I hold in my hand I think a mushroom can-no, a cavair can, which is more of a specialty item. This might represent onetwentieth of 1 percent of all the cans made, but for that product, which is an American-packed cavair, it might represent the total volume, so that in considering this subject you must remember what every man in the game knows, and that is when you think about can sizes you think in terms of the products, and as we will show in a minute, with the growth in popularity of the product and with the changes in consumer demand, there is a constant flux and change in can sizes.

Mr. FLETCHER. In relation to the sizes of the cans?

Mr. AUSTERN. In relation to the size of can.

For example, sir, many years ago all tomatoes were packed in No. 3. Today the bulk of them are packed in No. 2. Mr. FLETCHER. Which is No. 2 and which No. 3?

Mr. AUSTERN. Give me a No. 2 from the stand.

Mr. FLETCHER. What causes the fluctuation in demand?

Mr. AUSTERN. I am going to develop that, sir. That is the heart of this whole discussion.

The Congressman suggested that the people put it up in glass or crockery as suggested yesterday. I am going to touch on that.

An understanding of these factors which control the size of the can for the particular product is essential in thinking about this problem.

In the first place, the character of the product frequently predetermines and controls the size and dimensions of the can.

There is an expression that "Just as God made little apples," you cannot do anything, and we cannot change nature. Now let us look at some examples. Yesterday there was a great deal of discussion about pineapple. The familiar cartwheel slice, the round slice with the hole in the middle of it, goes into cans of three general diameters.

The reason for that is that on the average there are three different sizes of pineapple, and if you are not going to have tremendous waste in cutting that pineapple and packing it, you have got to have three cans of three diameters to accommodate the three sizes.

That is an example of the character of the product. While I am on pineapples, here is a can of vertical pineapple strips.

The CHAIRMAN. May I ask there, does every manufacturer or canner of pineapples have three cans to meet the different requirements? Mr. AUSTERN. Oh, yes; three diameters.

The CHAIRMAN. Three diameters to meet three different possible. pineapples?

Mr. AUSTERN. I do not want to say that all pineapples fit into the three groups, but when you average them, you have got three sizes for three different diameters. Unless you had that you would just waste the fruit, because you want to cut the maximum slice.

Here is another illustration of that point, sir. Here is a vertical pineapple bar. It is vertically sliced. The can has to be high enough to accommodate the bar, that you could cut in the fruit without wasting a great deal of fruit, otherwise you could not put the package out at a price the consumer could pay. Obviously, the height of that can as compared with this one is determined by the character of the pineapple.

The CHAIRMAN. Do those cans approximate with any of the standards suggested in this bill?

Mr. AUSTERN. No. I will compare them, and you can see. I have another one here that will illustrate that difficulty.

Now, let us take asparagus. If we want to pack a 6-inch spear of asparagus it is obvious that you have got to have a can at least that height. If you wanted to pack a 6-inch spear of asparagus, the only can you could pack it in among these seven would be in this half-gallon can, because you see all of these would be too small, and these would be too high. You could not have the asparagus bumping around in the can.

That would mean that if these seven were prescribed, in order to buy the long stalk asparagus the housewife would have to buy a half gallon. If you want to pack the 311⁄2 inch, which is another very widely packed size, you could put it only into this can, and you would have to shave off about a quarter of an inch and throw it away. What would be cut is usable asparagus but in order to fit this statute you would have to throw away a quarter of an inch of each stalk to get it in here. You could not get it into this because they are too high.

That is an example of how the character of the product, the usable part of what Nature gives us, determines the kind of can we have to put it in.

In white asparagus-have you got a square can there? That is usually packed in a square can-here we are because the industry has learned from a bitter experience that if you put it into a round can, the flower on the top of the asparagus is crushed, and they go to the trouble and the expense of putting it into this kind of can because they want the product to reach the consumer the way she wants it.

We heard a great deal about corn on the cob yesterday. This is another illustration. It is perfectly obvious that the size of the can is dependent on how long the cob is. When you buy a ton of corn you are not going to throw half of it away. Your costs would go up. So the usable height of an ear determines how high the can must be.

Obviously, the diameter depends on how many ears you are going to put in. Now, yesterday, Mr. Chairman, there were a number of corn cans referred to, and it was said that in that case you had three cans with the same kind of corn in each. It so happens that in one of those cans-I do not feel free to advertise any one by indicating which there is a special ear of corn, the result of 5 years' breeding by the university in the State in which it is packed.

That ear of corn was bred for the purpose of being packed in a can so as to have less cob, more corn, a narrow ear, and the can that had the four narrow ears in had that particular breed of corn. The others had other breeds of corn. Certainly, it was all yellow corn, but as we will show in a minute, that product was bred and the can was designed to fit that specially bred corn on the cob.

