Mr. IRVING LEVY. Senator, if I may interject, I should like to call attention to the fact that the very first wage order which was promulgated under the Fair Labor Standards Act went up to the Supreme Court, and that one of the principal questions the Court was asked to determine was whether the absence of a regional differential there failed to comply with the requirement of the act that the wage order must not substantially curtail employment. The Supreme Court unanimously held that the determination of the industry committee and of the Administrator that failed to fix a regional difference in that case, did not contravene the express requirement of the act, which was that no wage order might be promulgated which would substantially curtail employment. And that has been true in every other wage order in which that question has come up.

Senator ELLENDER. But the Court has not specifically passed on the issue.

Mr. LEVY. It was called upon in that case.

Senator ELLENDER. But it did no pass on it. The facts did not justify it.

Mr. BARKIN. On the contrary, Senator Ellender, the fact is that the industry witnesses before both the lumber wage committees, the one that established the 35 cents, and the one that established the 40 cents, the predominant group in the industry, North and South, asked for a uniform minimum for the whole industry. Nobody came before them in opposition. There might have been an individual, but no predominant association, North or South, asked for a geographic differential.

Senator ELLENDER. Of course, the reason for that is that the low wage, so far as lumbering is concerned, is confined principally to the South. When you talk about an industry as such, I doubt if it would take in the lumber industry in California or Oregon. Those who contend for higher wages are necessarily confined, as I understand it, to the southern region, where the wages were at one time very low. You have no complaint from the Northwest.

Mr. BARKIN. The 75 cents will only have a significant effect in the South, because the lumber industry elsewhere has minimums of 90, $1.10, $1.325, and now, with the increase, to $1.40 an hour.

Mr. LEVY. I do not know if I made it clear in that case. The Supreme Court says:

The economic data amply supported the findings that no regional differentials were necessary.

Senator ELLENDER. When I said the facts did not justify it, that is what I had in mind.

Senator BALL. As I read the present act, I do not believe that affects the regional minimum, because I do not know how you could do it on any other basis.

Miss DICKASON. You could make a classification of certain areas, if it were found that the cost of living was lower, the cost of production was lower, and perhaps the transportation costs were higher. But certainly in all of the work that has been put into that, both industry and labor appearing before those committees thought-if it could be shown that the cost of living was substantially lower in any area, that they had the power to establish differentials. We always thought that was what it meant. On our committees, organized labor

never represented more than one-third of the representatives, so that if the data had been conclusive that the cost of living was lower, or the cost of production was lower, organized labor could certainly not have determined the issue in those committees. I have found that 73 of the 114 determinations made by industry committees were by unanimous decision.

Mr. LEVY. The change which this act would make would be bound to suggest that the committees should more frequently find regional differences than they have in the past.

Senator BALL. That is correct.

Mr. LEVY. But in the past they have never found it justified. It must be that the purpose is to suggest that regional differentials should be favored. And yet the whole experience and evidence of 10 years under the act fails to indicate any economic justification for creating regional differentials, because it cannot be said

Senator ELLENDER. That is because the war came on. You do not think the Fair Labor Standards Act had a good test, do you? In other words, this act was passed in 1938, and in 1939 the war started across the water, and then, of course, you had hardly any use for it so far as the minimum established in that is concerned.

Mr. LEVY. But its principal purpose is to guard against the next period, when there might be a surplus of labor, and a depression, and it is precisely in that situation that this act is intended to have its primary impact.

Senator ELLENDER. The purpose originally was to do away with the sweatshops, not to fix wages.

Mr. LEVY. And prevent their return now.

Senator ELLENDER. I know, but if you advocate, each time Congress meets, the jacking up of the cost a few cents, you are going to have Congress fixing wages after a while, rather than establishing a minimum to prevent sweatshops.

Miss DICKASON. We are not asking for that. If a basic minimum is established, industry committees can establish minimums higher than that within a ceiling established by the Congress. The question will be solved for some time to come if the top minimum is sufficiently high.

Senator ELLENDER. I think you have done very well all over the country in establishing wages. And, as you said, because you have been able to get, through collective bargaining, a higher wage in the textile industry, that has had effect in causing employers in other industries to raise their wages, because of competition.

