Mr. BRAND. And we try to do our part toward curing it. Senator FRAZIER. We had a witness here the other day, one of the Farm Bureau men from Illinois, and he said some professor there in the agricultural college, in the university or the agricultural college, had advocated the distribution of crushed phosphate rock on their land, pulverized phosphate rock, and they used that, he said, quite extensively in place of commercial fertilizer.

Mr. BRAND. Senator Frazier, the United States consumption of phosphate rock, ground fine, for soil application, totals around 40,000 tons a year out of the total of 8,200,000 tons. In other words, the phosphoric acid in raw phosphate rock, no matter how finely ground it is, is very slowly available, and not available rapidly enough for the use of most crops; and even in Illinois, which is the great user of phosphate rock, due to Professor Hopkins' teachings some decades ago, they are going over very rapidly to superphosphate and to complete fertilizers very rapidly.

Senator FRAZIER. It seems to me that the work the T. V. A. is doing in this fertilizer down there, in the first place, will have the effect of getting more farmers interested in using it, and in the necessity of using it, through their experiments, and in getting it through the agricultural colleges, and so forth; but it seems to me the important thing that they are going to do is to reduce the price of commercial fertilizers to the farmer, just the same as they are reducing the rates of electric current to the people.

Mr. BRAND. They can only do that in an economic way if they can produce it more cheaply than the private industry can.

Senator FRAZIER. Oh, no, that isn't it; they can make private industry come down, and cut their profits, just the same as their electric companies.

Mr. BRAND. I would like to introduce into the record a table showing from the income tax records the earnings of some 264 to 300 fertilizer companies over a period of years.

Senator FRAZIER. Because they are not selling enough-they have their prices so high they can't sell it.

Mr. BRAND. Oh, no, the prices are low relative to all other commodities, at the moment. The latest figures that I have, all commodities index 122, fertilizer 99; in which 1910-14 is taken at 100. Senator FRAZIER. What year is the base of the index?

Mr. BRAND. 1910-14.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. If they were charging too much then they are in the same boat now, aren't they?

Mr. BRAND. That was not a year of high prices, and I would like to insert in the record a table showing prices of both superphosphate and certain grades of mixed fertilizer, if agreeable.

Senator FRAZIER. You mean of products the farmers must buy, like farm machinery, and so forth? Farm machinery is too high, too. Mr. BRAND. Fertilizer is the nearest except feeds.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. It is the nearest except feeds?

Mr. BRAND. Exactly so.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. The trouble is with these low prices of farm products, the farmer can't afford to buy fertilizer. Take the

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potatoes, for instance; they use $40 to $50 worth of fertilizer on an acre of potatoes.

Mr. BRAND. Right in Senator Frazier's own State of North Dakota, they are using more and more of it because they find it pays.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. They are using a little more because it gives them better yield, but practically none is used yet in North Dakota.

Mr. BRAND. It is a new territory just coming in, but you take the State of Maine, where the annual yield with fertilizer is more than 200 bushels to the acre, and the annual yield without fertilizer is about 100 bushels to the acre, and, of course, 100 bushels of potatoes will pay for a lot of fertilizer.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. At 20 cents a bushel it won't pay for much.

Mr. BRAND. That is the problem of the farm, and I have done, as you know, a great deal of work on that problem.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. It would take 200 bushels to make your $40 for a ton of fertilizer.

Mr. BRAND. Our survey with personal interviews of nearly 50,000 farmers shows that the farmers themselves testify that for every dollar they spend for fertilizer they get $3.50 back, that is the testimony of 50,000 farmers.

Mr. BIDDLE. Is that cash crops?

Mr. BRAND. Mostly cash crops.

Senator FRAZIER. That theory part of it is all right but it doesn't work out, and if they do that they could put in a little more and make more all of the time.

Mr. BRAND. You come to the law of diminishing returns and you can't do it, but they haven't with 2,000 to 3,000 tons and the celery growers of Florida are using even more than that, some of them up to 5,000 pounds to the acre, and they find it pays.

Senator FRAZIER. With some truck garden stuff like that, that they sell at comparatively big prices, it will probably give them returns on it.

