You know, if you want endorsements, they are easy to get. I do Hot think any of us need to-I mean none of us ever lack for reading aterial. I do not want to go through the procedure here of reading wspaper stories, because all I heard a few minutes ago from the revious witness were headlines. I heard him say that the Pennsyljania Bulletin says that so and so fights this bill. But what does it y it the column? Does it approve this bill or is it just a news item? However, let me give you the endorsement of Dr. Joseph Link of avier University, if you want endorsements. He says:

Your cause is good and thoroughly American, antimonopolistic, antisocialistic, d pro-Christian.

We can get words of endorsement from anybody. If you want em, we can give them to you. I will fill the record with all kinds praise for this bill. I can hire and pay for whatever you want; hatever testimony you wish, that is the kind I can give you. Mr. DINGELL. Well, I say to the gentleman we have had a great undance of paid witnesses on this subject before this committee. Mr. DENT. A what?

Mr. DINGELL. I say to my good friend that we have had a great undance of paid witnesses appearing on behalf of this legislation. I do not mean to say that my friend is paid-he is an idealistic, oroughly dedicated Member of the Congress, and I salute him as ch.

Mr. DENT. I agree that I am not paid, and I am sorry for it. Beuse I think that perhaps I am doing a better job than some of them at you say are being paid. Because the fellow that you have paid n tomorrow be on the other side of the picture.

If you want endorsements-heck, I have got Rotary clubs, I have t. Hon. Wright Patman, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, chambers of nmerce-I have got the Glenview State Bank. Now, what the kens-this is ridiculous.

What does a Congressman care what Kathleen Sabeta-whoever ⚫is-says?

As far as getting the endorsement of any organization, Mr. Chairn, I have a great deal of confidence in you; I have known you ever ce, I believe, you first started in the political arena, and I have great deal of confidence in you. And I can say to you right now t, if this organization needs any endorsements, if they will allow to sign you up, you will go get them. That is all there is to it. There is nothing intended in this legislation except to be able to e a quality product that is not bastardized by somebody who has interest whatsoever in the consumer or in the producer; his only Prest is in that intermediate station that he occupies-to take off t profit he can, regardless of what happens before or after his ing the product in his hands.

nd that is all this bill is for-to see to it that Joe Smith, on Main et, sells a refrigerator; he can service it because he has received w pennies more and can stand behind it along with the manuurer; that he will not be victimized in his business, nor will the uner by those who used that same product to bring the people in, then sell them any item under the sun with the leader that they ased in the good name, the good reputation of a legitimate lucer of good goods in the United States.

And that is all I have to say, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to have my statement for the record, if it is all right. Mr. DINGELL. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(The full text of the prepared statement of Mr. Dent follows:)

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN DENT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. Chairman, I've requested time to appear today because I'm very much worried-worried about the disease that continues to weaken our great country-and worried because again like last year, talk is taking the place of action to stall passage of a bill-the quality stabilization bill-that I deem absoutely necessary to be immediately enacted. I don't think it is a full cure for the disease. But I do know it is necessary now as a hypodermic of penicillin to arrest some of the poison infesting our bloodstream of national economy.

I simply can't understand why any Americans desire to condemn this bill by epithet; to bandy words, phrases and semantics comparing quality stabilization with fair trade and price fixing, as though they were dirty words. The quality stabilization bill-in actuality—is no more fair trade or price fixing under the accepted understanding of those phrases, than are wages, rents, phone bills, airplane and train fares, farm subsidies, gas, light, water, etc. But regardless of what anyone wants to call this precise and I think simple single-purpose bill-it is essential that it have its chance to stave off a fatal cancer gnawing into the spinal cord of the Nation.

We are drifting into more and more unemployment. Over a thousand retail businesses are folding each day. It is a cancer. And except for this quality stabilization bill we are trying to cure the cancer without attacking the cause. We seem to have lost all understanding of our economy: the whys and where fores of our production miracle and its dependence upon the sustaining jobs that are wiped out by cheap goods, importers, deceptive retail practices and price cutting and, above all, the monopolies created by scavenger tactics.

