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Mr. JACQUES. Yes; they have not the resistance.

Mr. SCHULTE. Rather than a little dirty milk?

Mr. JACQUES. I have drunk a lot of dirty milk and drank out of the tin bucket.

Mr. SCHULTE. You did not have towels?

Mr. JACQUES. No; we did even have towsack.

Dr. TENEROWICZ. Do you believe in inspecting herds?

Mr. JACQUES. Oh, yes.

Dr. TENEROWICZ. Well, according to your testimony one would think that you did not believe in inspection.

Mr. JACQUES. Well, I believe in inspecting herds; sure I do. There is no tuberculosis in Montgomery County or nearby Virginia, and Maryland does not test for Bang's disease, although Virginia does. Dr. TENEROWICZ. Do you have a farm?

Mr. JACQUES. Not now.

Dr. TENEROWICZ. Oh, I see. You believe in inspection?

Mr. JACQUES. Yes; there are lots of cows not fit to be eaten, let alone to drink the milk from them.

Mr. SCHULTE. Is that all?

Mr. JACQUES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHULTE. Thank you very much on behalf of myself and the committee.

(Witness excused.)

Mr. SCHULTE. I would like to read into the record at the time the two following letters:

SOCIETY OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL,

PARTICULAR COUNCIL, Washington, D. C. May 24, 1939.

Hon. Wм. T. SCHULTE,

House Office Building.

DEAR MR. SCHULTE: AS president of the Particular Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, I take pleasure in supporting your bill to open the market of milk production. We are primarily interested in a lowering of the price of milk that will stand tests required by the United States Public Health Service. I am confident that your bill will meet every requirement.

GEORGE J. CLEARY, President, Particular Council, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Washington, D. C.

Hon. Wм. T. SCHULTE,

House Office Building.

SOCIETY OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL,

ST. MARTIN'S CONFERENCE, Washington, D. C., May 25, 1939.

DEAR SIR: The St. Martin's Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society are in favor of any action that can be taken to reduce the price of milk in Washington, provided, of course, that the milk will meet the standard of quality required by the District.

A reduction in the price of milk will make it possible for our society to care for more of the poor who are in need of milk.

Very truly yours,

FRED L. BACH,
Secretary.

Mr. SCHULTE. The next witness will be Mrs. Boyle, of Consumer's Council.

STATEMENT OF MRS. JOHN BOYLE, JR., CHAIRMAN CONSUMER'S COUNCIL OF WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mrs. BOYLE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Mrs. John Boyle, Jr., 3901 Ingomar Street, Chevy Chase, D. C. I am chairman of the Consumer's Council of Washington, D. C., formed in 1933 under the general direction of the National Emergency Council. My council was given authority to represent in code hearings of the A. A. A. and N. R. A., the consumer interests in Washington. Two hundred county councils were formed at the same time. The county chairman received franking privilegeuntil N. R. A. went out of existence. There have been no paid workers.

The present executive board is composed of myself as chairman; Msgr. John A. Ryan, who is the first vice chairman; and Mrs. Huston Thompson; Mrs. Leon Henderson; Mrs. Duncan Brock; and Miss Mary Van-Casteel. I might say that I, as chairman, have the authority to call in people who are experts on various bills that we are considering from time to time. Those people are usually experts in the line that we are taking up and I have done the same thing with this bill. We reached as many organized groups as possible and informed them from time to time by letters and group meetings of what concerned them as consumers. The Consumer's Council has been interested in the milk question since 1933 when it made its first appearance in the Senate investigation.

The one thing I want to express is my conviction that the Congress and the general public is unaware of the real significance of this milk problem. This is a matter which concerns the community as a whole. The public health is involved and proper growth of our children and prevention and cure of disease.

In the first place, let us consider the District as a whole. It is true that here we have one of the largest per capita groups in the middle-income brackets-Government workers, and so forth. But here, also, there is a large third of the population in the lower-income brackets, and the spread between the two groups is very wide.

