Mr. JENKINS. The man who makes the higher wages usually works fewer days than the day men?

Mr. LEWIS. In southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky and Virginia, where they make $4.60 a day, they have their annual income decreased by 40 cents a day for 200 days.

Down in Alabama where they make $3.80 a day, they have it decreased by that much below the $5-that is, $1.20 a day, less earnings for 200 days, accrues to them at that place.

Mr. TREADWAY. $1,000 a year is rather high, is it not?

Mr. LEWIS. Very high, Congressman, too high to be considered a possibility in the industry.

Mr. TREADWAY. You say there is mining expense to be taken out of that?

Mr. LEWIS. Yes, Congressman. The men who work by the ton buy their own powder and buy their own tools and supply their own clothes and make replacements, such as lamps and so forth, and then they have their blacksmithing costs.

Mr. TREADWAY. I would think it would run into a considerable sum, the expenses which they have to pay themselves.

Mr. LEWIS. It is a substantial item.

Mr. VINSON. Have you any data to show the average number of persons in a family which subsists on that wage?

Mr. LEWIS. I think they use in the mining industry the factor of four children, Congressman, to the man.

Mr. VINSON. Is there anything pertinent in the prices paid to commissaries owned and operated by coal companies in respect of the wages paid to the employees?

Mr. LEWIS. Oh, yes, the coal companies of course increase their prices all the time to keep up with the increasing costs of marketing commodities.

Mr. VINSON. The gentlemen on the committee may not know about the opportunity to purchase living supplies by the employees. Mr. LEWIS. In all the contracts which the United Mine Workers have with the operators we have a clause which gives the men the freedom of action to buy their goods where they desire.

Mr. VINSON. What happened under the order that obtained before this contract was entered into?

Mr. LEWIS. They were invariably compelled to buy their supplies at a company store. That is true now at the mines of the West Kentucky Coal Co. and the other operators in western Kentucky, the Hart Coal Co., the Dawson Daylight Co., and others, whose representatives of company unions have testified here.

At the mines of the West Kentucky Coal Co., subsidiary of the North American Co., a man must buy at the company stores and cannot buy anywhere else, without being discharged of the mines covered by this agreement between the individual miners'

union.

Let me read you a section of that contract, and perhaps it will demonstrate why coal companies like to have a company union.

This is from the contract between the Operators' Association and the Independent Miners' Union of Western Kentucky, district no. 1. Section 9A, men in debt:

Men voluntarily leaving the employment of the company when owing that company shall not be entitled to their clearance cards until they have made arrangments with the company for the future payment of their debts by giving it a 60-day note for the amount of the debt with authority to notify the company for whom they are going to work that they desire their wages cut $4 per month until the note is paid in full, and that the check-weighman or secretaries of local unions shall not issue clearance cards until they have ascertained from the company whether or not the man applying for the card is in debt, and until the aforesaid note has been given, and any officer of a local union who, in violation of this agreement, does issue a clearance card without first ascertaining from the company whether or not the man applying for his card has given his note, the local officer being the agent of the local, the local will be held responsible for the illegal act of its agents and will itself become liable to the company for the amount of the debt.

There is a modern clause in a modern company union. You will understand how freely the men working in those mines will agree with the statement of the representatives of that company union, on this platform, that they desire to continue their happy relations with those coal companies.

Mr. TREADWAY. Is it out of place, Mr. Lewis, to inquire about the extension of the contract? You made some reference to continuation from week to week and month to month of the existing agreement, pending the framing of the new agreement, running for an indefinite period. Is it out of place to ask what changes you are contemplating?

Mr. LEWIS. Not at all out of place, Congressman. I just do not possess an adequate answer to the question because I do not know what the operators will do, or what can be done.

Mr. TREADWAY. What changes are the United Mine Workers asking?

Mr. LEWIS. What are they asking?

Mr. TREADWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. LEWIS. The mine workers are asking an increase in the day wage rate of from $5 in the north to $5.50, 50 cents a day increase in the north, and in the $4.60 in the South and the $3.80 in Alabama, and 10 cents a ton to those who work by the ton, and a 6-hour work day. Mr. TREADWAY. Is that based on your figures of increased cost of living to the miners?

