PARAGRAPH 261-ONIONS.

United States took less than 15 per cent, Belgium 22 per cent, Germany about 30 per cent, and Holland about 15 per cent, the remainder being divided up among various other countries of the world.

We should be in a position in this country to handle all the Cuban crop and supply the other countries.

Some people claim that high duties are maintained to protect the American workingman, but as the bees do not draw any salary no protection is necessary for the workingman.

Yours, very respectfully,

AMERICAN COUSULAR SERVICE,

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, January 9, 1913.

The MUTUAL PURCHASING Co., New York.

DEAR SIRS: In reply to your letter of the 27th ultimo I have to say that figures for 1912 are not yet available. In 1911 there was exported from Puerto Plata 5,365 gallons of honey, valued at $2,486 (none to the United States); from Monte Cristi 22,610 gallons, valued at $9,844 (none to the United States); and from Samana 3,776 gallons, valued at $1,824, of this 3,156, valued at $1,501, went to the United States. The total value of honey exported from the Dominican Republic in 1911 was $58,846. One shipment of honey to the United States was invoiced from this office in 1910, none in 1909, 8,267 pounds in 1912. Germany and France, I believe, take most of the Dominican honey.

By April 1 I probably can give you the 1912 figures for the ports of this district is you still require them.

Regretting that they are not available now, I am,

Very truly yours,

PARAGRAPH 260.

(Signed) CHARLES M. HATHAWAY, jr., American Consul.

Hops, sixteen cents per pound; hop extract and lupulin, fifty per centum ad valorem.

Onions, forty cents per bushel of fifty-seven pounds; garlic, one cent per pound.

For garlic, see Italian Chamber of Commerce, page 2681; and for onions, see also James W. Nye, page 2789.

ONIONS.

TESTIMOMY OF JOHN H. DAVIS, REPRESENTING THE SOUTHERN TEXAS TRUCK GROWERS' ASSOCIATION.

The witness was duly sworn by the chairman.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I have been listening to discussions here on the onion tariff, why we want it, and all those things. I believe Mr. Hancock said that the tariff was a local issue, did he not? I believe that myself, that every one of us in our peculiar sections want something. We have a tariff of 40 cents per bushel on onions, and we tell you that if you take it off we will starve to death.

I want to state that I am representing here what is known as the Southern Texas Truck Growers' Association. Seven years ago we realized that we could not do business at home unless we had some way of competing with the people in the market. For that reason there was an organization of farmers formed, and there is not a man allowed to be on the board of directors of this organization unless he be a farmer and actually engaged in the industry. This organization has sought

PARAGRAPH 261-ONIONS.

to bring together the two ends of what is necessary for success—that is, the market end and the producing end. We found that in the beginning of 1906 the commission men, while they were just as honest as they could be, were getting about all that we produced, and that we were absolutely farming at an expense before 1906. Since that time we have maintained a central office in our State and five other central offices, distributed throughout the United States, in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and several other places. We maintain those offices for about eight weeks during the market season in order to see that the farmer gets what is coming to him; that is, the market price or market value of his stuff; we do not want anything

more.

Now, as to the question of tariff. We have heard, if you will allow me, Mr. Chairman, this evening from Bermuda. A foreign country comes here and asks the Congress of this country to legislate in their behalf. That is something that I believe--I do not know; I may be mistaken-was never done before, and I do not think that such a thing was ever asked before any Congress in the world.

Mr. HILL. Never.

Mr. DAVIS. I can not understand that. Now, I do not know whether it is in order for me to say this, but such men have sold to me onion seed in two sacks and from one sack of seed not a plant came up and the other was no account. I do not know whether that is in order or not, but I could not help saying it. Now, he said that they had been forced to reduce the Bermuda onion crop from a 400,000 crate crop to a 150,000 crate crop, that is, while this tariff has been standing at 40 cents per bushel, and he comes back here and asks you to put back that tariff on American produce and produce growers, so that he may bring his stuff here and continue to sell it to us. Now, some of you may be acquainted with our friend Hanson, over in Mexico. I have a letter in my valise at the hotel in which he says, "Davis, if possible, prevent any reduction in the onion tariff." Now, gentlemen, you have it from Bermuda, a foreign country, on one hand saying "Take the tariff off," and you have Mexico, on the other hand, saying "Keep it on." And what do we say? Gentlemen, as the representative of this organization, which is trying to bring the two ends of the industry together, I say "Let it alone." I believe we are thoroughly protected and I believe the law of supply and demand for the farmer, for the manufacturer, and for every other industry that we have among us, will bring about success as long as American energy is behind it.

