establish them in Roanoke and Richmond and Norfolk and different places like that.

The total vote in the House is 100. When the matter came up we had to have a vote of 51 where finance is concerned. You must have 51 which is the majority. The vote came up on the last day of the legislature when many of them had gone home. It was 45 in favor and 28 not in favor, so it was not lost. I would not call that such a terrible defeat, because it looks like it was turned down. We did not have enough votes, that is all. If I had been the gentleman who introduced the bill, I would not have felt so badly.

The CHAIRMAN. Absenteeism in the General Assembly of Virginia is almost as bad as in Washington.

Mr. FROST. It was to be a revolving fund, smaller but similar to the revolving fund that you folks have. We have a marketing authority there that is nominated by the city of Richmond, the mayor. The nominations are made from the wholesale trade. They nominated three, including me. Then the mayor accepted the one that he wanted out of those three; he accepted me. It was five different departments, and these different departments in the State sent in these nominations, forming a marketing authority which we have power to borrow money, to sell bonds to open a market, to condemn land, and to do everything. We have all of the power in the world that we want, but we do not have any money.

Mr. ANDRESEN. You have the authority to issue bonds?
Mr. FROST. Yes, sir.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Have you ever tried that?

Mr. FROST. They turned it down. I am glad you asked me that question, because I want to answer it. I have been listening to you and you ask some nice questions. Whenever we go to private authority, do you know what they want? Thirty-year lease. I am 70 years old. I am 70 years of age, I don't like the world "old," do you? I am of age, and when we go to buy, they want us to give a 30-year lease, and sometimes 50 years, you never heard so many years' lease in your life. I would be a fine man to sit down and sign a 30-year lease, to give so much money for 30 years for that private concern to loan us money.

When I read this law, and it was sent to me, I thought it was one of the finest things that I ever saw for the produce distributive industry. I have a little thing here I want to read, what Dr. Crow said, Billy Crow of the Department of Agriculture. This is what he said, that these perishables, stuff that we have in our inadequate facilities we have today, I own my own house, it is 40 feet by 65, electric elevator, cellar, and three floors, that is a pretty nice house, really it is considered so, but it is as inadequate as it could be. Do you know today-imagine this, that you are sitting here in your store, and here comes a load of stuff, it could come from Texas, from anywhere, backs up to your door, and it comes under refrigeration. He wants to know what you will do with it. Well, you sell all you can and then the balance, what will you do with it? You have to carry it to Richmond Cold Storage and put it in there at a cost of 12 cents a package, 5 cents to bring it back, that is 17 cents.

Now, listen, you all say that you want to find out if the producer will get more and the consumer pay less. Seventeen cents, let us take that 17 cents off. Bill Crow says that perishables are worn out

carting them from a car to the tracks to the store, carting them back again to the storage, to the car, and back again to the store, until the retailer has to pay the difference of those losses. If you all knew the wastage and dumpage and stuff in perishable business, you would realize that you could get modern adequate up-to-date facilities like this law has if you could it would be fine.

There are some fine points in this law. I borrowed money and loaned money. I know what a mortgagor and mortgagee is. I have been a mortgagor until they like to worried me to death. I know that.

The marketing facilities will naturally reduce the cost of handling, save these perishable goods. It is the stuff that is thrown away that

costs.

Let me say just one thing. Suppose we have a hundred baskets of beans we throw away. We paid 70 cents charges to haul, 30 cents for the basket, 20 cents for picking. Add those up. The cost has to be somewhere. You have to carry your overhead. That is what I am saying. If you look through this thing, you can certainly see that the producer could get more and the consumer could get more and pay less, and we would make a reasonable profit, the distributor working upon a smaller overhead. He would certainly work under a smaller overhead. His losses would be eliminated.

You have in this one fine thing. These days of trucks coming to your door and unloading from a refrigerator car into an open house just like this, this is air cooled, but let us forget it, and call this your store, and he unloads it here, and you have taken it out of cold storage; what will you do with it? Tomorrow morning you would see it sweat and look at it, how it deteriorates overnight. You gentlemen would not believe it. But if we had a modern facility with 10,000 cubic feet of cold storage space on the premises, we would go right into there, gentlemen. Look what an overhead it would save. That would be 5 cents drayage to Richmond Cold Storage, and 5 cents back. That would be 10 cents a package. Suppose it did cost you 5 cents a package on your own. It would save 12 cents, because it is about 22 cents that you would save, or about 17 cents, and those would be cast on.

