handed up to the legislatures of the various States by the people of such States.

Mr. COOMBS. The powers of Congress pertaining to matters in the District do not pretend to reach outside of the District?

Dr. WOODWARD. No, sir.

Mr. COOMBS. The act of Congress simply has the effect of a State law within a State, and no more?

Dr. WOODWARD. That might be.

Mr. MANN. Do you have any difficulty in the enforcement in the District of Columbia of the present food legislation here!

Dr. WOODWARD. There is no difficulty in the health department except a deficiency in the money, the laboratory facilities, etc. The complaint comes from the dealer and not from the health department. Mr. MANN. So far as the food laws of the District are concerned, you have ample authority at the present time?

Dr. WOODWARD. We are asking no new legislation, and we feel that we need none at the present time. The defects in the law which have been discovered have been unimportant.

STATEMENT OF MR. A. C. MORRISON, SECRETARY-TREASURER OF THE AMERICAN BAKING POWDER ASSOCIATION, TOWNSEND BUILDING, NEW YORK.

Mr. MORRISON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the American Baking Powder Association has 60 members. It has something like 475 contributors in addition to these members, and represents in the aggregate approximately 524 manufacturers of baking powder scattered all throughout the States of the United States-almost without exception. This aggregation of manufacturers, under the name of the American Baking Powder Association, is not a combination in restraint of trade. The association takes no active part in the affairs of the individual members, and has nothing to do with their business, has nothing to do with fixing prices, and has no arrangements with the manufacturers of materials by which the prices are raised or lowered to the consumers. In fact, it is a business organization, like the Wholesale Grocers' Association or the Retail Grocers' Association. It has been organized for the past two years.

The object of this organization is to hold together and concentrate for defense against the aggressions of a single giant corporation, the manufacturers of baking powder who use alum as an acid ingredient. The annual output of the members of the American Baking Powder Association is upward of 86,000,000 pounds, and this represents about 86 per cent of the total output of baking powder for the United States, the remaining 14 per cent being known as cream of tartar baking powder. Of this 14 per cent fully 12,000,000 pounds are put out by à single institution known as the Royal Baking Powder Company, which is a combination of the Royal Baking Powder Company, the Cleveland Baking Powder Company, and the Price Baking Powder Company, and includes the manufacturers of cream of tartar. The Royal Baking Powder Company by this combination practically controls not only the importation of argol, from which cream of tartar is made, but is in a position to absolutely dominate the market for cream of tartar throughout the United States.

While it would be possible for a manufacturer of alum baking po der to secure cream of tartar in sufficient quantities to put out a sm quantity of cream of tartar baking powder by the purchase of suppli from his rival, the Royal Baking Powder Company, at the same time it is extremely doubtful if the Royal Baking Powder Company would sell a sufficient quantity of cream of tartar to enable the alum manufacturer to develop largely in the manufacture of cream of tartar baking powder. Alum and cream of tartar are the only two practical acid ingredients for the manufacture of baking powder.

Phosphate has recently become slightly more practicable through a patent on granular phosphate by which baking powder with phosphate as an ingredient is made commercially possible. It will keep better than formerly; but this phosphate is patented, and the manufacture under this patent is said to be controlled by the Royal Baking Powder Company.

The net result is that the alum baking-powder manufacturers are obliged to use alum. Further than that, they prefer to use alum; and further than that, alum has proved itself to be the most healthful ingredient for baking powder.

It is doubtless a surprise to those who are familiar with the trade controversy that has existed for many years between the manufacturers of the alum and cream of tartar baking powders to see a representative of the alum baking-powder industry duly accredited by proper resolutions to appear before you in advocacy of the most stringent pure-food laws. I am here for that purpose to-day. I am here in favor of the Hepburn bill.

We are strong advocates of the modifie Brosius bill, now known as the Hepburn bill, which contained two amendments which we secured.

I am here to-day in favor of those amendments. I am here to ask you to report that bill, and our reason for desiring this will be given. There are in this country numerous State laws with strict requirements. In none of these States except Missouri have we any trouble in the sale of alum baking powder. In the State of Missouri a law was passed which stated that no harmful and deleterious substances, to wit, arsenic, alum, bismuth, antimony, and some others, could be sold. It was passed without any knowledge on the part of the bakingpowder manufacturers that an attempt was being made to drive them out of the business. That law was pushed through by the Royal Baking Powder Company, or its predecessors. Its enforcement was conducted by them. Their witnesses and their attorneys are pushing that law to-day and not the State of Missouri.