Cheap prices, no matter where they start or where they are offered, cannot do anything but hurt the industrial community. That which tends to weaken the industrial complex must eventually destroy the rest of the national economy. When thousands of persons, in the distribution of goods, are deprived of an opportunity to earn a livelihood because of price cutting at the retail level, it dries up market money and its ill effects flow right back to the corporate setup, the production line and the paycheck.

This economy of ours rests upon five pillars, each as important as the other in maintaining a balanced domestic economy. These five pillars are, in order: investment, production, payrolls, consumption, and profit.

Without profit, there is no investment and without investment, no production and the result is unemployment, stagnation in distribution and consumption, and a further reduction in profit. This can only go so far before the economy becomes so out of balance that a crash is inevitable.

A cancer can be halted by catching it in time and applying drastic surgery or medication. Is there still time? Perhaps. But only if such emergency measures as the quality stabilization bill are tried.

By apathy, by inaction, we are allowing the patient to die. Worse, we are almost demanding the patient die, as time is wasted, as semantics are practiced, theories are preached and statements like "traditional positions" are quoted to further stall the direly needed immediate remedial action. Is it prejudice? Is it fear? Or is it a sort of greed that implies "give me everything and to the devil with the other person?"

Let us hope it is not any of these. Let us hope this not such a country. If there was an accident in front of this building as anyone here was leavingwould he run out to help, or would he stand back and say to himself "It's none of my business. I might get hit myself. Or I might get some blood on my suit and have to pay to have it cleaned?" Yet with respect to the malady at which the quality stabilization bill is aimed, we are standing by and we aren't doing much but talking. And I wonder why this precise bill, which can't kill but can only help to cure, is attacked so much for what it might not do instead of being praised and supported for the good it will do. If the quality stabilization bill doesn't work, it will quietly pass into oblivion. If the quality stabilization bill works, as I believe it will, then it will be a blessing.

Commonsense demands we do something about it right now-let us stop this economic bloodletting into the streets; let us channel instead this vital economic blood into the arteries of trade to keep the patient-our country-alive. Recovery is what we should be talking about as we expedite this bill.

How many witnesses have you heard say: “Our traditional position is to oppose legislation in this area." What does "traditional position" or "traditional stand" mean? I ask the leaders of organized labor where would labor be if tradition had been respected and there was no Wagner Act or child labor laws? I ask those representing the American farmer where the farmer would be if tradition had been respected and there were no subsidies, no guaranteed purchase of his crops, and no price fixing by Government of his products? I ask those representing the retired and elderly, known rightly as our senior citizens, where they would be if tradition had been respected and there was no Social Security Act? Would we not be British subjects today if tradition had been respected?

Tradition is no criterion by which to judge the merits of proposed legislation. Tradition, if correctly interpreted and applied, means adherence to the doctrines of incentive, of individual opportunity, and protection of our free enterprise system.

Today, right now, we have laws-whether good or bad-to protect every phase of enterprise except the final stage of retail sales. Are then the shackles of tradition to be applied only to the independent store owner?

The quality stabilization bill is a precise remedy for a malady eating the vitals of our country. Its enactment isn't going to change our traditional way of life. It proposes to do one positive thing toward saving our way of life. That is all. It will help the small retailer by preventing unfair competition in those brand names on which he stays alive as a businessman by giving the manufacturer of those brand names the right to prevent abuse and degrading of them. It's that simple. But let us look further down the road. Let us promote a healthful economic climate that will tend to keep the brand name factories in this country instead of forcing the manufacturer to take his dies to foreign lands where with foreign materials and foreign labor he will build products to be shipped back here to compete on a price basis in our Nation's present jungle market.

There is not one who has testified, nor is there one Congressman or citizen, who will not proclaim he is indeed the friend of the small businessman. He is saying it now. And as he is saying it, he is watching his friend die.

So, Mr. Chairman, I ask in all sincerity-what is all this hullabaloo that is preventing the application of a simple, straightforward tourniquet that will keep the businessman from bleeding to death until somehow a panacea is devised?

A good example of the stall-the theorizing-the fiddling while Rome burnswas the testimony of Mr. Lee Loevinger of the Department of Justice who, without directly saying so, deliberately created doubts about the constitutionality of this bill while at the same time reiterating the traditional opposition of the Department of Justice to legislation in this area. Have you ever noticed that the Deparment of Justice is usually always opposed to proposed legislation?

