I have listened to this testimony of some union representative purporting to speak for agriculture and labor, who said that 12 percent of the farms in Kansas would be affected by this law.

Mr. PACE. Why, I think it is a much higher percentage than that. Mr. SMITH. I am simply stating what the witness said.

Mr. PACE. I see.

Mr. SMITH. I do not know. I do not have the information on that; I have not figured that out.

Now, in Kansas, we have a law that prohibits corporation farming. Mr. PACE. I know you do.

Mr. SMITH. I know that you are practical, and I know that the things that you have said here are practical, and I subscribe to what you said about the hazards of farming. There is nobody who engages in any enterprise more hazardous than the farmer; nobody is in any business over which he has less control than the farmer.

For example, in the district I have described, there is at least a foot of snow and ice now. The farmers have had to take that into consideration and they have had to hire anybody they can get in Kansas to chop that snow and ice away, so that the farmer can get to his cattle.

The farmer has had a lot of increasing costs. He has had a lot of man-hours to pay for, and I do not see how it is humanly possible for a farmer in my district to know whether he is going to operate under this law or not, in view of all of those hazards. As you know, in rainy weather they cannot wait, they have to take the wheat in on time, and they hire everyone they can get.

Mr. PACE. I think that we should take care of these hazards under this bill, definitely.

Mr. SMITH. Yes, but a law, if it is to be applied effectively, must be applied systematically.

Mr. PACE. Amen.

Mr. SMITH. And I do not know how you are going to do that without a definite dividing line. I do not know how you are going to get that dividing line that has been talked about here.

Mr. PACE. Yes, I certainly appreciate your difficulty in defining that line.

Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Wier?

Mr. WIER. Well, Mr. Smith, you do not farm all of those farms yourself, do you?

Mr. SMITH. Myself? No.

Mr. WIER. And of your own farms, you rent them out, do you not?

Mr. SMITH. I think that the figures show that 25 percent of those farms in the district are owned by absentee landlords; that is, they are farmed by a tenant, whether he pays on a cash basis or sharecropper's.

Mr. WIER. Mr. Smith, you realize that we are going to run into this difficulty with regard to the farm problem, if I may say so, the same as we had when we were studying the problem of the cotton-oil industry.

For instance, there is the wheat acreage. It is a fact that during the last few years there have been a number of people who have come into Kansas and who have acquired land to such an extent that they no longer talk about acres, but sections. You see what I mean. Mr. SMITH. Yes.

Mr. WIER. Isn't that right?

Mr. SMITH. That is right.

Mr. WIER. And they will have not only one section; they will have 5 or 10 sections, in wheat. That being so, we are going to be faced with the problem of acreage control.

I mean, what consideration shall you and I give if that man has 5 or 6 or 10 sections, how much of the wheat shall we take away from the little wheat grower with 1 section or less, in order to accommodate this man who has come into, let us say, your State of Kansas, and while he is not a corporate farmer and he cannot be in Kansas, nevertheless, and I am sure you will agree, Mr. Smith, he is farming on a commercial basis.

Mr. SMITH. I happen to have two men in my district who raised 1,000,000 bushels of wheat last year.

Mr. WIER. Yes, and they are contributing, in a measure, to this uncertainty.

Mr. LESINSKI. Any more questions of Congressman Pace?

Mr. WIER. Let me say this, Mr. Pace, that I am one of the members of this committee here that is actively engaged in labor. I think there is a little misnomer in the inclusion under the title of "Agricultural Workers." I think that that inclusion is ambiguous, to say the least. I represent quite a farming district myself. I come here with no intention of including under the provisions of this bill or any other bill the so-called farmer, what is usually meant as a farmer.

Now, the part of agriculture that I come in contact with is the processing part of it.

Among these agricultural processors, we have the big packing plants. California has them; Texas has them; and up in Minnesota they have the beet-sugar processors.

Even under this bill, that provision would give them 14 weeksI think it is 14 weeks.