The thirty-one manufacturers of alum baking powder in the State of Missouri are legally out of business on account of this law. The Royal Baking Powder Company has been introducing these laws in other States persistently for several years. Last year it was necessary for me to appear before various legislative committees and various State legislatures until twenty-two such measures were defeated. The Royal Baking Powder Company is fond of charging that we are trying to defeat pure-food legislation. This is absolutely false. Their method is as follows: They begin in a State and advertise, using pure reading matter, without any notice that these articles in the papers are advertisements, declaring alum to be a very terrible substance. They will keep that up for months. Their expenditures for advertising in this manner are very, very large. Soon the legislature meets, and then a

I appears forbidding the use of salts of alumina in any form in any icles used in the preparation of food.

Then it goes before a committee, and eminent chemists appear and testify against alum. Then we expose the scheme, but the committee nearly always reports against us. We then expose the whole conspiracy. The bills have always been defeated-28 of them in the last two years. For instance, one is pending in Massachusetts to-day which will drive us out of business in that State if passed.

This conspiracy was completely exposed before the Industrial Commission of the United States, and the Royal Baking Powder Company failed to disprove the grave allegations. It has been taken up by the Committee on Manufactures of the United States Senate. We are tired of this class of strike legislation. We believe that a genuine pure-food law, which takes up both sides of the question and says that we shall not use anything harmful and deleterious, and shall not use any improper ingredients in the manufacture of articles of food, is the proper law.

The Hepburn bill says that an article shall be deemed adulterated providing it contains à harmful and deleterious substance. Under that law, if our article is harmful and deleterious, we will go out of business. We are willing to go into court about that at any time. We have been in court in the State of Missouri on the Missouri law, and the court decided that there was no evidence that alum baking powder was unwholesome.

I do not know how much the other side spent, but it cost us several thousand dollars to defend that case. The court asked every expert: "Have you, in your experience as a student of food products or in your reading, ever come across a case of malnutrition or disease which you could attribute to the use of alum baking powder?"

They all answered "No." That was on cross-examination. Mr. RICHARDSON. Was that in a Federal or State court? Mr. MORRISON. In the State court. That is now before the Supreme Court of the United States here on appeal. The court stated that in view of the fact that over 60,000,000 people in the United States are using alum baking power, and it has been used in increasing quantities for the past twenty-five years, and the prosecution failed to present to the court a single case of malnutrition or disease which can be attributed to its use, that this fact stands like a stone wall against the prosecution. But," said the court, "the legislature has a right to pass this law, and the law is valid, and I am obliged to declare these retail grocers guilty."

Mr. RICHARDSON. Holding that it was unwholesome?

Mr. MORRISON. Holding that it was wholesome, but nevertheless the legislature had a right

Mr. RICHARDSON. To pronounce it unwholesome?

Mr. MORRISON. Yes, sir; that is, the legislature was supreme. Mr. TOMPKINS. The legislature had a right to prohibit its sale whether it was wholesome or unwholesome?

Mr. MORRISON. Yes, sir; and we have appealed that to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the decision is to be given, I think, in April.

Mr. COOMBS. Suppose the legislature passed a bill prohibiting the sale of unwholesome articles. And that is the express object of the bill?

Mr. MORRISON. Yes, sir.

Mr. COOMBS. And suppose it includes something in it which by chemical analysis you can prove is not deleterious; does that constitute the bill

Mr. MORRISON. Under the decision?

Mr. COOMBS. Under the decision.

Mr. MORRISON. The decision simply stated this: Whereas the lower court declares that alum baking powder is wholesome (and the evidence was reviewed by the supreme court of Missouri, and they took great pains to make it clear) and the evidence indicates that the lower court was correct in its conclusion that this article is wholesome. Still, there is a conflict of the scientific testimony which was probably taken into consideration by the legislature of the State, and the legislature in passing this law had the right to do so; therefore the law is constitutional.

Mr. RICHARDSON. Is it not a fact that the State legislature passed a law saying that no unwholesome ingredients should enter into foods without saying the particular articles?

Mr. MORRISON. That is absolutely constitutional.

