Mr. HART. They are cooperating with the Hatch station.

Dr. REED. Yes, sir. They put up all the buildings. We own no land there at all. We own a part of the herd. Twenty-eight head, including heifers, represent our part. The University of Missouri has 18 head.

Mr. SINCLAIR. How much does it cost to run that station a year? Dr. REED. This past year, or in 1933, we put in $4,710 as our share. That was our share this last year, and this year it is $4,825. The original appropriation was $10,000 to establish the Federal cooperation.

Mr. SINCLAIR. You are saving $4,800 by closing the station?
Dr. REED. Yes, sir.

Mr. SINCLAIR. That is all the saving you make?

Dr. REED. Yes, sir.

Mr. CANNON. At the same time, you are losing the original $10,000 investment, and the maintenance cost for the years it has been operating since that time, as well as the cost of transferring the herd.

Mr. SINCLAIR. Is there any other investment by the Government there?

Dr. REED. The cattle represent the entire investment.

Mr. CANNON. As I understand it, the Government has contributed the personnel.

Dr. REED. The personnel, the cattle, and the feed for the cattle. Mr. KEMPER. We contribute only to the operating costs.

Mr. SINCLAIR. And you have an original investment there of $10,000?

Dr. REED. That was just for getting the work started. It covered the purchase of cattle and operating expenses the first year. Mr. SINCLAIR. You invested nothing in buildings?

Dr. REED. Nothing in buildings or in land.

Mr. SINCLAIR. Who furnished the land?

Dr. REED. The State of Missouri. The farm belonged originally to Mr. Hatch, and Mr. Hatch's heirs turned it over to the State of Missouri, and the State turned it over to the Missouri Experiment Station. Our cooperative relationship there is the same as at certain other places. They provide all of the buildings and permanent equipment, and we furnish some personnel, part of the herd and contribute something in the way of operating expenses.

CHEESE MANUFACTURING INVESTIGATIONS

Mr. SANDLIN. I am anxious to know how your cheese-making program is coming along.

Dr. REED. We are getting along very nicely with our cheese work. We have started some new work, and we are about to complete some old work. We believe that our work, particularly the work in connection with foreign types, is of more importance today than at any time in the past. We feel a little more hopeful about it. We think that our methods are going to be more widely adopted because of the condition of the industry. There is a surplus of milk and milk products due largely to under-consumption. We think that in time a good deal of the milk will be used for making foreign types of cheese. We have had considerable success with Roquefort cheese. We have produced some of the best Roquefort cheese ever made. There is a

great interest in getting it into commercial channels. In our Swiss cheese work we have introduced our methods into several States, and particularly into one Swiss cheese section in Ohio and another in Wisconsin. In Ohio we cooperate throughout the year with 20 to 30 plants which produce about 2,500,000 pounds of cheese a year. It is estimated that through the use of the cultures we have developed and by reason of other activities this small number of cheese makers in Ohio alone were enabled to increase the value of their product $58,525 in 1932. More than 2 cents per pound has been added to the selling price of the cheese made by our methods.

Mr. HART. That is Swiss cheese?

Dr. REED. Yes, sir.

Mr. HART. How does the price of domestic Swiss cheese compare with the price of the imported article?

Dr. REED. The retailers' price of imported cheese is higher. It is perhaps, 10 or 15 cents higher, depending upon the market. However, the quality of the Swiss cheese made is this country is more nearly equal to that of the Swiss cheese made in Switzerland than the difference in price indicates. They make a large percentage of poor cheese over there. But we never see their poor cheese, because they do not ship it here. They have to ship cheese in here that will compete with our best.

Mr. HART. But they do get more money for it?

Dr. REED. That is because it is imported. A great many people buy cheese because it is imported and pay more for it. They do it because of the word "imported." They cannot eat the word, but they pay for it. It is the same with Roquefort cheese. We do not produce enough Roquefort to make a comparison of the commercial prices of American Roquefort and Roquefort imported from France and Denmark. There is not enough manufactured here to do that. Mr. HART. You remember the cheese eater that I brought out there?

Dr. REED. Yes, sir.