Many times a man cannot buy from the producer because his margin of profit to the retailer, which would be the ultimate consumer, is so narrow that he just cannot handle it, and the man that produces that stuff wants to sell it, too. The consumer is waiting there for it when it is within reach.

The CHAIRMAN. The market that you operate is accessible to railroad transportation now?

Mr. FROST. That is another thing that we have to haul everything in this world. Everything that we have to haul from the railroad team tracks or delivery from the team tracks. We deliver a lot from the cars and use the cars as part of our storage.

Another thing, let us be fair, I would almost like for-we steal the use of the car, we steal every single one of us with inadequate facilities steal the use of cars, and then you bring it before some of your committee and say "Where are you going to get your refrigerated cars,' and there they are sitting on our storage. It is cheaper to have them iced and pay the demurrage, cheaper for it to lay in that particular car. It is cheaper to let it lay in that car that has been in 11 days,

buried in ice as deep as you are tall, than to take it out and put it in cold storage. The ice must melt wet to keep the moisture in these goods, you know, because of the nature of the perishable stuff, lettuce and so forth. I reckon 90 to 95 percent is moisture. So if we put it in that dry storage in our house and let it stay over there, look what it would do. We don't. We just use the car.

The first thing you know, the ICC and everybody else is after you to release those cars, because the man over in Florida or Texas or wherever it may be, I would like to call some of your States, because it makes you feel good, but anyway I mean he wants to move his stuff and he can't, and many times the stuff is destroyed.

I mean you take Maine potatoes up there. Sometimes you know they get up there and you cannot get them away to save your life, any of those far places.

The CHAIRMAN. Down there in your community, a private corporation, the A. & P., have gone out there on the Petersburg Turnpike and build a modern warehouse, the trains to the back door and the trucks to the front door. That is the way private business in America is operated. That is what you want to do in Richmond.

A man

Mr. FROST. The A. & P. warehouse, I know what you are talking about, both of them are on the same floor, the trucks and cars. comes up to me, up to my place with a truck. The truck is so high from the pavement we have to hire one man to take that off the truck to put it on the pavement so my porter can carry it in. If we had it, just get it that way. Do you not think this is a good bill? I don't know.

The CHAIRMAN. You have convinced me that it is a good bill, I believe.

Mr. FROST. These little technical features there, eliminate them. and get them so that it will work, but put this thing in, and if you can't get it privately, loan it to us. I am not afraid of the United States Government with you fine men behind it. Fix it so it will be possible. I am confident that it will be all right. It is a shame. Nothing can be written perfect, nothing. I don't think anything can be written perfect. It can be perfected, and I think you will do it before you get through.

Mr. ANDRESEN. Are you fearful that the rents that may be charged for the different spaces in there will be too high?

Mr. FROST. Now listen at this. You can't take a store like mine, for instance, if it was rented, and what could you offer a man? All you have in the world is a shell. Is that right? But when you have modern facilities, saving drayage, and cartage, you must figure all of that in as to what the benefit and those modern facilities.

Take the house next door to me. Blablock does business, of course, he has a storage downstairs, and a storage upstairs, he does not mind a load of 50-pound packages to back up. With 500 bags he runs them right in the storage. He does not mind the truck coming in from New York State with these little baskets of grapes in them, and putting them right in the storage. I can't handle them any more. I haven't the facilities. They used to come in iced cars. I could use them on the track, use part of that storage. These conditions have changed. overnight. The truck can change conditions overnight and there is hardly a market in the United States that is adequate unless it is adequate that can do it.

You are talking about the Government going into business and loaning to these folks money. How about the railroads. Name me a market that a railroad did not make. They did it because they wanted to control the freight that came into the yard. I don't care what. Name me one. I do say this, that I hope there will be some. way to zone, that the Secretary of Agriculture will have something that we won't have 16 markets, every one of them competing, because those little thorns in your side, you understand, are very bad sometimes, when a man has got adequate nice stuff, you know what I mean, to put it in position to keep it in nice conditions, and then some weeks without nothing, makes his price.

