AUTOMOBILE JUNKYARDS 425 



Because of this statement and because of the attitude of the 

 dealers, we passed junkyard legislation. We have just recently re- 

 quested a research program, through the Appalachian program, to 

 try to develop a portable smasher that could go up through the eastern 

 Kentucky hills where we can't use the large ones. Other States are 

 faced with the same problem. We are hoping through some research 

 we can get a portable smasher that can go up there and move the 

 cars out. We are tired of our area being used as storage space for 

 this so-called natural resource. 



Mr. PROLER. At the present time there are a number of scrap 

 processing manufacturers that are working very diligently to produce 

 portable and small, stationary, inexpensive car flatteners. This will 

 permit a lot of wreckers and small scrap dealers in villages and 

 small towns who heretofore have not been able to afford the expense 

 of scrap machinery, to scour the countryside and to bring this type 

 of scrap in economically, flatten it, and send it to market. 



At the present time the city of Chicago is delivering to an asso- 

 ciate firm approximately 35,000 abandoned cars a year. While 

 other large cities are dumping them in the ocean and you might say 

 in gullies and graveyards, the city of Chicago is receiving a great 

 amount of dollars from these old abandoned cars that have been 

 left on the streets. 



BENJAMIN SCHWARTZ. I have just a few comments to make at 

 this time. I want to join those who feel that the word "junk" has 

 been a gratuitous denigration of over 50 years of effort spent in 

 raising the standards, and in creating an image for the industry as 

 conservers of natural resources. We think that the old automobile 

 has been taken out of context, since it is only one of the sources of 

 raw material, out of context of the vast economic principles involved 

 in the secondary raw materials industry, and, therefore, has been 

 blown out of all proportions. 



We have no objection to the principles of good housekeeping, but 

 if planning goes beyond the screening principle, and involves talk of 

 subsidies, disposal bonuses, and what has been added to the discussion 

 by Mr. Owens from the platform, a fascination, and I call it a strange 

 fascination, with the giant fragmentizers and shredders to be estab- 

 lished, possibly with government funds, in competition with the 

 established people in the industry, then we maintain that it is going 

 beyond that principle of screening, and we are, therefore, dealing 

 with the free market. And the free market has not been analyzed or 



