418 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



We are dealing with the obsolete car. Cars, like all of us, will come 

 to the end of the road and this is a proper cost that should be borne 

 by the user. This question, indeed, is prompted by the present action 

 of the Congress with respect to the excise tax. Should not some 

 portion or a new tax be segregated for the strictly limited purposes 

 of dealing with automobile junkyards? 



Mr. ABERNETHY. Of course, we believe that the excise tax is not 

 a user's tax. The only other comment I could make is that the users, 

 as you well know, are paying well above their share in one way or 

 another for highway improvement. We feel that the excise tax was 

 discriminatory and the plan that came out of the committee just 

 recently for the elimination of it is in the right direction. 



The user is paying a lot to use the roads and highways. The 

 figure given is $2 billion more than the normal amount expected. 



HARRY E. INGWERSEN. I would like to speak not so much of what 

 might be done, but of our own experience with what has been done. 

 I would like to say, first, my remarks are directed or perhaps influ- 

 enced by an exhaustive study of a report prepared by Mr. Owens 

 and other members of his group, who should be very much congrat- 

 ulated. We feel, as has been said, that scrap or junk automobiles 

 rightfully used are a national resource. If properly processed, they 

 can well return to the furnaces of our steel mills and foundries. 



At the present time, I understand there are two methods or 

 machines that do this. One of them has been installed adjacent to 

 our plants in Kansas City, Mo., and Houston, Tex. The scrap 

 has been found to be excellent. In Kansas City, we have nothing 

 but electric furnaces. In Houston, we have both electric and open 

 hearth. 



From that experience, we believe scrap so processed can be used in 

 either type. One drawback is perhaps the cost. It represents a 

 major capital investment, but I believe there are methods now, some 

 perhaps even in use, that put the same type of process within the 

 reach of the smaller scrap processor throughout the country. We 

 feel that, if this can be developed, a great step will have been taken 

 in eliminating and putting scrapped automobiles into normal com- 

 mercial, industrial channels again. 



RAYMOND JONES. I represent 546 of the 1,600 salvage units in 

 the State of Texas. We are citizens engaged in a business that is 

 neither dishonest nor degrading. We are not the culprits who have 



