local restrictions on this material? We hardly believe that the concentrated and well-directed plastic approvel campaign has been mounted for the glorious privilege of passing the cost saving on to the home buyer.

Then there is the marketplace.

Our industry does not buy the premise that the determination of whether a particular material is acceptable to the ultimate user belongs squarely in the marketplace. Such a philosophy denies the possibility of consumer protection legislation. Our industry is a producer of pipe, not a consumer, and in all candor we recognize that our interest and our point of departure are not the same as that of the ultimate consumer. But in the contest with competitive materials, we have so much confidence in our own product that we are willing to identify our welfare with that of the consumer, and to advocate the continued existence and even improvement of consumer legislation regulating the use of building materials. Our industry does not make its money on built-in obsolescence. If the Federal Government is determined to remove this whole field of legislation from the State and local police power-the traditional habitat of building codes-it ought to be for the sake of extending a much improved and more sophisticated type of protection to the consumer instead of removing that protection entirely. Secretary Romney was sure that the Senator would agree with his principle. The Cast Iron Soil Pipe Institute hopes instead that members of Congress and the American public will agree with ours.

THE MATTER OF OFF-SITE CERTIFICATION

Our institute is also very much concerned about the effect upon small businessmen and consumers of efforts to establish certification programs for factory-built houses and parts of houses, whereby an inspection at the plant by some licensed or franchised representative will be the only inspection and whereby the factorybuilt entity will be allowed to go into place at the construction site without any further inspection.

We are concerned with this matter because we plan to compete for the factorybuilt market as well as the conventional housing market, and indeed the time may come when we will have to get our share of that market in order to survive as an industry. We favor inspection of plumbing systems prior to occupancy. We also favor final inspection on-site after the system has been hooked up and made operational. We do not see how the purchaser of a house in any price category, who invests his lifetime savings and mortgages his future earnings, can really be protected in the absence of such on-site inspection. All kinds of things can happen to a factory-made product in the course of transportation to the job site. If inspection by State officers, or local officers as permitted under State law, does not serve the public need, then we can see no adequate substitute for Federal Government inspectors. We see a built-in conflict of interest between just about any producer of housing or housing component, or any testing agency licensed by the producer, and the consumer interest.

Again, the National Commission on Product Safety studied certain of these agencies with a view to their reliability for a somewhat similar type of testing."

All are different and each must be judged on its own merits, principally in the light of whether any private firm or industry is in a position to provide a substantial share of the testing income to the organization.

As stated above, we consider the National Sanitation Foundation to be too closely identified with the plastic industry and too dependent upon income from that industry to be an acceptable substitute for governmental testing of plastic building materials.

With respect to the building official organizations which are also in the competition, we find the same problem. As stated above, these organizations live off the dues of their members, income from sales of publications, and fees paid by firms and industries for product approvals and certifications. We cannot believe that the last-named constitutes a negligible source of income.

A federal official identified as Gene A. Rowland, Chief, Codes and Standards Section, National Bureau of Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, had the following to say to materials producers concerning approvals by building inspectors: "... to get approvals you must be a friend to the building inspector.

17 See fn. 10 supra.

You show up at his meetings or you provide him an airplane ride to meetings or your association has a big hospitality suite at code meetings.'

18

Rowland has hit the nail right on the head! He deserves much credit for identifying a major problem in this type of certification.

We see another type of problem when an association of building officials undertakes a certification program. The building official in his own jurisdiction is an enforcer of local regulations. Unless he is dishonest he serves one master, his city government. When he leaves the city limits and functions as a member or agent of his building officials association the case is not quite so clear. The association or its licensee considers issuing a certificate for a factory-built house at the point of manufacture. After the house is shipped and installed in another jurisdiction, the certificate is intended to get the product past the local inspection entirely or at least prove very helpful. Has the police power been lawfully delegated to the association for this purpose? And who pays the association to the testing, the policing government or the manufacturer to be policed? No man can serve two masters. Is the building official away from his jurisdiction simply showing-for an above board price, but a price neverthe less the producer how to get around the formal inspection back home?

NOT JUST ANY GOVERNMENT AGENCY

All Federal agencies have their built-in biases and points of view, in great part because of the job Congress has given each to do. Farmers can expect a better shake from Agriculture than from Treasury, organized labor better from Labor than from Commerce, the ethnic minorities better from the Civil Rights Commission than from Defense.