Mr. RICHARDSON. It did not name the articles?

Mr. MORRISON. The Missouri alum law did. That is the trouble. All these State laws say flatly "any harmful and deleterious article is prohibited." There is no question about that. We say that they are all right. Nobody dares to question them. But these subtle laws that are put in by these people say: "You shall not use salts of copper, salts of zine, salts of alumina, in articles used in the preparation of food."

Mr. MANN. Because they claim that they are unwholesome?

Mr. MORRISON. Because the Royal Baking Powder Company is trying to drive us out of business. And we do not propose to be driven out of business.

Now, we think that if a national law is passed the State laws will be conformed to it, and if the national law is strong enough to say that nothing harmful and deleterious shall be used, and that law will hit us if we are wrong, we are ready to abide by the result; but we are not afraid of such a law.

That is why I am here to-day advocating the passage of some measure as strong as you can make it.

Mr. MANN. So that you are willing for that?

Mr. MORRISON. We are not afraid of this law. I am here under instructions to forward this measure and urge it and do everything in my power to have it passed after it leaves this committee.

I do not think the committee has any idea of the trouble the manufacturers are going through on account of the misinterpretation of the food laws. I do not think this bill gives the people anything they do not want, and I do not think you can pass such a bill unless people at large are getting protection out of it. I say if you could only get a national law which is broad enough to cover this subject and relieve the manufacturers of any necessity of going about as I have been going during the past years to the legislature of nearly every State to fight strike bills, you would be doing a great service to the manufacturers of this country.

There are two amendments in this bill which are not in the original Brosius bill, and I desire to call the attention of the committee to them.

One of them affects the question of the labeling of baking powder. There has been an attempt through the various committees to compel us to put "This baking powder contains alum" on the cans. We resist that, because the moment that we do it the Royal Baking Powder Company will begin to advertise in reading articles and other advertisements that alum is a rank poison; "Beware of alum-it is deleterious to health;" and they will ram that down the throats of the people, and the minute that they see alum on a can we will be discredited. However, we are willing to label our cans "Alum," provided you compel all baking powder manufacturers to put on the cans not only the ingredients contained in the powder but the resulting substances which are left in the food when ready for consumption. If I should label a can of carbonic-acid gas, "Sulphuric acid and marble dust," people would not be apt to use it. Now, sulphuric acid and marble dust create carbonic-acid gas.

If I should ask you whether hydrochloric acid and bicarbonate of soda would be a fit agent for the leavening of bread, you would say, "That is terrible," because hydrochloric acid is dangerous; yet Von Liebig said that that combination would be the ideal leavening material. Why? Because the residue left in the food is common salt.

Now, you understand that when soda and an acid come together it creates carbonic-acid gas, and a residue is left. In the case of alum and soda there is no alum left in the food.

Now, it is the residue left in the food that people are interested in. That is what goes into the stomach. We are perfectly willing to show what goes into the stomach, and that is in entire harmony with this Hepburn bill. We want to show the people not only what is in the can, but also what goes into their stomachs just what they are eating. It would be misleading to label the can "Alum and soda or "cream of tartar and soda." That would not inform the people what goes into their stomachs, because it is neither cream of tartar nor alum that goes into the stomach.

Mr. RICHARDSON. The trouble about that is the impracticability of it. How are you going to put on a separate and distinct label as to what different ingredients, all of which are healthy, enter into one composition to make up a certain thing; how are you going to put them all there? It looks to me as though it was impracticable.

If

Mr. MORRISON. There is a very simple answer to that. Every manufacturer of baking powder knows exactly what his residue is. you compel him to label at all, we want you to make him put all the ingredients on the can and tell him that he must also label it with the residue. If he labels incorrectly, your administrator of the law will soon find it out. If his label is right, there will be no difficulty at all. But, if you compel him to label at all, compel him to do it fully. That is what we ask here:

That substances which enter into the preparation or preservation of food, and which change their chemical nature in the preparation of food, shall be branded at the time of manufacture with the names of the resulting substances which are left in food produced when ready for consumption, together with the name and address of the manufacturer.

Mr. RICHARDSON. That is as to the manufacturer. Now, when you give it out to the retailers.

Mr. MORRISON. We will put on every can what is in the can, and what is left as a resultant of the chemical action that takes place where it is used as food.