NINETEENTH ANNUAL -YEAR BOOK— PART VII 399 



mission to devise such a system. The Federal Trade Commission went 

 to work on that system of accounting and perfected it, and Mr. Colver 

 told me last week it had not yet been put into operation. The wheels of 

 the government are pretty ponderous, and move slowly. Among other 

 things, the committee of five recommended that the commission men, the 

 traders and stock yards, all be put under a federal license, and as a result 

 of that recommendation they were licensed, and that went into effect 

 last fall. 



Now, these recommendations were of course temporary, and would 

 all come to an end, and would terminate with the war, under the food 

 control act, when peace was signed, and we go back to the old conditions 

 which prevailed before the war, unless there is some kind of legislation 

 enacted to take their place. That is a very important matter, and a mat- 

 ter to which I wish to direct your attention most emphatically. While 

 flie committee of five were working out their program, the Federal Trade 

 Commission was hard at work on its report, and along in July it made a 

 summary of its report. I wish to read you just a few words in regard 

 to that. I am quoting from the report of the Market Committee of the 

 American National Live Stock Association: 



"Let there be no misapprehension about our standing squarely back 

 of the Federal Trade Commission. Its findings of fact are exactly in 

 accordance with what we have charged. The remedies proposed are not 

 radical; on the other hand, they promise the maximum amount of bene- 

 fit, without disturbance to the industry. It is most unfortunate for both 

 the producer and the consumer that the character of the report has been 

 grossly misrepresented by reports sent to the press, so that the public 

 has received an entirely wrong conception of it, believing that government 

 ownership and operation of the packing plants was recommended, when, 

 as a matter of fact, the commission's remedies dealt solely with the facili- 

 ties for marketing, distribution, storage of live stock and the products of 

 live stock. 



I presume nine out of ten men you meet on the street have received 

 the impression from the packers' propaganda, which has gone from one 

 end of the country to the other, that there is government ownership and 

 operation involved in the recommendations of the Federal Trade Com- 

 mission. In the first place, so far . as taking over the packing houses 

 themselves and operating them, that has never been even considered or 

 mentioned, but the recommendation of the Federal Trade CommissioT? 

 deals solely with the facilities of the marketing and distribution of the 

 live stock. 



I Think you will be interested to hear from Mr. William P. Colver. 

 chairman of this commission. He gave us a very interesting talk in 

 Denver. I will quote a few lines of what he says in his report: 



"After we had been told by congress to gather the facts concerning 

 food control and prices, we spent $250,000 of your good money on the job. 

 At the beginning we found the five larger packers were in very close 

 touch secretly. We found their hand in Washington, and found it in other 

 places, even Irt associations like this. We saw they tried to stop your 

 market committee from passing the resolution calling for a federal inves- 



