and also in 1927 and 1926. As far as Ohio is concerned, I think we will have to reserve the right to object to this proposed amendment. Senator NEELY. Gentlemen, in order that something concrete may result from this meeting, may I suggest that I read the bill section by section, with the invitation to all of you to offer suggestions or amendments. Section 1 is as follows: }

It is hereby recognized and declared that the production and distribution of bituminous coal in and throughout the United States are affected with a national public interest, and that the right of the public to constant and ample supplies of coal at reasonable prices, the conservation of all remaining bituminouscoal deposits in the United States by scientific and economical mining and marketing of bituminous coal, the maintenance of just and rational relations between the public, owners, producers, and employees, the right of owners and producers, to fair returns upon their investments and of employees to just wages and working conditions, and the general welfare of the Nation require that the bituminous-coal industry be regulated as a public utility. It is further recognized and declared that all production and distribution of bituminous coal directly bear upon and affect its interstate commerce and national public service; and that the elimination of unfair trade practices which have tended to destroy the bituminous-coal industry and its interstate commerce is dependent upon the elimination of unfair practices in relation to hours of labor, wages, and conditions of employment.

Has any one any suggestion to offer regarding this section?

Mr. WARRUM. We would like to have that strengthened and somewhat elaborated upon. As the proponents of the bill, we would be willing to have the congressional declaration made stronger. I can read the redraft I have made, if you wish.

Senator NEELY. I wish you would.

Mr. WARRUM. The change is in two ways. Out of deference to the fears that have been expressed by some of the operators who have advocated the passage of the bill, we struck out the public-utility feature and retained that portion which stated that the production and distribution of bituminous coal are affected with a national public interest.

Senator NEELY. In what line?

Mr. WARRUM. That would be line 12, page 2. We made one or two other slight changes. I will read the redraft:

SECTION 1. It is hereby recognized and declared that the mining of bituminous coal and its distribution by the producers thereof in and throughout the United States are affected with a national public interest; that the service of bituminous coal in relation to the industrial activities, the transportation facilities, the health and comfort of the people of the United States; the conservation of bituminous coal deposits in the United States by scientific and economical mining and marketing; the maintenance of just and rational relations between the public, owners, producers, and employees; the right of the public to constant and ample supplies of coal at reasonable prices; and the general welfare of the Nation require that the bituminous coal industry be regulated as herein provided.

It is further recognized and declared that all production of bituminous coal and distribution by the producers thereof, bear upon and affect its interstate commerce and render regulation of all such production and distribution imperative for the protection of such commerce and the national public service of bituminous coal; that the excessive facilities for the production of bituminous coal have led to practices and methods of production and distribution that waste the coal resources of the Nation and burden and obstruct its interstate commerce to the end that control of such production and regulation of the prices realized by the producers thereof are necessary to promote its interstate commerce, remove burdens and obstructions therefrom and protect the national public interest therein; and that the right of mine workers to organize and collectively bargain for wages, hours of labor, and conditions of employment should be guaranteed in order to prevent constant wage cutting and the establishment of disparate labor costs detrimental to fair competition in the interstate marketing of bituminous

coal, and in order to avoid those obstructions to its interstate commerce that recur in the industrial disputes over unfair labor relations at the mines.

Senator NEELY. Senator Guffey, is the amendment proposed by Judge Warrum satisfactory to you?

Senator GUFFEY. Perfectly, as far as I am concerned.

Senator NEELY. Has any operator any objection to the language just read by Judge Warrum?

Mr. MAHAN. Mr. Chairman, this is the first time I have heard it. It sounded all right, but I wouldn't want to be considered as absolutely committed in favor of it.

Senator NEELY. Gentlemen, after you have had time for reflection, if you decide that any of the suggestions made this morning are unwise and that you wish to change them, will you not kindly send the chairman of the subcommittee an expression of your views in order that they may be considered before we undertake to report this bill to the full committee next Wednesday?