The fact that both you and I can obtain opinions from 100 topflight constitutional lawyers disagreeing with Mr. Loevinger-opinions that will say the quality stabilization bill is fully constitutional and the most direct and fully workable concept yet devised-is beside the point. Because under our system of Government it is the function of Congress to make the laws: it is the function of the Government's agencies and bureaus to support and protect those laws; and it is the function of the Supreme Court to interpret those laws. So-what is all this verbal shooting for?

If the quality stabilization bill gives some protection to a brand name and the independent store in the present jungle of massacre, it is then worth the trial. Thus Congress will be reflecting its determination to protect our wonderful way of life and it will most of all be encouragement for the small businessman to continue his long hours and dedication to independence, service and place in the communities that make the backbone of America. What's behind the pressure to halt its trial? That is what worries me today. That is why I am here now. This is the only measure of medication that can immediately help. And the patient, Mr. Chairman, in the final analysis is our country.

I've said before I do not believe anyone wants to hurt the independent merchant. I'm also certain no American wants to harm or hinder the senior citizen to the fullest enjoyment of his twilight days. Plaintive letters are coming into my office in the past few days-and I expect to every other Congressman-stating the quality stabilization bill, H.R. 3669, is evil because surely it will increase the

price of their medicines. Who, Mr. Chairman, is instilling in these good people. these fears? Obvously it is not from their reading or studying H.R. 3669, which states that prescription drugs are excluded. They evidently have not been correctly informed by the inspirers of their missiles-that this bill puts a ceiling on prices as well as a floor. They very definitely have not been informed that this bill is purely voluntary and optional to manufacturers of a competitive prod uct--and that it will give them a standard of value to judge a true bargain instead of being lured into a store on a promise of a well-known brand name at less than cost, yet oftentimes going home with a cheap imitation made to sell for far less than they actually paid.

And they have not been reminded that they are living a longer, and a better and an easier life than did their immediate predecessors because of the incentive the expensive research and resultant developments-that made these beneficial medicines possible at all. As I remind the senior citizens that the quality stabilization bill, H.R. 3669, carefully exempts their prescriptions, medicines, and drugs, I also want to ask them, Do they really want to exterminate the small businessman, many of whom are brother senior citizens? Would they prefer a welfare state, wherein all business is handled by just a few giant combines or, by ultimate necessity, by the Government? Is this what they want for their children, for their grandchildren, and their descendants? Is this their desired legacy? Are their final days of life on this Earth going to be made happier by the misery, the failure, and the heartbreak of others? I do not think so. I have too much respect for these fine people to believe anything other than they have been duped as to the facts regarding the content or import of this quality stabilization bill.

I have stated that unless something is done soon it will be but a matter of a few years until all retail merchandising will be in the hands of a few giants. Scheduled to testify in these final days of House hearings was the National Association of Consumer Organizations. You of course need not be told that this actually was the association for closed-door discount houses. Now I understand there's a new association-the National Association of Mass Merchanddisers. It is members of the Mass Merchandisers who have often been quoted as bragging that it is only a matter of years until they control better than 80 percent of America's retail trade. I can, Mr. Chairman, better understand their interests in wanting to kill this bill-can understand it as I deplore it. I do not want to put them out of business. I do want to create ground rules whereby they have to compete fairly.

In these days of final hearings, it is also deploring to me that the National Farmers Union as well as the American Farm Bureau Federation has requested extra time to be heard-to be heard in testimony against the livelihood of the American retailer-against the crossroads grocer, hardware dealer, druggist, bicycle dealer, gas station operator-the people who meet with him at the town hall, the people whose kids go to school with his kids, the people who join in the parties at his home.

Both of us know, Mr. Chairman, that the Government-ourselves-have fixed the farmer's prices. We've gone further. We've established laws whereby he is paid for not producing-in order to "save our way of life." When the Government actually-not semantically-fixes prices, it is always in "the best interests of the consumer, country, and economy."

A very recent editorial in the New York Daily News, on agricultural Secretary Orville Freeman's wheat-control program on which farmers are requested to vote "yes" this May 21, stated, and I quote "As we understand the Freeman scheme, it would bring all U.S. wheat farmers under the strictest production control ever seen in this country. The Government would fix the prices the farmers would get for their wheat. Any farmer who refused to go along with the control scheme would be frozen out of wheat raising."

