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Show Xivestoclcl I Los Angeles, California, February 26, 1934 The ways and means committee com-mittee has favorably reported in the house of representatives a bill to devy an excise tax of 5 cents per pound in all cocoanut and sesame oil used in the United States. As is usual in important legislative legisla-tive matters we find a division between be-tween industries handling cocoanut and sesavrse oil entirely of foreign origin and organizations representing represent-ing agriculture. Nearly every chamber cham-ber of commerce in the west has had an appeal from the industrialist urging a continuation of the present situation wherein large quantities of oil and copra are brought into this country annually, and as usual agriculture agri-culture and livestock interests because be-cause of lack of proper organization j have not been so prompt to set forth their side of the question. In Lo:; Angeles the importation for the year. 1933 was 52.000 tons of copra (from! which the oil is pressed) and 14,500, tons of cocoanut and sesame oil. This, probably is a very small part of our national importation. The usual flood of telegrams is going in to members of our national ' legislature and numerically the in- dustries may send in more telegrams and write more letters than the agri- j culturists. However, that doesn't! settle the question. The point isj that we are bringing in these foreign' oils which go largely into the manufacture manu-facture of soap and to some extent' for edible use, instead of using animal and dairy fats of which we have a tremendous surplus. The soap makers claim that the class of soap they are putting out cannot be' made from any other fats or oils. As my memory goes we had metj all the practical needs of ablution be- fore we knew very much about cocoanut co-coanut oil. However, there is no disputing the fact that cocoanut oil makes good soap, and we want to keep all of these institutions going as much as we can; but the paramount para-mount issue of the nation is to restore re-store commodity values to a point where the farmer will get enough out of his products to enable him to buy something that he does not produce and which buying power the nation is sorely in need of today. Our Agricultural Agri-cultural Recovery act was founded on this premise. Livestock values are in many cases far below the cost of production. We have an accumulation of animal and dairy fats which need marketing, market-ing, probably the largest accumulation accumula-tion ever recorded. The greater use they can be put to the greater the benefit to agriculture, reflected thru improved values of our flocks and herds. We have a decided improvement improve-ment in the price of hides, which has been of tremendous help to ouri flockmasters. Now if we can get more money out of the fats, it is going to enable the packer to pay more money for the live animal and it is through such operations that we are going to bring price levels back to a point where the livestock producer pro-ducer can at least live. Notwithstanding the claims of industrialists in-dustrialists and giving the fullest considei'ation to the desirability and importance of continuing their j operations, we still believe that animal fats, together with the vegetable vege-table fats produc'ed in this country, should be given first place; but it is well that industry should understand that their very life depends upon agricultural success. And directly involved in the whole question is the reduction of cotton acreage, naturally reducing the production of cotton seed oil. The deficit thus created in our cotton oil supply should not be supplied by foreign oils. It would be just as reasonable to admit foreign cotton to make up our deficit in production, pro-duction, so as I see the matter, the passage of this bill would be of great benefit to our agricultural and livestock live-stock structure. |