We hold it to be an accepted fact of political life that homebuilder influence looms very large in HUD. Those who campaign for increased housing assistance to the poor generally do not regard HUD as a consumer-oriented agency. Everything we have seen in connection with HUD's so-called code reform program, everything we have seen HUD do for the plastic pipe industry, and everything we have suffered from HUD, encourages us in this belief. Secretary Romney's letter to the Senator discussed above fully confirms us in this belief. When HUD tampers with a local code, its Consumer Beware!

In the wake of the factory built house will come inevitaby some federalizing of building codes and standards and inspection procedures. There is a crying need that these functions be housed in a strong and respected agency biased in favor of the homebuyer while HUD gets on with its business of looking out for the homebuilder and home manufacturer. Otherwise, the American home buyer had better hand onto his shirt!

Mr. ROE. Mr. McMillen, do you feel that HUD ought to be pushing any material or do you feel that they should be working for performance standards?

Mr. McMILLEN. Well, I don't think HUD should be allowed to use the taxpayer's money to coerce the acceptance of any material in a local area. That is what is going on now. HUD has done absolutely nothing to establish performance standards to serve as a criterion or measure according to which materials might be approved or disapproved.

It would seem to me that everybody would have better protection, and the country would be happier, it would be a better way to handle the matter, if Congress would face the thing headon. And if we have arrived at a time when this whole business of code and standards ought to pass from the local government to the Federal Government, that Congress should be forced to act.

You get a great deal of popular discontent and loss of respect for Government when an administrative agency, having dreamed up some

18 Quoted in "Building Code Action." Newsletter of Associated Home Builders of Greater Eastbay. Inc., P.O. Box 5008, Elmwood Station, Berkeley, California 94705, issue of March 27, 1970, citing a five-part series of Associated Press articles dealing with the high cost of housing.

kind of imaginary legislative authority, pursues administrative policies of its own devising and does whatever it can get away with until Congress or the press or public opinion steps in to call a halt.

And, of course, we haven't been able to muster the force to press the problem, because of what we are up against. The manufacturers of plastic pipe are the petrochemical industry-Mobil, Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Uniroyal, and so on-and you put that together with the homebuilder, the home manufacurer and HUD itself, and we are really up against it; we are powerless to cope with a thing like that.

Mr. ROE. Are you saying that HUD, as a Department, a part of the executive branch of the Federal Government, is legislating by requiring individual towns to pass certain legislation and by requiring uniformity throughout the country, which has the effect of Congress passing a law?

Mr. McMILLEN. They are in effect the legislator for the locality, or in certain cases the State where the plumbing code is a State matter. Actually it isn't HUD itself, but HUD utilizing the so-called model codes which are the products of private organizations, for example, associations of building officials.

Without changing one word or one iota in these books that come out of these organizations, HUD is telling local governments that they have to throw out their present codes and enact one or other of these model codes instead. So this is not only HUD legislating, but they are converting the model code publishers into Federal legislators.

We also take exception to the model code philosophy of HUD, as spelled out in a letter which I have given you, Mr. Chairman, from Secretary Romney to the distinguished Senator from the State of Alabama, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. A copy of that letter was furnished to an officer of our institute. What is important here is the defense which the Secretary gives for HUD's present code activities.

The key word is "marketplace." They take the view that any building material which has a product standard issued by the American National Standards Institute or the American Society for Testing of Materials, or similar organizations, is entitled to be sold in the marketplace and installed at jobsites unless the city which wants to restrict it can demonstrate a case for a restriction to the satisfaction of HUD. So it is really a very permissive, "anything goes" code philosophy. And the point that I want to make, and which my colleagues will demonstrate shortly, is that these product standards do not assure satisfactory performance in terms of public health, safety, and welfare. They do not indicate or prognosticate those properties, which in the case of DWV plastic pipe, might give trouble 2 or 3 or 4 years after they are installed. This is the difference between a product standard. on the one hand and acceptance of a material in a plumbing ordinance on the other hand. ANSI and ASTM publish the product standards but the governing body in each city decides whether the product thus described and identified is adequate in terms of the public welfare according to the local conditions.

HUD wants to take away that power. We think, therefore, that the consumer is not protected and that what has inspired the building codes of our several communities is something else, the power which

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a people has utilizing the police power of State and local government to restrict materials, if for some good reason pertaining, to public health or safety or welfare they don't want those materials installed. In other words, production is for the sake of consumption.