Section 2 is as follows:

There is hereby established in the Department of the Interior a National Bituminous Coal Commission (herein referred to as "Commission") which shall be composed of five members appointed by the President, by an with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Commission shall annually designate its chairman, and shall have a seal which shall be judicially recognized. The first members shall be appointed for terms of 2, 3, 4, and 5 years, respectively, the term of each to be designated by the President; but their successors shall be appointed for terms of 5 years, except that any person appointed to fill the vacancy shall be appointed only for the unexpired term of his predecessor in office. The Commission shall have an office in the city of Washington, D. U., and shall convene at such times and places as the majority of the Commission shall determine. Three members shall have no financial interest in the mining, transportation, or sale of coal, oil, or gas; one member shall be a representative of the producers; and one member shall be a representative of the employees. The Commission shall, without regard to the provisions of the civil-service laws appoint a secretary and necessary clerical and other assistants. The members shall each receive compensation at the rate of $12,000 per year and expenses. Such Commission shall have the power to make and promulgate all reasonable rules and regulations for carrying out the provisions of this act, and shall annually make full report of its activities to the Secretary of the Interior for transmission to Congress. Upon all matters within its jurisdiction coming before it for determination, it shall have the power and duty of hearing evidence and finding facts upon which its orders and action may be predicated, and its findings of facts supported by any proper evidence shall be conclusive upon reveiw thereof by any court of the United States.

In my opinion you would eliminate a great deal of the objection to this bill if you would enlarge this Commission. I am also of the opinion that you might eliminate some of the objection that may arise by providing that there shall be equal representation as between the North and South, so far as the operators are concerned. Some urge that the Commissioners should be like the members of the Supreme Court-without particular interest in the subject matter of their decisions.

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Chairman, the Mine Workers have already agreed to any enlargement of the Commission that is thought necessary. We concur in your suggestion and think that it would inspire confidence in the measure if equal representation were given as between the North and the South. It would be an evidence of good faith and would promote confidence. We are willing to make it 7 or 9. We don't care anything about the number. The industry is going to support it, and the expense will be so small that it cannot be computed in mills per ton.

The Mine Workers do hope, however, that the Senate will not eliminate from the Commission any representation of the coal operators or the Mine Workers. We likewise want to feel some confidence in the Commission. My experience has been that too often we are not justified in having confidence in public commissions selected from professions, occupations, and conditions of life where labor has no influence whatsoever. I will be very brief. I feel strongly on this subject, but I will be very brief.

When a man reaches the eminence in his profession or calling in any community or State or in the Nation to be selected on a national commission, that in itself indicates that he must be a man who has accomplished something in his life, and who stands out in the profession or business of his community or his State. Obviously, his circumstances in life, his associations, his financial relations and commitments, his business affairs, his social relationships, his political relationships, and his sympathies are outside the field of labor. So that if he has inherent reaction or sympathy, even consciously or subconsciously, they will react more quickly to suggestions from business and business relations than from labor. So labor starts into this proposition with a handicap against itself when it accepts a so-called 'impartial commission or tribunal."

I care not whether they be professors from the cloistered precincts of our universities or presidents of the universities. The greatest financial rape ever committed on the miners of this country was committed by the president of a great State university who acted as umpire. I care not whether these are lawyers, whether they are politicians, whether they are great captains of industry, labor starts with a handicap. The only safeguard that labor has under those circumstances is that it may be given the right to have its voice heard before the decree is entered by the tribunal itself.

The men of the organization I represent want to have confidence in this commission. They do not want to believe out in the mining communities of this country that their fate, their destiny, their social status, and their hopes for the future, are going to be decided entirely by men who inherently know nothing about the subject, and have not had a proper opportunity in the cloistered chambers of their individual relationships to find out about it, or to have the story told to them in any proper way.

Washington is full of college professors to whom I would not trust my destiny or that of the membership of the organization I represent, whether they be university presidents, theoretical lawyers, or budding statesmen or politicians. Why should I? The power for life and death for the future lies in this bill for hundreds of thousands of citizens, and the well-being of a mining population amounting to millions of our people.

We want a minority representation. We are willing to yield to majority rule, the right of the public interest to govern. We are willing to yield that to the preponderant trepresentation on the Commission to decide, but we think we are modest when we merely ask for the right to have our natioal representative on this Commission to be able to tell this story in the executive sessions of the Commission, offset, if you please, by trained and seasoned representatives of the operators themselves.

There are operators in this room who, during the war, when we were all serving on war boards and committees over here and had the Fuel Administration set-up, who will bear me out in the statement that the list of so-called "impartial executives", the list of the men in the Fuel Administration, was so long that it would take a large book to contain it. There were 1,400 employees, and a vast number of them called one another "doctor", and knew positively nothing about the coal industry. The trained men in the coal industry had to be absolutely vigilant day by day through all the long months of the war to keep those men with college training from absolutely ruining the coordinating processes and the synchronized movement of the coal industry of this country.

