Mr. SNYDER. Again, on page 24, in the cross-examination of Mr. Gudeman, the matter of the acidity is taken up and discussed more particularly:

In making cornstarch, the corn, irrespective of the kind, whether it is white, yellow, or other color, is soaked in tanks containing a very mild solution of sulphurous acid.

In making starch in this way there is introduced into the material sulphurous acid into the tank. Now, as far as we know, this is largely taken off with the water in the by-product, but there is still left this sulphurous acid material in which the corn is supposed to soak for 24 to 72 hours. It has an opportunity to come in contact with, absorb, and take up sulphurous acid. At other plants, undoubtedly other acids are used. Not all are using sulphuric acid. Some use hydrochloric acid.

Mr. LANNEN. Nobody is using sulphuric acid.

Mr. SNYDER. The testimony is right here in this record.

Mr. LANNEN. You read sulphurous acid.

Mr. SNYDER. I said sulphurous acid.

Mr. LANNEN. It is not sulphuric acid at all, is it?

Mr. SNYDER. Sulphurous acid is a combination of water and sulphur-dioxide gas; the sulphur is burned; it is run into tanks and combined with water.

Mr. LANNEN. It is not sulphuric acid?

Mr. SNYDER. Sulphurous acid is what I said.

Mr. LANNEN. You said sulphuric acid.

Mr. SNYDER. I stand corrected if that is the correction. In making sulphurous acid you also make some sulphuric acid. Sulphurous acid in some degree passes over to sulphuric acid.

Mr. RAINEY. I shall enforce the rule against interruptions until you are through.

Mr. SNYDER. I wish to speak now in regard to the classification of starches, on page 16 of the record I have just read from:

I stated that all starch is edible. The starch that goes into the laundries is edible, but they don't eat it. Laundry starch is not eaten, but I say it can be eaten. You would pulverize it in your own house if you wanted to and then it is nothing but ordinary cornstarch in the form it is in the package. The starch which is used primarily for laundry purposes and recognized as a laundry article is exactly the same as what we eat in the powdered form, excepting it is simply in the lump form. Corn flour contains about 6 per cent gluten, and other than the inclusion of gluten I don't think there is any difference between corn flour and starch. I don't think you could tell the difference between corn flour and starch. There is no difference between corn flours I have seen and the starch we make.

Mr. RAINEY. Is that a part of the case that you are going to put into the record?

Mr. SNYDER. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAINEY. You don't want it in the record twice, do you?

Mr. SNYDER. I wish to refer to it.

Mr. RAINEY. You don't want it printed twice in the record?
Mr. SNYDER. No, sir; just take it from the book there.

Corn flour and cornstarch are the same in the trade. Just for our own use here, I would refer to page 21 of the record, in which it is stated:

In some parts of the United States starch has been and is to-day being sold under the name of corn flour.

25718-16-28

Again, on page 22 of the record, it is stated in connection with pearl starch that it is very commonly used as a filler and as a diluent in many substances.

Again, on page 31, it is mentioned that

You could not tell the difference between a low-grade cornstarch and a highgrade corn flour; you could not tell the difference by just looking at it, and it is very difficult to tell it in the laboratory.

Just briefly, on page 36, and we find here and on page 37 that the cost of making cornstarch is, when you give proper credit to all of those by-products, no greater than the making of corn flour in the little mill.

Again, on page 22, it is stated that the corn flour has been used as an adulterant of flour. I presume it is meant by flour, wheat flour. It is not qualified, but no one can take any other meaning when the cornstarch and corn flour are each mentioned by the name of flour.

We all heard the testimony of the gentleman from the Department of Agriculture, Dr. Howard, that it was impossible to tell within 5 or 10 per cent or more when a sample was submitted to a chemist as to the amount of cornstarch or corn flour that was present, meaning this, that if a mixer was to put up a mixture of 80 per cent or, say, 90 per cent of wheat flour and 10 per cent of cornstarch and label it as such the analyst would not be able to tell whether he had 5 per cent or 20 per cent of starch present in the mixture. The accuracy of that labeling could not be checked up, neither could they tell whether it was cornstarch or corn flour. Therefore I claim that it is the most dishonest competition that the wheat-flour industry could possibly have.

Further than that, it leaves the way open for the prosecution of an honest mixer, in case that some one would feel that they wanted to go after him, because it would be a very easy matter to get one to sample his goods that he had put together, say a mixture of 20 per cent honest corn flour, if he used such a thing, and I doubt whether in an 80 per cent wheat flour and a 20 per cent corn flour mixture, the analyst might report 30 per cent corn flour and take him in and fine him and everything else, and there is no protection in this law for the honest dealer whatever, if an official in some way gets the idea that is not put up right; and, further than that, if any one of these cases is ever taken into court you will find that the provision for labeling is impossible to execute or to carry into effect. Practically, gentlemen, the labeling is a dead letter. It is uncontrolled competition, and it is competition that we don't want to meet.

