the protein there in any other source at all. Let me repeat that, so that we have that clear. In this 16-ounce loaf of bread that is proposed to be put on the market there is, if this example is right, more real flour used than in the 12 ounces of the straight wheat loaf. Mr. SLOAN. You mean in proportion to its size?

Mr. SNYDER. I mean in proportion to its size and the weight of it. Right on the face of it that additional flour must cost more. We are told here that the saving is 30 cents a barrel. You can save a tenth of a cent, on their own figures, and on top of that they have put in more flour. That, of course, will not check. That looks nice, but when you look at it the same way a bank examiner would look into a bank's accounts and straighten up the different columns, it will not check. That is not fair, gentlemen.

Now, it is interesting to apply some of the principles that have been suggested here to this booklet. We are told that these flours of high gluten percentages are the ones that are to be diluted with the cornstarch. Here we had a sample of a bread containing 0.78 of an ounce. If you will figure that out and figure back to the amount of flour that is used in making that, and its protein content, you will start out with your real flour with only a little more than 8 per cent of portein, and that is the one that is diluted. I can not understand why such a sample of very low protein content was used in this example when it has been stated here frequently and particularly and so forcibly by Mr. Wagner that if this act were passed it was not these flours that they intended or were going to advise the mixing of this cornstarch with, when right there in the booklet it is the very one which has been used for this purpose.

In this Bulletin No. 142, to which I have already made reference, white bread is given as 9.2 per cent protein. Now, when the cornstarch is mixed with the flour we are getting a material which in food value is below that of rice. It is a fact. Look at the figures right there-protein content of rice and protein content of this mixture. Do you want to say to the American laborer, "Here is your staff of life with no more of this vital nutrient-protein-than is found in rice?" How can we excuse ourselves? On this question of economy? No. What do we save? Thirty cents. What do we get in return? A debased and adulterated flour. You can not get away from it from any angle that you look at it. Suppose an individual consumes a barrel of flour; suppose it is good flour; suppose that it has 12 per cent of protein material. There he has for one year 24 pounds of protein. Suppose that instead of this good flour he uses a mixture of 80 per cent of that same flour and 20 per cent of cornstarch. What do you get? You get a reduction of just 20 per cent of the amount of protein. Instead of 24 pounds which you have there you have a reduction of 20 per cent of 24 pounds, which would be 4.8 pounds. Now, it would take a large amount of food material to make up this difference.

Just a word about baking when cornstarch is added. We are going to get a bread that dries out very quickly. There is nothing there to hold the moisture. It dries out quickly. The housewife, instead of baking twice a week or such a matter if she has got a real good flour, has got to bake more frequently. Is that a saving? What about the young people, those who eat a good deal of bread? They are going to throw it away when it is dry. It will not be en

tirely consumed. More labor is going to be forced upon the housewife. She is going to have to bake more frequently, and she is going to get a poorer quality of bread to contend with.

Now, we have heard a good deal about the moisture content of bread. Let us look back to this example on page 16. Here is this one made out of wheat flour. It has there 4 ounces of water and 12 ounces of bread. That would be 33.33 per cent water. Another one, where the 20 per cent of starch is present, has 5 ounces of water in the 16 ounces of bread, or 33.31 per cent. They come right out together, don't they? It is singular that when we hear about the reduction of the absorption so much that these examples check so closely.

In this little booklet, Fair play for Corn, reference has been made to the three samples, A, B, and C, on page 54. The per cent of ash or mineral matter, which many bakers look at as an index to the degree of milling, is given as 0.38 per cent for B. Now, mind you, we are told that this cornstarch does not add any mineral matter. Here in sample C, with mixed flour, the ash content is given as 0.35 of 1 per cent. If you take 80 per cent of 38, that would be only 0.304 of 1 per cent, and the statements that are given in the earlier part of the work, particularly that part where the miller is advised to make a mixture of 70 per cent of pure wheat flour and 30 per cent of pure cornstarch are contrary to the analyses quoted, all from the same book.

There are some other points which I have here which have been discussed so thoroughly that I will pass them.

There have been a number of misconceptions here. The idea has prevailed that corn meal and corn flour are the same. They are not. Corn meal is a desirable food article. It needs a little strengthening with protein. Corn flour made by millers in their corn mill-this so-called corn flour-has not as much food value as the corn meal. It is different. More of the life-producing materials, life-sustaining materials are extracted. And then we come down to the cornstarch, which has no protein at all. There is no difference whatever between the low-grade cornstarch and corn flour.