I should like to speak for this lower third this evening. They are the average people of whom Lincoln said "God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them." These are the people who do not come to the lobbies of the Capitol.

Among us there are approximately 150,000 persons with incomes under $30 per week. Of these, approximately 80 percent have incomes of under $18 per month. These are not down-and-outers. These are the people who manage to buy their food and shelter, but they cannot afford luxuries. And here in the National Capital the price of milk-the primary food of health-makes it a luxury. That is the reason that our consumption of this essential food is less than 1 pint per capita.

Again, in the District of Columbia, there are approximately 59,000 children who need more milk for proper nourishment. They are milk starved. They are children of the average people of the District. All told there are 120,000 school children in the District, public and parochial, and 48,000 children of free-school age who need milk. But the price of milk is 14 cents per quart and in many cases it is beyond their reach.

Now, let me do a little addition and subtraction. Can a man earning under $30 per week afford sufficient milk to keep his family in good condition? That means that he must pay $4.20 per month per child for each quart of milk he gets daily. To that man this is a large sum, it is over 12 percent of his weekly income. He cannot afford it so he cuts the corners and buys some but not enough milk for his family. That is the reason that our per capita consumption is less than 1 pint.

Here in the District we have the fourth highest tuberculosis death rate in the country. Milk is an esential item of diet for the tubercular, but milk is a luxury.

I could quote for you many instances of this sort-cases and statistics illustrating how great the need for milk is in the District.

On the other side of this picture, we have here one company which supplies over 60 percent of the milk consumed. In 1936 when the milk marketing agreement was adopted by the Department of Agriculture there was extensive discussion and one farmer said: "The consumer has a place in the sun but it is not in the farmer's milk marketing agreement."

Although not speaking officially for this group, Mr. Horace L. Gregg, of Hamilton, Loudon County, Va., did express that group's feeling about this problem when he told you, "The western shippers will find different conditions here when their milk reaches the market, because we will not relinquish this market. Only the consumer could possibly benefit by a reduction in the price of milk."

Mr. Gregg briefly summed up the entire situation in these few words. He meant that the consumer should be ignored in any consideration of the milk problems of the District. Mr. Gregg meant that we have here a monopoly which will not relinquish its grip on this market and which is opposed to any consideration of the consumer in connection with this bill. That is why the price remains at 14 cents a quart. But since this is the basic commodity of health, gentlemen, we consumers feel that this committee will give some thought to the needs which exists in enacting a bill in regard to milk.

Currently from the consumer's angle, milk is prohibitive in price. And the consumer cannot escape from paying this 14 cents a quart, since there is no differential between store-bought and home-delivered milk. Currently we have here in our local milk regulations a vicious trade barrier which benefits no one but the monopoly.

The consumer's council has read this bill carefully We have weighed health provisions with a great deal of interest. We have considered the economic aspects of this bill. And the conclusion has been that this bill will work to break down the vicious trade barrier which we have here without injuring essential health regulations.

We believe the bill is sound in principle. We believe it attacks a trade barrier that exists solely for the benefit of a few and is maintained at the expense of many-the unheard consumers of the District.

To defend the present barriers on the grounds that they are essential to the health of the citizens of the District is to beg the question. The health restrictions doubtless are splendid-but we question if they are not too severe and above all we protest against the maintenance of these barriers at our expense when it prevents our getting

good, wholesome, pure milk and cream at reasonable prices. By reasonable prices we mean prices which are somewhere near a level which the poor can reach.

We do not see any reason to fear for the health of the community if this bill becomes a law. Intelligent administration of its provisions should insure against unsafe cream coming into this market. The arguments of the opponents to Congressman Schulte's bill when based on the question of health are, in short, merely assertions that nowhere in the country except on one-thousand-three-hundred-odd farms in nearby Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia can milk be produced which is safe, that nowhere else are stands worth while. That the standard ordinance and code promulgated by the United States Public Health Service and now in effect in 2,100 communities is not good-that many others placed with health regulations which have served their citizens well; there being no epidemics traceable to milk in these cities-are not good.