In the manufacturing of this starch it is well enough to know what it is steeped in-a vat of sulphurous acid-for 36 to 72 hours. That is a nice thing for a food product, isn't it? Steeping right in sulphurous acid!

Let us see how sulphurous acid is ranked, and what is said about it. Dr. Wiley, whom we heard yesterday afternoon, in speaking about the sulfids-that is, the product of sulphurous acid-whenever united with minerals, and also in speaking of the sulphur-dioxide content, has this to say in his book entitled" Foods and Their Adulterations," on page 333, in speaking of the action of sulphuric acid on food materials, in this case applies:

The greater number of physiological and hygienic experts agree that the fumes of burning sulphur commonly known as sulphuric acid are injurious to health. It has been shown by researches in the Bureau of Chemistry that sulphuric acid or sulphides have a specific influence upon the red corpuscles of the blood, tending to diminish them very largely in relative numbers. * * * It is hoped that by means of general information, which is spread abroad concerning matters of this kind, among our people and also through the operations of National and State laws the use of injurious substances, such as the fumes of burning sulphur in connection with food products, may be entirely discontinued.

The whole subject of sulphurous acids in foods is decidedly objectionable.

Mr. LIND. Let me ask you, suppose the tanks are lined with lead

Mr. RAINEY. Governor, I will have to enforce the rule.
Mr. LIND. Oh, yes; I beg your pardon.

Mr. SNYDER. What else it could be we do not know. The only metal that can be used for lining the tank is lead. Suppose it is lead. There we have a possibility, almost a probability, I would say, of introducing into that product, lead. I am not drawing on my imagination in this at all, but I am telling you the actual fact, that we are opening the way for putting into a food material an articlecornstarch made in this way-which has the high probabilities, I would say, almost beyond probability, of carrying with it lead. would like to have had a little longer time in the preparation of this, to have made some extensive examinations, to know just about to what extent lead is present, if present at all, in our different foods. We who know know that it is poison. It is regulated very carefully in the food substances, but here we are legislating a material which is to become a part of the starch.

I

Right in this connection, when the corn is steeped in the acid. bath there are certain materials that are taken out of the corn that are very essential for food materials. I have here the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry for April, 1915. It contains an article by the president of the Corn Products Refining Co., Mr. E. T. Bedford, entitled "Contributions of the chemist to the cornproducts industry." I think it is fair to take this just exactly as it stands, although it is not sworn testimony, but it is in a technical journal of high quality and character and over his signature. Speaking now of the valuable material that comes out of that steeped water, he says:

The chemist next turned his attention to the soluble solids lost in the water which is used in the softening or steeping of the corn, which water forms an ordinary trade waste. These solids consist of nitrogenous matter, sugars, and other carbohydrates, the valuable organic phosphorous compounds, and the salts of magnesia and potash.

We are putting into our flour cornstarch, which has these valuable organic phosphorous materials, and other materials which are mentioned here that are taken off in the steeped water. Is that right to put into a food a material which has anything of value or strength that is taken out of it? There is one of the provisions of our present food law that says that a material is adulterated if it has anything abstracted from it.

Now, again, speaking of this article, he pays a very glowing tribute to the chemist. I shall have occasion to refer to it again.

This book (Fair Play for Corn) has frequently been referred to. Mr. LIND. What do you call that?

Mr. SNYDER. This book is Facts Concerning Mixed Flour; Fair Play for Corn, issued by the American Manufacturers' Association of Products from Corn.

The flour manufacturer is told that if he takes one of his flours, something like the total mill run of flour-that is, all the flour that he mills and mixes with it 20 per cent or 30 per cent of cornstarch he can make a flour that will come right up to the proposed Government standards as to flour. Is that right? Right here, right on the face of it, advising him to use cornstarch in order to get around a possible Government standard that may be or will be promulgated and that is being worked out by the millers and the Department of Agriculture and bakers and all others that are concerned with it.

I would like to read just that place. I will omit that place for the present. I will have occasion to refer to it later.

