Mr. TINCHER. In other words, you do not intend to have any limit placed on the amount of money you spend with the newspapers for what you call "educational campaign"?

Mr. WELD. We are going to spend as much as we think we can afford to spend and as we need to spend in assuring the stability and safety of our business in the future.

Mr. TINCHER. And you do not think you ought to divulge the names of any newspapers with whom you spend this money, and you do not intend to be throttled at all in what you say; if you want to call a bunch of Congressmen a “bunch of demagogues" you are going to do that through the American Institute of Meat Packers? Mr. WELD. No.

Mr. TINCHER. Do you not think that you are really bigger than the Government?

Mr. WELD. No, sir. You are not fair in making such remarks, Mr. Tincher.

Mr. TINCHER. I do not know. I do not think you were fair in starting out here by saying you were going to show that what Mr. Anderson said was false about your propaganda, and I do not think any of these advertisements that are paid for by somebody before your profits are analyzed could reasonably be called "educational propaganda," or "educational advertising," and I do not think that they are calculated to do anyone any good.

Mr. WELD. They are calculated to do good and they are doing good.

Mr. YOUNG. I think everybody agrees that a certain amount of advertising in every business is a perfectly proper thing to be done. But you evidently know, as all gentlemen who think know, of the criticism of a good many of our leading publications which are being charged by a great many people with being influenced in their policy and in their publication generally. We do not know whether a man is really speaking his sentiments or whether he is speaking an inspired sentiment of some industry who has paid for that sentiment to be expressed.

I am not charging that you gentlemen are doing anything of that sort; I do not know anything about it, as indicated by the methods that you have described here. But do you not think it would be rather a sad thing for this country when the reading public getting their literature feel that that literature is controlled by some great overpowering special interest?

Mr. WELD. I certainly would think that would be very serious. I do not know that it is any more serious to have the editorial opinions on one of the principal industries of the country largely controlled by official Government reports which misrepresent our industry, however. I think that is fully as bad.

Mr. YOUNG. There is a thought running through the minds of people all over the country that when you pick up a daily paper it is very difficult to know whether that daily paper is expressing the real sentiment of the man who owns it or whether it is from the financial point of view representing somebody else.

Mr. WELD. That is undoubtedly true that there is that feeling, and it is unfortunate.

Mr. CHAPLIN. Mr. Young, what would you have us do if the newspapers make false statements about us?

Mr. YOUNG. I think you are perfectly within your rights if misstatements are made about you by a public official or newspapers to come back and answer; I think anybody has that right.

Mr. CHAPLIN. If a man at a cattleman's convention or any place gets up and makes statements to a big audience showing he does not know anything about our business, that he does not understand the economic laws that control it, and shows a dense ignorance of the subject and misstates the facts about us and misrepresents us, how are we going to protect ourselves?

Mr. YoUNG. I think you have got a right to answer that in any way you see fit.

Mr. CHAPLIN. That is what we are doing.

Mr. WELD. Last week the chairman of the Cattlemen's Association indulged in one of the worst tirades against the packers and based practically his whole argument on the fact that the returns from hides was not included in figuring our profit on beef and indicated that there must be a profit of some $25 an animal for which we have not accounted when we say our profit is a dollar a head; and the unfortunate thing about it was that he got away with it. I suppose nine-tenths of the people there in that big audience believed him.

Mr. YOUNG. He was a very prominent man down there, and I would not think he would be guilty of making loose statements. Mr. WELD. Those are the statements he made. It could be very easily verified if you wanted it.

Mr. YOUNG. If he did misrepresent the facts or state incorrectly, I think you gentlemen have the right to state the facts before the public.

Mr. WELD. Of course, in the case of that audience I had a chance to combat it myself the next day, but I imagine they believed him rather than me; I do not know.

Mr. TINCHER. That is Mr. Turney. What was it he said? Mr. WELD. He said that the return from hides was not included in figuring our profits on cattle, and that therefore our statement that our profit only averaged about a dollar a head for the last few years was absolutely false; that there was some $25 a head we had not accounted for.

