take into consideration in connection with the enforcement of such a bill as this. So far as I am concerned, as I said before, I do not know that that is a matter of primary importance. It is certainly one upon which there may be a difference of opinion.

I think that is substantially all I want to say about the bills at this time, except that in the provisions with respect to the stockyards we follow substantially the provisions now in force with reference to rates and practices on the railroads, in the belief that there was a similarity in the problems to be solved between the rates and practices on the railroads and the facilities which they are to furnish and the rates and practices in the stockyards and the facilities to be furnished there. The same character of questions arises in both cases, and we thought that the Interstate Commerce Commission, with the experience which it has already had in dealing with those questions, was better qualified to deal with them in the stockyards than any other agency.

Now, Mr. Sullivan referred to the fact that the State of Minnesota now has a provision for the regulation of the stockyards in that State. Under that law the stockyards and traders and commission men are subject to the jurisdiction of the Railway and Warehouse Commission. The Railway and Warehouse Commission has set up an agency in the stockyards which deals with the grievances and the complaints and the conditions that arise in the stockyards.

I hope the committee will hear Mr. Wells, who is in direct charge of the regulation of the stockyards at South St. Paul. I think he can give the committee a great deal of information which will be valuable to them in consideration of this general legislation. He is anxious and I am anxious that the regulation which we have established there should not be disturbed.

I am frank to say that if it were possible to have local State regulation of the stockyards, substantially uniform in character, I believe State regulation to be preferable to Federal regulation. I am, in general, of the opinion that the nearer you can bring the regulating authority to the people, the more likely you are to have regulations which are applicable to local conditions. In Minnesota they have established a contact between the railway and warehouse commission or its agent in the stockyards and the producers and the shippers and the commission men and the buyers, which I think has been exceedingly helpful in the solution of the problems that have arisen there. The regulation, I am told, has saved the shippers of the country thousands of dollars in charges for yardage, feed, and other costs arising in the yards. It has resulted in administrative improvements, very much in the interest of the producers as well as in the interest of the stockyards company and the commission men.

I am told that the fact that State regulation of stockyards in South St. Paul exists has been a very large factor in inducing business in those yards. It has been of tremendous advertising value to the stockyards company and to the commission men in South St. Paul. As I have said, we are anxious to preserve State regulation. I have prepared an amendment which I think will do it and which will be presented by Mr. Wells when he is heard by the committee. I hope the committee will hear him at some length, because I think he has something to say that will be of interest from the standpoint

of Federal regulation as well as from the standpoint of State regulation.

Mr. KINCHELOE. Of course I have not had opportunity to read your bill as fully as I shall do, and I am sure you appreciate the handicap a man labors under coming on the committee as a new member and not having heard the former hearings. So I will ask you a question or two. Do you think there is any evil to the public in general through the packers owning, controlling, and operating their own stockyards?

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Kincheloe, I do not think it is a question of ownership. There is some advantage which might arise to a packer as the result of ownership of stockyards. Probably, however, that advantage is a fair business advantage. That is to say, the packer who owns a stockyard into which cattle come which are bought not only by him but by everybody else takes a certain amount of toll from all those cattle, and he is benefited as much in that toll by the cattle that are bought by other packers as by the cattle bought by himself. He has in that volume a certain business advantage in the yards over the man who does not own any stock in those stockyards. I do not think there is any doubt about that. On the other hand, from the standpoint of regulation it does not seem to me it makes any difference who owns the stockyards. The question we are interested in is: How are the stockyards conducted? Are they conducted in such a way that no unfair advantage is taken of the producer, who can not protect himself, and is there no unfair advantage taken of the consumer, who can not protect itself? In other words, what we are interested in is having the stockyards run in the public interest, and the question of ownership as it seems to me does not bear very directly upon the determination of that question.

Mr. KINCHELOE. Let me ask you one more question.

Mr. ANDERSON. The reason, of course, for the raising of the question of ownership I think was this: Those who raised that question were mostly of opinion that the stockyards should be owned by the railroads, because if owned by the railroads it was thought they would be subject to the same regulation as to rates, practices, and facilities as the railroads are. Now, we attempt to accomplish all that under this bill without undertaking to compel a change of ownership, the difficulties of which are pretty well illustrated by the attempts that have been made under the decree to divest the packers of ownership of stockyards. I am assuming that there has been an honest effort on the part of everybody to accomplish that end in the decree that requires it.