This material-cornstarch-is now passed upon and has been considered as an adulterant by the Department of Agriculture, and has been branded by the simple word "fraud." I have here Bulletin No. 63, entitled "Exhibit of the Bureau of Chemistry at the Pan American Exposition, Buffalo, N. Y., 1901," prepared under the direction of Harvey W. Wiley. I invite your attention to what is stated on page 10:

Flour.-Owing to the firm attitude taken by American millers, adulteration of staple brands of flour is practically unknown; still, the samples of flour exhibited on shelf 6 are of considerable interest. The milling industry was seriously threatened several years ago by the extensive adulteration of wheat flour with a finely ground Indian-corn preparation which was sold as “flourine.” The influence of this fraud in the price of flour was so disastrous that an organized fight was inaugurated by the millers, and resulted in the passage of a revenue act which taxed and required the proper branding of mixtures of this nature. The result of this law was most wholesome, and the practice of adulterating wheat flour with Indian-corn products was quickly and effectually checked.

Reference has been made here frequently to the use of various mineral substances in flour. Those substances were proposed. They were not, as far as I know, used by any miller, but they were used by flour mixers. I have analyzed samples of it. I have analyzed a great many samples of adulterated flour during the time during 1896, 1897, and 1898. Now, one of these specific cases of the use of mineral materials was followed up by the United States Government postal authorities, and the man who had proposed the use of that mineral substance served a criminal prison sentence: but I would like to read from his record right in connection with this:

The ground soapstone, of which a sample is exhibited on this shelf, was extensively advertised as a flour adulterant, but appears to have found but little or no sale for that purpose. It is interesting to note that the originator of this swindle is now serving a prison sentence for fraudulent use of the United States mails.

What follows is a little bit against the flour miller, but I am going to put it in, because it is right to Dr. Wiley, whom we heard yesterday.

One form of flour adulteration which is still extensively practiced is the substitution or ordinary flour for gluten flour. It is unfortunate, but this sub

stitution is commonly practiced. If gluten flour is of value in the diet of invalids, it is highly important that a patient should be able to obtain the article prescribed by his physician.

I would say, in this connection, that there are probably not over three or four manufacturing companies; that is, at this time, that were engaged to any extent in making what is called gluten flour. This has since been controlled and regulated by the present purefood laws and other regulations, and it has nothing to do whatever with the ordinary milling of flour, as we understand it.

It is hardly necessary to ask why we should consider this a form of adulteration. It lowers the baking strength of the flour. It lowers the quality of the bread as a food product; it is a material from which something of value has been extracted.

Now, when we come to its use, it forms a one-sided diet. I would like to read this to you, just a line or two from Bulletin No. 142, Principles of Nutrition and Nutritive Value of Food, by W. O. Atwater, United States Department of Agriculture, "Danger of a onesided diet":

Unless care is exercised in selecting food a diet may result which is onesided or badly balanced; that is, one in which either protein or fuel ingredients are provided in excess. If a person consumes large amounts of meat and little vegetable foods the diet will be too rich in protein and may be harmful. On the other hand, if pastry, butter, and such foods are eaten in preference to a more varied diet, the food will furnish too much energy and too little building material.

Extreme illustrations of such a one-sided diet are found in the food of those persons who live largely on bread and tea, or others who live on cornmeal, fat pork, and molasses. The "hog and hominy" diet supplies liberal quantities of energy, but is very deficient in protein, as illustrated by the diet of negroes in the black belt."

Right here yesterday Dr. Wiley explained fully what is the result of this one-sided diet: Lack of sufficient amount of protein for the growing child; lack of nutrients which are used for the most vital purposes of the body in the construction of bone, muscle, and the vitals of the body. Not only that, but in putting flour into cornstarch we are putting in that case a protein of a different character. I am speaking now of the flour that contains a little bit of the corn protein. From every point of view it is objectionable. There is no excuse for it, and in order to make a very slight saving of 30 cents per year-that has been figured out here on paper-there is a very serious loss in the amount of protein. We are told here in this book, Fair Play for Corn, that during the past year the bakers, so we are told, in Chicago, could have made a 16-ounce loaf of bread out of 12 ounces of wheat flour and 4 ounces of cornmeal and sold this 16-ounce loaf for 5 cents, whereas only a 12-ounce loaf was sold for that price. Now, these figures are interesting when we look at them and when we figure them back, because they will not check.

In the 12-ounce loaf of bread we are told that there is 0.78 of an ounce. There is 0.78 ounce of an ingredient in that 12-ounce loaf of bread. In this paragraph we are told that the cornstarch adds no protein to the bread. Right down below there we are told that in the 16-ounce loaf of bread we get 0.83 of an ounce of protein. Now, inasmuch as the cornstarch adds no protein whatever there is only one way in which this 0.83 of an ounce of protein can be derived, and that is from making this 16-ounce loaf of bread, with a basis of more flour than was used in making the 12-ounce loaf. You can not get