Mr. HILL. Do we import onions from Mexico?

The

Mr. DAVIS. There is another correction I want to make. gentleman from Bermuda said the Bermuda onion which they give us is better than the Bermuda onion produced in Texas. Gentlemen, we have just "out-Bermudaed" Bermuda so much that we have run them out of the market. We can produce the finest flavored Bermuda onion ever produced, and that is proven by the fact that we have put the Bermuda onion out of business. Now, answering your question, Mexico has, down along the Tampico coast, some 800 or 900 acres that this year for the first time will be planted in onions. Now, the Bermuda onions from Texas, the Bermuda onions from Mexico, and from the Bermuda Islands come in almost at the same

PARAGRAPH 261-ONIONS.

time. The onions from Bermuda and the onions from Mexico come in 20 days later than the onions from Texas, and those onions fill in that gap; that is, they fill in the gap between the time of the coming in of what is known as the common onion in the United States, in the spring, and the season of the old onions of the year before. The Bermuda onions fill in that gap, and it is a good thing for the country to have them coming in to the market at that time. Now, I do not believe we are going to be so seriously affected if you take this protection off, so far as making something out of our business is concerned, but I do not believe it is just that the American farmers should have something taken away from them and taken out of the values that they have placed in their machinery, and so on, in order to grow onions. It costs about $400 or $500 an acre in southern Texas, where we are growing this stuff, to prepare an acre in which to plant onions. I heard the questions asked about the pumping business there, and I want to say that it actually costs to put our land under irrigation something like $400 an acre. Now, then, we have this money invested in that industry and we have in this organization 2,700 members growing onions to-day.

Now, as to this tariff I do not know just what to say; I am betwixt the devil and the sea; I am right between and I do not know what to do with it. I do not know whether it will help us to take it off or help us to have it kept on. I just can not say.

Now, talking about that cabbage business. This organization seeks to correct that very thing which you are talking about. Two weeks ago, gentlemen, in Pittsburgh there were 125 carloads of cabbages standing on the tracks. Ten carloads were sold at between $7 and $8 a ton, and the balance of them, gentlemen, rotted, and when asked why they did not put them on the market and give to the people that commodity, the answer was "If we ever get the price down we can never get it up." That is a peculiar condition, is it not? The CHAIRMAN. Your time has expired.

Mr. DAVIS. I believe I have the privilege of filing my brief?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS. I say in this little paper which I have prepared that I believe this organization is aiming at the right point, and our office at San Antonio has compiled, for the last 7 years, every possible statistic along every possible line affecting our business, and I will be very glad to furnish those statistics, or any other information we may have, if the committee should desire them. I thank you very much.

The WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE,

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 20, 1913.

House of Representatives.

GENTLEMEN: I am here to present the claims of the Southern Texas Truck Growers' Association. This organization is now marketing approximately 60 per cent of the produce in the territory indicated by the name of the association. It is a cooperative organization, managed and controlled wholly by a board of directors composed of farmers.

Onions is the product for which the marketing agency was originally formed that the growers might, as it were, be protected against themselves.

The question of tariff has not, to this time, entered into our consideration, and we have certainly had troubles enough without having the injection of pauper labor from abroad to contend against.

PARAGRAPH 261-ONIONS.

The 40 cents per bushel on onions, in our judgment, will, as it has done, serve the greatest best interests of the people and the governmental revenue. To increase this revenue would shut out what we regard the proper foreign competition. To reduce it would do nothing in the way of preserving an industry nor producing a tariff.

For your consideration, therefore, in making up the schedule we would have you consider in support of the general statements above, the following, to wit:

(1) Onions are an agricultural product, employing in their production in the United States approximately 40,000 farming laborers, who have not at present another livelihood.

(2) The past season not less than two and a half million bushels of onions have gone to waste, due to combined overproduction and importation.

(3) Nine States in the Union are engaged to a greater or less extent in this industry. It is a perishable product, hence can not be a trust-controlled interest.

(4) The only interest possible to be served by the reduction in the present tariff would be that of transportation.

(5) Thousands of acres of the land in the South reclaimed by irrigation would not pay interest on the investment of the machinery, to say nothing of other necessities for irrigated lands; likewise in the North thousands of acres of land (muck land) would be valueless.

