a monopoly fund or "war chest." Why they could reduce the price of milk with that.

Mr. SCHULTE. Did you know that they have a $44,000 pay roll that the consumers in the District must pay?

Mr. JACQUES. Didn't the Government Printing Office report several years ago that they had listed a director in the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association here that drew a salary of $35,000 a year. I don't think he ever owned a cow. He may. I don't say he did not own a cow, because I have no personal knowledge of that fact, but why any man, a director of a company as necessary as this, receives such a salary-I can see if they were building automobiles that would be one thing, but milk is an essential article of diet, and here they paid $35,000 a year just to one man for nothing.

Mr. SCHULTE. Does any member of the committee wish to ask the witness any question, Doctor Tenerowicz?

Dr. TENEROWICZ. No, sir.

Mr. SCHULTE. Mr. Schwert, do you wish to ask any questions? Mr. SCHWERT. There is no way if the producer is allocated, for example, 30 gallons--there is no way of him knowing whether any of his surplus milk is sold for fluid milk, is there?

Mr. JACQUES. Well, you never can make the farmer believe it anyway. I do not know of any way unless you go into their books.. They make a contract with the farmer and again even if he can sell his surplus somewhere else he is not allowed to do it. I have a contract and I have it home and I neglected to bring it down here. The farmer has to get special permission from them to sell to someone else.

Mr. SCHWERT. If a farmer is producing 100 gallons of milk a day and 30 gallons of it is to be used as fluid milk and 70 gallons are for ice-cream purposes, and so forth, he has no way of knowing whether 70 gallons out of the 100 are utilized for fluid milk or 60 gallons.

Mr. JACQUES. I do not know how we would know. And when the Boy Scouts came to town why those Scouts drank tremendous quantities of milk. That happened several years ago. Now, where did it come from if normal daily average consumed all the milk in the District of Columbia? There were a vast number of gallons consumed with 100,000 people coming here. Now, when the King and Queen come here where will the milk come from that those people will consume; that is where the farmer is hooked; that is where the consumer is hooked.

Mr. SCHULTE. Then you feel, Mr. Jacques, that there are a lot of children in the District of Columbia that are being deprived of milk because of the excessively high price?

Mr. JACQUES. I certainly do; no sensible person could think otherwise.

Mr. SCHULTE. We heard a lot of talk about the small farmers who are members of the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association.

I have not had time to add them all up, but we have got two farmers here who told us yesterday or the day before yesterday what their production was.

We learned of one producer in the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association that had an average of 800 gallons of milk a day and received for it the average price of 22 cents. That makes it $176 a day that he gets, or $1,232 a week, or $4,928 a month, or $59,136 a year to one farmer.

Mr. JACQUES. Absolutely.

Mr. SCHULTE. Does that sound small to you?

Mr. JACQUES. I knew a farmer personally up the country that was shipping to the association and they were paying him $750 a month for the milk. When his contract expired he left them and sold it and got $1,500 independently. He sold it for 25 cents straight, and they were glad to make a new contract to pay him $1,500 a month.

Mr. SCHULTE. Here are the figures of a fellow who produces 210 gallons a day which gives him $46.20 a day, $323.40 a week, or $1,293.60 a month.

Mr. JACQUES. That is right.

Mr. SCHULTE. Here is another fellow with 230 gallons a day with an average of $55.20 a day, or $366.40 a week, or $1,999.22 a month. Mr. JACQUES. You can figure it easily. A good dairy cow is supposed to produce on the average year in and year out 50 cents a day, and 100 cows would produce $50 a day, and there you are.

Mr. SCHULTE. If you wanted to help the small farmer and were sincere in their efforts, here is one man producing 800 gallons a day. Mr. JACQUES. Sure.

Mr. SCHULTE. That stops 80 farmers, or it will stop 50 farmers from participating or making a living because this one fellow has 800 gallons a day.

Mr. JACQUES. Sure.

Mr. SCHULTE. And in addition to that he has a business on the side. Mr. JACQUES. Or if you ride up to Gaithersburg they have a big dairy, a big new dairy just put up.

Mr. SCHULTE. Probably a new deal for that organization.

Mr. JACQUES. Yes.

Mr. SCHULTE. Are there any questions? Dr. Tenerowicz, do you wish to ask any questions?

Dr. TENEROWICZ. No, sir.

Mr. SCHULTE. Do you wish to ask any questions, Mr. Schwert? Mr. SCHWERT. No.

Mr. SCHULTE. Have you any further testimony to offer?

Mr. JACQUES. No.

Mr. SCHULTE. We want to thank you, the committee and myself, for coming here this evening.

Mr. JACQUES. I would like to see the babies in the District get more milk. I like milk myself. There is nothing wrong with these regulations if they play square. You know our ancestors drank milk that came out of an old bank barn. They are talking about TB, and you can go down the street and see the sputum on the sidewalk. That is where you get your tuberculosis. You can go down the street along a construction job and see everybody drink out of the same water bucket and dipper. I have done it and the man right before me I knew he was in the sanitarium for tuberculosis.

Mr. SCHULTE. Don't you think that by denying little children milk you are weakening their resistance and making them more suscep

tible to disease?

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 privilege until 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