putting it in there will aid and abet the dishonest retailer in this way. was not going to dwell on it because it is in my brief.

We who are experts are always astonished at the degree of ignorance among the lay public when it comes to the geographical origin of furs. Such names, especially the arctic names like Russian, Greenland, Labrador, Canadian, carry almost a warranty of quality in the minds of these people. However, it is a fact very easily ascertainable by the committee that there are good, bad, and indifferent furs in every geographical origin and in every species. A dishonest retailer-puffing in the course of salesmanship is an old article-if the retailer says to the woman whom he presents with a beaver coat, "This is the finest Labrador beaver," she may or may not believe him. She may, if she is shrewd, say to him "That is puffing, I do not have to take it into account."

But if he has a label on there that says Canadian or Labrador beaver, that woman has virtually what she believes is a guaranty. That is the only objection that I can conceive of.

Mr. O'HARA. No woman would know whether it was leopard or rabbit, would she?

Mr. BERGNER. No, sir. And I must state most emphatically that I do not think there are any of us, and certainly in talking for myself, that would object to sitting down and writing any kind of legislation that would be aimed directly at whatever abuse actually exists.

I state that most emphatically. But what we do object to is wholesale penalty on the entire trade for something which does not exist where no legislation is necessary and which, mind you gentlemen, there was a statement here about the cost of administration, but what about the millions and millions of dollars involved in tagging and labeling the skins all the way up to the point of manufacture, to say nothing of the labor involved in breaking open bales and cases and putting them together again, which serves no useful purpose, which is no guaranty of anything, and does not do the least bit of good to the retail consumer.

That is what we object to. That is what our group objects to. That is what we see in the bill, as wrong and bad. That is what we

see as unnecessary.

We say the Federal Trade Commission has taken care of the situation and we are willing to sit with the Federal Trade Commission and plug up any loopholes which exist in their present rulings.

In closing, I am reminded of the words of the chairman of the committee at one point this afternoon, when he said he now has another reason for dissuading his wife for buying a fur garment, other than the mere monetary consideration. That worried me a great deal, gentlemen, because it is not true, but absolutely untrue, that there is any wholesale or even retail abuse of the kind which would appear from Mr. Miller's testimony in the fur.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, your opinion is that whatever may have existed in the past does not now exist.

Mr. BERGNER. I submit to you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, yes. The CHAIRMAN. To what do you attribute that change or circumstance?

Mr. BERGNER. To principally the fact that the Federal Trade Commission came in and said "Boys, look now, are you going to

behave yourselves?" "Yes?" "Fine, we will sit down and write a set of rules."

And we did. And the advertising did clean itself up under those rules.

The CHAIRMAN. You say that the Federal Trade Commission has done an admirable job, in your opinion. What have you to say to the fact that the Commission came in here and asked for a bill giving it more power in order that they can be more effectual?

Mr. BERGNER. It is my opinion that this piece of legislation did not originate with the Federal Trade Commission.

The CHAIRMAN. They approved it.

Mr. BERGNER. I have read what the Federal Trade Commission said on the subject and what Mr. Miller had to say.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you not think that this committee should give very careful consideration to any suggestion that comes from an agency which has performed the splendid service that you now give them credit for?

Mr. BERGNER. I think so, yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I think so, too.

Mr. BERGNER. I think so without question.

But I told you that one of the important points I wanted to make was the fact that the Federal Trade Commission has not approved of the bill in its present form, has suggested that amendments are necessary.

The amendments go to a great extent, to our criticism of the bill. And that is, that a great deal of the practice involved in its provisions is unnecessary and unreasonable.

As a matter of fact, most of it cannot be done. Certainly it is unnecessary if you just want to get at some form of fraud at one very, very particular point.

The CHAIRMAN. It would have been and still would be very helpful to the committee to have you folks who are interested in maintaining integrity and honesty in the sale of fur garments to suggest the amendments that you think should be made to the bill.

Mr. BERGNER. Mr. Chairman, I think we would be most happy to do so, but, so that you do not get the wrong impression as to why we came here, and as to why we have nothing but opposition for the bill, instead of having something to say for it, I am reminded of the fact that Mark Antony came to bury Caesar and not to praise him.

