feel that these people who are now paying 40 cents an hour, and are crying, are going to be as badly hurt as they feel they might be.

I do not live in a place where there is anyone hired for 40 cents an hour, outside of possibly a few womenfolk in factories that move from the larger cities out into the smaller towns to get away from the labor unions and make hosiery and ladies' clothes, and one thing and another, and they are still paying 40 cents an hour, which happens to be going on right in the little community in which I live, as far as that is concerned.

I do not think it has been 10 years that I have not paid 40 cents an hour, and considerably more than is being asked for in this bill over the last 3 or 4 years, so I feel this bill should be passed, and I know that the average farmer in my community, where we have discussed these things, are all agreed that if we do not have the consuming power in the cities that our prices are not going to be maintained, and that we will not have a market among people who do not have the purchasing power to buy, and as far as overproduction is concerned, I would like to state that all records show that there never has been an overproduction of any goods in the United States of America. It has never been overproduction, but it has been under-consumption that causes the trouble each and every time.

With that, I thank you.

Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Shoemaker, is it not a fact that your costs of production are a lot higher than they are in Missouri, and Missouri is a lot higher than in Texas, as far as costs of production are concerned?

Mr. SHOEMAKER. That is very true, and when it comes right down to it, the farther South you get the lower the wage standard seems to be, which makes it all the more competitive for us in the North, especially in such lines as the dairy industry, where you are required to build barns that cost four or five-well, you cannot build them for $5,000. I just received a letter from my wife today saying it is 22 below zero, and the cattle have to be protected. There are times during the year when we cannot work, and we have to keep on paying wages. We cannot put men out working in weather 22 below zero, and when the storms come and it snows for 3 or 4 days we simply sit around and just see that the cattle are fed, and that is about all we do. We do not accomplish any of the other things that are supposed to be accomplished on the farm.

Mr. LESINSKI. Did you get any more per pound for beef?

Mr. SHOEMAKER. No. In fact, there are approximately 3 to 4 months of grazing weather during the year, pasture that we can put our cattle out on, and in many places in the South they can pasture them the year around, and there are no requirements needed so far as shelter is concerned, so our cost of production, when it comes to livestock, is way above what it would cost farther South.

On the finished article we are a little more fortunate. We may have a little more corn, but that takes a lot of money to produce and a lot of labor before you get it into the finished product.

Mr. LUCAS. Is this what you favor: You want to penalize the man who has better climatic conditions?

Mr. SHOEMAKER. No; I beg your pardon if you get that conception of what I said.

Mr. LUCAS. You said yourself your wages are higher, and your hours are higher, and, therefore, let us make all the costs the same. Mr. SHOEMAKER. I was making this comparison. You do not find the wheat people down here opposing the legislation like you will have the cotton ginners from the South, where they have cheaper labor. We have no available labor. I have been down through the South many times, and have seen only half of the workers on the farm working, and the rest sitting around.

Mr. LUCAS. And that is the type of labor we have down there; they are not worth 40 cents an hour, in the main, and we pay them 40 cents an hour because the factories in town have to pay that much, and in order to get labor at all we have to pay the minimum. When you place a minimum wage in interstate commerce, you affect the minimum wage in all commerce, and the no-account, worthless help that prevails in some parts of the country causes a high cost of production. Mr. SHOEMAKER. That is also true in our neighborhood. We do not have all first-class help, by any means. It has been a problem in the last 2 years, but, nevertheless, there is no open season on that. We have that here, and we have to contend with it, but because of that fact would be no argument why I should reduce myself to their status, either in ambition or accomplishment.

Mr. LUCAS. And the reverse is true; I see no argument why you should raise them to your status.

Mr. SHOEMAKER. It is like water seeking its own level.

Mr. LUCAS. It has not yet.

Mr. SHOEMAKER. We have to either try to bring them up to our level or, by virtue of the laws of nature, we are going to sink to theirs, which I do not want to do.

Mr. Lucas. It is perfectly plain, Mr. Shoemaker, why you want the 75-cent minimum wage on the farm. I understand that precisely. Mr. SHOEMAKER. It is not for mercenary or selfish reasons at all, as far as that is concerned. But if you knew the damage that has been wrought throughout the cattle district, throughout the Middle West, it is tragic.

Mr. LESINSKI. I have a letter from Fort Smith, Ark., addressed to Representative Tackett, in reference to department stores, and also a letter from Congressman Bramblett, asking me to see that a telegram that was sent to him also be made part of the record. If there is no objection, same will be made a part of the record. (The communications referred to are as follows:)

Re minimum-wage bill.

Representative BOYD TACKETT,

ARCADE DEPARTMENT STORE, Fort Smith, Ark., January 31, 1949.

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

DEAR REPRESENTATIVE TACKETT: How could a small independent merchant ever grow into a department store under the proposed wage bill?

How could there ever be any more new department stores?

Wouldn't the public be deprived of all the savings, all the conveniences, and all the services (much of it free) of the small department stores?

