SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATION OF REPORT OF HEARINGS ON H. R. 16925 428 TO REGULATE THE STORAGE OF FOOD PART I STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES WILSON Secretary of Agriculture JANUARY 24, 1910 Printed for use of the Committee (Without revision) WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE STORAGE OF FOOD PRODUCTS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOOD INVESTIGATION, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Monday, January 24, 1910. The subcommittee met this day at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. J. Hampton Moore (chairman), presiding. STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES WILSON, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary Wilson, at a preliminary meeting of this subcommittee it was decided to invite you, as the head of the Department of Agriculture, to appear before the subcommittee to discuss, in your own way and in your own time, questions affecting the supply and demand in foodstuffs, beginning, if you please, with the point of production, the farm, taking into consideration the packing, the transportation, the refrigeration, the storage, and the distribution of food commodities. We all recognize that no man in this country has more information, and perhaps more general knowledge and ability to discuss this problem, than yourself. That it is a problem that the entire country is interested in, and that it is apt to grow in influence and importance, can not be disputed. The committee would like, I presume, before you depart, to ask a few questions, but the purpose of our asking you here was, first, to have you make a statement in your own way covering this problem, vast as it is, as tersely as you can, so that it might form a basis for future inquiry. If you please, we will let you go on now as you see fit. Secretary WILSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I had no idea what you wanted. I supposed perhaps you were going to set out to do what none of the rest of us can do. We can get facts with regard to meats on the farm, with regard to the movement of meats to the markets, and the packing and wholesaling and distribution by the retailer; we can get those things. But there is one thing we can not get. We do not know what the cause of the high retail price is. You represent, for instance, Congress for the District of Columbia. We do not know why the people of the District of Columbia on the average should pay 42 per cent profit to the man who cuts and distributes the carcass of meat. We do not know whether it comes about naturally or not. But you take your basket on your arm and go to buy a cut of meat anywhere in this District, and you pay the same price at every place. That possibly may be natural. I have an idea that you could inquire and find out about it. We can not. Nobody else can. You can. You have the power of Congress behind you, and you have the power over the persons; you have power to send for persons and papers. You can turn a man over to the courts if he does not answer the questions, and you can make him produce the papers you want. I suppose you have that power. The CHAIRMAN. We have that power through Congress; yes. Secretary WILSON. I supposed so. That is the one thing lacking with us. I had an idea in my mind that Congress had done a wise thing to create a committee and to authorize it to get facts with regard to the one city over which Congress has absolute control. You make all the laws for this District. You discipline the District, and you protect it. Why it is these combinations exist we do not know, and we do not know what under the sun to do about it. The people who work for the Government in the District of Columbia have to pay such prices for their food that, no matter how fast you may promote anybody or increase his salary, he can scarcely get enough to live on. They tried to organize themselves, as has been done in many foreign countries, to buy by the wholesale and then to retail to themselves, but they could not do it. The wholesalers here would not permit them to do it. I suppose there is no power in the land that can find out why that is except yourselves. I think it is well worth finding out. I think without doubt it would be wise for you to get the officials of these organizations and combinations and bring them here and have them give you the facts, because what is done. here is unquestionably done everywhere else. We inquired into the prices that the farmer gets on the farm to ascertain whether the farmer was getting all the money of the country for the sale of his meats. We found that the stock steer on the farm, a 2-year-old steer, is not a particle dearer now than it was twelve years ago. You can buy them just as cheap now as you could have bought them twelve years ago. Good ones can be bought at 4 cents a pound; good ones, stock steers, weighing 800 pounds. Mr. JOHNSON. Is that limited to any particular age? Secretary WILSON. Sometimes it is. Perhaps it is 3 years old when we get it. Mr. WILEY. A gentleman whom we all know, a Member of Congress, raises fat veal for market. He says he is getting this year 1 cent less than last year, and yet here in the District the price of veal has advanced from 25 to 30 per cent. Secretary WILSON. Yes. We all know these things, we on the outside, but we have not the power that you have. Mr. WILEY. I may say that it is Mr. Gardner, of Atlantic City, to whom I refer. He tells us that. Secretary WILSON. We have not the power to compel these people to testify, but we would be very glad to have you find out why that comes about. Now, to go back to the farm. Several years ago, in 1906, the crop of corn that year was the heaviest grown in the United States, and people fed it, fed heavily; and the next year the corn crop was not so good, quite, and they still continued to feed, but they lost money. The abundance of the stuff put on the market brought the prices down. Fewer farmers fed last year, and this winter a good many fewer. A year ago the farmers who had their fingers burnt from feeding dear corn stopped feeding, and to a great extent they are not feeding now the number of stock that they have fed hitherto, because when you take a 2 or 3 year old steer around nine or ten hundred |