And another thing, a man can be quoting every kind, let us call it top grade fancy, and call it lower grades, utility, anything he wants, he does not quote it by utility, he says apples so much a pound or so much a basket. He does not tell the quality and he can do you a lot of harm in a first-class, high-class market. I may have the first class he might have the culls that came off, and brought them to my market, because he thought it was good. He ought to be made to come into my market, that market ought to be zoned, and my house that I own on Pear Street, if and when we have the market, which we will have, and you know the Government has already designated the market, drawn plans and everything else, for our market authority. The chamber of commerce got them to come down there to Richmond to get it. We have the plans and we have the Federal, State, and city; all we lack is money.

All right, if you don't think it is important, all right.

Mr. HOEVEN. I was interested in the statement you made about your competitor who seems to be making such great progress. You compared your business with his. How did he get that way? He did not have any Government money to help him.

Mr. FROST. My next door neighbor, what I am talking about is this, he could not handle all of the business of Richmond there to save his life. Consequently, I am glad you asked me that question, because many men in our business that are fully adequate, have full facilities and ability, you understand, to handle this successfully but have not the money to get modern facilities, and if it was possible, like, let us say, for the Richmond authority to issue market bonds and get money, you understand, without these terrible loans, he could not sign a long lease, his financial standing would not be worth a nickel to the individual private bankers, you understand. They look at your Dun & Bradstreet standing. Anybody can put their name on a paper. I can get my porter to do that.

Mr. HOEVEN. What money he needed he got from his private bank, did he not?

Mr. FROST. I am talking, I am not talking about this man. He was in that position. I am talking about the man that is not. It is like the 99 sheep. That was the one. You understand he did not go astray, but he just went that way and had the money. The others there that do not have the money, consequently I don't mind my competitor, I don't mind competitors, the more you have, the better I like it. It makes the market.

Another thing about it, if we would roll all six of those markets into one zone, it would make activity. It is funny, it is a human side to selling fresh fruits and vegetables. You have no idea the people that copy after another. If they see Smith, he buys, they

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know he is pretty good, if I have stuff up here, I know that old boy will follow Smith. The first thing he is going down to the other market. That is all. You have all of these divisions. You have no idea about perishable stuff. Ask any of these people, that boy who spoke here from Philadelphia, where he throws paper all of the time, makes every kind of motion in the world, offer him a nickel or a dime or whatever it is, they will take 50 packages, all of that kind of stuff. Mr. HILL. I am very much interested in hearing you talk about the great city of Richmond. Coming from the West, I have always been awed by these great southern cities and the big eastern cities. What is the population of Richmond?

Mr. FROST. They are having a little argument about that. We think we are going to about 240,000.

Mr. HILL. It has been in existence for a long time, has it not?

Mr. FROST. Yes, sir. Do not ever say that she was the capital of the Confederacy; she was the capital of the United States of Virginia, or, the United States of America.

Mr. HILL. I have you ready now for my question:

Did you know there is a little town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains by the name of Denver? I do not live there. I live close by.

They had courage enough and brains enough to develop their own market without coming here crying like babies and asking the Federal Government to supply it. You can get in there with a truck, if you are a farmer, or you can get in there with a big cross-country truck if you have one of these air-conditioned trucks.

Then, that is not all. If you have just a little 4-ton steel-body truck, you can drive in there.

Congressman Hope told about the Kansas City market. They have more room than they can find people to fill, and Kansas City did not come down here crying about the situation they are in.

Let me ask you this: Have you got to such a point that you cannot run your own business any more and that you want us here in Congress to supply the money? That is the only thing that you have. said that has impressed me. We do not mind your coming to the Federal Government to ask for the money, so you are not exciting me a bit when you do that. But are you going to put yourself in a position when I ask to drill another hole through the Rocky Mountains and ask for money, to ask your Representatives in the House and from the South to support that proposition? Of course you are not. You are just going to come here because you are interested in the market and say you want the Government to furnish all the money. You will give any kind of a mortgage, as long as the United States guarantees 85 percent of it, is that right?

Mr. FROST. If I personally honestly and sincerely thought that market of ours was not going to pay you back that money, I would not want to own it.

I am going to answer your question.

We have tried and are still trying. Listen, gentlemen, with respect to Wall Street, they have such terrible restrictions on the long years of life of the guaranty, that it is utterly impossible for us to do those things.

Now, Mr. Hill, is your market more of a farmer's market?

Mr. HILL. It is everybody's market.

Mr. FROST. If they build a farmers' market in Richmond, I would be willing to build my own plant around it.