In closing, it is apparent that size differences will be a complication to the promotion of plywood from the United States in the overseas market. At the same time, important progress has already been made in this area and the plywood industry, particularly the American Plywood Association, is confident that these differences will not seriously obstruct further export accomplishments.

Very truly yours,

JOHN D. RITCHIE, Regional Vice President.

Mr. CONABLE. I don't have a great deal to add to the questions Mr. Vivian has already asked.

I take it your experience with the Office of Commodities Standards has been uniformly good from your standpoint.

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes, sir.

Mr. CONABLE. Can you just summarize the procedures they use to insure that hardship is minimized on those who are going to be affected-those producers affected by the standards?

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes; and I believe those procedures are alike. The plywood association in the beginning becomes the legman, the catalyst, the organizer. We have a standards committee made up of representatives or manufacturers. We have open meetings so if there are manufacturers not members of the association, they are invited to participate.

More recently, we have added nonmembers to this particular committee. This probably takes a year and a half because there are so many little things involved. You have plants manufacturing different species. They make it in the Deep South, Northwest; sizes of logs, quality of logs. It may be what we call a co-op operation. It may be a big operation.

Once in awhile the economics creep in, so the first chore is that of the association and after meetings with the standards group we will come up with a first draft of proposed change. This is a revision and it would be the same for an original standard. That is circulated to our own industry after it has passed the standards group.

Meanwhile, we start contacting the appropriate people in the Bureau of Standards and they get copies of what is going on. We kind of go along together side by side.

While we are doing this, their technicians are checking it out from the Commerce standpoint.

When we finally arrive at the point where the Bureau of Standards feel it is acceptable to them, and it is acceptable to us, then there is a review committee and that could be made up of manufacturers. There are 19, I believe, manufacturers, consumers, distributors, and lumber dealers, and I think perhaps builders, or some other interested group. They take the standard and each one of these review committee members and these people are selected by the Department of Commerce and they must then come back with a response to the standard that has been submitted. Each one actually has to OK it. If one has a serious objection, the Department of Commerce then will say they will decide whether that is serious enough to start over again, so to speak, or make sure it is reconciled, and in most cases in the interest of long-range cooperation, these questions when there is a doubt are finally solved, once the review committee comes back and they are uniformly in favor, it goes through the Department of Commerce to an acceptor group and

there is no limit to this number of people. You and I can be members of the acceptor group if we indicate an interest in what is going on. Presently, I think, there are 900 and these are circulated to this acceptor group and they can be anyone. They usually are given perhaps 15 days to respond, and there again that is the last time that you see if anybody feels he has been hard done by or has a good bona fide objection. Once that is complete, then there is a promulgation date set for the changeover or the installation of a new standard, but in our case since 1933 it has been a revision. The present one is the biggest revision we have ever done. This will happen November 1.

That wasn't a very good job of doing it briefly. I am sorry about that, Mr. Conable.

Mr. CONABLE. The ultimate responsibility is the Government's for promulgating the standard, but there is voluntary participation in the process up to the point of promulgation.

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes, sir.

Mr. CONABLE. Do you have any idea of the expense to the Government in this process? Is this a large operation?

Mr. RITCHIE. Mr. Conable, I don't know how much, but I would not consider this a large operation. The effort is in time and talent which is substantial. There often is testing done in support of a proposed change and that is usually handled by the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison and yet I would not consider from what I know about it that this would be substantial.

Mr. KINTNER. Mr. Congressman, from my knowledge of Government budgets and experience as a former Government official, I think this commodities standards work is literally performed on peanuts by way of appropriation by a group of very able and very dedicated people in the Department of Commerce. It is one of the least expensive and one of the most efficient in terms of manpower that I have encountered in the Federal Government.

Mr. CONABLE. There is no implication that you hope to see maintained a different set of standards for the country than there is internationally?

Mr. RITCHIE. Quite the opposite. We would like them to be the

same.

Mr. CONABLE. You feel that the approach followed by the Office of Commodity Standards would perhaps tend to force our policy toward one uniform standard in every case?

Mr. RITCHIE. I would think so, sir, just because they have had all the background we have had over these years and I think we would move forward on that basis very efficiently and very simply.

Mr. ROUSH. Mr. Ritchie, as I understand from your last statement to Congressman Conable, you do support the objectives of this legislation, but you are somewhat concerned with the methods that were devised?

Mr. RITCHIE. That is right.

Mr. ROUSH. Couldn't those fears which you express just as well exist under the authority which the Secretary now has?

Mr. RITCHIE. Well, I think we go back to Secretary Wallace's statement and our experience. I can't feel that we would have those same fears under the present procedure.

Mr. ROUSH. I gather that under this legislation there are specifically two things we are doing which the Secretary feels he cannot do now. One is in the establishment of the clearinghouse.

Now, I would imagine that you have no objection to this if it is a Government operation; is this correct?

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes, we have no objection, and I think we would heartily endorse that concept and we do feel as a Government operation that we can be more certain that it will not be affected by the differences in international procedures. We would be entirely in favor of that.

Mr. ROUSH. And secondly, we are giving the Secretary the authority to make grants. This you do not agree with, is this correct?

Mr. RITCHIE. I wouldn't say that we don't agree with that. We are more concerned that the clear-cut control and responsibility be in the hands of the Government, and if they have assignments that can be accomplished by private groups, I don't believe we would object to that.

Mr. KINTNER. Not in the least. It isn't a matter of providing funds for private industry to accomplish tasks which they wouldn't normally accomplish without Government grant and aid, where the control lies in the program.

Mr. ROUSH. As I understand the proposed legislation, these are the only two new grants of authority which we are giving the Secretary and having no fears in either of these areas, I don't know that your fears are well founded in that they are fears that you could just as well have under the existing legislation.

