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of the country in shoes with Missouri; in textiles with the Carolinas, where they pay low wages and work long hours. On a Government contract, I would like to see them go in and say, "Here, you Carolina and Missouri, you have got to pay decent wages like I pay.' And, "We believe in higher wages, shorter hours, we believe in better education, and better living conditions, and because we believe that. we think you should do it, too."

If we were asking them to do something unreasonable, that would be different, but we say all we want is decent wages and a decent place in the sun for the workers to live. You are trying to do that in this bill; you are trying to make them pay decent wages when they want to sell to the Government. I do not believe the Schechter case was applicable to this, at all, because I think the Government can set down any sort of specifications that it wants to set down. Incidentally, in regard to the Schechter case, if the Government had brought in affidavits showing that those chickens when they were slaughtered, had been brought over to Newark, N. J., I think you would have had a different decision in that case.

There was one direct point brought out by a speaker here, who suggested that an amendment could be properly put in, that no contract would be awarded to anybody who did not give labor the right of collective bargaining. That is in the law in reference to all industry in the United States, as far as outside of Government contracts is concerned, and I do not see why that should not go into this. It would not be bad idea for the committee to think it over. Mr. CITRON. Mr. Connery, have you had any experience with the workings of the Bacon-Davis Act?

Mr. CONNERY. Yes; in the Lynn post office, I spent week after week trying to stop them from paying 20 cents an hour on the job. They told me that the men had to get their back pay, which was awarded to them by the Labor Department for this chiseling on the job.

Mr. HEALEY. You know of the kick-back practice?

Mr. CONNERY. That is where we got the Metcalf-Connery bill. We had all of the labor representatives, all of the contractors in the War Department, and the Navy Department came before us. They told us the men would be employed and were supposed to be paid $10, with the understanding that he was to kick back $3, and the man would agree to anything, just to get a job. That was the old story we had.

Mr. CITRON. Is it the Bacon-Davis Act which requires a contractor to pay the prevailing rate of wages-will that in any way effect the contractor and his business?

Mr. CONNERY. If it does anything, properly enforced, it drives out the chiseler. Imagine 20 cents an hour on a job in what was supposed to be a civilized community, building a overnment building, a post-office building.

Mr. CITRON. So you say it had a beneficial effect?

Mr. CONNERY. Yes; of course it has.

Mr. CITRON. No question about that?

Mr. CONNERY. No.

Mr. CITRON. And is it easy of administration?

Mr. CONNERY. Yes.

Mr. CITRON. One job and all one piece of ground, and one contractor?

Mr. CONNERY. Yes.

Mr. CITRON. It is not comparable in any way with the administration of this proposed law?

Mr. CONNERY. We always worry about the administration of these laws. Get me right before I answer your question: The N. R. A., in its idea, was beautiful, until they put in all the big business to run it under the codes. I did not favor these codes that were referred to. Mr. Williams, of the Cigarette Trust, came in and wrote a code of how much he was going to pay cigarette workers down in Carolina. There is your administration.

Mr. CITRON. You and I know that which probably a lot of people do not know, unless they were in Congress: That the N. R. A. would never have been heard of if it had not been for two factors: First, the national manufacturers; and second, organized labor. Manufacturers, for years, had been trying to get trade agreements through. We had investigations. I went through all of that. And organized labor was here wanting to get recognition for organized labor. So when the opportune time came, as a matter of fact, they got together and organized labor, and took a chance on the codes.

Mr. CONNERY. That is all they took, because they were not represented.

Mr. CITRON. Other people took a chance on section 7 (a), because they were both worded in such a vague way they might be interpreted in different ways, and in order to get the thing going, they both agreed to something that was not definite. If it had been definite, it might have been different.

Mr. CONNERY. Well, now, Congressman

Mr. CITRON. I do not think anybody will dispute that.

