he is buying and therefore know that he is not buying something else, that lead me to support this legislation.

While taxes and license fees on margarine are objectionable at all times, they are doubly offensive now when they are an obstruction to the meeting of wartime food needs, and to the far operation of wartime rationing,

Now, in somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the grocery stores in the country the consumers cannot use their ration stamps judiciously for, thanks to Federal and State tax and license barriers, no margarine is sold.

I am one of the lucky consumers. I can buy and do buy margarine in my State when I cannot get butter, which is most of the time. I serve it to my family white, because I am not going to go through the fuss of coloring it. I am one of the lucky one-quarter or one-third that can find it when I cannot find butter, and I am concerned with the two-thirds or three-quarters of the stores where margarine is not available to people like me who want to buy it.

Passage of this bill repealing Federal taxes will not, obviously, put margarine on the shelves of all these stores, for State taxes and license fees remain. This bill will, however, remove those barriers which are Nation-wide, and will set an example which we hope the States will follow. Groups in our association are already seeking repeal of some of the most prohibitive of the State laws. The Wisconsin State Division of the American Association of University Women, at its annual conference, April 16, 1943, resolved:

Inasmuch as the Constitution of the United States prohibits tariff barriers between States we move that, in view of the critical world situation, restriction on the importation of butter substitutes into Wisconsin be removed as quickly as practical.

I think, Mr. Chairman, I can offer no stronger evidence of the opposition of our association to the practices which this bill will, in part, correct, than this action by our membership in the leading dairy State.

Mr. HOPE. You spoke of the areas in which the consumers do not have an opportunity to buy oleomargarine because of the fact that the stores did not sell it. It is a fact, is it not, that most of these localities are in the South? Is that your understanding?

Dr. WARE. I am using the summary statement of the National Research Council. I haven't myself gone back of that generalization. Mr. HOPE. Well, now, I have here, and I would like to call your attention to it, a publication entitled "Barriers to Internal Trade in Farm Products," issued by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, United States Department of Agriculture, and it was furnished to all the members of the committee by the sponsors of this legislation. The figures which they show are not as up to date as I would like, but they are the latest I have seen and they indicate that States generally in the North are not the ones where there is difficulty in buying oleomargarine.

I call your attention to the fact that in Kansas this report shows that 87.1 percent of the retail stores sell oleomargarine; Indiana, 80.8 percent; Ohio, 75.9 percent; and so on.

Now, when you get down into the South, where they produce the oils from which they make the oleomargarine, they evidently do not

like their own product, because in the State of Mississippi, only 6.7 percent of the stores carry oleomargarine; Arkansas, only 17.8 percent; Louisiana, 20.4 percent; North Carolina, 20.6 percent; Georgia, 20.8 percent; Alabama, 21.1 percent, South Carolina, 21.6 percent; Kentucky, 24.2 percent; Texas, 28.3 percent; Virginia, 29.7 percent; which would indicate the principal bias is right down in the country where the products going to make up margarine are produced. They evidently do not like to consume their own production. They want to eat butter, and let the people up North eat the oleomargarine, if these figures tell the story.

Dr. WARE. Under the present tax system the burden falls most heavily, of course, on the little neighborhood stores that have a small volume of trade but have to pay a high flat tax, and it is therefore particularly hard on the people who are likely to be low-income people who have to trade in their neighborhood stores.

Mr. ANDRESEN. When you refer to the high tax for the little stores, it is 50 cents a month, or $6 per year. We were told here yesterday by a member of the National Retail Grocers Association that the average margin of profit on margarine was 4 cents a pound, while the tax of 50 cents a month would be about 11/2 cents a day. So that with a margin of 4 cents a pound on the retail sale, it wouldn't take very much to absorb the tax.

Dr. WARE. It depends, of course, on the volume of sales, but all of these matters, so far as I am concerned, and so far as my association is concerned, are of secondary importance. However you work the arithmetic, the point is that this is a discriminatory tax on a particular product and we are against it on that ground.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Would you object to the sale of oleomargarine without any tax on it if it were made in part from imported coconut oil? Dr. WARE. That is a matter which is also irrelevant. The point is it is a standard product, standardized by the Food and Drug Administration, properly labeled, and it is a healthful product, and as such my association is against penalizing it by taxation.