Mr. KINTNER. We have pointed out the existence of a clause in the bill which seems to give the Secretary of Commerce rather broad authority to, if he wished, disband the present domestic program. Therefore our concern has been that this committee and the Congress inake clear that it was not intended in granting this authority on international matters to grant the Secretary authority to disband the domestic program. This is their concern that this domestic program and all that it has accomplished be preserved.

Mr. ROUSH. I think the Secretary of Commerce could do it under present authority. I think he is not of that mind and probably will never be.

Mr. KINTNER. I have the annotated code and I think you could carry a very good brief for the fact that the Secretary probably could disband this program, but fortunately each time there is a pass made at this program by either private industry or someone within Government, it is usually private industry, those who have valued the program rise up in wrath and suggest that the Secretary continue the program under his authority.

Mr. ROUSH. We are glad to have this expression.

Mr. KINTNER. Further, Mr. Chairman, I think the Congress from time to time in granting appropriations has been able to exercise an oversight here and to make it clear to successive Secretaries of Commerce that they wish the program continued and strengthened, and progressive Secretaries have assured the Congress that they would not only continue the program, but they would strengthen it just as Mr. Connor has done in this current period, and even though the Secretary

might have the legal authority to abolish the program, it is quite clear that he would be flouting the will of the Congress if he did so.

Mr. ROUSH. Is the participation in the commodity standards program now satisfactory to you as Government participation? Mr. KINTNER. Yes, indeed.

Mr. ROUSH. Would you like to see that enhanced?

Mr. KINTNER. We think that recent improvements in the program instituted by the Secretary of Commerce have resulted in strengthening the program. These improvements have resulted in better review at the Department of Commerce in bringing to bear a higher degree of Government expertise in this area of commodity standards, and particularly in bringing to bear in the formulation of standards the interests of the public including consumer interest, user interest, and so forth, the sort of thing which Mr. Ritchie has so well described here this morning. These procedures, I think, are fair. They are designed to protect the public interest and they are protecting the public interest, the interest of all the public, not just the industry involved. Mr. ROUSH. I might just add this: it was not my impression from listening to and sensing the philosophy of Dr. Hollomon's testimony that we would abandon the present Government commodity standards program. I gathered it is the intention of the Commerce Department to intensify Government participation in commodity standards setting, and to enhance that program so that we would have a more lively and meaningful program in all areas, not only in the setting of international standards and our participation in international standards activities. This in turn would stimulate and help our own domestic commodity standards setting program. I would hope that would be the case.

In any event, we are going to ask for comments from Commerce concerning your testimony.

Mr. VIVIAN. I think Dr. Hollomon indicated that the principal new authorities conveyed by the bill were first, the ability to issue grants to private organizations rather than contracts; and second, the ability to publish findings in their publications of the Department of Commerce; and I think publications of the Department of Commerce because in the past we always contracted some of the firms publications.

Now, let me go back to the first question, issuance of grants implies that the organization receiving the grant shall have very wide latitude and shall control the grounds of its own making. Do you construe that grant of authority as inimical to the program?

Mr. RITCHIE. I think one of our concerns is that there would be that much authority passed out to the organization without the Government control that we think would be necessary. We would like to see it pinned down a little bit more.

Mr. VIVIAN. A specific new request in this bill is for authority to make grants rather than to enter into contracts since this authority already exists.

Mr. RITCHIE. Yes. I believe that indicates some lack of control, that the Government should be more deeply involved in setting of programs.

Mr. VIVIAN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. ROUSH. Thank you, Mr. Ritchie. We appreciate your coming.

Our next witness is Dr. Frank L. LaQue, vice president, International Nickel Co.

Dr. LaQue, we are very pleased to have you here. We have been looking forward to your testimony in view of this study which you have made. You may proceed as you see fit.

Dr. LAQUE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity. I have a prepared statement which I believe you have or will receive. Mr. ROUSH. We have it.

Dr. LAQUE. As I reviewed the bill-and this is an introduction to my statement and in view of the preceding comments I'd like to say that I didn't detect any threat to the commodities standards activities of the Department of Commerce in the bill as I read it. Since some questions were raised by Mr. Vivian and others with respect to this aspect of the matter, and if you would care to have me do so, I would supplement my prepared statement with answers to any questions you would like to ask on this point. In the meantime, I will go on with the statement as I have prepared it and please feel free to interrupt me as I go along if you wish.

Mr. ROUSH. You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF DR. FRANK L. LaQUE, VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL NICKEL CO.

Dr. LAQUE. My name is Frank LaQue. I am a vice president of the International Nickel Co. From May 1964, until February, 1965, I served as chairman of a panel organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce to survey standardization activities in this country and to make recommendations to deal with any deficiencies disclosed by this survey. This panel was instructed to give special attention to international standards. This was accomplished by assignment of this field to a task force headed by Mr. Alfred C. Webber of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and Mr. Charles M. Mapes of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. These gentlemen had the benefit of extended experience through participation in the activities of the principal international standardization organizations: The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The former deals with a broad range of standards. The latter concerns itself primarily with electrical machinery and devices. In addition, special attention was given to standards work in Latin America through the Pan American Standards Commission, referred to by the initials of its name in Spanish as COPANT.

A review of H.R. 17424 and the supporting document has convinced me that passage of this bill will enable the Department of Commerce to serve the national interest, as disclosed by our panel study, by supporting those activities in the field of international standards that were identified as being most essential and in need of help of the type that this bill will permit.

I condensed in this one paragraph, I think, a very important statement that the bill does implement the recommendations that our panel thought were appropriate.

The national interest requires participation by technical personnel from the United States in the preparation of international standards so that these documents will be properly representative of the

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