To allow cream to be imported into this area, as the bill provides would not be doing anything revolutionary except that it would be a jolt to the local milk monopolists. At least one important city, and one which is proud of its health regulations and jealous of its reputation in respect to them, permits outside cream for fluid consumption to come in, provided that it comes from States having satisfactory milk-inspection regulations. This city is Boston-and we believe there are other places where the same situation exists. In commenting on this Boston regulation, the Federal Trade Commission in 1936, said on p. 19 of its report on the Sale and Distribution of Milk and Milk Products in Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, that—

If authorities desire to keep out milk or cream from other States, refusal to inspect is an important bar to such milk and cream. Generally speaking, cream for manufacturing purposes is allowed fairly free movement between milksheds, but milk and cream for fluid consumption are in many cases closely restricted and inspection requirements are a commonly used means of stopping their movement.

The Commission also said that it believed

Other States would do well to follow this practice of Boston with due consideration to the thoroughness of inspection given by any particular State. We feel that if the Schulte bill is enacted, it will work a great good in the community.

Mr. SCHULTE. Dr. Tenerowicz, do you care to ask any questions? Dr. TENEROWICZ. No, sir.

Mr. SCHULTE. Mr. Schwert do you wish to ask any questions?

Mr. SCHWERT. No; I think Mrs. Boyle's report is very complete and I do not think she left us any questions to ask her. I think she covered most of the points.

Mrs. BOYLE. There is one thing I wish to say. That is, this is very interesting, going through the Federal Trade reports and their reports are quite voluminous. Take in this milkshed applying to the District of Columbia, there are approximately 1,300 farmers supplying this shed.

In St. Louis which is a city of about the same size, if I remember the figures correctly, and if they are not correct I can get them. One large dairy, the largest distributor in the city of St. Louis gets its

milk from 2,300 farmers; the next largest gets milk from 1,800 farmers, and the next from 3,000 farmers, and here you have only 1,300 farmers all told, so you can see what a difference there is. I am sure that it is more complete than that but the comparison between the little 1,300 here and a large number of farmers supplying milk for the city of St. Louis is rather appalling to me.

Mr. SCHULTE. Thank you very much.

Mrs. Boyle, you do not approve of these excessively large farms coralling all of the producing business-is that it?

Mrs. BOYLE. I think the farmers in this area should be put under proper restrictions if they are not and furnish good clean milk. Mr. SCHULTE. You do not approve of the 800 gallons a day out of one farm, and all of those things?

Mrs. BOYLE. I would spread it.

Mr. SCHULTE. To give more jobs?

Mrs. BOYLE. I would spread it out.

Mr. SCHULTE. We have a number of people here engaged in the business to whom it is just a side line.

Mrs. BOYLE. I would like at this time to present Miss Margaret A. Gerber.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARGARET A. GERBER, DISTRICT

COOPERATIVE LEAGUE, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Miss GERBER. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee: My name is Margaret A. Gerber and I represent the District of Columbia Cooperative League, which is an organization composed of 2,000 organized consumers, who are trying to cooperate to stretch their dollars a little further than they would ordinarily go. Among these consumers there are a relatively large number from the lower-income brackets and we are concerned with them in this matter of the price of milk for the District.

The Cooperative League favors legislation that will make possible the shipment into the District of Columbia of western milk and cream, provided that adequate safeguards can be established to protect the health of the District residents.

We have not gone into the exact details of how the health of the District is protected by this bill but we assume that experts will see to it that the health is adequately protected by some such methods as asking dairies to comply with the public-health ordinance which Mrs. Boyle says some 2,000 towns and cities now follow.

We want the barriers which now exist in the District to be moved for the simple and obvious reason that the price of milk in the District is now too high and is being artificially maintained.

According to the Bureau of Agricultural Economics Statistics of May 1939, that is this month, that survey shows that the prices for the District are higher than other cities of comparable size. This is a survey of the 17 cities with population of over 450,000, comprising Denver, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Baltimore, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

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