Now, this bill has some little things that it would be well to call attention to. It says leavening agents are to go into it. There is no definition at all as to what these leavening agents are. If you were to pass this bill it would be in conflict with some State law. Massachusetts, for example, has passed a law defining leavening agents and stating what can be used. Now, rightly, justly or unjustly, I do not know which, there are coming into use a great many materials for leavening agents, some of which are minerals. The Massachusetts law was aimed principally at calcium sulphate. There is only a small amount present. I am not arguing what it amounts to, but it is well to call attention to what is meant by this leavening agent.

Then again there are certain products as salts that are manufactured, and products of dextrines, and some materials that will increase the capacity of the flour for absorbing water. The Corn Products Co. make dextrine. We have heard a great deal of the addition of water to flour in making bread, but there is nothing that would create a greater fraud in opening this up, because there are no materials that will enable the flour to absorb more water than some

of these dextrines. It is objectionable from a good many points of

view.

There is some misconception in regard to durum wheat, water power, water in bread, and so on, that I have notes on, but I will pass them unless some one wants to ask a question.

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I will have to leave, and I would like to ask a question before I go.

Mr. RAINEY. All right.

Mr. HILL. How long have you been engaged in lecturing on foods? Mr. SNYDER. I was for 18 years professor of agricultural chemistry in the University of Minnesota before becoming connected with the milling business.

Mr. HILL. You are familiar with the laws of the different States? Mr. SNYDER. Yes; to some extent.

Mr. HILL. Do you know of any attempt to control adulteration by the taxing power?

Mr. SNYDER. My studies have been more on the nutrition side. I have not been following the enforcement of the law at all.

Mr. HILL. Do you know of any country that uses the taxing power with regard to adulteration?

Mr. SNYDER. Yes; Germany has used it very extensively.

Mr. HILL. In Germany it is now unlawful to use flour made wholly out of wheat?

Mr. SNYDER. That is true, but they have used the taxing power on foods for the purpose of raising revenue.

Mr. HILL. Will you put into the record a memorandum of the law of any country on earth that uses the direct taxing power for the regulation of the purity of food.

Mr. SNYDER. I will make that request of the Department of Agriculture and try to get any information I can.

Mr. RAINEY. Are there any further questions?

Mr. LIND. I would like to ask the professor one or two questions:Mr. Hill asked a preceding witness whether pure wheat flour containing 8 per cent gluten was superior in food value to an 80 per cent wheat flour and 20 per cent cornstarch, showing the same protein content?

Mr. SNYDER. Yes; I consider it is, because we have introduced into this mixture a starch which we all know something about. We do not know whether there is sulphurous acid residue or not, and other materials. It is a different acting starch and it has a different value. and its main value would show in the bread making. It would not be of the same value; no.

Mr. RAINEY. Are there any further questions of Mr. Snyder? Mr. LANNEN. I would like to ask the witness some questions. With regard to this sulphurous acid, you did not mean to say in your testimony that the corn was soaked, was steeped for 30 hours in sulphurous acid?

Mr. SNYDER. So this testimony says here. It is used in the steep water. I am giving only this statement. It is certainly very plain here. I could not get any other meaning from it.

Mr. LANNEN. The fact is it is steeped in a very weak solution of sulphurous acid in water. Is not that the fact?

Mr. SNYDER. I do not know the facts. That is given in there.

Mr. LANNEN. You are aware of the fact that the Government has ruled permitting the use of sulphur dioxide in foods?

Mr. SNYDER. Up to a certain extent. I believe they have limited it. Mr. LANNEN. In food-inspection decision No. 76 they allow the use of 350 milograms per kilo in foods, if it is stated on the label what is used. Is not that true?

Mr. SNYDER. I presume it is. I am not disputing that.

Mr. LANNEN. Then, in food-inspection decision No. 89 they rescinded the former one and take the limit off. Is that not true? Mr. SNYDER. I do not know.

Mr. LANNEN. Food-inspection decision No. 89 reads:

No objection will be made to foods which contain the ordinary quantity of dioxid, if the fact that such foods have been so prepared is plainly stated upon the label of each package.

Is that not true?

Mr. SNYDER. It may be, but there is where the difficulty comes in. You are amending the pure-food law and defining what this mixed flour is taking it out from under those provisions.