Mr. ANDRESEN. All you are interested in, then, and your organization, is that it is a wholesome product, irrespective of the source from which it comes?

Dr. WARE. That is right. It is a wholesome, nourishing product, properly standardized and properly labeled.

Mr. MURRAY. Have you had training in nutrition?

Dr. WARE. No; I am not a nutritionist.

Mr. MURRAY. I think most people would subscribe to your statement that they do not believe in these trade barriers between the States. I just wonder if a lot of this heat that we see engendered is not the result of trade barriers; and I think you will admit that we can have trade barriers without having taxes; isn't that true?

Dr. WARE. Oh, yes.

Mr. MURRAY. To give you a concrete example, here is the Washington milk market. It is the only city where Congress has anything to say about it.

Dr. WARE. Yes.

Mr. MURRAY. I would like to ask you why you suppose there has never been an effort to lift that trade barrier. I believe that milk that meets certain health requirements should be allowed to be shipped

any place in the United States. I just wanted to call that to your attention. You are from Virginia?

Dr. WARE. Yes. I am not only from Virginia, but I am a farmer in Virginia as well-not a dairy farmer, however.

Mr. MURRAY. And the milk that is being produced there is getting one subsidy of 7 cents a pound for butterfat, and another of 10 cents, and then there is also a subsidy on the hay of $14 per ton. The price of butterfat is over a dollar a pound. That is what more or less causes this heat, because the people out in the Middle West, in Mr. Andresen's State, for example, cannot ship their milk down here to this market whenever they want to, because there is a trade barrier built up under the guise of a health requirement.

Dr. WARE. I am not supporting that, Mr. Congressman. Just because something else could stand correction hasn't anything to do with whether this particular problem here needs correction.

Mr. MURRAY. You are interested in the cost of living. I have seen milk sell in this town for 14 cents a quart when the people in Mr. Andresen's State were getting a little over 2 cents a quart.

Dr. WARE. Mr. Murray, there is no argument on that question whatever. Whatever the fact may be, or however bad they may be, hasn't anything to do with whether there should be a tax on margarine or not. Mr. MURRAY. I think it has quite a lot to do with it.

Dr. WARE. The tax on margarine is, in my view, and in the view of my association, bad in itself, and if there are other taxes under similar circumstances, they are also bad.

Mr. MURRAY. Don't you think we are going to have opposition from Virginia if we allow interstate commerce of filled milk? If they added fortified vegetable fat and then sold it as milk in any of the markets here in Washington?

Dr. WARE. I cannot speak to that question.

Mr. MURRAY. Don't you think we would have opposition from the milk people on that?

Dr. WARE. I don't put it beyond them, but that is not my affair and it is not what I came here to discuss.

Mr. HILL. First of all, I think you have made a very fine statement on behalf of your association. I happen to know about it, and it is doing a great work. Let me ask you this, What have you done in your organization to work out a plan to keep public institutionsfor instance, you can go into a hotel and they take this butter or oleo out of the original package and I can't tell what I am eating when they put it in my plate-what have you done through your investigations to work out a plan where, when I go into a cafe or a hotel, or a public institution, I will know I am not buying oleo which is substituted for butter?

Dr. WARE. You have a real point there, I think. Yesterday I came here to testify and did not get a chance, so I went for my lunch over to the Supreme Court Building, to the cafeteria there, and very properly there was a sign there saying "We are serving a butter substitute today." That let me know what I was taking, and that seemed to meproper. But I thought at the time it should have said "We are serving oleomargarine today."

Mr. HILL. I have never seen one of those signs, and I am pretty sure that I have been eating oleo at several places in this town. I haven't seen anything anywhere to indicate that it was oleo.

Dr. WARE. I am sure the members of my association would be very sympathetic to local ordinances or any proper requirement for identification.

Mr. HILL. You really think, then, that the cafe that brings out the "butter" on a little plate ought to tell me, if that is the case, that it is colored oleo and not butter?

Dr. WARE. I don't know that the waiter should lean over your shoulder and tell you by whispering in your ear, but it may be that it should be on the menu or posted, or in some way identified.