Mr. HART. He preferred your cheese to the imported cheese. Dr. REED. We are importing a good deal of cheese at the present time-approximately 56,000,000 pounds a year. I think, however, that through our efforts in developing methods of manufacturing of the foreign types of cheese, we can displace a considerable amount of imported cheese with cheese of domestic manufacture. If we had made all of the cheese that was used in this country in 1932 instead of importing part of it from abroad the milk from 150,000 more cows would have been used in the making of the cheese than was utilized by the cheese industry.

Mr. CANNON. Do you think, then, we can produce in this country as good cheese as any European cheese that is imported?

Dr. REED. I think so; I think we have plenty of evidence to bear that out.

Mr. CANNON. And also at less cost to the consumer?

Dr. REED. Yes; at a lower cost.

Mr. CANNON. How do you account for this enormous importation? Is it because our cheese makers are not living up to their opportunities, or that it is a defect in marketing?

Dr. REED. It is due to several reasons. Perhaps the most important one is that the imported cheese is very uniform in quality.

We do not see any lack of uniformity in imported cheese, because only the best is selected for export to this country. In cheese making it is obvious that a certain percentage of second, third, and even lower grades are made and cheese of these poorer grades must be disposed of as well as the top grades.

Mr. CANNON. Those cheeses are not sufficiently inspected and graded so that the public is in a position to know the character of cheese it is buying and the grade of cheese it is consuming?

Dr. REED. That is left up to the various States. They all have that. Practically all of our Swiss cheese is made in two districts in Wisconsin and Ohio. They have their own methods of grading. We have our Fancy, no. 1, and on down to what we term "grinders which is the lowest-priced and the lowest quality of cheese.

Mr. CANNON. Isn't there some way to assure the customer he will get a high-grade domestic cheese if he pays for it?

Dr. REED. Only on grades.

Mr. CANNON. What governs the quality of cheese, is it the manufacture, the ingredients, or the packaging?

Dr. REED. Both. We can not make good cheese out of poor milk. The thing that governs the quality of cheese more than any other one thing is the quality of milk.

Mr. CANNON. You mean the butterfat content, or the care with which it is handled?

Dr. REED. By quality I mean, Mr. Cannon, the cleanliness and sanitary quality of the milk. If we have a lot of undesirable bacteria in there of one kind or another, then off flavors and odors. are likely to develop in the cheese.

Mr. CANNON. What effort is the Department taking to enable the local manufacturer to take over this market now being monopolized by imports from foreign countries?

Dr. REED. Under our dairy manufacturing investigation and introduction project we are attempting to introduce into commercial plants our methods of manufacturing cheese and other products. We are now working with factories where these types of cheese are begin made.

Just to illustrate, about 75 percent of all of the Swiss cheese made in the United States is produced within a radius of about 50 miles of Monroe, Wis. We have a man stationed there who works in cooperation with men from the University of Wisconsin. The same is true at Sugar Creek, Ohio. Our man is working with some twenty-eight factories there. Our part is to give instructions in the manufacture of cheese, and in furnishing pure cultures, which aid in the making of this type of cheese.

Mr. HART. A reduction in the appropriation in the Budget will not in any way curtail this work?

Dr. REED. No, sir.

Mr. HART. Could you speed up the development of these so-called "foreign" cheeses if your appropriation was increased?

We

Dr. REED. Well, that is pretty difficult to say right now. could do more work; yes, Mr. Hart. It is our plan this year to make a little more definite and detailed study of the foreign type cheeses in European countries. We hope to have a representative go over there to make some observations and studies this year, preparatory to taking this work on. With more money we could do more research

work along this line, and we hope, early in April or May, to make this study in some of the foreign countries.

Mr. HART. If you are successful in displacing this imported cheese, to what extent would that affect, or take up the surplus milk that we now have, the surplus dairy products? Do you have the figures on that?

Mr. SANDLIN. You said it would take the milk of 150,000 cows. Dr. REED. Have you the figures on that, Dr. Rogers?

Dr. ROGERS. Six hundred and twenty million pounds.

Dr. REED. One hundred and fifty thousand cows, about, and 620 million pounds of milk to displace the foreign types of cheese. Mr. HART. I wonder what proportion that is of our surplus?

Dr. REED. It is 620 million pounds, but I could not say what percent of the surplus it represents.