Mr. KINCHELOE. What is your idea as to what evil there is in having none of the packers own the refrigerator cars?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, I think that raises substantially the same question. I have never gone into that question to the same extent I have some other questions involved, but if the refrigerator cars and the refrigerator companies are common carriers and the same rules apply to them as to nondiscriminatory rates and practices as would apply to other common carriers I do not think the question of ownership would apply to the same extent that it has been urged by some people. But there again it seems to me it is a question of conducting the refrigerator cars on such a basis that every shipper shall have a reasonable and fair use thereof. If refrigerator companies are com

mon carriers and must operate their cars for the benefit of everybody concerned without undue advantage to anybody, the question of ownership I do not think a very material one.

Mr. KINCHELOE. That is what I was leading up to. Now, do they have to furnish these refrigerator cars to independent packing concerns who do not own refrigerator cars?

Mr. ANDERSON. Only by agreement, I think.

Mr. KINCHELOE. That is what I did not know.

Mr. ANDERSON. There was some amendment in the transportation act which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission some authority over refrigerator cars which it did not formerly have. I must say, however, that I am not sufficiently familiar with that provision to discuss the limit of its effect. But it was stated by the commission at the time that the provision was sufficient to give the Interstate Commerce Commission the same authority with respect to refrigerator cars as over any other class of special equipment cars, or any other

cars.

Mr. TINCHER. It did give the commission authority to require the common carrier to furnish refrigerator cars in any suitable quantity to those having use therefor.

Mr. ANDERSON. But it did not take away from the packers or anybody else the right to operate their own refrigerator lines to the exclusion of any other shipper. That is the difficulty.

Mr. ASWELL. May I ask if one of the provisions of your bill avoiding general drastic regulations would not go far to meet the propaganda and criticism of too much Government in business?

Mr. ANDERSON. I think it does.

Mr. ASWELL. That seems to me a very important point.

Mr. ANDERSON. That is one of the things I had in mind in adopting the form of procedure we adopted in this bill.

Mr. ASWELL. You are not adding any new regulations or new control by new rules of any sort?

Mr. ANDERSON. No, sir.

Mr. TINCHER. Does your bill, in your judgment, confer upon the Federal Trade Commission any different jurisdiction to what they now have. It has been suggested that your bill in effect makes a court of the Federal Trade Commission and gives them a different class of jurisdiction..

Mr. ANDERSON. I do not think that is true. Of course it does give them a wider jurisdiction, because, as I take it, there is an extension of the Federal Trade Commission's powers in the additions that we have made to the things that are prohibited.

Mr. TINCHER. The packers themselves in the hearings here, through their well-informed men, advocated a continuation of the Federal Trade Commission. They complained of some of the personnel of the Federal Trade Commission but advocated a continuation of the body. To put this power with some other body, commission, or other officer, that you are seeking in your bill to give to the Federal Trade Commission, would of necessity avoid duplication, or in the former case avoid our taking from the Federal Trade Commission certain powers that they now have, wouldn't it?

Mr. ANDERSON. I think so. Of course it seems clear that the packers should not be subject to regulation by the Federal Trade Commission under the unfair methods of competition prohibition,

and also subject to some other regulating authority under the general prohibitions of this act, even though there may be some practices included in unfair methods of competition which would not be inIcluded in this bill.

Mr. TINCHER. The packers complained of some of the reports of the Federal Trade Commission as published and of certain conclusions the commission reached concerning the five big packers. If the Federal Trade Commission had the responsibility of making an order to stop any unfair practices, or to stop this or that practice, if their reports were inclined to be sensational or probably even unfair as charged, that would have a tendency to stop such a thing and the system, wouldn't it?

