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on it that is, repeal everything of the regulations, and especially this revenue feature of it-you will open the doors and we will have the same performance again. I have no more doubt about it that that I am standing here before you. I suffered before that law was passed, I suffered mental agonies. I do not like to speak about myself, but I was struggling at that time: I had a mortgage on my little mill, and then along came this mixed flour. I am speaking now of what it was before the days of the present law. My sales fell off. Well, I inquired among my flour friends, and among those to whom I sold. They replied, "We have no objection to your flour; there is no complaint about the quality of it; but John Jones down below has offered us flour guaranteed to be just as good as yours at 10 cents a barrel cheaper." They said "We would like to give you the preference any time, but 10 cents a barrel is 10 cents a barrel."

That was the argument. This is the corn-flour proposition at that time that was worked very smoothly and insidiously. They sent out these advertisements, you know, fine written letters, that you can make so and so and you can make so and so, that you can put in 20 or 25 per cent of this stuff, and nobody will be the wiser, and that you can buy this stuff, I believe it was, for half a cent a pound. I think that was what it was at that time. And they said " You can sell it at flour prices and you can make large profits."

The first man that fell for that proposition was one of those men designated by the gentleman here the other day as belonging to that class one of whom is born every minute. Some people think they can get something for nothing.

The second class of men that fell for it were the unscrupulous men. That corn flour came, and a lot of millers that did not want to get into the game finally found that they had to if they wanted to succeed. I know every member of that Southern Illinois Association personally. I know them to be straight and honest men. They are not angels, but they are straightforward business men. And out of those 62 there were only two, as far as I personally know, that stood up and took the consequences and did not mix flour, and one of them was a grand old man who is dead now; there never lived a grander man. He is dead, but his son is right here now. Your humble servant, who is standing before you, was the other man who did that, and it brought me to the verge of bankruptcy, because I stood up for what I conceived to be honesty.

Mr. MOORE. Do you mean to say that the other 60 were compelled to do it?

Mr. SHOENING. You know how it is when you are in business; you have to make some money to support your family, and so on, and your trade is taken away, and somebody will argue with you, "Everybody is doing this; why don't you do it?" But I could never see that you can compromise with the principles of honesty; just because everybody else does a certain thing does not make it honest.

Mr. MOORE. The act of 1898 restored the equilibrium, did it! Mr. SHOENING. Absolutely and instantaneously. As poor as I was, I contributed something to a fund to send Mr. Gallagher up here to Washington, and I was myself in Washington when that law was passed. One of the men that took an interest in it was Senator William E. Mason, from our State. Mr. Mason was a warm personal friend of mine, and I said to him, "Something has got to be

done to save us; that is, to save the men who do not want to put up the goods under false pretenses," and the result of our efforts was the present law that is on the statute books.

And, gentlemen, I know it personally-I am speaking from absolute personal knowledge-this law was put under the Internal Revenue Department for this simple reason; there was no deception about it at all, it was put there to give the Internal Revenue Department control of the adulteration of flour. It was never conceived to be a revenue bill, it was never pretended by the advocates at that time that it would be a bill to raise revenue for the Government; and, as has been said here, it was a failure as a revenue raiser. It was never expected by anybody that it would be a revenue measure, either by the advocates or opponents of the bill. They knew what it was for, it was to stop the adulteration of flour, and that is what it was passed for, and that is what it has accomplished, better than anybody anticipated.

Mr. FORDNEY. The bill had that effect, did it?

Mr. SHOENING. The bill had that effect; yes. The reason it had that effect was because everybody that was engaged in it felt the shame of the business, whether he did it or not; even though they did it they were so glad that they had a pretense of getting out that they obeved the law.

Mr. MOORE. The attitude of the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture was favorable to the act of 1898, at that time; was it not?

Mr. SHOENING. As I understood it. yes. Everybody, even the men that practiced the blending and adulteration of flour at that time, were mighty glad when the law was passed. As I said a moment ago, there must be a motive for men advocating anything, and I have been searching for that motive in this legislation.

I have no quarrel with the cornstarch manufacturers, that is a good, wholesome product, I suppose, for what it is intended for. But take their own statements. They say you can not mix any larger amount than 20 per cent of this corn flour and wheat flour and get good results. Well, we will admit for argument's sake, that you can produce a barrel of this mixture, this adulterated flour, at a cheaper price than you can produce a barrel of pure flour.