Mr. FLETCHER. Would the passing of this bill compel them to produce another kind of corn?

Mr. AUSTERN. It took 5 years, and I think a 10-year grant to a university, to develop that one. But the point I make, sir, in this

part of the presentation is that we are limited in many instances in the size of the can we want to use by what the product is.

Here is another example of that, sir. If we are to pack a whole fruit or a whole vegetable, we must have a can that will take the average size of the vegetable. Of course, you can trim it down. If you do that, you have tremendous wastes. On the other hand, you cannot put them in a larger can and have them roll round or they would reach the consumer crushed.

Mr. FLETCHER. What will it cost the industry to comply with the provisions in this bill?

Mr. AUSTERN. With your permission, sir, I would like to take that all up at once. We have assembled all the costs so that you may see

them.

Mr. ANDRESEN. If you will pardon me a moment, you do not need to be modest about saying that corn came from Minnesota. [Laughter.]

Mr. AUSTERN. Now, I will just take one more of these as an illustration. Here is another type of difficulty. You take pimentos, which are not packed whole, but which are first flattened out and packed. In order to get that into a can you have to take a can that has a diameter large enough to take the whole pimento. You cannot have one too big, and you cannot have one too small. The woman wants pimento in good shape, and obviously the size of your can is controlled by how many pimentos you want to put in. They are all flattened out. They all fit into the can, and you must have that diameter, and how high the can is depends on how many you are going to put in.

I could go right through the 225 products and illustrate this point to show that in many cases the required size of the can is controlled by what grows in the fields, and the canner must select a can on the basis of the raw product and the style of the pack.

I say "style," Mr. Chairman, because in food the eye appeal is important. Surely, we could take our tomatoes or our pears and we could jam them into a can. I suppose you could get them into some of these cans provided we could process them, which I will come to in a minute, but the housewife does not want them all mashed up. We have to sell appearance and style in addition to the food because when you eat, you eat with your eye possibly as much as with your appetite. Mr. THURSTON. Would you tell us this? What has been the trend in your industry, have you diminished the number of different-sized cans, or have they increased?

Mr. AUSTERN. In the stable products, sir, the trend has been in the direction of contraction.

Mr. THURSTON. Unless for a certain vegetable or a certain fruit? Mr. AUSTERN. Yes.

Mr. THURSTON. But in the case of corn or other commodities, has there been an increase in the total of different-sized cans?

Mr. AUSTERN. No; I would like to put it this way, sir: There has been a phenomenal increase in the number of products. Now let us get that right, at the outset, and answer it. Give me those bulletins. I have brought some statistics. I think we ought to have some facts here. These are for staple items, and this is the bulletin which the association gets out yearly on the pack of the principal commodities. I mean the old, staple items, and some of the new ones which have developed.

Mr. THURSTON. Let us be specific. For instance, in the case of tomatoes are there any greater or fewer number of cans we will say for canned corn or for peas or beans or tomatoes—the four?

Mr. AUSTERN. All right, let us take corn as an illustration. There is a new kind of corn, the vacuum-packed corn, a number of them. Well, that is because within the last relatively few years, the vacuum packing of the whole-kernel corn developed. You are probably familiar with that. That is the corn packed dry as distinguished from what we call "brine pack" or "cream style." Production of that has increased. It is now 10 percent of all the corn, so that those cans which are used for vacuum packing of whole-kernel corn are new, they are added, but as far as the total number of cans in the packing of older lines of corn, there has not been any increase. Relatively, there has been a decrease.

I will develop the statistics which measure that in a moment if I may. May I present these to the committee, because we can talk right about them. These are bulletins as I say which give the pack of the principal ones. There are the vegetables?

Mr. THURSTON. To recur to this thought, it has been expressed here to members personally and in the committee that your organization wants to diminish the number of sizes of cans, so I just wondered if we could get some picture as to whether or not you have taken any definite steps to effect that result?

Mr. AUSTERN. Yes; I have that, sir, and I would like to come to that. I have each of these subjects collected so we can give the committee a coordinated picture. All of us have been meandering about here for a day or so, and to secure a complete picture we have attempted to save the committee's time by putting all information on each topic in a separate chapter.

(The bulletin distributed by the witness is as follows:)

NATIONAL CANNERS ASSOCIATION

CANNED-FOOD PACK STATISTICS, 1936

Compiled by Division of Statistics

PART 1-VEGETABLES

The statistics in this bulletin for the years 1933, 1934, 1935, and 1936 were compiled by the division of statistics of the National Canners Association, while those for earlier years were assembled from other sources, including the Bureau of Census, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Food Administration. and State associations of canners.