We came down here faced with a bill which, to us, looked very vicious, and we came here to oppose it and to oppose it very violently. If in the course of this hearing it turns out that a job can be done, I think we would be very happy to sit down and do it.

The CHAIRMAN. Constructive criticism is always helpful.

Mr. BERGNER. Of course. Yes, sir. On the other hand, the question is, What is the purpose of the hearing?

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, I can see also that you may have come down here only in opposition to the bill because, in your opinion, there is no injustice existing at the present time.

Mr. BERGNER. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman, certainly at the level where we operate there is not any. At least we have not seen them and we do not know that they are there, and believe me we would be glad to have them pointed out to us.

Mr. O'HARA. You are dealing at a level of one expert dealing at arm's length with another expert.

Mr. BERGNER. Mr. O'Hara, certainly the least that we can say is that if there is no evil at that level, why put anything in the bill to cause annoyance at that level?

The CHAIRMAN. The testimony so far, by yourself, Mr. Miller, and the president of the association, would indicate only that you are speaking for your own interests, the same as you charge those who sponsored the legislation with doing.

What this committee is interested in doing is looking at not only the fur industry, but also the consumer side.

Mr. BERGNER. I think it is a laudable attitude on the part of the committee. We know that those levels are going to testify, and undoubtedly they will testify on that subject.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Busbey made some reference to the laws. It prompts me to say that I was a member of this committee when those enactments were made back in 1933 and 1934. The testimony before us dealt with the past as to what had been done, but it was the past that gave justification for the passing of the legislation to prevent it in the future.

Mr. BERGNER. May I say, Mr. Chairman, that the distinction I made was that what Mr. Miller testified to was the distant past and not the recent past or the present. That is a very important distinction, in my mind.

There is not anything at the present time, right up to the retailer, to the best of our knowledge, and we are pretty certain about it. We say, too, insofar as the retailer is concerned, and I want to be very careful, that I do not know of any wholesale abuse there, but we are willing to submit that it may exist.

The CHAIRMAN. I think most of the abuses have been in the retail end and not the wholesale end.

Mr. BERGNER. I am reminded of Mr. Miller's analogy. He brought in this case of the traffic lights, a very good case in point, but you do not regulate necessity, or requirement for the miner who digs the iron ore, to label it "This ore is not to be used on a vehicle which is going to violate traffic regulations," nor do you require of the manufacturer of the vehicle to put it on the vehicle. It is put on the books so that the individual who uses the car knows that he is not to violate the traffic laws.

Mr. O'HARA. Would you say that the truth in fabrics law was a good law? That it would work, that it has worked out as a good law? Mr. BERGNER. I think so; yes.

But I submit to you there, also, that there is not any similarity between this law-not "law"-this proposed legislation as it now stands, and the Wool Labeling Act, because, for the Wool Labeling Act to be similar to this it would have to require that every strand of wool that is woven into a yard of fabric bear a tag stating the animal from which it is derived, the country from which that animal came, and so forth.

Mr. O'HARA. The industry, in preparing the furs, could keep the Russian furs together and the Persian furs together, and do a good job. Mr. BERGNER. They do a pretty good job now.

Mr. O'HARA. Yes. I say, without making such a play of the difficulty of foreign furs and domestic furs.

Mr. BERGNER. I understand the difficulty which he dwelled on was the labeling or tagging. Yes. That would be very costly.

Mr. O'HARA. I say there are other ways. Suppose I take a group of furs to a furrier, and I say "I want a fur coat made from this." He has many other furs on hand. Do you mean to tell me that he has any difficulty keeping my furs separated?

Mr. BERGNER. No. I think he does a pretty good job of it right now, and without the necessity of any tagging or labeling. Of course, that is not practiced, and yet the job done is a good one.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bergner, we thank you for your appearance before us today.

Mr. BERGNER. Mr. Chairman, would you mind just 15 seconds more?

Hatters' furs, I had that on my memo.