The most critical, hazardous stage of a store is when the smaller store grows or expands and decides to convert into a service institution, known as a department store. The department store with a volume of $300,000 is faced with expense of giving the public a rounded out service, with not enough volume or income (as yet) to carry the load.

A department store in reality is a number of specialty shops and stores under one roof; each department has a merchant at the head of it (known as department managers who in small stores are also buyers); each are responsible for and profit by their own department if there is a profit.

The public in small cities could never look forward to the day when the “Jones Shop" or "Smith's General Store" would grow into and become a department store to give the citizens of their town a complete department store service. Jones and Smith would not be able to suddenly assume greatly increased expenses, at the critical stage when volume was only $300,000-so the public in their growing towns could not enjoy the benefits nor the pleasure of buying all their needs in their own home town.

The purpose of this bill is no doubt to help the small retailers, but in actual practice, it benefits the big chain-store corporations who operate hundreds and thousands of stores with an average sales of less than $300,000 per store. The small merchant will have to compete with the larger ones for the retail store employees and this will work an added hardship on them.

There are numerous functions in a retail store which can be filled by and thus furnish employment for past middle age widows or people who have physical handicaps. The stores cannot afford to pay these people the rate per hour for such jobs as pin-ticketing merchandise, wiping, dusting, keeping statistical records, or merely sitting at an interstore communications system and the various other jobs which do provide employment, that would otherwise have to be discontinued.

The writer started from "scratch" in a little town of 690 population and at no time in my career were the problems so great as the period in which I was converting from a specialty store here in Fort Smith to a department store. My $300,000 volume simply was not enough to give the public all the advantages and service of a department store. If, at this critical stage, I would have suddenly been faced with wage increases in excess of competition of the specialty stores, there would be no Arcade Department Store serving this community today.

A large percentage of the public in normal times would suffer hardships without the help of charge and budget accounts, especially at the start of a new season, or when winter arrives. These families can go to a department store and make purchases for all the family from all departments covering the clothing and home needs of the family.

Payments are budgeted out to meet the needs of that family, who could not very well go to a dozen or more specialty stores and arrange for a dozen budgets in a dozen stores. Most specialty shops sell for cash, except the $1 down credit stores, who are compelled to charge the public about double for merchandise.

A department store renders a complete service, and operates some departments at a loss in order to make the service to the public complete. Alterations, gift wrapping, hose mending, and many other services usually are free or rates less than cost.

Department stores pass savings to the public made possible by savings in transportation whereby goods for several departments can be combined to make up on economical freight shipment.

Department stores do a great deal of research, quality testing, fashion scouting, which is not done by specialty stores.

A department store with a volume of only $300,000 is comparable to placing under the proposed law a specialty store when their volume reaches $50,000.

A department store with a sales volume of less than a million dollars finds itself in what is known as a critical stage and records will show that during the past 40 years, far more have fallen by the wayside than those who made it. during the danger period between the quarter-million and million-dollar mark. A department store, until it passes the million-dollar mark, is in grave Ganger. All the little merchants (department managers, buyers, merchandisers) are in grave danger, and then to have its Government come along and right at the most critical stage, pass laws, almost nakes it impossible for Jones and Smith to give his town the benefit of a department-store service, or to grow into a department store.

I think the records will show that the average merchant in charge of a department in a department store makes as much from his wages, profit sharing, etc.. as the average storekeeper makes on his own. Both are merchants and the same man or woman has more to guide and assist them in a department store against failure.

If we

Paper patterns are considered a necessity, especially for low-income families who do their own sewing, but paper patterns do not run into volume and selection is slow. In our store we sell about $200 in patterns per month. The cost of the patterns at the factory is $120, from this we pay transportation. figured nothing for rents, insurance, or any overhead except just salary to the sales person in charge of the patterns and give her the entire income, it would be $80 per month. We now pay $90 in order to have patterns for the public, but we surely cannot pay any more nor increase our losses. This is light work, and gives employment to an aged woman who would never be able to find a job at the proposed new rates.

Specialty stores have prospered at the expense of department stores and the public. Many of them grab off and only deal in the "thick" center of demand. If you do not happen to wear a best-selling size, you would be unable to obtain your needs from a specialty store. A department store would handle your size even if turn-over was slow and the size unprofitable to handle. Many essential articles and staples are sold at a very small mark-up, often far below the cost of doing business, but it is at the department store you find it, and seldom at a specialty store, but there can be no more department stores if laws are passed to prevent it.

A small department store is expected to render all the service of a big one, and they strive to do it, and would be compelled to do it in order to be patronized, but none could get over the critical stage with added costs, which specialty stores would not have.