Mr. LESINSKI. Yes.

Mr. WIER. Fourteen weeks, considered to be the rush season, or the emergency season, when they cannot wait.

Mr. LESINSKI. That is right.

Off the record.

(There was discussion off the record.)

Mr. WIER. When we are talking about farmers, when we listen to propaganda attempting to get those farmers under the bill, we must be sure what we mean.

We have big farms of 1,200 or more acres. I am not interested in that farm; he is a big farmer, all right, but he is not a commercial farmer.

What I am talking about is the big commercial farmers, where the owners employ two or three hundred men. I think that they ought to be scrutinized.

I say to you that I am not going to sit in this committee and include in this bill any farmer who is not commercial, nor any member of the family, nor any employees of his in this bill. That is not my ambition. I want to get into the commercial business, into the big processing business.

When we come to them, of course, we run into the sugarcane people, and we run into the packing plants on the Rio Grande, and other such

establishments, where they employ 300 or 400 employees. In such a description, the small farmer cannot be included. Mr. PACE. Are there any more questions?

Mr. LESINSKI. Are there any more questions? (No response.)

Mr. LESINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Pace.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN W. EDELMAN, REPRESENTING THE TEXTILE WORKERS AND APPEARING FOR THE CIO LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE

Mr. EDELMAN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am John W. Edelman, Washington, D. C., representative of the textile workers and appearing here today on behalf of the CIO legislative committee.

I want to make a very brief introductory statement, a very brief presentation to your committee. Then, I have individuals here who will make very brief statements indeed.

I would just like to mention to this committee that back in the oh, some several years before the adoption of the present Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938-I was at that time representing the same union I am now representing, except that in those years it was in the American Federation of Labor.

The textile industry in those years was in dire economic straits, due to cutthroat competition in the industry, and a number of other case We attempted to achieve a measure of stability in the textile industry by having introduced into this Congress a bill which set up minimum wages and maximum hours for this particular industry. It was introduced by the then Congressman Ellenbogen of Pennsylvania.

Hearings were held before this committee and the measure attracted considerable national publicity.

I think it can be properly said by students of this particular legi lation that the efforts, studies and the attention given to the problem: that we then presented to the Congress did have very considerable to do with the final development of this law that we are now discussing today, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was adopted several years later.

I worked for the adoption of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Of course, as a union representative, I had considerable to do with its administration during the 10 years that it has been on the books.

In 1945 I again resumed activities on behalf of fair labor standardlegislation and have written a great deal of testimony.

I have also followed the hearings here. I have read pretty much of every brief that has been presented. I have listened to most of thes hearings since 1945 up to the present time.

And, after going over this testimony, Mr. Chairman, and listen a to these arguments, I have tried to ask myself the question as to whether anything has been said, particularly during this set of hearings before this committee, whether actually anything new-any new information, any different kinds of arguments, any approach that had not beer developed in all of these other hearings-were brought out.

I have come to the conclusion very emphatically, even to the languag which is used in these hearings, that it is the same language as the language which was used in the hearings back in the 1930's, in the

hearings prior to the 1938 act, and that was also true in all of the hearings subsequent to that time.

It is also true in all of the hearings in recent years up to the present time. Even the language is identical. The arguments are the same.

I say to you, Mr. Chairman, that you do not have before you a situation or presentation or data or argument or evidence which in any way is different from all of the arguments or presentations or data or evidence that have been presented on behalf of this bill during the past

15 years.

The NAM and the chamber of commerce come before you and say that this question of what the minimum wage should be is too difficult and too delicate. I mean, that is the intent, the purport, of their testimony.

Those are not the exact words that are used by them. But what they do say to you, Mr. Chairman, is this, that this question of the minimum wage is really too ticklish for them to speak about. That is to say, these great leaders of business in America will not say what the minimum wage should be.

All that they know is that it should not be 75 cents an hour. That they do not want it to be.

All the rest of the act is, according to them, meaningless and unnecessary and should be discarded.