Mr. LEWIS. That is based on my figures of increased cost of living to the miners and also, Congressman, on the fact that the wage, in the first instance, has not been an adequate compensation for the service that the men performed, or for the requirements of their situation.

Mr. TREADWAY. The attitude, as you gather it on the other side, is that owing to the cut prices at which coal is being sold they cannot definitely say that they will accept the proposition. Is that about the situation?

Mr. LEWIS. That is right; they have to get it some place, and they cannot get the money to pay increased wages in the case of a declining coal market. There is not any question about it, Congressman, if they were assured of reasonable stability in the industry, that an agreement could be made, in my judgment, because they would not be beset with fears of declining realization and such troubles.

Mr. TREADWAY. That brings me to another line of questioning, and I want to say at this point, Mr. Chairman, that some of us have been favored today with what I think is rather an unusual procedure. We heard on the floor of the House this morning a very illuminating

address by one of our colleagues. We all appreciate the remarks Mr. Huddleston made. And this afternoon we men on this committee have heard a very remarkable, able, brilliant address by Mr. Lewis. I have heard a great many witnesses in my time on this committee, but I am frank to say that I think Mr. Lewis has demonstrated his capacity to appear as a witness, among the best of them. Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Congressman.

Mr. TREADWAY. You have spoken of stabilization, and that brings up a line of inquiry that I would like to follow up for just a moment. Assuming that there is some element of correctness in the attitude that has been taken here by the opponents of this bill on the question of constitutionality, and you have heard the various arguments made-assuming that there is some justification for their viewpoints, as I see it, all three factors want stabilization. The consumer must have it, or ought to have it, at least. You people ought to have it, and the operator ought to have it. I am in hearty accord with that effort to secure stabilization, but if there are severe drawbacks and arguments against the method that has been suggested in this bill, in view of your very intimate knowledge of the coal situation and of the conditions, could you offer us any other suggestions as to the manner in which Congress could rightly undertake to improve the conditions for all three parties and secure stabilization, other than through the Guffey-Snyder bill? Is that a fair question?

Mr. LEWIS. Very fair question, Congressman, and may I say this: That a year ago last month the mine workers started to work with a committee of operators, representing the National Coal Association, a committee of 14, to see whether or not, out of the experience of the industry with N. R. A., there could be devised a program that might be jointly recommended to the Congress by the industry with the miners and operators cooperating.

We started to work in May a year ago. That committee met from time to time over a period of 5 months, and we were not able to recommend any joint program on the thing because the operators were unable, on their side of the house, to crystalize their own judgment or any agreed method.

Along in October or November the mine workers finally served notice on the operators that we could not agree among ourselves, not because the operators and the miners had disagreed upon the practical features of it, but because the operators were in disagreement themselves, and that we were going to offer something else. As a result, Judge Warrum went to work on this proposed bill, and every item put into the bill, every provision, was a matter that had been discussed at great length in the joint meetings with the operators. There was nothing new whatsoever. And there were put in those features upon which it seemed there was a possibility of securing the greatest degree of approval on the part of the operators. So that this bill, as coming before this committee now, and as developed by Congressman Cooper the day Judge Warrum testified, comes down as the refined product of a year's constant study, continuous work, and weeks, months, days and nights of joint negotiations.

Judge Warrum held open house in our office since last November, for the operators, the lawyers, and the leaders of the industry. He

has held open house, and the latchstring has been out day and night, and all the leaders of the industry and most of the lawyers of the industry have come in and sat around the table and voiced their views and set forth their crystallized ideas, and out of it all comes this bill which I think is the last word of refinement within the councils of the industry, so far as the industry can refine its practical features.

There are some things in it, Congressman, which are controversial from a legal standpoint, in the light of the recent decision of the Supreme Court.

Able men, learned in the law, disagree upon them. You and I, as laymen, cannot intervene and prevent that disagreement, because our judgment will not be accepted as laymen.

If the legal fraternity itself cannot agree, I do not know what a layman can do except exercise his own judgment and common sense. That is what I am trying to do. I am not learned in the law, but I can read a court decision. I have sat more days than I like to remember in councils with attorneys, for our own organization and for the industry, and in the courts of the land, where I have been the defendant in a countless number of injunction suits.