Big interests with unlimited capital might be able to open big department stores, but Smith and Jones who started out in a small way, with limited capital, could no longer cherish the hope that they may some day be able to give their customers the full benefit of a department store, and all its services and savings. Retail stores were exempted from the original law because there was a reason for it. That same reason still, or will exist. However, it is admitted that retailers did right well during the war and boom years that followed. The cost of doing business and expenses in general have increased. Sales volume kept pace with it until now, but sales are dropping, and 1949 it looks like a very lean year for most retailers. We do not know how to make ends meet, without the additional burden. In most cases a drop of 15 percent in sales, would result in money-losing operations for retailers.

A factory closes down when they do not have ample orders to operate at a profit. Retail stores are compelled to be open for business at all times, days and seasons, even the slack seasons when it loses money, therefore a factory can shoulder the increase, whereas retail stores cannot do it.

Farmers and merchants are not very good money makers in normal times. Competition is extremely keen. The merchants, for fear his competitor will take his business, strives to absorb all of the added costs, and does until the sheriff comes along.

Retailing is a hazardous business, and we need not go back too many years to find the days of bankrupt sales, quit business, and other signs of excess failures among retailers.

We here, have seen examples of what a uniform wage scale for both North and South means. We have seen our vast coal centers and cost towns turn into ghost towns, because due to freight rates and uniform wages, or nearly so, no demand for our coal and no work for our people resulted. We have no cold winters, no big fuel bills, no need of extremely warm clothing. What our people need and want is a job. We want equalization of freight rates, and that will automatically increase wages and give us an outlet for what we can produce.

The class legislation under consideration does not deal alike with all business. It means one class of retailers are doomed to die and the other to live, and in this case the home owner and the stores that do render the best and greatest services to the public are doomed.

Lots of small merchants operate leased departments within department stores and under the same name, and here again the law imposes penalties on this very, very small merchant because he is under the department store roof.

It outlaws all hope of the small merchant growing into a department store service institution. It sets all the progress made in retailing back about 40 years. If retailers are not exempted plans should be made now to provide employment for the vast thousands of workers that will be out of employment.

Very truly yours,

H. N. POLLOCK,
President.

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES,

Chairman JOHN LESINSKI,

Committee on Education and Labor,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C., February 4, 1949.

House Office Building, Washington, D. C.

DEAR CHAIRMAN LESINSKI: Complying with the requests made in the enclosed telegrams I hope the committee sees fit to follow through and give these people a chance to testify on a definite condition which is applicable to their particular industry.

Sincerely,

Hon. ERNEST K. BRAMBLETT,

ERNEST K. BRAMBLETT, M, C.

MONTEREY, CALIF., February 3, 1949.

Member of Congress, House Office Building, Washington, D. C.:

Following telegrams have been sent to Congressman Lesinski, chairman, House Education and Labor Committee. Please marshal all available aid to stop move to amend Fair Labor Standards Act without considering previous reasoning of Congress or allowing industry to present the reasons why proposed amendments are not practical:

"We have read in the papers that the House Committee on Education and Labor is considering a bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act which will eliminate the fish-canning exemption. There are 17 sardine canners in Monterey furnishing work for approximately 4,000 people and producing a pack worth $20,000,000 in a normal season. This exemption is of vital importance to the industry. Thus far, we are not sure that we have been able to get a copy of the bill under consideration and have not been able even to learn what the number of it is, yet we are informed that hearings on the bill are to terminate Saturday, Febru ary 5. If this be true, we are compelled to protest most strongly against this precipitate rush which will preclude us from presenting to your committee the facts concerning the violent fluctuations in the industry which caused Congress to include the exemption and justified previous congressional committees in withholding recommendations for its modification. In full confidence that your committee does not wish to be arrogant in this matter, we request an opportunity to be heard, to file appropriate statements setting forth the facts, and request from your committee information concerning how and when we may do so.

"MONTEREY FISH PROCESSORS ASSOCIATION, "By GEORGE CLEMENS, Executive Secretary."

“I have just read in the newspapers that the Wage and Hour Administrator proposes to remove the fish-canning exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act and that there is a bill in Congress to this effect. I am amazed to discover that hearings are scheduled to end this week. The natural factor of when fish are caught determines when fish canning takes place and whether overtime must be worked, and cannot be arranged by the cannery operator to suit his convenience. As the owner of a sardine cannery in Monterey, Calif., I know that it is not economically feasible to process fish at overtime wage rates and that much wastage of fish will result if the exemption is removed. I request that the fish-processing industry be allowed to present all the applicable facts to the committee handling this bill. I also wish to protest against the apparent steam roller procedure and lack of hearings. Signed, OXNARD CANNERS, INC., S. A. FEBRANTE."

"We wish to protest vigorously against the proposal to remove the fish-proc essing exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act. We are operating a fish cannery in Monterey, Calif. Our industry has been suffering for several years from an acute shortage of fish. The removal of this exemption would make it uneconomic to process all the fish on hand when fish are caught. On top of the fish shortage, it would economically ruin the industry. We request that you do not take hasty action on this exemption until you have all the facts. Signed, SAN CARLOS CANNING CO."