Mr. CONNERY. Mr. Congressman, may I tell you why you had the N. R. A.? Something that I think even you do not know. You had the N. R. A. because the administration was already to go through on the 30-hour a week bill, but I refused to take out one provision in that bill, and that bill said that whenever the total landed cost of any article or commodity coming into the United States was less than the cost of production of a similar article in this country, that article should be barred from the United States, and I would not take it out. That is why, 5 weeks later, they wrote the N. R. A. Perhaps I showed poor judgment at that time, I think I did. I should have done what I did last year and put a bill in the Ways and Means Committee calling for the same thing, and you would have had a 30-hour week today and you would have had none of those codes that were written for the benefit of Mr. Williams and

the manufacturers of the United States. You had no equal representation on your codes. You would have had a 30-hour week, easy of administration, a flexible week, not a strict 30-hour week, where a board would be set up with equal representation of labor and employers on the board. We will come to that next session, as sure as you and I are sitting here, and we will put a tax on the machinery, the power of machinery to stop the speed-up system and the stretch-out system. You can see all of the signs heading

that way, that is, if I come back to Congress and I hope to and expect to.

Mr. HEALEY. You think it would be practicable to set up a board, under this legislation, that could determine, after taking such standards into consideration, minimum wages and maximum hours that would be fair and equitable?

Mr. CONNERY. Absolutely. The Secretary of Labor, or whoever you put in charge of it, can do it. I have had experience with Cabinet members, and I think they try to be extremely fair. I find that, whether under the Republican administration or Democratic administration, they try to be extremely fair to everyone concerned, and I do not think they would set a minimum wage that would drive anybody out of business.

Mr. HEALEY. Assuming a board or commission was set up as a fact-finding body, do you think it would be possible for them to determine minimum wages and maximum hours that would be fair to all persons concerned?

Mr. CONNERY. Congressman, to me that is the simplest thing in the world, for this reason: If you are going to Wichita, Kans., to buy something that is made in Wichita, Kans., the central labor union in that town or the workers can tell you there instantly what the prevailing rate of wages in that town is. A manufacturer may come in and say, "We don't think you ought to pay $6 a day, or $4 a day", and they can get a compromise there, and it would not take them 20 minutes. They have all of the facts and figures.

If you went down to the Secretary of Labor now, she could call in a man in that Department who would tell you what the prevailing rate of wages is in every city or town in the United States. It is not a matter of a lot of investigations in these places: Labor will be glad to give that information, without any cost whatsoever. The manufacturers will be glad to give that information, even if it is only to refute what they say.

I am in favor of the bill. I hope it is passed, because I think it is a great step forward.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HOLT. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Connery inferred that I had possibly evaded the question you asked me, when you asked me what the rates were in our company. I simply stated that it was impossible to name all of them, but I will say this: That our minimum. rate for raw labor is 47 cents an hour, as compared to 35 cents an hour that was the minimum rate under the code. Our maximum rates are $1 to $1.25 an hour; that is for the highest type of mechanic.

Mr. Connery wondered why these men wanted to work overtime. The answer is perfectly obvious: To earn more money, particularly during the wintertime, when there is no outside distraction; and those who work 8 hours' overtime get paid for a dav and a half. That would be 30 percent added to their pay check. So, to bring a pay check with an additional 30 percent on it to one's wife is very gratifying, and I think all of us would like to do the same thing.

There is one further word-there is another thing that I would like to touch upon that Mr. Connery criticized in my remarks.

Mr. HEALEY. We would like to give you an opportunity to make a full explanation, but I hope you will realize that there are a great many witnesses here who want to be hard.

Mr. HOLT. I do want to amplify one thing I read from my paper. Mr. HEALEY. All right; go ahead.

Mr. HOLT. That was this statement that I read:

Wages can be increased and hours of labor can be shortened only as general progress is made through invention, improved processes, production economies and lower prices leading to increased consumption. This is proven by the history of the last 75 years. Even during the 1 st 35 years hours have been progressively reduced by 30 percent, while hourly wage rates have been trebled.

And I know that of my own personal experience, because, when I went to work in a machine shop 35 years ago, our average rate was about 25 cents per hour, and they worked 60 hours a week, and I have seen the hours go from 60 down to 40. I have seen wage rates for first-class machinists go from 30 cents to $1.25.