We just want the chance to tell the story in a practical way and in a practical sense to the members of the Commission before they write the decisions and before they enunciate these decisions with which we are expected to abide. So we do hope, whether the number of the Commission is increased to 5 or remains at 7 or 9, there will be a minority representation, at least a representative of the mine workers for the guidance of the members of the Commission.

Senator NEELY. I take it for granted, Mr. Lewis, that there will be at least one representative of labor on the Commission. The suggestion which I intended to make after we disposed of the suggestion relative to the appointment of a member of the Commission from the northern operators and one from the southern field was that there be similar representation given to labor.

Mr. ESSINGTON. Did I understand the suggestion of the chairman to be that the bill provides for representation of operators and mine workers from the North and the South?

Senator NEELY. That the commission should include a representative of the operators in what is commonly known as the northern field and also a representative of the operators in the southern field.

Mr. ESSINGTON. May I respectfully suggest that there is about as much production of coal west of the Indiana-Ohio line as there is in either the northern or southern fields. Therefore, I wonder why it should be excluded and why the operators and miners west of that line should not be represented?

Senator NEELY. The thought in the mind of the chairman has been that Indiana and Illinois and Ohio have usually been considered as a part of the northern field. There may be ground for another division between the East and the West.

Mr. ESSINGTON. I am very sure it is the intention of the chairman to provide equal representation for all sections of the industry, but in speaking of the northern and southern fields they seem to be composed very largely of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but west of that line there is about as much production as in both of those sections.

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Senator NEELY. That is unquestionably true. Unless the States of Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio can be properly classified with the northern or southern field, I shall gladly concede that they should also be given representation.

Mr. ESSINGTON. I am sure the chairman was perfectly sincere, but if there should be 1 from Pennsylvania and 1 from West Virginia, it would seem to exclude the balance of the country,

Mr. LIVERIGHT. Mr. Chairman, I speak for the eastern Pennsylvania interests. They have the view that the commission should be impartial and neutral, and not have any distinctly operator or labor members. In addition to that, they suggest the inclusion of the following phraseology in section 2:

No member of the commission shall have a financial interest in the mining, transportation, sale, or distribution of coal, oil, or gas, and no member therefor shall engage in other business activities while employed as a commissioner.

The colloquy that just occurred between the chairman and Mr. Essington leads me more firmly to the conclusion there should not be any industrial or labor representation, and that the suggestion we have made should be adopted.

Mr. LEWIS. The mine workers have no desire to insist that the operators be represented on the commission. The mine workers, however, do insist that labor be given representation on the commission. If the operators desire that the mine workers be repre sented without the benefit of the association with the operators, that is all right; but the mine workers do feel that it is essential that labor be given a voice in the councils of this commission.

Mr. BITTNER. Mr. Chairman, I feel that the illustration of the Supreme Court was not a good illustration in this matter, because the judges of the Supreme Court know something about the law. That is why we are insisting upon mine workers' representation on this commission, and also for operators, because they know something about the industry.

Senator NEELY. So far as I know, there has been no objection from any source to the mine workers having representation upon this commission.

Senator GUFFEY. Do you represent eastern Pennsylvania, Mr. Liveright?

Mr. LIVERIGHT. Yes.

Senator GUFFEY. What group?

Mr. LIVERIGHT. The Eastern Bituminous Coal Association. Senator NEELY. Do you operators concur in the suggestion of Mr. Liveright that there should be no operator on this commission?

Mr. O'NEILL. Mr. Chairman, I don't see how you can appoint operators geographically. We have so many States producing coal, and competitive questions are going to come before the commission, questions of allocation, price relationships. If you select one from Pennsylvania and one from West Virginia, Kentucky undoubtedly will want representation, and Illinois undoubtedly will want representation.

Senator NEELY. First, do you think that operators ought to be made members of the commission?

Mr. O'NEILL. I don't think so.

Mr. LEWIS. At this point I would like to ask Mr. O'Neill a question. Senator NEELY. Proceed.

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. O'Neill, is your opposition to operator representation based on the thought that it is impossible for the operators to agree upon a recommendation of one of their number for membership? Mr. O'NEILL. I think that is primarily one of the objections. The competitive situation is such that I don't see how they could agree on representation on the commission.