How significant a section do you feel this portion of the bill is? Mrs. BRADY. It is the heart of it. It is the heart of the bill. And it is really the most significant issue before us.

Furthermore, certainly existing law does not permit this kind of regulation, except for some industries. It does for some. You will find the regulation in the milk industry. You will find it in butter. You will find it in bread. You also, of course, find it in liquor. And, interestingly enough, the liquor industry was the first one to bring the problem of irrational, unreasonable size changes to the attention of the Government.

It was in 1959 that they made a protestation to the Treasury Department and said the food industry is making large profits by manipulating quantities and this is the new merchandising method and we are being denied it, so we want all liquor released from the standard sizes, and they presented quite an analysis-they based it entirely on the grounds that liquor profits were not as great as food industry profits in a number of areas and they felt they had a right to as much and felt they couldn't get it unless they were released from the establishment of reasonable sizes. I am glad to say the Treasury Department turned them down.

This is the heart of the bill and this is the heart of the complaint. We can't compare prices. And we can't compare prices when apparently competing products are in widely varied sizes, unreasonable

sizes.

Senator HART. A very common reply at this point I find is "Yes, but the variety in weights is responsive to the particular needs of the marketplace. The needs of large families and a bachelor differ. There is a wide demand, a demand which requires us to package in the packages that we do."

Mrs. BRADY. I don't think that is quite-I certainly don't want to categorize, but I don't think that argument is to the point. Granted that consumers want different sizes. They do. However, when Borden came out with that 5-ounce size of instant coffee when practically everyone else was selling 6-ounce sizes, I doubt if it was in response to consumer request.

You could buy instant coffee today in ounces all the way from 10 down to 2, going 1 ounce at a time. The 5 ounces look as big as the 6-ounce sizes. You can't tell by looking at them. I don't think, it is hard for me to believe that this variety is of great meaning to con

sumers.

Much more important to the consumer would be that variety which permits her to make an intelligent choice.

It would be possible to have instant coffee in packages descending every quarter-ounce. There is nothing to stop it at the present time. I don't see how manufacturers can claim that this is required by

consumers.

Senator HART. You probably heard earlier today the team from General Mills. They testified that Betty Crocker rarely hears any complaint from the consumer.

Mrs. BRADY. Well, I find that perhaps not as hard to understand as it might seem.

Senator HART. It seems to make an affirmative point. The consumers do find the existing conditions of the marketplace satisfactory. Mrs. BRADY. Well, let me say this: We heard a good deal about Government bureaucracy this morning. Business, of course, is highly bureaucratic.

And even in as small an organization as CU we have some difficulty in routing our mail properly. I myself have received a number of letters complaining about General Mills' products, including a copy of a letter sent to General Mills. It is easy for me to understand that many may have gotten lost.

Certainly it is very difficult for me to go over all the letters I receive. I would say that the first thing General Mills ought to do is look to its mail receiving room and then look to the distribution of this mail.

Senator HART. Wait a minute. I, though a lawyer, have had association with business activities and I find it hard to believe that the management of a business would not want to know its customer reactions, good and bad.

Mr. BRADY. I don't say they don't want to know at all. I understand. I am simply saying they might not have provided the avenues through which they can learn, through which they can even get to the flow.

It does seem unreasonable that I would receive letters complaining about-I think Morton's pies are one of General Mills products andI can't remember products but I receive these and General Mills received none. It could happen, of course, and it merely means perhaps that maybe they don't know the address of General Mills in spite of what I heard about how it has to be on the package. Also manufacturers seem to forget. On the Kraft Fudgies, for instance, when we printed in Consumer Reports something about the drop in the size of the package from 15 to 10 ounces, I got a letter from the general sales manager saying, "You made a mistake; the previous size was 12 ounces" and we said, "Well, yes, but previous to that it was 15."

I don't know. I would have to put that into the strange phenomenon category that they receive no letters.

Senator HART. I have been, in effect, doing a little testifying myself and giving you my reaction to this and it is twofold: I keep a mail count by the week of incoming expressions of opinion on legislation and while it was a short weekend from the 26th to the 30th, I got 1,303 letters on specific legislative matters.

I got 107 expressions of opinion on Vietnam. The majority of them are unhappy about the situation. There are 8 million people in Michigan. One hundred over eight million is very insignificant manifestation of interest, but I don't conclude there aren't millions who are concerned. And a good many probably figure, "Good night, what good will it do to write? That question is so big and complex." But I assume that almost all of the 8 million are vitally concerned with that and a lot of other things on this list. And turning it around a little, once in a while I do go to a drugstore and get frustrated by the toothpaste with that "1 cent more will get you two" and when all of the tubes begin at large sizes and all of this business that is the subject

of cartoon comment. But my reaction is-it is only a nickel and why sit down and write Mr. Pepsodent on whoever it is. I am busy.

I think most of the housewives would react that way. A weekend before last I went into a supermarket because we wanted to get some tomato juice. It was a quiet part of the day and the cans were there and in fairness, let me say the quantity, the volume was easily read on the label. I quit trying to figure out which was the best buy in terms of price.