Mr. HILL. You favor that?

Dr. WARE. We are definitely in favor of the identification of a product from beginning to end, and I think you have a real question there.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. We thank you very much for your appearance and for your statement.

We will now hear Mrs. Thomasina W. Johnson.

STATEMENT OF MRS. THOMASINA WALKER JOHNSON, LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NATIONAL NONPARTISAN COUNCIL ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS OF THE ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA SORORITY

Mrs. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, I am Mrs. Thomasina Walker Johnson, legislative representative of the National Non-Partisan Council on Public Affairs of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Our national headquarters are located at 961 Florida Avenue NW., Washington, D. C.

The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is the oldest Negro college women's organization in America. Its membership is 6,000 college and university women in 152 chapters in 46 States. Each one of our members is a leader of some kind in her community-teachers, social workers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, and professional women in all walks of life.

I also appear for the National Council of Negro Women, of which we are a member, which is composed of affiliated organizations representing 800,000 Negro women from all walks of life.

I am also appearing for the International Ladies Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, representing 22,000 women in 48 States and the Dominion of Canada.

All of the women whom I represent are consumers and housewives as well, and it is that light in which I wish to present testimony.

We should like to say that we are highly in favor of the passage of H. R. 2400, which is a bill to eliminate a Federal trade restriction in the form of a revenue measure against domestic margarine by repealing the one-fourth cent per pound on uncolored margarine and 10 cents per pound on yellow colored margarine; the additional tax of $600 for manufacturers and $480 or $200 for wholesalers, $48 for retailers for the sale of yellow colored margarine, and the $6 for the retailer of uncolored margarine, as well as related restrictive provisions.

We appeal to you to repeal these taxes so that we might be able to buy oleomargarine along with all other food products. We are now faced with a situation where we cannot buy it in many places through

out the country and of having to pay an excesesive rate when we are able to buy it. Thousands of the women whom we represent are in the low-income groups or in low fixed-income groups whom the rise in wages in war work has not affected. With the scarcity of butter and the rise in cost of butter they have had to pay prices they could not afford, or worse still, they have had to go without, because the wholesalers and retailers will not handle margarine as long as these tremendous taxes are imposed not only by the Federal Government but by State governments as well.

There are many places where margarine may be bought, but the housewife must add the coloring in her own kitchen, because of the great difference in the amount of tax for the sale of colored margarine. This process could be done better and more cheaply by the manufacturer. When this is done by the manufacturer the exhorbitant tax must be paid by the consumer.

We believe that taxes as revenue should not be levied on food of any kind.

We as consumers do not wish to be deprived of the right to buy colored or uncolored margarine at any place, the present restrictive taxes make this impossible. We are further unalterably opposed to absorbing this unnecessary tax rate on a badly needed food when we are able to find a store selling margarine.

We do not believe this tax is just or justified by any criteria. We do not believe that the enterprise of any industry should be taxed while others are not taxed. Why must margarine be taxed while other foodstuffs are not taxed?

Margarine is a good food, it is a nutritious food, much needed and in demand by low-income and low-fixed-income groups and we strongly urge that taxes which prohibit its sale be repealed.

Gentlemen, we cannot urge you too strongly to repeal the taxes on margarine through the passage of H. R. 2400.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. We thank you very much for your appearance. Now, then, is there any other witness listed here who wishes to testify?

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY WRIGHT JOHNSON, REPRESENTING THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS

Mrs. JOHNSON. My name is Mrs. Mary Wright Johnson, representing the District of Columbia Federation of Women's Clubs, the Women's Economic Council of the United States, and the Housekeepers' Alliance of the District of Columbia, a consumer and a housewife. Mr. ZIMMERMAN. You may proceed.

Mrs. JOHNSON. I have not a prepared statement. I have taken some notes, and I have some information that I would like to get across to you.

This resolution was offered in the resolution committee of the District of Columbia Federation of Women's Clubs, from the Housekeepers' Alliance, who had passed it. That committee was composed of Mrs. Frank M. Shortell, Mrs. Bruce Baird, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Charles H. Bair, andMrs. Ruth H. Snodgrass.

Whereas oleomargarine is a wholesome and nutritious low-cost food product;

and