Just to make it more easily visualized, I have also brought a sample of butter, for comparison, and I have the quantitative data on the color of the butter. It is our opinion, at least, that there can be no confusion between the color of ordinary commercial butter and that of hydrogenated soybean or cottonseed oil.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a sample of butter at what time of the year? Or is that the standard maintained at all times of the year?

Mr. KOENIG. Well, I believe there is a considerable variation in the natural color of butter, and I believe that at certain seasons of the year it is artificially colored. This simply happens to be a sample of the palest available commercial butter which we could find on the market at the time.

I might say that the darkest color which we observed, after hydrogenation amounted to no more than about 12 percent of the original yellow color in the initial oils.

The CHAIRMAN. Your point is that you cannot make oleomargarine with a natural butter color unless you add color?

Mr. KOENIG. That is correct; from the soybean and the cottonseed. That about concludes my statement, Senator.

Senator GEORGE. Let me ask you: The Federal restrictions have required that your hydrogenation be carried to the degree that the oleo is white. That, of course, has influenced all of the chemists in the country who had anything to do with this problem, to say that you could not leave enough of the natural coloring in these products to have a yellow margarine, has it not?

Mr. KOENIG. Would you restate that, Senator? I did not quite get it.

Senator GEORGE. Well, I said that the Federal restrictions have required that these processes produce a white margarine before it can be sold. Because they have a super-added tax of 10 cents on anything above that.

Mr. KOENIG. Yes. That is correct.

Senator GEORGE. And that has influenced the chemists in saying that you could not leave enough of the natural coloring in, of, say, soybeans, peanut and palm oil, and others, to give you a yellow margarine.

Mr. KOENIG. We say that in the ordinary process of the preparation of oleomargarine from cottonseed and soybean

Senator GEORGE. Well, you are confining it to those two things?
Mr. KOENIG. That is correct.

Senator GEORGE. Leaving out animal fat and any other sort of oil. You are also keeping in mind the Federal restrictions, which require that the hydrogenation be carried to the point where the margarine is a white product?

Mr. KOENIG. Senator, it happens that in going to the stage necessary for the proper plasticity of the product, you automatically bleach, in most cases below even the statutory requirement.

Senator GEORGE. Well, in my own short lifetime, which is not very long, I assure you, I can remember when oleomargarine was yellow without your coloring. And then, of course, there was some legislation, and you had to do away with that. You had to get it white again.

Mr. KOENIG. Yes. I believe you refer to the time when palm oil was being used.

Senator GEORGE. A little palm oil was being used in it. But do not tell me the chemists of this country cannot produce a yellow margarine with the domestic oils that we have now, if they are not restricted by the these Federal statutes.

Mr. KOENIG. Our experiments simply show that in the course of hydrogenation, to get the proper plasticity of the oil, the yellow color is almost completely destroyed. A yellow-colored margarine can be produced possibly from palm oil. Our experiments have not covered that, although the textbooks tell us that there is a considerable bleaching, even of the very dark palm oil. Senator GEORGE. Well, of course. I do not like to have witnesses testify to something here that I personally know is not so. I used to sell margarine when I was a boy, that was as yellow as butter, and it had no artificial coloring in it.

Now, I know it can be made again. It cannot be done, of course, and meet all of these restrictive statutes that have been imposed from time to time. That is where the trouble is.

Mr. KOENIG. Possibly the oleomargarine that you speak of was hydrogenated not so far, let us say.

Senator GEORGE. I am sure it was not. That is exactly what I am talking about.

Mr. KOENIG. Partially hydrogenated material, that is, material not hydrogenated to the consistency now used, will have a color somewhere between these two samples which I showed.

Senator GEORGE. Well, I am sorry to hear testimony of that kind. You heard Dr. Lepper this morning say that it could be made yellow, did you not?

Mr. KOENIG. I believe he referred to the additional use of palm oil. Senator GEORGE. Yes, sir. He said it was at one time palm oil, because they used a slight quantity of palm oil; but you cannot do that any more because every time you produce something, as a natural product, without the use of artificial coloring, those who are writing the restrictions come over here to Congress and get some more restrictive legislation if they need it.