It isn't that a producer can produce anything he wants and then get it accepted immediately in the marketplace, he has to produce to meet the needs of the people. And if the people don't want him to produce something, they have a right to say so if they have reasons in terms of public safety, health, and welfare. And, therefore, we think it would be a great loss indeed in terms of consumer protection if HUD were able to wipe out our local code and the Federal Government were not to replace that with something better, something more protective of that little home buyer or homeowner. As I said in the prepared statement as things stand now there is a great need in the Federal Government for another agency, not HUD, that will look out for the consumer in the same way that HUD now is looking for the homebuilder and home manufacturer.

As an illustration, if you are a businessman you would go to the Department of Commerce. If you are a small businessman, you go to the Small Business Administration. If you are organized labor, you go to the Labor Department.

At the present time we think it is a political fact of life that the homebuilder and manufacturer have so much influence in HUD that. if we are going to have the right kind of protection for the home buyer, it will have to be handled by another agency. And that is what we recommend.

So I think that that will be sufficient for my remarks here today, in addition to the statement, Mr. Chairman, and I am very, very grateful for this opportunity.

Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. For the record, I just called one of my staff members and told him to call something off. I had something really important, but this is more important to me than this other thing that I have later.

I am very much impressed with your statement.

Mr. McMILLEN. Well, it is certainly fortunate, Mr. Chairman, that there is a Member of Congress who recognizes the seriousness and importance of this problem.

Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. I want to take this up in Washington with the proper authorities.

Mr. ROE. Is this some equipment you have?

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD C. MORRIS, DISTRICT MANAGER, CAST IRON SOIL PIPE INSTITUTE

Mr. MORRIS. Yes, sir, my name is Richard C. Morris, district manager, Cast Iron Soil Pipe Institute.

First, I have three pieces of literature which I would like to explain. and then I would like to show you a demonstration of our product. I have here our standard, the institute's standard for cast iron "NoHub" or the hubless sanitary cast iron system. We obtained a patent right to this system approximately 7 years ago.

We made some innovations through the help of the American Iron and Steel Institute on proper materials to use in our method of join

ing. We received information from DuPont and other rubber manufacturers as to a better grade of rubber to use in our job.

When we had completed our joint, we hired the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory to run some tests and they took our product, No-Hub Joint, and put it through tests that no other product had ever been put through before or was even expected or dreamed that the material could stand up to. And it does.

And then we have an installation kit which was written by a Prof. T. C. Brown, who taught engineering at the University of North Carolina for over 20 years, and is presently engaged writing a heating code for the State of North Carolina.

And we feel that here we have the expertise to introduce a product on the market that can meet any demand, any need, and should be acceptable. And as Mr. McMillen previously said, regarding HUD, I will cite one example, the city of Springfield, Mo. Approximately January of 1969 they approved plastic pipe because they had a letter from HUD stating that if they didn't their workable program for community improvement would not be recertified.

I came in approximately 2 months later. I have a big territory and I can't be everywhere at once. I asked them to approve CI No-Hub. It costs money to change the code. If I can be in Springfield at the time that urban renewal is up again, and they have to be recertificated, then I might be fortunate enough to have a meeting with their city council and they might be willing to go to the expense of putting an amendment in their code, which they probably wouldn't have considered amending anyway had they not had coercion or force from HUD. A city that has just revised its code doesn't want to realine and start anew.

This is neoprene rubber.

Mr. KLUCZYNSKI. We will put that in the committee files, not in the record.

Mr. ROE. This is a product that you are manufacturing now?

Mr. MORRIS. Yes sir, we have three methods of joining pipe on the market. The one most widely used is the oldest, the lead and oakum joint.

However, when lumber became so expensive that a homebuilder couldn't buy a 2 by 6 to put up a bathroom partition and he had to stay with a 2 by 4, we had to get our pipes smaller. In order to do that, we had to eliminate the hub on the pipe and we went this road. This is a neoprene rubber gasket. It has a sealing ring, a centering device in it.

It slips over the pipe like that (demonstrating). This is series 301 stainless steel with a series 305 stainless screw. It is a product that would do the job. It will last as long or longer than the building, according to the American Iron & Steel Institute. I don't know whether it will or not, I do know that we have installations of iron several centuries old and still performing in useful service.

But stainless steel has a good track record of approximately 50 years.

This is slipped over, we recommend it for direct burial in the ground or anywhere else. Then this joint is put in, and the joint is slipped in here (indicating).