Over 100,000,000 skins of rabbit and hare and other pieces that go into the manufacture of fur felt hats would be affected by this law, without the slightest necessity, without any reason whatsoever.

The CHAIRMAN. If we could do anything to improve some of the hats that I saw

Mr. BERGNER. That would not improve it; no.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be heard tonight.

The CHAIRMAN. We have one more witness. Mr. Sidney Friedman, counsel for the Afghan American Trading Co., New York City, who informs me that he wishes to present remarks that will not exceed 5 minutes in length, and he has an engagement that requires him to leave the City tonight.

STATEMENT BY SIDNEY FRIEDMAN, AFGHAN AMERICAN TRADING CO., NEW YORK CITY

Mr. FRIEDMAN. It will not take more than 5 minutes. The previous speakers have covered most of the points involved, but I will cover certain practical matters to which they did not refer.

The CHAIRMAN. It is getting to a point, I think, where we could all agree that the previous witnesses have nearly covered the subject. Mr. FRIEDMAN. Yes, sir.

The company for which I am appearing is the Afghan American Trading Co. That is a corporation which is owned by nationals of Afghanistan.

That company imports into the United States between $25,000,000 and $30,000,000 worth of skins each year. It is perhaps, with the exception of Amtorg, the Russian agency, the largest dealer in the world in fur skins.

It imports for the most part Persian lamb skins, importing most of the Persian lamb skins which are imported into the United States.

As I understand it, Persian lamb constitutes the largest volume fur, dollar-wise, larger than any other skin that is dealt in, or turned into fur articles, in the United States.

The Afghan Trading Co., of course, has a vital interest in this legislation since the economy of Afghanistan is to a very large extent dependent upon what happens with the Persian lamb skins that are imported into the United States.

It is particularly important to these people for certain practical reasons, which other witnesses have not referred to and which I will now present.

Mr. Mohammed Omar, the head of the Afghan Trading Co., was unable to appear himself because of a very serious automobile accident he had recently, but he did give me some figures in which I think you would be interested.

He told me that he estimates that the cost of unpacking the skins after they arrive here and marking them as required by the bill, and then packing them back into bales, would cost about $20 a bale; and since the Afghan Co. imports approximately 15,000 bales of skins each year, it would mean that that one company alone would have an additional cost for labeling skins of about $250,000 to $300,000 for that one item alone.

Then, as Mr. Mann pointed out previously, there are additional items of expense arising from the unpacking and packing; the fact is that when the bales are unpacked and then repacked, the size increases to about double what they were originally. This means increased storage and transportation expenses which did not exist before. Even more important than that is this fact:

When the skins get here they sometimes remain in the United States for several months before they are processed. In this pending period they are stored. And if the bales are opened for the purpose of labeling there is considerable danger-and there cannot be any question about this-that they will be seriously damaged by moths which get into the skins after the original bales are opened. This happens because it is impossible to rebale the skins as they are originally baled and chemically treated in Afghanistan.

In addition to that, and even more important, is this fact:

The chief element of quality, that is, the elements which distinguish an expensive Persian lamb from a cheaper Persian lambskin are two: No. 1 is luster, and No. 2 is the curl in the skin. Whether or not they are large or small, and whether symmetrical or not.

Mr. Omar, who is undoubtedly the leading expert in this field, states that if the skins are unpacked and permitted to remain open, or even repacked in the United States, that the quality of the skins will rapidly depreciate because of loss of luster and modification of the curl.

In consequence, he says, that the effect, automatically, of opening those bales and labeling each one of those skins would be to reduce the value of those skins up to 30 percent, that is, 7 to 10 million dollars a year. The consequence would be an automatic reduction in the income of Afghanistan, a country friendly to the United States, which uses the dollars acquired from the sale of the skins to purchase American goods.

Mr. O'HARA. When do they open these bales?

Mr. FRIEDMAN. According to the bill, sir, they would be opened after they got to the United States. It states that it shall be done by the person who puts them in interstate commerce.

It cannot be done in Afghanistan, under the bill, as it now rea ls. Mr. O'HARA. They would still have to unbale them when they get them over here?