Mr. ANDERSON. It seems so to me. That recalls to my mind this thought which I wanted to present to the committee: It is a matter of common knowledge that there is not the relationship of confidence between the producer and the packer and between the packer and the general public which, in my judgment at least, it is desirable to have. And I do not know of any way to create that condition of confidence except to set up an agency between producer and packer, and between packer and consumer, that will give confidence to the producer and to the consumer, and tend to induce the belief that somebody is going to see to it that a square deal is given to everybody concerned. I think that the setting up of such an authority is just as much in the interest of the packer as in the interest of anybody else; that instead of the thousands of dollars and perhaps millions of dollars spent in good-will advertising in the last few years in an effort to create a feeling of confidence on the part of the producer in the integrity of the stock markets and in the integrity of the practices of the packer, let us have something like this that will not entail such an expense on the people. And there is in my judgment a greater lack of confidence and greater distrust to-day than there has ever been since this question was first agitated.

I think it is in the interest of the people of the country as a whole that some action be taken by this committee and by this Congress to reduce the whole situation to one of mutual confidence and assurance of a square deal. This situation is not much different from the situation that existed years ago when we first began to consider regulation of the railroads and when the railroads and other concerns, which we now consider public utilities, were mentioned as public utilities. And while I am not prepared to say that the situation in the packing industry is such that the packing industry should be considered a public utility, I do undertake to say that its potential industrial power is so great that we must deal with it in some sense of supervision, such as we have exercised in the case of the railroads and other public utilities.

Mr. VOIGT. Your present judgment is that the administration of any packer bill should be left in the hands of the Federal Trade Commission?

Mr. ANDERSON. So far as it relates to those who are defined in the bill as packers, yes. I think, as I stated at the beginning of my remarks, that regulation of the stockyards and everybody in them should be under one jurisdiction, but whether it should be the same jurisdiction as controls or regulates the packers, I am not prepared to say. I have no definitely formed opinion about that.

Mr. TINCHER. The general opinion of all the witnesses we have heard on the subject is that they bear a more direct relation to transportation.

Mr. ANDERSON. The questions that arise there are more nearly identical with questions that arise in transportation than any others I know of. They are questions as to furnishing facilities and the rates and charges which are charged for furnishing such facilities and services.

Mr. TINCHER. You are absolutely right, I think, in your statement as to a condition of lack of confidence, and perhaps there never was more occasion for that feeling toward the industry than right now, a time when the producer is selling his product way below the cost. of production, and where the ultimate consumer is paying a price that bears no relation to that which is paid to the producer. Mr. ANDERSON. I suspect the packer is having his troubles now,

too.

Mr. TINCHER. That is what I was going to ask. The packer, no doubt, has a serious situation confronting him right now. But, Mr. Anderson, does your bill reach the real evil of this situation? Do you think that under the bill you have before the committee the Federal Trade Commission or anyone else would be able to see to it that the packer does properly value his product to the consumer, and see to it that the consumer gets that product at a legitimate profit only, above cost of production?

Mr. ANDERSON. I think so, at least as far as any governmental agency can accomplish that result.

Mr. TINCHER. You know, I have always had, what some might. term a fool idea about this packer proposition, and that is that instead of enacting a law to prevent the packer from retailing his meat, that we ought to enact a law to force him to see that the consumer gets the meat without paying three or four times what the packer even sold it for.

Mr. ASWELL. You ask, Mr. Tincher, will this bill reach the evil? What is the evil?

Mr. TINCHER. The evil is that perhaps I sell an animal at 6 cents a pound, and then if I buy a beef steak in Washington I pay 45 or 50 cents a pound for it.

Mr. ASWELL. That is the evil?

Mr. TINCHER. That is the evil. Is there anything unfair about. that? I understand the way the thing is being handled now that even the packer is losing money, but I do not know where the money is going if he is losing money.

Mr. JONES. I understand the retailer is overcharging for meats frequently. The packers are publishing their cost prices to the retailer, and now where is the trouble?

Mr. ASWELL. Does this bill reach the retailer?

Mr. JONES. Mr. Tincher was just suggesting that we ought to require the packer to sell to the retainer at a limited price.

Mr. TINCHER. I think the Federal Trade Commission under this bill would have some jurisdiction as to unfair practices all down through the line. Mr. Anderson's idea is that it is ithe product he has in mind.

Mr. ANDERSON. I want to make it perfectly clear that this is not a price-fixing bill. I am personally opposed to any governmental