Now, when it comes to the consumer, these chemists tell us there is so much brain food and so much brawn food in pure flour, and that the human system has to have that quantity of brain food and brawn food. Now, say that it would be possible practically, which I do not think it would be, but admitting for the sake of argument that the ultimate consumer would be benefited by permitting this thing to be done, you would need so much food for brain and brawn, as the food experts say, and that is contained in wheat flour. Now, you adulterate pure wheat flour with 20 per cent of any goods, whatever you want, cornstarch or corn flour, or whatever it may be called, but that is deficient in this brain and brawn food. Now, if your system needs that much of that kind of food, and you can get that in a loaf of bread that costs 5 cents, you pay 5 cents for that particular kind of food that your system needs; you need that quantity and you can buy a loaf of bread containing that quantity for 5 cents; but if you buy a loaf of bread made of this adulterated flour, you may be

able to get that loaf for 4 cents, but you will have to eat a loaf and a quarter to get the same amount of brain and brawn food. So, what are you saving thereby? You pay just 5 cents for getting that amount of that food in your system, and you load your stomach up with 4 or 5 ounces of that stuff. You do not cheapen the cost of living at all.

Mr. MOORE. Do you know any instance where the price of a loaf of bread has been reduced from 5 cents to 4 cents?

Mr. SHOENING. No, sir.

Mr. MOORE. Do you not think the price would remain the same? Mr. SHOENING. Absolutely.

Mr. MOORE. Whether you used wheat flour or other flour?

Mr. SHOENING. Absolutely. I have been in the game-I tell you I am not so very old, although I am 63 years of age. But do you know I have never done anything else for 50 years but make flour. Mr. FORDNEY. And you are apparently a young man yet. Mr. SHOENING. Of course, I have assistants now. Mr. Wagner made a statement here that he had in his factory men who could tell the moisture contents of starch by touch, by simply taking in their hands. I venture to say that I can stick my hand into a sack of wheat and if it will grade a No. 3. I will tell you within a quarter of a pound, 99 times out of 100, the weight of that wheat, and if I chew the wheat, I can come very near telling you the amount of gluten it contains, I think, closer than any chemist that ever lived.

Now, no man has more respect for a chemist than I have. I have a chemist in my family now-oh, yes; I am getting to be quite a highfalutin' miller now. My son is a graduate of the Washington University. He took a special course in chemistry and he has a diploma. But I will tell you what happened to me with this chemist. When he came back I put him to work. I bought him a pair of overalls and made a practical miller out of him. He wanted to run the mill. That is his hobby. Then he began to analyze the flour as he made it. I knew that the flour was uniform-and I can tell you when flour is uniform-but he got a different result every time he made an analytical test. He would get different results. Finally it got into my noodle that I had not spent my money very wisely in giving him this collegiate training, because it certainly took a lot of money to keep him at the university for four or five years. I said, "I believe I have spent some money on you foolishly. What is the good of all this knowledge about chemistry if you do not get some results that are worth something?" I said, "You don't get the same results as we do as practical millers."

Well, we could not understand it. He says to me, "I am doing it as I was instructed at the university and as our professors do it." He says, "Why don't you send some of this flour to the laboratories. for analysis?" and suggested that he should send some. I said, "If that is going to be sent, I am going to send it myself." And I did. Do you know what I did?

Now, as I said, gentlemen, a few moments ago, nobody has more respect for a scientist or a scholar than I have, because I realize what I am lacking. I am no scholar; I have not had the opportunity. although that is not my fault, that is my misfortune; but I will tell you what I did. I am naming no names, but I will say in justice to my old friend Dr. Wesener that it was not his laboratory-I went

to the packing room and grabbed a 12-pound sack of flour. They come down at the rate of 400 an hour; I make 25 or 26 barrels an hour at the Columbia Mills. I grabbed one of those sacks. Everyone who is a miller and knows about the operation of a mill knows that there can not possibly be any difference in that little 12-pound package of flour. I made three sample packages of it-2 pounds each, I believe-and sent the three samples to the same laboratory, but I tell you what I did, I expressed one package from Columbiapost-office address, Columbia-writing a letter on Columbia Mill stationery, "We have expressed you sample No. so-and-so, please report as soon as you have analyzed it." And then I took the second sample to Valmeyer, 12 miles below, and expressed that sample to the same laboratory; and then I took the third sample to another point, 32 miles below me, and expressed that from that place, all to the same laboratory.