Now, it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that this sort of testimony, therefore, cannot be regarded as in any way being important or significant.

You have had before you a whole series of trade associations, of industry representatives, and people speaking for particular type of employment.

They have come before you, Mr. Chairman, and all of them have been saying to you, in effect, "We do not want to pay this minimum wage. We do not, think we can. It will create unemployment. It would distress us to have to do it and, in any case, we do not believe in the principle of maximum hours and minimum wages."

At no time, Mr. Chairman, with the exception perhaps of the witnesses brought here or sent here to testify on behalf of, I think, two consumer organizations-to testify for the child labor organizations and the National Consumers League-other than that, there has not been any discussion, that is to say, outside of the testimony offered by these organizations and of the major union groups-no testimony about the people.

There has been no testimony concerning the people who work for wages below 75 cents an hour. What about them? What about their plight?

There has been a constant tendency to ignore that aspect of the problem altogether, and to conduct hearings purely on the level of a discussion of these great broad economic problems, and ignore the fact that we are discussing, really, flesh-and-blood human beings, and what all these things would mean to them.

We suggest, Mr. Chairman, today, as a series of witnesses that I am going to have to make very brief appearances before you-we suggest that people who work for less than 75 cents an hour are the people who are being condemned by that fact to poverty. You cannot describe it in any other terms. They are being obliged to endure substandard living conditions.

It is our contention, Mr. Chairman, that it is the obligation of Congress to remedy those conditions insofar as legislation can do it.

It is our contention that the experience of the last 15 years in the United States demonstrates conclusively that legislation can correct these problems to some measurable extent, and that the total effects are measurable.

To illustrate my point, I am going to ask Miss Sue Malone, who comes from Petal, Miss., to make a very brief statement here which I think will help to make my point. Miss Malone.

Mr. LESINSKI. Miss Malone, will you proceed?

TESTIMONY OF MISS SUE MALONE, PETAL, MISS., ON BEHALF OF THE AMALGAMATED CLOTHING WORKERS OF AMERICA

Miss MALONE. My name is Sue Malone. My home is in Petal, Miss I have been employed at the plant of the Reliance Manufacturing Co. in Hattiesburg, Miss., for 7 years. My job is machine operator. Since January 1, I have been on leave of absence from my job to help other garment workers in Mississippi organize in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

Our union contract in Hattiesburg, Miss., provides for a minimum wage of 65 cents per hour. Our standard, though, on which rates are based, is 75 cents per hour. All experienced workers who are paid by the hour receive more than 75 cents per hour. Most of the work, as is the case in most garment plants, is paid for on a piecework basis. The piece rates are set so that the great majority of the pieceworkers

earn more than 75 cents an hour.

The company that I work for employs 700 people in Hattiesburg, more than 500 in Laurel, Miss., and about 300 in Montgomery, Ala. All of these plants operate under agreement with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and in all of them the basic standard is 75 cents per hour, as I have already mentioned.

The Reliance Manufacturing Co. also operates plants in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Iowa, and other States as well as in Mississippi and

Alabama.

I have heard representatives of the company say that the efficiency rating of our plant is very good as compared with the efficiency ratings of their plants in the North. Since the workers in our plant organized and got higher wages, committees from our shop have visited workers employed in other plants in Mississippi who want to become organized, too. In one town in Mississippi where I spent several weeks recently, the wage of the workers had been reduced by about 20 cents an hour. A great number of these workers were only getting 55 cents an hour. The hardship of these workers was very great be cause a great many of the women who work in the garment factories help to support the family. In a number of cases, the husband is sick or is no longer living, and the woman has to support her children on wages that she earns in the factory. After they pay for their transportation, social security, and other deductions made, many of them have a very hard time getting along on the little money they have left to take home.

I came here to testify in favor of a 75-cent minimum wage with the right of industry committees to bring the wage up as high as $1 because I know how hard a time the people in my plant had trying to