Now, before somebody jumps up and says, "Yes, but quality is the factor," let me say, unless you figure out the price per ounce, you are in pretty tough shape trying to figure out what the quality superiority should bring.

My reaction to the absence of critical comment by mail stems largely from my own experience. Maybe I won't sit down and write but I don't prove by that I am not concerned.

Mrs. BRADY. Our experience makes me take a slightly different view. Now, if you will remember, I think the gentleman from General Mills said he received lots of letters.

Senator HART. Betty Crocker gets 30,000.

Mrs. BRADY. A fantastic number. Of course, she invites them. You do get letters when you invite them.

Senator HART. But she does not even exist, and that is a pretty good mail count.

Mrs. BRADY. Well, you know that you get a response usually from whatever percent you put out. You don't get a big response but you get some.

When we publish an article in Consumer Reports on auto safety, the number of letters we will get goes up on that subject, not only on that, but the whole problem, packaging problem was brought to our attention by the letters that came in unsolicited.

Now, getting on a single subject 50 letters in 1 week, to be sure there are 90 million families, but this is like a fever. Those 50 letters mean there is a high interest. Many of our letters say, "I am not a letterwriter, this is the first letter I have written, but I am so mad I have got to say something."

When you get this kind of reaction, it doesn't mean just that one consumer has a short temper. If you can get 10 such letters, it does not mean that. It is a fever thermometer. People won't sit down and write about everything. For that reason, it is just impossible for me to believe, since we received so many letters about these instant mashed potatoes-as I say I am not accusing General Mills of misrepresentation of it. I am just putting it in a strange phenomenon group.

Maybe they think there is no point in writing to the manufacturer. They will write to you but maybe they think the manufacturer is their

enemy.

Senator HART. Thank you very much. I think I have directed that the record shall contain the appendix that you offered. Additionally, the record will reproduce the front of the package of chocolate almond cookies.

Mrs. BRADY. May I have one of them? It just happened that we got two.

(The exhibit follows:)

Senator HART. We are playing that game again with the man who just arrived. He has the other one. I was tempted to ask if you thought the selection of the color design of the label is responsive to consumers' demands? [Laughter.]

Mrs. BRADY. In terms of the definition of consumer demand as it has been presented by the opponents of this legislation, the answer is "Yes."

Senator HART. Our concluding witness this morning is John Edelman, president of the National Council of Senior Citizens. Is he here?

(No response.)

Senator HART. The statement will be received and printed in the record, and the exhibits will be received at this point. (Appendixes A, B, C, and D follow :)

EXHIBIT A. PACKAGING AS A TECHNIQUE OF DECEIT

(A speech presented before the 43d National Conference on Weights and Measures, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1958, by Colston E. Warne, president, Consumers Union, Mount Vernon, N.Y.)

There is no area of buyer information that so drastically illustrates the advantages held by the business buyer over the ultimate consumer than the area in which you gentlemen operate. Take almost any issue of the magazine Purchasing, a trade journal for purchasing agents for business firms, and you will find accounts of a number of standards programs-programs to standardize the sizes and weights of the materials used in preparing the final product that we consumers buy. Of course, business buyers frequently go much further in many of their standardization and specifications programs. But let us stick to just this basic simple problem-standards of size and weight.

There is, as you here well know, no more fundamental requirement in trade than standards of weight and measure equally understandable to buyer and seller. These are even more important in trade than in monetary units. When money standards fail, barter is always possible; but even for intelligent barter, the standards you here are empowered to enforce in our communities are essential. This is why around the story of weights and measures there glows a patina of beneficient history as opposed to the catastrophic glare of military triumphs. Trade is peaceful and fair and understandable; trade transactions benefit all parties. These workaday standards are usually reported, and correctly so, as one of man's first attempts to introduce a rational basis for fair dealing in trade.

They appear to mark not only the beginnings of a more satisfactory commerce, but also the extension of ethics deeper into the affairs of everyday life. These standards are the buyer's first defense against fraud. Behind their establishment there is a long inch-by-inch journey over the years which is an important part of our many attempts to rise into a more controllable environment. Here we deal with an alphabet in social survival. These, your weights and measures, are the hand and finger contacts through which we try to build and preserve a cohesive society. If it seems to you that I am overromantic about so simple a thing as a standard weight, let me say that it seems to me that it is precisely these things we experience day by day in our least pretentious activities that are frequently those very happenings which, a thousand years from now, historians will view as more significant than the slogans and fears that now agitate us. It seems to me that, when I say that business buyers apply and use these measure ments increasingly but deny their use to the ultimate buyer, one of the things I am saying is that the general public is being robbed of its heritage. I do not need to tell you how long a heritage it is. You here know about King Dungi's standards of weights and measures for Babylonia back in 2350 B.C.; but I am afraid that perhaps the public does not know. I am afraid that we have all been not too romantic but too prosaic in our approach to the problems today's market poses in this area.