(6) The $600,000 now received on this imported article would, in our belief, be lost to our Government without good results returned to the people, as is indicated by statistics in the Treasury Department.

We are not asking of your committee protection for protection sake, but preservation for those whose money is now invested in an industry and whose profits are very meager compared to the capital required for its operation.

The organization represented by me would be glad to furnish any information that the committee may further desire in this connection. Respectfully submitted.

JNO. H. DAVIS,

President Southern Texas Truck Growers' Association.

TESTIMONY OF E. F. WEBSTER, REPRESENTING HARRWARNER CO., OF WELLINGTON, OHIO.

The witness was first duly sworn by the chairman.

Mr. WEBSTER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am here from Ohio to represent, as best I may in the short time given me, the views and wishes of the onion growers of the North. Mr. Davis, of Texas, will represent to you, I understand, the views from the Texas standpoint. We respectfully submit the following considerations, which, to our minds, clearly demonstrate that the existing tariff of 40 cents per bushel on onions should not be disturbed.

First. This year's crop of onions demonstrates beyond a doubt that this country henceforth can easily produce all the onions that this country can consume. There is therefore no occasion to open the gates wider for larger importations than we are now receiving, for America can furnish all the onions America can use in the future. Second. The onion growing in this country is in the hands of farmers, in quantity from 1 acre up, from Massachusetts to Texas and California. The bulk of onions in this country is grown by small farmers and they being so widely separated there is sharp competition all along the line and no combination to fix or control prices is possible. Absolutely the supply and demand must fix the prices.

Third. Labor in the foreign onion-growing countries is so far below prices prevailing here, and the freight rates from those countries are so nearly the same as ours that the former, if the tariff should be

PARAGRAPH 261-ONIONS.

removed, to illustrate, could lay his onions down in New York City, and with a profit to himself, at a decidedly lower price than the American grower could do it. Now, to illustrate. Labor in Egypt and Spain can be procured for about 20 cents a day I should say in Egypt at about one-third less than that. We in Ohio pay $1.50 a day for men working in the field, and we pay women and children proportionately.

Mr. HARRISON. Have you ever been over to Egypt?

Mr. WEBSTER. I have not.

Mr. HARRISON. The Ohio farmers would be very much offended to be compared with the fellah laborers in Egypt. They have not improved in their agricultural methods for 6,000 years.

Mr. WEBSTER. I want to show, when I get to it, that we should not compete with them on equal terms. The freight from Spain, as I was saying, is 36 cents a hundred pounds; from Egypt, 40 cents; and from Mexico, 51 cents, while from Ohio and Indiana points it is 22 to 25 cents. Inasmuch as we are paying seven or eight times the price for labor that they do, with the slight advantage of freight in our favor, which I have given, of course they can kill us in the market if they come into the field. There is, however, a certain demand for foreign onions. Now, fifth. If it be urged that these low prices that I have hinted at will benefit the consumer, my reply is that with the tremendous increase in acreage recently attained in this country and with the large tracts of land waiting for development, to be developed as fast as the country demands it, it is perfectly certain that in the future the prices to the consumer in this country will be as low as the American grower can stand, and if by any means the prices be forced below the cost of American production the American grower must quit the business. In that event the foreigner will have the market, and when he has fairly got the market you know, as well as I do, that prices will go up far higher than they are now and far higher than they will be if this industry is preserved.

Mr. HILL. As a matter of fact, can not Texas raise onions in competition with the whole world?

Mr. WEBSTER. Mr. Davis has studied about Texas onions. Ask him. He will be on the stand shortly.

Mr. HARRISON. From what part of our country do the onions come which are sent out in the export trade?

Mr. WEBSTER. There are not very many exported, but if they are exported we export some.

Mr. HARRISON. $307,000 were exported in 1912.

Mr. WEBSTER. That is only a drop in the bucket. They probably went to Canada.

Mr. HARRISON. There were imports of only $1,233,000.

Mr. PALMER. That is four drops in the bucket.

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes; that is four drops in the bucket. There is a certain class of people who want these imported onions and who are willing to pay for them. We can supply those onions just the same. Now, sixth. Importations of onions for the last two fiscal years, 1910 to 1911, and 1911 to 1912, were about 1,500,000 bushels each year, a little more one year and a little less the other. With the tariff removed the importations would soon be doubled and later