Mr. LANNEN. There is no sulphurous acid in the edible articles that we have sold to the housewife to be eaten, is there?

Mr. SNYDER. Not if it is made with hydrochloric acid.

Mr. LANNEN. You do not mean to say that the cornstarch we produce here has any sulphurous acid in it, do you?

Mr. SNYDER. I have not analyzed it. I would be able to say if I had analyzed it. I have analyzed starches heretofore, and I would say that starch made after the method that has been described here would give reactions for sulphates and sulfids.

Mr. LANNEN. That is laundry starch, though.

Mr. SNYDER. They say they are all the same starch-edibles; and every one of those starches-they said they are all the same.

Mr. LANNEN. They are the same chemically.

Mr. SNYDER. It does not say that. It says the same degree of purity. That is what the evidence says.

Mr. LANNEN. With regard to flour. Flour is a pure product, purer than starch, is it not?

Mr. SNYDER. Flour, I would say, as I understand the term, is a product made from wheat?

Mr. LANNEN. Yes.

Mr. SNYDER. It is certainly purer than starch.

Mr. LANNEN. The Russell-Miller Co. makes flour?

Mr. SNYDER. Certainly they do.

Mr. LANNEN. Was their flour always pure flour?

Mr. SNYDER. Yes.

Mr. LANNEN. Is it not a fact that your company was convicted in North Dakota for selling flour bleached with peroxide of nitrogen? Mr. SNYDER. No. Prior to the enactment of the pure-food law, and there was a condition which arose that was similar to the condition which we have described here with regard to the mixing of flour. Before the pure-food law no order was promulgated as to what was desired in regard to the bleaching of flour. The RussellMiller Milling Co. did bring an action against one of the commissioners, the commissioner of North Dakota, to test his ruling. The company protested because it was prohibited from making flour in

that State and bleaching it and shipping it out and competing with the flour that was produced in another State. It carried that litigation on until the question was settled or until it was acted upon by the Department of Agriculture; then the litigation was discontinued. Mr. LANNEN. You say that was before the pure-food law was passed?

Mr. SNYDER. That was before the order in regard to the use of nitrogen peroxide or the Alsop process for the bleaching of flour was issued. As soon as that order was promulgated by the Secretary of Agriculture, along in December, giving until the following May to stop bleaching, the millers of the Northwest, and particularly of Minneapolis, came together as a unit and said to the Secretary of Agriculture: "You have never indicated what you wished done in regard to this bleaching of flour; there has been no ruling, nothing in regard to it whatever; but inasmuch as you have indicated what you wish done, we will cease bleaching at once and desire to cooperate with you in stopping the bleaching," and they did not wait until the time was given, until May, but they started in less than a month or so afterwards. There was no ruling whatever. The action which you spoke of was not an action in the interest of purity, but it was brought to protect ourselves at a time in the fall when we had a large amount of flour that was contracted for and was to be bleached. Bleaching, which you speak of there, is nothing at all as injurious or to be compared with the bleaching that has been proposed since with other methods.

Mr. LANNEN. The conviction was under the North Dakota food law, which had been in force at that time for several years.

Mr. SNYDER. No; there had been no law at all on the subject. There was a ruling of the food commission. And I will still state that that case has not been settled; it is on the docket on appeal.

Mr. LANNEN. There was a conviction in the court under the law of North Dakota-the lower court?

Mr. SNYDER. No. The court in this decision said:

We do not find this product injurious to health in any way. Technically it is a violation of the law, because the law says there shall be no substance of such a nature.

It is entirely a question of whether there is the least infinitesimal trace or not. The court said it would not pass upon that point and did not pass upon it, but passed it up to the higher court. It distinctly said it was not injurious to health, but for that purpose it would pass it up to the higher court.

Mr. LANNEN. Do you know of any cornstarch ever having been convicted because of containing any chemicals?

Mr. SNYDER. No; because the cornstarch has not been put in flour of late years.

Mr. LANNEN. Well, straight cornstarch without being put in flour. Mr. SNYDER. No; I have not followed the literature. But that does not mean that some is present. I believe it is. I will say that I have a recipe book here about cornstarch, and I do not find any recipe here that is for cooking breads, biscuits, muffins, and so on without using a very large proportion of flour, it needs wheat flour to make these materials. Cornstarch needs wheat flour for such materials, but better, more wholesome, and more valuable bread can be made of pure wheat flour.