Well, sir, when those reports came back-and I have the documentary evidence in my desk now at Columbia, although I have never said anything about it-the reports were such that if those laboratory tests would govern the price of flour I would have to sell the same flour made out of the same wheat 90 cents a barrel less for one sample than I would have to take for the other. [Laughter and applause.] These theories are all right. I am not stating these things to throw any slurs on scholarship or knowledge, I have too much respect for it for that; but practical experience is also important. You have to fight when you have competitors like I have. They all fight fair, but they show no mercy-and neither do I, for that matterin an honorable way.

Dr. Wesener made a statement here, I don't remember his exact words, but the gist of his statement was that if you had a hardwheat flour, with an excess of gluten content, you could take this corn product, this cornstarch or flour or whatever you call it, which is merely composed of starch, you could take that and mix that in with the hard-wheat flour, and then you would have a good, soft winter-wheat flour. I beg to state that I read that same statement in some milling or baking journal over a year ago.

Mr. FORDNEY. I did not catch that last statement.

Mr. SHOENING. I say I read that same statement in some technical journal over a year ago, and that system, if it worked out in practice would revolutionize the wheat-milling industry. It made such an impression on me that the next time I went to the city I bought some corn flour in a store and bought one of the standard fine spring wheats that is offered on the market in St. Louis, and mixed it together according to the schedule of my chemist, my analyst, that I got out of my family and raised. I see that Dr. Wesener has gone out. He is not here now. I would like to ask him if he ever tried it out practically when it came to making biscuits and rolls, to see the value of that mixture. You might as well have made those biscuits out of low-grade flour.

Mr. LANNEN. I would like to say that the bread we had on the table here the other day was made that way.

Mr. LIND. And it looked it.

Mr. FORDNEY. Nobody could tell whether it was good or bad. Mr. SHOENING. Understand me, I do not mean to say it is not true in the laboratory sense, but it does not work out. There must be

something else in the wheat kernel that nature puts there that has other qualities than the cornstarch-I don't know. Let me tell you, Mr. Congressman, if that could be done, I would turn my mill into a hard-wheat mill as quickly as I could. It would not cost me much; then I could buy the cornstarch and mix it with the hard-wheat flour and have a soft-wheat flour then, and could make hard-wheat flour the same as Kansas mills do or anyone else. But we have a monopoly on soft wheat-that is, the soft-wheat millers have a monopoly of a certain part of the trade and hard-wheat millers have a monopoly of certain other parts of the trade.

Mr. RAINEY. We will have to take a recess at this point.

(Thereupon, at 12 o'clock m., the committee took a recess until 2 o'clock p. m.)

AFTER RECESS.

(At the expiration of the recess the committee resumed its session.) Mr. RAINEY. The committee will come to order.

Mr. LIND. I will call Mr. Sparks.

STATEMENT OF MR. W. L. SPARKS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE SPARKS MILLING CO., TERRE HAUTE, IND.

Mr. SPARKS. I am vice president of the Sparks Milling Co., which company has mills at Terre Haute, Ind., and at Alton, Ill. I also represent here about five or six of the larger mills of the State of Indiana, who deputized me to come here and appear in their behalf. Those five or six mills, together with my own, will chip in after I get back to reimburse me for my expenses.

The company I am vice president of was organized by my father in 1855. If the gentlemen will permit. I will speak more particularly concerning our own personal interests, my own company, and I am sure I am safe in saying that these five or six mills in Indiana that I represent fully concur in everything that I might say. I also think it is a fact that the members of the Indiana Millers' Association, of which association I have been president heretofore, would agree in everything that I might say concerning this subject, although I am not definitely authorized to represent them.

As to my personal status as a miller, I was born and raised within hearing of the wheels of the mill, my father operated in 1867. I am 48 years old and have had that much experience in the business end of merchant milling. From the time since the organization of the company, which has since become the Sparks Milling Co., in 1855, for a period of 60 years that company has been operated by our family all that time, and is at the present time. The company is owned by the members of our family. We consider that we have been reasonably successful as flour milling goes. Other people have been kind enough to say that they think we are a reasonably capable family of millers, and, gentlemen, it is a family of a number of able-bodied men now, the sons of the man who founded this business, also the grandchildren are in the business. Our last statement showed net assets of something over half a million dollars-about $600,000. We have accumulated that in 60 years, and we think we have done pretty well.

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