That progress was made and was made without any shedding of blood that Mr. Connery mentioned, at least not around my plant.

Mr. CONNERY. Mr. Chairman, I want to say here that, if their wages went up, it was because organized labor forced them to put them up.

Mr. HEALEY. Mr. Mates here has to leave, and we would like to hear him.

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK A. MATES

Mr. MATES. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee-
Mr. HEALEY. What is your first name?

Mr. MATES. Frederick A. Mates.

Mr. HEALEY. Whom do you represent?

Mr. MATES. Just an individual. I represent

Mr. HEALEY. What is your official position now?

Mr. MATES. Procuring officer for the State of Pennsylvania for the United States Treasury Department.

Mr. HEALEY. You are here in your individual capacity?

Mr. MATES. I am here speaking as an individual and not as a representative of the Government.

During the period from November 1932 until July of last year, I served in the capacity of the purchasing agent for the Relief Adminstration for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Relief Administration in Pennsylvania is conducted by a separate board that has a power that is a little different from the regular departments of the Commonwealth.

We had the opportunity then of doing something that is rather similar to what you are attempting to do in this bill. Before a contractor was permitted to bid on merchandise for the Emergency Relief Administration--and I might add, by way of digression, that we purchased in that period of t'me about $10,000,000 worth of goods, of shoes and clothes, in addition to many other millions of other merchandise-before we permitted manufacturers to bid on substantial quantities of shoes and clothing we required that they submit to investigation of their factories by the representatives of the Commonwealth's department of labor and industry. Those investigations are a matter of record of the Commonwealth and were

very interesting. We had factories that were so far below the average that we would not consider doing business with them.

We figured that, if we were going to be hard boiled with the manufacturers and insist that they manufacture merchandise for us over very definite and rigid specifications, those same manufacturers should have the right and should have the protection against chiselers, so to speak, coming in and underbidding them and being able to produce merchandise because of the fact that the uncontrollable fact in their eyes was the governing factor in deciding prices.

In other words, a legitimate manufacturer would go out in the open market to buy cotton, and he paid the established market price for his cotton, or his leather, or whatever it may be in raw materials. He had the element of fixed charges, or certain other fixed charges for operating his factory. When it came to labor, if he paid some machine operator $3 a week, he could make sweaters or underwear or shirts for a much lower price than if he paid $12 or $15 a week. And the same way with shoes. If a shoe manufacturer would pay his men operators $8 or $10 a week, they could produce shoes at much lower prices than another factory who was paying $15 or $18 or $25 week.

So we figured it was only fair to put them all on an even basis and require that they maintain good wages and, furthermore, reasonable factory conditions. We insisted that they comply rigidly with the regulations of the department of labor and industries within the State.

When those reports came in, we graduated those factories into three classes, A, B, and C. A were the ones that were up above the line; B were the ones on the line; and C below the line-and C were out, we would not do business with them. It was interesting to see the reaction of the manufacturers on the C line. We would notify them that the factory was rated at C, and, therefore, they would not receive copies of our proposals. In a tremendous percentage of those cases, those manufacturers came back to us and would say, "Is it possible for me to get a copy of that report? Just what is the matter with my factory, that you cannot consider it?" We would let them know what we thought of their factories, and in most cases they went back, raised the wages, cleaned up the factories, put in rest rooms, put in toilet facilities, and so on, and brought the factory up to a reasonable place for persons to work, raised the wages, raised the standards in general.

Then we had another report made, and another investigation made and the report came back that they were above the line, and they were then in open competition with the same manufacturers on the same line.

Mr. WALTER. Did any of the people operating in the factories that you classed as C factories attempt to secure business with the State? Did they submit to your rejection, because they had been placed in the C classification?

Mr. MATES. We did not send them copies of the proposals to bid on. That was a prerequisite, and I would rather favor that as a consideration for this committee.

Mr. WALTER. Certainly you do not take the position that the State of Pennsylvania has a right to select the manufacturers that they are going to do business with?

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