Mr. POAGE. Do you, or did you ever teach school?

Miss WYCKOFF. Yes.

Mr. POAGE. And how did you get around the dilemma you just described?

Miss WYCKOFF. You know, when you begin teaching school you have more courage, perhaps, than when you know too much.

Mr. POAGE. When you began you told the truth, and then you found the butter people didn't like you to tell the truth?

Miss WYCKOFF. It so happens I didn't get into any difficulties.
Mr. POAGE. You were teaching in the city?

Miss WYCKOFF. No; in a small town.

Mr. MURRAY. I would like to ask the witness if she realizes we are making all the margarine now that we have allocations of fat for. Miss WYCKOFF. One of my points was that low-income families need to put every dollar that they can get into the best food that they can get. If you take off the State and Federal taxes, and they would have just that much more money to put into the food dollars. We are using butter and oleo both.

Mr. MURRAY. Do you realize that that quarter of a cent may or may not be offset by subsidies on these vegetable oils going into oleomargarine?

Miss WYCKOFF. I don't understand your question.

Mr. MURRAY. I said, did the lady realize that this quarter-of-a-cent Federal tax may or may not be more than offset by the subsidies that have been extended to the vegetable fats?

Mr. POAGE. Will the gentleman from Wisconsin tell us whether that is a fact or not?

Mr. MURRAY. The gentleman does not ever make statements that he cannot back up.

Mr. POAGE. I am asking whether it is a fact or not.

Mr. MURRAY. I made the statement.

Mr. POAGE. Did you make it as a statement of fact?
Mr. ZIMMERMAN. You may proceed.

Mr. MURRAY. That is the point, that probably the subsidies will offset the quarter-of-a-cent tax. I haven't figured it out, but have you taken into consideration that there will be subsidies for these vegetable fats, which will show millions of dollars loss each year? Some of this fat is funneled through this oleomargarine.

Miss WYCKOFF. The consumers are interested in getting food at the least cost at which it can be produced, and they expect business to take care of the cost of production, and they expect business to take care of the cost of production of it. When you put a tax on oleomargarine, just because it is oleomargarine and not butter, it should be still lower if you have subsidies to help offset it.

Mr. POAGE. I don't understand the gentleman yet.

Mr. MURRAY. I would like to get this straightened out. If 1⁄2 cent a pound on vegetable fat we will say, is the arbitrary figure set up as a subsidy on cottonseed and soybean oil, the oleomargarine manufacturers will have a small subsidy, then whoever buys the oleomargarine is still paying the quarter of a cent tax, and still has a big advantage.

Mr. POAGE. Will the gentleman from Wisconsin yield there. I don't understand his question. Do you mean to say as a fact that

there was a subsidy paid on these oils that are used in the making of oleomargarine in excess of the half of a cent a pound?

Mr. MURRAY. I am surprised that the gentleman from Texas did not read the President's message.

Mr. POAGE. I am not saying what the facts are. whether you said that or not.

I am asking

Mr. MURRAY. I am saying that the Government is subsidizing fats, which will cost some $30,000,000 according to the President's message. Mr. POAGE. I am not questioning that is the fact, but I didn't understand you so to state.

Mr. MURRAY. Some of this fat funnels through and has been a subsidy on vegetables oils

Mr. POAGE. I am not questioning what is happening. I am asking whether you said it, whether you so stated. And, if so, how much is the subsidy on cottonseed oil.

Mr. MURRAY. I didn't say there was any on cottonseed oil. I say that there was a subsidy of millions on some vegetable oils.

Mr. POAGE. Well

Mr. MURRAY. I didn't say there was a subsidy only on cottonseed oil.

Mr. POAGE. I am asking you, is there a subsidy on cottonseed oil and soybean oil. Those are the two main products that go into oleomargarine.

Mr. MURRAY. I don't know from memory. Flaxseed, I know is holding its own, but there has been a subsidy of some 12 cent per pound on cottonseed and soybean oil.

Mr. POAGE. Flaxseed does not go into oleomargarine.

Mr. MURRAY. Oh, the gentleman is away behind on his information.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Gentlemen, this seems to be simply a controversy between you, and the witness is here to be questioned. Proceed, Mr. Murray.

Mr. MURRAY. As to these school lunches, isn't it rather a reflection on all of us to have our children drinking that skim milk that is being given out at the schools? When the butter fat is being obtained by the man with the price?

Miss WYCKOFF. I am not ready to speak on any other subject but this one, because I speak for an association.

Mr. MURRAY. But if we are to furnish food cheaply and fairly to our people, we have to take everything into consideration. We are using lots of skim milk in our schools now. If we want to provide food, taking your premise, and I subscribe to it, and we want to give the low-income groups all the food we can, I personally do not want to subscribe to a program that puts a price of 22 cents a quart on skim milk, because the food value, as you must know from your experience, would make it really worth more than that in comparison to whole milk at 15 cents a quart. Isn't that right?

Miss WYCKOFF. I am not ready to speak on anything except this margarine matter. I am sorry.

Mr. MURRAY. There are a lot of ways you can get that vitamin A. You could squeeze the juice out of sweetpotatoes and still get it.

Miss WYCKOFF. That is the homemaker's point of view. She doesn't like that. She wants butter first, if she has the money, and if she can't get that, she wants colored margarine that she can feed to

her family without having to buy it, and then go home and take the time to stir in the color.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. We thank you for your appearance.

We will next hear Mrs. Caroline F. Ware, representing the American Association of University Women.

STATEMENT OF DR. CAROLINE WARE, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN

Dr. WARE. My name is Caroline F. Ware; I live in Vienna, Va., and I am the authorized representative of the American Association of University Women, an organization of approximately 70,000 college and university graduates, organized in approximately 900 branches from one end of the country to the other.

For many years our association has supported legislation in the consumer interest. We arrive at our legislative program only after exhaustive study by the branches of our association, and after adoption at our conventions of such legislative program, and it is under that authorization that I come before you today.

We are supporting this bill to repeal the taxes and license fees on margarine as a piece of needed legislation in the consumer interest. We are opposed to trade barriers and other measures which obstruct the flow of food to consumers. The present margarine tax and license fees constitute such barriers. We are strongly in favor of measures which insure that consumers will know what they are buying. We are opposed to this legislation as we would be to legislation which put a burden on rayon, as mentioned by my colleague, or, if the rubber people didn't like leather and got a special tax on leather, we would also be against that. In other words, we are against special penalizing legislation which interferes with the free flow of commodities, especially food commodities from the producer to the consumer. Mr. ANDRESEN. Do you yield for a question?

Dr. WARE. Yes.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Do you believe in a free flow of commodities over the world or just within the Nation?

Dr. WARE. That seems to me to be a question which is irrelevant at the present time.

Mr. ANDRESEN. You mentioned that you were in favor of a free flow of commodities. You said that?

Dr. WARE. Yes; and I am speaking

Mr. ANDRESEN. And against barriers.

Dr. WARE. I am speaking with reference to flow within the United States and will, if I may, decline to enter into a consideration of the flow of commodities outside the United States.

On the other hand, we are strongly in favor of measures which insure that consumers will know what they are buying. The Food and Drug Administration's standards for oleomargarine, together with the requirement that the product be identified by the label lets the consumer know what he is buying and assures him of a product which meets minimum standards.

Were the label requirement not added, I could not come here and speak for my association in support of this measure, but it is because there are adequate regulations which make the consumer know what

92417-43-18

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 1/2 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