Mr. CHAPLIN. There was another man who appeared, I think, before one of the committees here and said that he thought one of the quarters of the beef we did not account for when we made our returns on beef, that there was a quarter we set aside in some hidden fund.

Mr. YOUNG. They have got this idea about those things, that the man who is producing cattle, for instance, who thinks that he got the worst of the deal has a right to make all kinds of investigations and get all the facts he can find in order to ascertain whether or not he has been held up and has not got proper returns for the stuff he has produced; and in the investigation of the situation he may get information that is really not facts. That may be all true but if he is an honest man and believes what he has heard is true and makes a statement about it, if those statements are not cor

rect, then the gentlemen on whom those statements reflect have got a perfect right to come back by advertising or otherwise and set the real facts before the public. There is nothing to be lost, but everything to be gained, to my judgment, for the public to know the whole facts of the whole situation, and when the public knows the real facts they are going to be satisfied, and that agitation will very largely stop.

Mr. CHAPLIN. Suppose that that man is influential and that he organizes a large campaign extending over the whole countryorganizes a campaign based on this misinformation, this is the only way we can reach that. We have speakers who go around, but they can not meet all their speakers. They may have perhaps hundreds of speakers. This is the only way we have left for our defense, and it is our shareholders' money that we are using when it ought to go to the shareholders, though we are taking and spending it in this. way to protect ourselves. We are doing it as a duty to the country in order to get the facts before the public.

Mr. YOUNG. The point I was raising was not against_legitimate advertising. I have no objection in the world to that. But it was a more comprehensive question I was referring to. If our Government is to survive, our people must read; and when our people pick up magazines or newspapers in getting their information from those magazines or newspapers if the editorial staff and management of these newspapers or magazines have been purchased, whether in the guise of advertising by special interests of the country, they are not reflecting the real editorial opinion, but, under the cloak of editorial opinion, they are really reflecting the viewpoint of somebody who wants to keep their operations covered up; and then it is a pretty serious situation.

Mr. CHAPLIN. That would be a very bad situation.

Mr. YOUNG. That is not advertising, in my judgment.

Mr. CHAPLIN. I will say we have found in editorial columns of some papers the same editorial exactly in 20 or 30 papers; the same editorial attacking the packers, word for word. That is not the editorial opinion of that paper; some one is manufacturing that editorial opinion attacking the packers and sending it around. There is an organization there; I do not know what it is.

Mr. MARSH. Will you ask him, Mr. Chairman, to put the list of those 20 or 30 papers into the record, and I will find out from the editors where the matter came from.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Nebraska. Right on this matter of educational campaign that Swift & Co. is carrying on, I wanted to ask a question. I assume that you will answer it in the affirmative, and correctly so, but I have heard it intimated a time or two, probably by parties who knew nothing about it, that in this campaign carried on much more largely by Swift & Co. than by other packers, that other packers were helping Swift & Co. bear the expense of it. I do not know as it would make any difference if it were true.

Mr. CHAPLIN. That is not true.

Mr. WELD. That is not true; nobody is helping us bear the expense of it. I do not think they would want to help us putting out material under the name of "Swift & Co." That is the first time I ever heard that suggestion.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN of Nebraska. I have heard it mentioned a time or two lately, and I thought I would ask you about it.

Mr. TINCHER. This advertising which has just been read into the record is a joint advertisement put out by the packers' association here. That is, where you do not want to assume personal responsibility for the charges made, it is done through the American Meat Packers' Association?

Mr. WELD. That association has 300 members.

Mr. MARSH. Mr. Chairman, will you decide whether I may ask whether this letter which Mr. Mayer asked to be read into the record

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). How long will it take you?
Mr. MARSH. About three minutes.

Mr. WELD. I would prefer to go on with my statement and let this gentleman attend to his troubles after we get through.