Mr. BRAND. Your yield of wheat is about 14 bushels to the acre, and the yield in Pennsylvania, where they use fertilizer, is almost 24. Senator FRAZIER. I think, too, that the T. V. A. is going to work out some plan of using this concentrated high-grade fertilizer, and in that way keep down the freight a great deal.

You spoke of the milk situation, but you know the farmers now, the average farmer, out in my country at least, use a cream separator, and they don't ship this water to market at all.

Mr. BRAND. I take a rather practical view of that. We have in our industry sales executives who have been carrying on this work for anywhere from a few to 25 or 30 years, of distribution of fertilizer, and I know of no reason in the world, in principle, why an agronomist from the University of Tennessee would be so much smarter than these men who have been engaged in this work of distributing millions of tons of fertilizer over the years, and I can't quite see just how that is going to eventuate.

Senator FRAZIER. The same argument is used by the power people, against the public utilities, too, exactly the same argument.

Mr. BRAND. Of course, I don't know the arguments and I consistently

Senator FRAZIER. You know that the electric current has been cut more than 50 percent by the public ownership plants.

Mr. BRAND. I don't know about that, at all.

Senator FRAZIER. Well, you know from experience where you have been, you can see right here in Washington, for instance, we have gotten over 50 percent.

Mr. BRAND. We have always had a relatively low price here. I have only lived here

Senator FRAZIER. Twelve or fifteen years ago it was 8 cents a kilowatt, and it has been cut to less than a half of that now, just because of threatened competition.

Mr. BIDDLE. You would rather stick to phosphates than just

Mr. BRAND. Yes; Senator Frazier; I don't know enough about the power question to even argue with you.

Senator FRAZIER. Down there in the Tennessee Valley country, they claim that the old-line companies had met the T. V. A. rates, and were selling enough more current to make more money than they did before, and I believe you could do the same thing with fertilizer.

Mr. BRAND. I can only answer that by inserting in the record the results of the last request for bids by the triple A, of the prices of concentrated superphosphate, and to sell to the triple A, for its distribution, and the soil-conservation work, at prices equal to or below those that the Tennessee Valley Authority can offer.

Mr. BIDDLE. It looks as though T. V. A. helped the industry. Mr. BRAND. Well, I don't know just what you mean by "help." Mr. BIDDLE. They are getting bids for these triple-phosphates, and T. V. A. can't supply enough so that they have to turn to the industry for it, isn't that right?

Mr. BRAND. We have been asked within the last few days, and the bids were returnable last Monday, and they were returned, to bid on 75,000 tons of concentrated superphosphate, and the industry bid on 81,500 tons, so that you can see what the industry can furnish, and I would like to put in the record the table showing the prices at the different points.

Senator FRAZIER. Don't you think the T. V. A. has something to do with the low bids?

Mr. BRAND. We bid on our cost basis.

Senator FRAZIER. Of course you did, but before that you had been sending it in on your profit basis.

Mr. BRAND. We never have sold on a high basis, Senator Frazier, our loss record is such that it really is something for the industry to be ashamed of.

Senator FRAZIER. Well, a lot of these public utilities have lost money, too, and the railroads have lost money because they have had their rates so high that the people can't use them.

Mr. BRAND. Our prices haven't been that way.

FILLER MATERIALS IN MIXED FERTILIZERS

Senator FRAZIER. I don't know what you call it, when you put in 20 pounds out of 100 of fertilizer and the rest of the filler.

Mr. BRAND. The red line there, Senator Frazier, shows fertilizer prices, and the black line shows all commodities so that you can see where we have been with reference to both of them all of these years. There is so much bunk about the prices of fertilizer, and about the profiteering of fertilizer manufactures, that it really is very unfair. Senator FRAZIER. You admit that there is a lot of bunk goes in every sack of fertilizer.

Mr. BRAND. Absolutely not.

Senator FRAZIER. You call it filler; I call it bunk.

Mr. BRAND. Every State but 1-47 of the 48 States, have fertilizercontrol laws, that are rigid, more rigid than the food laws, that we have to comply with.

Senator FRAZIER. Oh, well, you just have to tell what is in that. Mr. BRAND. We have to live up to it, and we get penalized and fined. Mr. BIDDLE. If it is a percentage of sand, you marked so much. sand on the bag.