Miss DICKASON. But if you have to do that in the South-I spend most of my time down there.

Senator ELLENDER. You are not from the South?

Miss DICKASON. I was born and raised in a small town in Oklahoma. Senator ELLENDER. Is that right? Good.

Miss DICKASON. I have heard people talking about how it costs less to live in the small towns of the South than it costs to live in the East, or in large cities. Last year, I said to the House committee that it seemed to me that when I was at home it cost more to buy groceries in my home town for my mother, than it cost me to buy them across the street

Senator ELLENDER. You are not comparing that with Washington, are you? I have been living in Washington for 11 years, and I know

it costs me quite a bit more to live here than where I live in Houma, La., a little town of about 50,000. We will not argue about that. Go on with your testimony.

Miss DICKASON. After I went home from there, I wrote to my mother, and asked her to send me the newspaper. I have here an ad from the Okemah Daily Leader, and an ad from a New York paper. I could buy string beans and tomatoes-practically everything that might be bought for my house-more cheaply in New York than where my mother lives, in Okemah, Okla., using the prices on the same day, and buying them from a cheap store in New York, and she buying them from the chain store in Okemah.

Senator ELLENDER. That depends upon the seasons.
Miss DICKASON. This was July.

Senator ELLENDER. In my own State, for instance, potatoes are being dug on my farm at present. I am getting about 3 cents a pound for them, and Saturday, while going through the market, I observed that those same potatoes were selling for 122 cents a pound. From my farm in Louisiana shoppers are able to buy potatoes at 4, 5, 6 cents at the most, and here in Washington retailers are getting 122 cents for the same product.

Mr. LEVY. Is it not true that when our potatoes come in here, we will be able to buy them cheaper than you can in Louisiana? Senator ELLENDER. When we do not produce them?

Mr. LEVY. When our crop comes in here. Does that not cancel out? Senator ELLENDER. I guess it does not.

Miss DICKASON. I want to show this to the committee.

Here is a page from one of the New York papers, and my paper, the Okemah Daily Leader, with the ads in it. It was a matter of cross reference from one to the other.

Senator ELLENDER. I would imagine that maybe you might be able to get them cheaper in New York at certain periods, than in Oklahoma, where, with all due respects, you are not able to grow many green vegetables. You have quite a large dry territory there.

Mis DICKASON. I live in the eastern part of the State. We have gardens. We grow things from March on. But it does burn up later-it does in most places.

Senator ELLENDER. And when it burns up, up go the prices.

Miss DICKASON. I do want to say one thing with reference to the cost of living for a single woman without dependents. After an investigation of various State agencies, the lowest budget for a single woman worker without dependents was 91 cents. In the State of New Jersey, they have, as in most States, outlined exactly what they would include in the budget. She can buy a raincoat every 4 years-that was the budget. She can buy a sweater every 2 years. A woman can get one cotton blouse and one rayon blouse a year, a pair of rubbers every 2 years. She can get an umbrella every 3 years. You know what has always troubled me is what would happen to that woman if she would lose her umbrella, because there is not room in the budget to buy another one if she loses it, because it takes every cent of her money at that kind of standard.

My point is that it has been stated that there is a tendency on the part of these State people to go out and price things that are too expensive, or they price too many things, so that they get an unusual level. I men

tion those items to show you how careful a woman has to be-one raincoat every 4 years, an umbrella every 3 years, and that there has not been any extravagance in setting up those budgets.

On your regional economic factors, we all know the South is developing very rapidly. Great numbers of factories have been established there since the end of the war, which is a very healthy trend, and at the present time the industrial expansion in the South is on the healthiest basis it has ever been, because firms are opening plants there now to take advantage of the fact that there is a labor supply there. They are not going down there to exploit labor, to undercut to the same extent that was true back in 1933, when a great many firms in the cotton garment industry went there.

I just came yesterday from a Southern State where a firm has opened a plant where they are paying a 60-cent minimum wage to women who never saw a sewing factory before. That is the learners-60 cents. There are plants in North Carolina that pay inexperienced workers off the street 60 cents an hour. Naturally, when those workers become experienced, they will earn substantially more than that, but that is what is going on in the South now.

