the court took the case from the jury and directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty, at the request of the State. About 18 years ago Congress enacted the mixed-flour law at the instance of the same people who to-day oppose its repeal. They werethen quite satisfied that the name "mixed flour" was a proper and fit designation for a product consisting in part of wheat flour and cornstarch. Congress adopted its own definition and it has been in force ever since. Gov. Lind argued day before yesterday that the term "flour" applied only to the product obtained from wheat. Representative Hill, I think it was, a member of this committee, showed that this contention was in plain conflict with the definition of the word "flour" as given in the Standard Dictionary, as well as Webster's, and the reference of the learned counsel for our opponents to the definition of flour as promulgated by the Secretary of Agriculture Mr. GREEN. I think it was Mr. Sloan that you refer to, and not Mr. Hill. Mr. WAGNER. I am glad to be corrected. That definition was one prepared and adopted not by the Department of Agriculture, but by a board of agricultural and analytical chemists. Now, gentlemen of the committee, please bear in mind that our opponents do not find fault with the term "mixed flour" so long as there is the tax on the product, but the moment the tax is taken off, they seem to contend that the term "mixed flour" is all wrong. I ask you, Is such a contention based on sound, fair reason? We contend, without fear of successful contradiction, that if mixed flour is mixed flour with the tax on, it is mixed flour with the tax off. It is plain, therefore, that all this quibbling on the part of our opponents reverts to a discrimination against the products made from corn, which I beg to remind you is our greatest national cereal. However, this matter is not one which concerns only the millers of wheat and corn. It concerns the consumer as well. Miss Boswell has shown you that the housewife wants this product, mixed flour, and Miss Cauble told you yesterday in so many words that it would be a blessing to the poorer classes if they could have it. Why, then, should they be denied this product? Can you think of any reason except that of greed on the part of the wheat millers? The housewife wants it and it should be given her, and the only way it can be given her is by taking off this tax. A food product should not be penalized by a tax just because it goes primarily to the poor. Even if they be poor they have a right to live. As Miss Cauble said, "Give us a chance to feed the poor." Mr. FORDNEY. Can they not get that flour now? Mr. WAGNER. No; because it has been killed by the tax. The principal argument which has been advanced at this hearing so far against the repeal of the tax is that if it were done the conditions existing in the milling trade prior to 1898 would be restored, followed by a complete demoralization of the flour business. Let me set you right on this point. If a blender or dealer, prior to 1898 (and, mind you, that was the time when there was no national food act), placed a product upon the market consisting in part of wheat flour and barytes, which we may assume is the same product referred to at this hearing as mineraline, and if this dealer sold such a product to the public as flour he was guilty of the grossest kind of adulteration, because he defrauded the purchaser of the so-called flour to the extent of the added adulterant, which has no food value whatsoever. If, however, he sold a product consisting in part of wheat flour and cornstarch, which latter product at that time was sold to the milling trade at times as "flourine," he did not sell an adulterated product, because his mixed product has substantially the same food value as the straight wheat flour. But he sold a misbranded product, in that he palmed off on the public a product as wheat flour which in fact consisted of wheat flour and cornstarch. I say emphatically that this condition will not be created by the passage of the Rainey bill, because, in the first place, we now have a very efficient national food law, and, secondly, because the Rainey bill goes even beyond the stringent requirements of the Federal pure food law, in that it provides that the product must be sold under the name of "mixed flour" and none other, and, further, that the ingredients, as well as their percentages, must be stated plainly and conspicuously upon the package. pure Following up further the claims of our opponents on the subject of adulteration, permit me to recall to your mind that Congress in 1898 laid down the law that a mixture of wheat flour and cornstarch should be sold under the name of "mixed flour," provided a tax of 4 cents a barrel was paid to the Government, and other requirements complied with. Do these gentlemen wish to be understood as claiming now that the term "mixed flour" should not be applied to a |