Isn't it incongruous that the farmer who gets "fixed" rates for not producing will tell you that the brand-name manufacturer, distributor, and retailer who serves the farmer as a neighborhood or area consumer has no rights to any protection?

How inconsistent can we be-representatives of the farmer demand that domestic cotton producers must sell their commodity to foreign manufacturers about 25 percent lower than to domestic manufacturers-and this, they say, is not price discrimination but instead is neighborly goodwill.

To quote the very able Raymond S. Reed from his column for Home Furnishings Daily on May 10-"One Government bureau calumniates, persecutes, and

prosecutes the manufacturer who merely stops selling a retailer who wrecks his brand name and price structure in the marketplace—while another bureau threatens to put any farmer, who cuts its fixed prices, out of business."

Last year, and again this year, a Washington, D.C., newspaper struck out in its editorial columns against the quality stabilization bill as fair trade "price fixing" under a new cloak. Now, any newspaper has the right to give its opinion and I shall never criticize it for such. But I would rather hope of a newspaper that it would research its material-and do a little reflection as to its own policies-before falling to prejudice or pressured bias. And most interesting was that this editorial was what we used to call "pot boiler"-meaning prepared in some other place and used as filler by newspapers-thereby saving them the expense of mind and money in creating their own stories. This "pot boiler" editorial attacking the quality stabilization bill was used throughout the country. But of most interest and significance to me was that these editorials inevitably appear right alongside or below the very definitely fixed price of the newspaper to the consumer and its fixed advertising rates. The senior citizen who for some reason--such as a requiem mass notice ad for a departed relative-would find no "bargain" at the newspaper-no sympathy at all for his advanced years or lesser income-he would pay the fixed price or get no notice. Where, oh where, is the golden rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?" I cannot help but be interested in learning of a newspaper's low percentage of advertising income from national brand name advertisers as compared with its income from ads by local discount houses and loss-leader operators. And I wonder again about sincerity and commonsense. And that is why I have taken this valuable committee's time.

It is even more deploring to me that certain members of the AFL-CIO are arguing against passage of this single-purpose lifesaving measure. Here again is a "traditional stand" preventing an objective study as to merits. There certainly are no Members of Congress more dedicated to the salutary principles of the labor movement than Ray Madden, Chet Holifield, Hubert Humphrey or myself. We have joined in introducing, and in fighting tooth and nail for immediate enactment of the quality stabilization bill. We have done so to promote the survival interest of the union movement. We look upon the quality stabilization bill as a means of increasing employment when such is of ultra importance to our national welfare and as a means of implementing the oft-stated code of AFL-CIO president, George Meany, to continue the quality of product, to ever upgrade it, and to create the incentives for new goods as the only way to insure and improve the lot of labor.

My esteemed colleague, Congressman Chet Holifield of California, has most eloquently and positively outlined many, many reasons why labor should be far out in the lead in support of quality stabilization. His testimony before this committee is a must study for every Congressman and certainly for the officers and members of the great AFL-CIO. I am not surprised that the directors of the Oklahoma AFL-CIO organization unanimously voiced their full support of this bill's passage into law. I am surprised that the national organization of the AFL-CIO has not been in the forefront of support for this bill.

I repeat now-where would labor be today if it had not adapted itself to modern needs by forcing experimentation of betterment for the good of the American worker. Where will labor be tomorrow if it continues to abet a cannibalistic marketplace which worsens day by day-not only to put the store owner out of business but to force the manufacturer of brand-name products to move to foreign countries, there to make cheaper products to send back in competition with his own American factory? Where is labor's future in supporting a distributive system that depends on automation, on profit from foreign nonunion products, and on duping the laborer himself, the greatest consumer in number, into buying goods not produced by him or in his interests? What kind of tradition calls for suicide?

Let me quote from Business Week of February 3, 1962:

"Food industry labor groups have sounded the alarm over the discounting invasion. At least 2 unions, the 350,000-member Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Retail Food Store employees and the Retail Clerks International Association, are launching drives to organize discount stores affiliated with food outlets. "President Toby Coletti, of Meat Cutters Local 342, says the discounters pose two main problems for labor:

“(1) "They've introduced a number of practices long since eliminated by