REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED BEFORE THE HOUSE 

 AND SENATE AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEES ON H. R. 3717. 



[Prepared by CHARLES E. SCHELL, at the request of the Senate committee.] 



The COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY, 



United States Senate, Washington, D. O. 



GENTLEMEN: In response to a request by members of your body that 

 I furnish a brief resume of the evidence presented by the friends and 

 the opponents of the Grout bill I will endeavor so to do, speaking, 

 however, only for my own clients. In the beginning, allow me to state 

 that in my opinion the full enormity and infamy of the bill in question 

 can not be comprehended properly by any member of this committee 

 without carefully reading everything that has been offered on both 

 sidss, and I would earnestly urge that this be done. There has been 

 but little repetition, and the principal part of that has been in the 

 memorials from live stock and cotton growers associations whose inter- 

 ests are sufficiently large that a little repetition as a means of more 

 fully impressing the importance of their claims would not be amiss. 



In calling attention to the estimates of probable loss to the live stock 

 and cotton-seed oil interests should this bill become a law, I wish to 

 remind the committee of what appeared during the hearings to the 

 effect that some of the estimates of losses took into consideration only 

 the actual net loss by reason of the destruction of the local oleomar- 

 garine industry; others computed the loss by taking into consideration 

 the total output for the purpose of manufacture of oleomargarine, 

 both at home and abroad; while others, and perhaps the most accurate 

 computations, were based upon the loss that would accrue from lack 

 of a home market and by reason of the effect upon the general market 

 and the export trade by reason of the official condemnation which would 

 be placed upon the various products and would necessarily affect, if 

 not entirely destroy, the export trade. As was fully shown before 

 the committee the actual loss can not be estimated by merely taking 

 the difference between the price of the materials for the purpose of 

 manufacturing oleomargarine and the price of the same materials 

 still retained in their original uses. Their return to former uses 

 would necessarily reduce the existing price of the materials still so 

 used, and the effect of a total destruction of one market for a product, 

 however small that market might be, compared with the entire put- 

 put, would be more vast than the most expert board of trade manipu- 

 lator could estimate. However, the estimates from the various sec- 

 tions as a result of different experiences and different evidences suffi- 

 ciently coincide that a fairly accurate idea can be established as to the 

 minimum loss even if no one can estimate the total loss that this leg- 

 islation would bring about. 



In the interests of cotton-seed oil we first have Fred Oliver, begin- 

 ning at page 81 of the hearing before the House committee, and I earn- 



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