Mr. BRAND. You are not required to show the filler, you are required to show affirmatively the quantity of plant food, and in some cases, a tag that discloses the sources of the plant food.

Mr. BIDDLE. But nobody suggested that you put in less fertilizer than you say-I think that you had better put in enough. And go ahead, Mr. Brand.

PRIVATE INDUSTRY PROGRESSIVE

Mr. BRAND. Another statement that is frequently made is that the industry has been unprogressive, and has not served the country as it might.

I have already shown that private inventors, and the private industry, have patented all of the processes, and developed all of the processes commercially, and had done it before T. V. A. came into existence, to show that the industry has done its part in those respects. The same is true of nitrogen fixation.

Acting Chairman SCHWARTZ. When you go back to 1600 or 1700 for some patents, and use that as a basis of what you are doing today, it is rather far in the past, isn't it?

Mr. BRAND. I am now going to the date of the wet process and its utilization 31 years ago, to the electric furnace process, as evidenced by Monsanto and Victor, and the blast furnace as evidenced by-particularly by Victor.

Senator FRAZIER. Haven't they worked out some new methods. down there at Muscle Shoals, that you people have never thought of? Mr. BRAND. They have improved the design of apparatus, and they have made discoveries about refractory materials, and they have helped in some cases, in the building of new plants, where their engineering studies have given them new information, but so far as these broad claims that have been made is concerned, that is not true.

Mr. BIDDLE. Let us take a definite claim. Prior to the T. V. A., had triple-phosphate ever been produced for actual sale to farmers? Mr. BRAND. Yes.

Mr. BIDDLE. To what extent? How many tons?

Mr. BRAND. I am unable to say because-purely a surplus proposition; the electric furnace process is so expensive, that the pure product obtained from that goes into the food and the chemical industries, rather than the fertilizer industry.

Mr. BIDDLE. I am talking of the fertilizer.

Mr. BRAND. And only in the fertilizer industry, only when there is a surplus.

Mr. BIDDLE. It went into cooking soda; it didn't go into fertilizer. Mr. BRAND. The surplus has gone into fertilizer, and it always has. Mr. BIDDLE. That is the point.

Mr. BRAND. The wet process is so much cheaper, and you get the same end product, that is the one that people have used for fertilizer

purposes.

Now, I want to continue just a little further on that. In the matter of the mining and the beneficiation of phosphate rock, all of the improvements have been done by private industry, and they have been very great, and the matter of washing, and flotation, and the flotation process alone has added probably 30 to 35 percent to the recoverable percentage of the matrix.

In the matter of briquetting and sintering and nodulizing, and all of those things, the private industry has certainly done its part, and the other side of it is the sulphuric acid side of it, because half of every ton is roughly sulphuric acid, and the process has been improved, and improved, and improved by private industry, so that I just mention those to indicate how unfair it is to say that there hasn't been any progress.

The same is true of the manufacture of nitrogen by the various processes, and it was private industry that discovered the phosphate beds, and it was private industry that developed the fractional crystallization process, Searles Lake, for the manufacture of potash, and I say that in all of these respects, and continuously, the industry has, as rapidly as its economic circumstances, depending upon the economic circumstances of the farmer, permitted, he has made all of these forward steps, and always given the farmer the benefit of them in the price of the goods.

That is as these price indexes and price curve will show.

Even Dr. Curtis stated, in the testimony that I heard on August 4, I just wrote this out in pencil here, he said:

The old process is a good process, a cheap process, and it is still the process that will produce so far as we know, available phosphates cheapest at the factory. So that if I seem to be arguing against Dr. Curtis, I am not in reality, because much of what he has said is exactly what we said.

Mr. BIDDLE. He was thinking, I think, of those deposits of phosphate that could not be commercially manufactured and transported. He had that in mind, he had that western reserve in mind all of the time, I think.

Mr. BRAND. But we-I mean private industry, I am just using "we" in that sense, private industry put the electric-furnace method in, and the blast-furnace method also, so that what they have done is improve design and they have made real contributions and I don't want to be misunderstood, I think that they have made a real contribution.

Mr. BIDDLE. I think that you are very fair about it.

Mr. BRAND. And I want to be fair in this, too, that directly these statements are made, that frequently the reports of what they have