What you do not understand, and what the dairy people do not understand is that this particular type of legislation is the most vicious thing that we have on our Federal statutes today, and ultimately State after State will be legislating against the products of some other State unless this thing is wiped out. And there will not be very much that can be done to help it, within the State. That is what I want to see eliminated, far more than I want to add to the value of cottonseed oil, although this would add greatly to cottonseed oil value if you increased the quantity of oil used in the production of oleomargarine, just as it would add to the value of soybean oil, if you could increase the quantity of that used.

But beyond all that, you cannot maintain, through any long period of time, legislation of this kind without inviting States to retaliate. And that retaliation is already in process. That is one of the most unfortunate developments in our life. It would be the most unfortunate development in the American economy.

Those are all the questions I have.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, very much, Doctor.
Congressman Murray?

STATEMENT OF HON. REID F. MURRAY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

Representative MURRAY. Reid F. Murray is my name.

I would not have the temerity it ask to appear here if it were not for the requests of the Badger Co-op and the Pure Milk Products Corp. of the State of Wisconsin. They asked all of the Representatives from Wisconsin to try to present some of the facts in connection with this controversy.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have you here.

The schedule had been arranged before we knew that you wanted to come. I assume that you are speaking also for the other seven of your associates whose names are on this letter.

Representative MURRAY. Yes, sir, except Mr. Hull, who has his own statement I wish to include.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. Will you proceed, Congressman?

Representative MURRAY. To start with, it is unfortunate that we have this bill brought in at this time. Very few people realize that the dairy industry is in bad enough shape now, after 14 years of the "more abundant life," without injecting this particular piece of legislation into the situation in the present Congress.

It is a matter of record that there are fewer milk cows in the United

States today than there were 14 years ago. It is a matter of record that United States milk production has been going down every single month since last July. It is a matter of record that Mr. Henry Wallace was ridiculed because he wanted to give everyone in the world a quart of milk, and put a bottle on the doorstep of every Hottentot.

And yet, after these 14 years of the more abundant life, we do not even have a quart of milk a day or its equivalent for the American people.

However, the bill is up for consideration. The passage of the Rivers bill will be a great backward step to American agriculture.

It already has different parts of American agriculture in controversy among themselves. The effort to tear each other down certainly is not going to be for the benefit of American agriculture. The end result is apparently going to be that we will have agriculture suffering as a result of this piece of legislation. The Agricultural Committee was trying to iron out this problem in the House of Representatives, and would have ironed it out fairly and equitably to all groups included, if they had been allowed to carry out their program.

There are a couple of angles in connection with this controversy that no one has brought out yet. I will tell you what one of them is. The sooner somebody finds it out, the better off this country will be.

All the time we have been listening to the chatterings about the wonders of the reciprocal trade treaties, we have seen our friends of the South build up embargo after embargo around their product. And if today the by-products of buttermaking had the same comparable parity, had the same financial support, that is already extended to some of our other crops, the price of butter would not be over 50 to 60 cents at Chicago wholesale in this very hour. Can we expect to keep prices under control when they kill off 2,000,000 milk cattle?

What else have we been doing? During this time we have been spending millions and millions of dollars. This next year, under the ECA, we have $343,000,000 already earmarked to get rid of cotton. We also have other millions of dollars earmarked in order to get rid of cottonseed meal, so that those over in Europe can feed it to their beef cattle, so they will not have to go through the trouble of milking their cows.

And when you realize that a State like Wisconsin, Mr. Chairman, producers nearly as much milk as the entire British Isles, 15 billion pounds per year as against 18 billion, you can realize the effect this will have on the dairy industry within a State like Wisconsin.

I do further want to say that the psychological effect as well as the economic effect will be important. Because if this Rivers bill becomes law, as I repeat once more, it is going to be one of the greatest disservices to American agriculture that any Congress has ever extended to American agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you mind if I interrupt at that point? Had the Agriculture Committee gotten far enough with its studies so as to have at least a tentative program for solution of the matter? Representative MURRAY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you be at liberty to say what that was? Representative MURRAY. The subcommittee is not composed of those who are rabid on either side. In other words, neither Mr. Andresen nor I were on this subcommittee. [Laughter.]