Mr. HART. You figure there around 200,000 cows?

Dr. REED. About 150,000 cows.

Mr. SANDLIN. Is there anything further you wish to submit, Dr. Reed?

Dr. REED. I have presented here in this outline, Mr. Chairman, statements for all the other projects. We had gotten down to the cheese manufacturing project. I do not know what you want to take up now.

Mr. SANDLIN. You made a full statement on the cheese manufacturing project, and any other statement would be a repetition of the one you have already made.

Dr. REED. That is correct.

ALLOTMENT OF P.W.A. AND C.W.A. FUNDS

Mr. SANDLIN. Have you explained these emergency funds to the committee?

Dr. REED. Mr. Kemper will explain them.

Mr. KEMPER. They have not been explained.

Mr. SANDLIN. You have emergency funds aggregating $368,410. Mr. KEMPER. Yes, sir; that is the combined amount of the allotments under Public Works and Civil Works. The original allotment from Public Works was $173,670, and we recently received a supplemental allotment of $88,750, Added to that is the allotment for Civil Works, aggregating $105,990. Of course, all of that is not for expenditure during this fiscal year; some of it will run into the fiscal year 1935.

Mr. SANDLIN. That fund has been mainly for the construction of buildings, has it not?

Mr. KEMPER. The Public Works funds are entirely for physical improvements, in the construction of buildings, clearing land, building fences, laying water and sewer mains, drain tiles, and other similar improvements. No land purchases are involved.

Mr. SANDLIN. Did you get an allotment for this work from the C.W.A.?

Mr. KEMPER. No, sir. The Civil Works funds were not for expenditures on Public Works projects. The C.W.A. allotment, was of course, largely for labor, but it did provide for materials purchased. In other words, the principal expenditures from C.W.A. funds were for labor clearing and terracing land, and items of that character.

Mr. SANDLIN. You get your labor locally?

Mr. KEMPER. Through local employment agencies entirely.

Mr. SANDLIN. This statement on page 89 itemizes it thoroughly? Mr. KEMPER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SANDLIN. It shows the places where you are spending the money?

Mr. KEMPER. Yes, sir.

Dr. REED. In each case we have gone through the State organizations that handle these matters.

Mr. SINCLAIR. The C.W.A. funds are on a different basis from the P.W.A. funds?

Mr. KEMPER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SINCLAIR. Do you hire them at different rates under those funds?

Mr. KEMPER. No, sir; the wage rates are exactly the same for skilled and unskilled labor. The rate for skilled labor in your State is $1.20 per hour and the rate for unskilled labor $0.50 per hour.

Mr. SINCLAIR. That applies to both P.W.A. and C.W.A. funds. Mr. KEMPER. Yes, sir. The scale for skilled and unskilled labor is the same.

Mr. SINCLAIR. I understood that the C.W.A. was only hiring at the rate of $0.50 per hour.

Mr. KEMPER. No, sir.

Mr. SINCLAIR. I am glad to know that. That satisfies the union scale of wages.

Mr. KEMPER. The wage scale was established by a wage board and the rates fixed for skilled and unskilled labor were adopted by both the P.W.A. and the C.W.A.

Mr. SANDLIN. Is there anything further you wish to present, Dr. Reed?

Dr. REED. There is nothing else.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1934.

BUREAU OF CHEMISTRY AND SOILS

STATEMENTS OF DR. HENRY G. KNIGHT, CHIEF; DR. C. A. BROWNE, CHIEF, CHEMICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH; DR. W. W. SKINNER, ASSISTANT CHIEF, CHEMICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH; DR. A. G. McCALL, CHIEF, SOIL INVESTIGATIONS; AND DR. C. H. KUNSMAN, ACTING CHIEF, FERTILIZER INVESTIGATIONS

GENERAL STATEMENT ON WORK OF THE BUREAU

Mr. SANDLIN. We will take up the items for the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. Have you a general statement you would like to make to the committee, Dr. Knight, in reference to the work of the Bureau?

Dr. KNIGHT. The research work of the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils comprises in general studies of the physical and chemical properties of soils and fertilizers, and of the numerous products which are produced or utilized by agriculture and the agricultural industries.