AMENDMENTS TO THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1949 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:30 a. m., Hon. John Lesinski (chairman) presiding. Mr. LESINSKI. The committee will come to order. You may step up, Congressman Pace. Have you a written statement, or are you going to make just an oral statement? Mr. PACE. I do not have a written statement. Mr. LESINSKI. You are going to make just an oral statement? Mr. LESINSKI. Congressman Pace, gentlemen. You may proceed. TESTIMONY OF HON. STEPHEN PACE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA Mr. PACE. Mr. Chairman, as most of you know, I have devoted a good part of my time in Congress in trying to improve the economic welfare of the agricultural producers and the agricultural workers of the Nation. I do not have a prepared statement, and I was in the hope that possibly in the time assigned me I might bring about, you might say, an informal discussion with the members of the committee regarding the policy of the committee with respect to the legislation as it relates to agriculture. I am assuming, Mr. Chairman, that it will not be the desire of the committee to retain in the bill the provisions now which bring agricultural workers both under the minimum wage and maximum hours, because I am quite sure that every member of the committee realizes that somebody would likely go hungry. As it is now, the farmer works from daylight 'til dark. He has found it necessary to do that to feed the Nation. And if we should limit the hours to 40 hours a week as provided in this bill, and on top of that should make the 75-cent minimum wage applicable to the farm workers, we would be faced with a rather serious condition in the country. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Pace, in answer to that, I think every member of the committee does not want to put the farmer under that act. That is absolutely a fact. Mr. PACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. LESINSKI. The only question among us is this: How can you make a separation of the big commercial farms as against regular farms? Mr. PACE. Mr. Chairman, may I say right there that I do not entertain too much concern about the big commercial farms. Rather to the contrary, I am concerned about their growth. I am sure you have not had an opportunity to study the figures, but large commercial farming has more than doubled in this Nation in the last 8 years. We now have industry farming on an increased scale, and I do not know of anything that would be more disastrous to this Nation than for our agriculture to turn to large commercial farming, because it would bring about in this Nation what we have known in other countries as the peasant, where the man would have no opportunity to do anything except to work on a farm for someone. I do not know of anything that could undermine our democracy as quickly as bringing about that condition. That is the reason, as you have observed, that I have devoted so much of my time in the Congress to an expansion of the family sized farm. Where there is industrial farming, I think it is quite a different problem from the average-size farm in the Nation. You will observe, Mr. Chairman, that I said at the outset that this committee would do exactly as you said, that you did not intend to bring agriculture under the provisions of the act. Mr. LESINSKI. Here is a thought that came up yesterday. Consider, for instance, the expansion of family farming. We have in the bill the figure of 300 man-days per farm, and if you went over that, you would be recognized as a larger farm. The question is, if we extend that to 500 man-days per quarter with the provision in any one quarter up to 1,000 man-days, it will mean approximately 10 to 12 men could be employed on the farm. Mr. PACE. Mr. Chairman, that was not my method of calculating it. A quarter is 3 months, and say there are 25 working days in the month, and most of them are working 10 hours a day. That would be 250 hours per month for one worker. Mr. LESINSKI. We are figuring on man-days. Mr. PACE. That is right. Mr. LESINSKI. It is not hours; it is days. Mr. PACE. Well, that would be 25 per month, then, on man-days. In 3 months, it would be 75 for one worker. Mr. LESINSKI. It would take about six workers, then, at 300 mandays. I am talking about the average through the month, the 500 man-days with permission to go as high as 1,000 man-days in any one quarter when the crop is being harvested. Mr. PACE. I do not believe that would do it. Then you will find this as one of the consequences, Mr. Chairman. As you know, there are many times on a farm when there is really not much for a worker to do. So far as I know, 99 or 100 percent of the operators keep those workers there and let them do some minor job. I think if you ever put 75 cents an hour on the farm Mr. LESINSKI. We are not attempting that. All we want to do is have a differential between the large industrial farm and the home farm. Mr. PACE. I would do it on the basis of workers. You are going to have to be careful there. In every part of the country, and cer tainly in my part of the country, a man will have a 1,000-acre farm; he operates it on a share-crop basis. A man has about 30 acres, he and his family. Whether you are going to write the language to in lude him is what I am worried about, for then you will have wrecked he system. Mr. LESINSKI. No; we do not have that thought in mind. Mr. PACE. If you want to get the larger operator, I would say a nan with over 100 or over 200 workers. I do not think when you get down to four or five workers you are going to correct the situation. Mr. BREHM. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's knowledge of farm problems, and I am heartily in agreement with the development of the family sized farm. Would there be any way at all to differentiate between the large commercial farm that does processing; that is, that is also engaged in the processing of products? Could that be worked out some way regarding the area of production, and then we could make a differentiation between the large commercial farm and the small-sized farm? Mr. PACE. That is, commercial industrial farming; yes, sir. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Pace, here is what we are up against. Take the situation where several of the farmers have a little packing plant on a cooperative basis. We do not want to touch that farmer. Mr. PACE. I should not think you would. Mr. LESINSKI. But we would like to get the canning company that operates 1,000 acres or more and hires people at low wages to grow its produce, and in addition to that it buys the produce from farmers around their plant. They are able, at the low wages they pay, to produce their goods for less than the little farmer gets for his produce. And when they go out into the field and buy the little farmer's crops they probably pay him a price that will give him an average of only 20 cents an hour for his work. What we want to do is to help the little farmer to get a better price for his produce and labor. Mr. PACE. He needs it. Mr. LESINSKI. He needs it. He is not getting the price he ought to get. How can we figure that one out? Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chairman, will you yield there? Mr. LESINSKI. Yes. Mr. McCONNELL. I am wondering as I listen to you whether you have not brought these people under the coverage of this act because of the nature of their business rather than the fact that they are just farmers. In other words, you have mentioned some big canning company. I guess there is one near my district, Campbell's Soup. I believe they operate farms; I do not know. But a company of that type is probably what you have in mind when you speak of applying it to farmers. Now, are you applying it to them because they are farmers, or are you applying it to them because they are industrial in nature? Mr. LESINSKI. They are industrial in nature. Mr. McCONNELL. Then maybe our classification ought to be changed, rather than mention the farmers. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Burke? Mr. BURKE. I think Congressman Pace has given one of the finest explanations of what we are trying to arrive at when he said that in the last 8 years industrial farming has doubled. There is a danger of our reaching a peasant class in this country, and that is what we want to get away from in this bill. In my particular district we do have industrial farms. Those farms will probably never reach the peasant class because they are not only industrialized, they are unionized. They are not canneries or anything of that sort. Many of them are under glass, by the way, in hothouse farming. And the packaging and all that sort of thing is done on a production-line basis, on belt conveyors, with a line of people just as there is in an automobile plant, a line of people cleaning and grading and packaging these vegetables, or whatever the product of that particular farm is. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Burke, right at that point, it is all right within certain sections. But when you get out west to these big farm areas, where they have 10,000 acres, there is no chance of unionizing that section and paying high wages because every one of those industrialists hides himself under the minimum-wage exemptions. Mr. BURKE. That is exactly the point, that there is an economic and a social danger there of these industrial farm corporations gobbling up a lot of the small farmers and buying them out or keeping them out, and actually creating this peasant class that we are trying to avoid. Now, the break-off point is what we are trying to find. At least, I am trying to find it. Frankly, I do not know enough about agriculture to say what the break-off point is. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Brehm. Mr. BREHM. I just wondered, these large industrial farmers in the west that you referred to getting cheap labor, are they able to obtain all the labor they want at 40 cents an hour? Some of the testimony that we have had here is that the labor cost is one of the highest expenses which the farmer has to contend with. I am just wondering are those large commercial farmers getting anybody today at that small wage of 40 cents? If so, they can afford to pay more and would be willing to pay more, rather than have their crops ruined. Mr. PACE. I think, Mr. Chairman, there is a problem there. This might be out of place. Most of the Committee on Agriculture de votes its time to those problems, and if you find that our committee could collaborate with you in drawing that line and helping to draft that language, we would be delighted to do it. Mr. Chairman, for the most part I had a request to make of the committee, and the only excuse I have for making it is that it cannot be done on the floor of the House. I will be very brief, Mr. Chair man. I do not know how many on the committee are familiar with the parity formula. I want to say just a word about it. The parity price for a farm commodity is that price which will give to that commodity a comparable purchasing power to that of the price the farmer has to pay for the things he buys. It was worked out, as you know, in 1933. Generally speaking, I can illustrate it in this waythat if 10 pounds of cotton at the base period would buy a pair of shoes, if that 10 pounds of cotton at 10 cents a pound would buy a pair of shoes, and then if the price of that pair of shoes should go up and double, then for that same 10 pounds of cotton to buy the same pair of shoes, it is, of course, necessary for that cotton to go up to 20 cents a pound in order to be able to buy the same pair of shoes. That is a very sound principle. It is now in effect. The only difficulty is that in the parity formula at the present time there is not taken into account the labor cost, although labor represents on the average, across the Nation, one-third of the cost of producing a farm commodity. |