The CHAIRMAN. I suggest that it would be better, Mr. Marsh, to take that up a little later.

Mr. MARSH. Also may I add Mr. Mayer's counsel for the Associated Press

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). It should be left to the witness. The witness has the floor and is entitled to it.

Mr. WELD. I was saying that Mr. Anderson gave an example of the kind of misinformation given out..

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Weld, do you not think an open, frank statement as to these profits would save a good deal of money in the publicity matter? It seems to me the statements that are made over the signatures of the packers themselves should not be subject to much question. We ought not to spend days in discussing something that bears the signatures of the packers themselves. What is the use of spending millions of dollars in explaining what they themselves contend?

Mr. WELD. If there was anything definite

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). You have spent three days on this profiteering, yet here is a letter from Mr. Swift and others stating the profits and acknowledging the dividends that have been declared.

Mr. WELD. You have stated our profits most unfairly. We have given a complete statement of the profits of Swift & Co. Nevertheless, you keep referring to the large profits, 45 per cent, and that sort of thing. We are furnishing and have furnished an accurate statement of our profits, and we have nothing to conceal, and you can learn anything about the profits of Swift & Co. that you want to know.

The CHAIRMAN. I have quoted your own letters; I have not gone beyond that; and I am not objecting to nor criticizing the packers for making profits. They are not the only ones who make profits. But it seems to me unreasonable that we should spend three days on explanations of figures that are generally admitted by the packers themselves. Let us understand what is alleged in the letters. If there is something to take back let us have it.

Mr. WELD. Mr. Chairman, may I proceed with my statement without interruption?

The CHAIRMAN. I thought while we were talking about advertising and publicity that we might clear up one thing at a time as we went along.

Mr. WELD. That is a very unfair statement, Mr. Chairman, for you to make?

The CHAIRMAN. What is there unfair about it?

Mr. WELD. We have cleared up scores of things.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; and then you went back to them. You are talking about publicity, and my suggestion is that we can save time by admitting facts, if they are facts.

Mr. WELD. We do give the facts; we present them for the record. I do not know whether it is worth while for me to start in or not. The CHAIRMAN. Start in now, and there will be no interruptions except with your permission. I think you should have that privilege.

Mr. WELD. Mr. Anderson referred to the statement that we have been making that we handled less than 45 per cent-we thought it was 45 per cent of the beef production of the country. He gave that as one illustration of the misinformation that we have been giving out. In the first place, what we have been saying right along in our advertising is that we handle less than 40 per cent of the total meat production of the country. When we have referred to Swift & Co. we have said about 12 per cent of the entire production of the country, and almost always have coupled that with the statement that about 22 per cent of the "output of inspected houses." I am not trying to get away from the fact that the five large packers together handle some 71 or 72 per cent of the total meat output of inspected houses, which is the only figure that the Federal Trade Commission gives, but emphasizing the fact that it is only about 40 per cent of the total meat production of the country, because we believe that that is a very significant fact. The point is that we come in competition not only with the comparatively few interstate houses, but with practically every local packer, every retail butcher who does any killing of his own, and we even come in competition with the farmer who kills his own stuff on the farm.

We are selling stuff in practically every railroad town in the country, and we are competing with the local butcher's-killed meat in almost every town in the country-that is, where that stuff is killed at all and where it would be killed if we did not go in there and sell, or if we charged too high a price. Even the farmer who kills his own stuff has the privilege of either selling his live animals and buying our meat at the local butcher shops and killing his own meat and selling it. We come in direct competition in that way with the farmers' own butchering. We also come in competition with them indirectly in that way as a potential supply that might be sent to the market and might be used to supply the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C.

As to the accuracy of that statement that we have been making less than 40 per cent of the total meat supply of the country, I am not sure but what Mr. Anderson has got something on us in that respect. so far as the accuracy of the statement is concerned that is, on 40 per cent, rather than 45 that Mr. Anderson spoke of-because we find in this bulletin just put out by the United States Department