a business manager, it is in the testimony in the first 75 pages of the brief, and the business manager would constantly get on the doctor if he had too many "walks." A walk meant that as a patient was in the waiting room and it filled up, they were coming in on the promises of this advertising, some of them would get up and leave if they had to wait too long. This was a "walk," and if they had too many "walks" the doctor was either sent to another office or reprimanded in someway, but the thing was, get them in that examining room, get them out, get a prescription, and sell the glasses.

Another example. All the personnel in these offices would wear the same type of jackets, not with their name, just the assumed name of the organization, and one doctor testified that he came back from lunch one day to find the business manager with a patient in the chair examining his eyes. The business manager was a layman, not trained in any way, not a doctor of any kind.

Incidentally, the chain operations hire medical doctors along with optometrists as their employees. The Texas Merchants Association, the Texas board has never been able to do anything about that.

A doctor doesn't fit a patient with glasses and he gets too many of them, of the organization, as is shown by the evidence, requires him to fill out a "no-fit" form and send it in to the home office, not as an analysis of the visual problem of patients, but, why didn't you fit him with glasses? A "no-fit" form. And of course you can imagine sometimes the doctors would rather go ahead and fit them with glasses and sell a couple of pairs than to fill out that complicated form that had to go into the home office.

Just the examples of the evils that come once you open the door to this type of operation.

Second, Mr. Chairman, I would like to put into evidence a series of three advertisements, and again I want to stress that the advertising media is not responsible for this, they didn't have any way to judge whether this ad was true or not, a series of ads by one of the chain operations in Texas, this was a commercial optometrist, brought out in testimony at his trial in which the brief was introduced, and the first ad diagnoses glaucoma checked off, and a representation in the ad:

You are assured that if such eye diseases as glaucoma, iritis, cat opticaract, atrophy, etc., are present they will be found so an eye physician can begin prompt treatment.

The doctor that published that ad under oath and subject to cross-examination testified that he knew, and everybody knew that in an eye examination such as they got at his office, or any medical office you want for an examination, nobody could be sure that a patient didn't have cataract, or had glaucoma. This was confirmed by the testimony of an ophthalmologist who testified and the ophthalmologist further testified that this is an insidious thing, because if glaucoma is not caught in time it can cause blindness.

Think of the harm to the public when people who rely upon your assurances in this type of ad, that did not get medical attention and thereby may have lost their eyesight?

There is a series of ads here, five or six of them, and the second one is "I wanted to be sure about my child's eyes." He didn't have any eye disease.

They sucker them in on that basis and sell a pair of glasses but anything to get them in.

If you open the door, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, that type of thing, it is a danger to the public and the danger is obvious.

Thirdly, I believe it is, I would like to submit for the record as an exhibit a series of advertisements from three El Paso newspapers, all published on the same day. They appear to be advertisements of different optical organizations. One is named Mesa Optical, one is named Lee Optical, and another along the same line with a different address, and the truth of the matter is, all three of these are the same man, who lives in Dallas, Tex., who is an optometrist who practices under not only these three names but about 12 or 15 other names, but the obvious fraud in the ad is that, three different ads published the same day, and in them he assured the patient in one ad, the public, that the glasses are $12.50 at the Mesa Optical are the lowest possible price for glasses, the lowest possible.

Yet down the street in his Lee Optical office, he is selling the same glasses, and he testified, no different product, they all come from the same manufacturing firm in Dallas, Tex. that he also owns a little interest in, in the same product, the equipment is the same, the quality of the examination is the same, as a matter of fact they even shifted doctors back and forth between the offices, but he advertises the same thing down the street for $9.90.

Mr. Chairman, in El Paso, as you well know, there are many lowincome families in that area to whom $3 makes a lot of difference.

Here we have a man misrepresenting, obviously false, but to show you his gall in the third ad, he says, at One Price Optical, he makes this challenge against other optical companies, he says, "Other optical concerns confuse you with different prices," but here he is confusing them, the same doctor, operating under this type of commercial operation and we submit them for the record for the consideration of the committee, Mr. Chairman.

(The quotations submitted by Mr. Babb from various State court opinions respecting provisions of optometry laws similar to the provisions in the proposed legislation, appear in the appendix, pp. 375-380.)

(The two series of advertisements described by the witness follow:)