A great deal of my time, Congressman, has been spent in Federal courts, defending my organization and myself from injunction suits filed by these brilliant managers of the industry who like to get a court injunction. I know them all well, and I know their weaknesses, their elements of strength, and I know their commitments and intrigues, and even the banks to which they owe money, and I can talk their language, and they cannot gainsay me.

But, considering the law, I do not know what we are going to do in this country, or what this Congress is going to do, except to let this Court of ours, which we all revere, and which we just established in a new $10,000,000 building, across the Plaza here, decide these quibblings among the lawyers.

I like the rule of common sense, and if it be true in the industry that after proper and mature judicial consideration the Supreme Court should hold that this act is not constitutional, then I, as a citizen, will hope that in writing that decision the Supreme Court will give us a chart to guide ourselves in the future in this industry, and out of that decision of the Supreme Court may come a line which we can follow to regulate the human and economic and financial equations in this industry in some rational, modern way.

I think, as a layman-and my opinion is worth nothing to my legal friends-that the Court was trying to show us a way in the Schechter decision. To me, as a layman, the Court laid down a rule. I think I could follow that rule in writing that bill, and I think this bill largely follows that rule, Congressman. I think it does. It tries If it errs, who can say in advance that it errs?

to.

As president of the United Mine Workers of America I can go out and hire any number of outstanding, able lawyers to come in here and plead on either side of this question, and the net result of the expenditure of the necessary amount of money to do that would be merely to bewilder the committee. That is all.

After all, I believe in letting a court function. We pay and maintain a Supreme Court, and we give them a nice house to live in, and let them tell us when these bills are right or wrong.

Mr. TREADWAY. Nine men ought not to have such an expensive roof over their heads as that.

Mr. LEWIS. I am for giving them a good, safe workingplace.

Mr. TREADWAY. Let me add right there that we have in Massachusetts a provision, with which I happen to have had some experience, whereby the legislature can ask the supreme court of the State for its opinion as to the constitutionality of proposed legislation. I do not know whether other States have that or not.

Mr. LEWIS. I do not know.

Mr. TREADWAY. But right at the present moment, with this bill here, it would be extremely useful to have such an arrangement for the Federal Government, would it not?

Mr. LEWIS. I think that is true, Congressman, because that would render a real service to us right now.

Mr. TREADWAY. I think so. I do not know whether other States have that opportunity afforded their legislature or not.

Mr. LEWIS. Congressman, I think this discussion of the constitutionality of this bill is just a sort of waste of everyone's time, because the able lawyers on the committee are, in the end, going to be influenced by their own mature thought and judgment and analysis of the situation, in the light of the facts and the law as they understand them, and they are hardly going to be influenced by the pleadings of partisan attorneys on either side. I recognize that. We are perfectly willing to leave it to the committee, and we are perfectly willing and we hope the Congress will leave it to the Supreme Court finally to determine that. But we hope also that the Congress will not shut the door of opportunity and the door of hope to this beleaguered and stricken industry, and to suffering people in the industry who have suffered so long, by refusing to enact this legislation, or refusing to report out this bill because some corporation lawyer comes in here and argues against its constitutionality.

I feel a good deal like Governor Al Smith, of New York, as he expressed himself in a statement over in New York one day.

He said when the people of his ward were out of coal, they did not want a Supreme Court decision-they wanted coal.

A judicial decision meant nothing to them, but they wanted coal; and our people want protection and the right to live, and the right to live decently, and they want to make a contribution to human welfare, and want to educate their children and make a contribution to the national welfare and national stability.

This is a big industry. There are millions of people dependent upon this industry. It furnishes 35 or 40 percent of the total freight revenue of the railroads. It is somewhere near to that figure. Millions of people are absolutely dependent upon the prosperity or nonprosperity of this industry.

Certainly the experience in the lifetime of most of us has demonstrated that the men who have been managing the industry are not going to organize it or stabliize it, because they have not done it, and the cost has been too great for us to continue to bear.

We are pleading with the Congress of the United States to permit some rationalization to come into the processes of this industry.

It