Senator ELLENDER. Is that not due to the fact of the labor market, that labor is short?

Miss DICKASON. In the particular place where the factory is located that I was speaking of, that is hiring workers at 60 cents an hour, in that particular place there were six job applicants for every job. I presume that was the reason the factory was opened there, because where there is a shortage of labor, the factories are not opening up. The expansion is taking place where labor is available. And, Senator, I think there is a terrific reservoir of labor in the South.

Senator ELLENDER. That was before the war, but since the war they have simply gone into the factories. I do not like to talk about my farm, because I am going to have to abandon it next month. After I dig the potato crop I am out of it. Why? Because I cannot get labor to work for wages I can afford to pay. In other words, laborers want $5 to $6 a day running time. I cannot pay that on my farm. It is impossible.

Miss DICKASON. My father operates a farm. I am just as much concerned that the farmers should get along as I am that workers should do so.

Senator ELLENDER. I happen to have a small farm, in contrast with those you have in Oklahoma. I have 120 acres, and I maintained six families on that farm. Today they are all gone, because they have been lured away because of better wages, and as a result my farm will have to grow up in weeds after May, unless I can find someone to rent it, because I am not going to operate it. I cannot spend the money I make in the Senate to run it, and I do not want to do it.

Miss DICKASON. We thought 40 acres was a right big farm where I was raised.

Senator ELLENDER. My farm has been operated on the basis of 15 to 20 acres per family.

Miss DICKASON. These economic factors such as the cost of living, it would seem to me, leave a great area of discussion, in the industry committees, that witnesses would not be able to testify to. The same applies to the value of service rendered. I believe the Supreme Court

has held that the inclusion of such a factor is not necessary as a matter of law. Mr. Levy includes the citation in his brief.

I am thinking now-suppose I, or any of us, were going to be a witness, or a representative of an employers' association, at an industry committee meeting. Suppose that I were to advocate a high minimum under this law, or suppose somebody brought up the question of a lower one, since it is provided that a lower one can be considered.

Just what could be said about the value of the service, other than, I think, that value of service in this country is determined by the economic factors of supply and demand. Suppose wages went down to 40 cents an hour, the minimum, assuming that the present 40 cents an hour was on the books. I have seen them go down to $3 a week for tens of thousands of workers. That was the condition in 1933 that this act was started to correct.

When we have a so much higher cost of living, and we have a so much larger economic plant in this country, where we must support the purchasing power of the worker, and avoid the breaking down of the wage standards-because one rotten apple in the barrel causes the rest of them to decay-it does not serve the purposes of the act to consider what the value of service is in the market place, if that has fallen below an amount sufficient to maintain health and efficiency. I want to make one more comment, that S. 2386 provides that the minimum can be brought down, as well as up. It seems to me that that introduces a very unsound principle. Industry sells far in advance. It introduces uncertainty as far as industry is concerned, and as far as workers are concerned, because, if they were only getting 60 cents an hour, they would need the money so badly that if a reduction were to be made, it would be disturbing to them. And even under the 75cent minimum, under Senate bill 2062, the industry committees could bring the minimum up as high as a dollar, but no further. Even under that, on the basis of any budgets that have been presented, it would not be more than sufficient. If it went up to a dollar, it would just about clear the majority of these State budgets for women workers living alone. If the Congress acts only to set the barest minimum, which does not reach the standard of health and decency wage, then to provide that it could be broken down is all wrong. There has never been anything in the economic life of this country-and I have studied the cost of living after the last war-to justify any such reduction. On the matter of special conditions in the industry, to make a change based on special conditions, that is a pretty broad phrase, and I will simply leave that statement at that.

That is what I want to say on the matter of the industry committee procedure. Very briefly, I want to make one comment on the matter of overtime provisions, not with reference to the provisions of any of these bills.

Senator BALL. Before you leave that, it seems to me your argument about the uncertainty of industry applies equally to any flexibility up or down. Certainly an employer is uncertain about what his wage costs are going to be when an industry committee can raise them 25 cents, as they could under the Thomas bill. I agree with you that at the best, I am not so sure myself about fixing a flat statutory limit,