The chairman of the subcommittee was a gentleman from your State, a man who has been here for many years, and in whom everyone has confidence. It is Congressman William Hill; not prooleo; not probutter. And the Democrats on the committee are also high-class chaps, as well as the other two people on the Republican side.

If you leave them alone they will bring out a bill that will satisfy the soybean people and the cottonseed people, and satisfy everyone who is interested in this problem. The more one goes into this oleo legislation the more angles you see in connection with it.

Now, I will give you one more.

If you are going to pass this Rivers bill, you might just as well save your time and include an amendment to legalize filled milk. This oleo outfit will not have to raise $7,000,000 again to carry on a lot of false propaganda, and run some phony experiments like the one out in Chicago, that has more holes in it than any piece of Wisconsin Swiss cheese ever made. Yet they come down here to Congress and expect people to believe it. You might just as well add another amendment that says that you will legalize filled milk. Here is a sample can. It contains 6 percent cottonseed oil and 94 percent skim milk.

The oleo promoter wants to get his head under the dairyman's tent. That is all there is to this at the present time. Because if you legislatively give oleo equal consideration with butter, you might just as well say that this filled milk is just as good as evaporated natural milk. Oleo contains 80 percent vegetable oil. They will probably come over and tell you that it contains milk. But it does not. It contains defatted milk, skimmed milk. This administration has kept the price of defatted milk so low, in fact way down in the cellar all this time. They have never given it a decent support price, nor one in keeping with its food value.

It is only 10 cents a pound now. Think of that: A product with twice as much protein as a pound of meat. And yet, according to the support program, it is only worth 10 cents a pound.

If it is not going to be difficult to make Members of Congress believe that a product with 80 percent vegetable oil, 15 percent skim milk, salt, and other ingredients added, which makes it oleomargarine, is equal to a 100 percent dairy product, it will then surely be easy to make them believe that this concoction, which I hold here, and which is 94 percent skim milk and 6 percent vegetable oil, is just as good as evaporated natural milk.

And you might be interested in knowing that so far as my State is concerned, not being one of the leading butter States, it is the evaporated milk people that can see the handwriting on the wall. They have within the month hired a lobbyist, I presume to protect their product from the vegetable oil interests that are already set to ruin them. They know that just as soon as you let Mr. Oleo get his head under Mr. Dairyman's tent, the next step will be to legalize that concoction, and then you will not need very many dairy cows in the United States. You will reduce the wealth of these States that have these evaporated milk factories all over the United States.

And just to add insult upon injury, another thing that has happened during the last 6 months is that these boys, some of whom are not dry behind the ears, that I saw over at Geneva last summer myself, strutting around like a lot of little turkey gobblers, did just the last thing they could do to the dairy industry. They lowered the duty on dried skim to 12 cents per pound, which means % of a cent a quart, and of a cent a pound on the skim milk.

In other words, you might as well say it can come in here free. They do not need any United States skim milk to expand this racket or the margarine business, because all you have to do is import the skim milk products from other countries. Since they have reduced the duty, you do not need to worry. They are dependent on the dairymen of America from here on out. Imports of dried skim here started to roll in here in pretty good quantity the first 3 months of this year.

So there is just one more example of what is happening to the dairy industry of this country, and what can happen. I repeat, you might just as well put another amendment on the Rivers bill, legalizing the filled milk. At this time it cannot be shipped interstate, but you can say, "We hereby legalize the filled milk, and you are free to ruin the evaporated milk business of America.

The CHAIRMAN. What does this cost?

Representative MURRAY. I would not know. I have had that for a couple of years. I keep it to show what the handwriting on the wall is. But evaporated milk, during the war, sold for 9 cents. Now, the price is higher. You cannot help having it higher. This administration controls prices. They have an OPA of their own at wholesale levels just as much as we had during the war at retail levels. This administration has the money, it has the power, and it has the authority, to control any agricultural prices. If they would make an announcement tomorrow that we would not pay more than $1.90 a bushel for wheat, that is all wheat would be, day after tomorrow. Because they have the authority, power, and money to do it.

I again repeat, I do not know how you expect to hold the price of dairy products down if you are going to knock over 2,000,000 of