na Legislature. So it was only natural for me to go from there own to North Carolina, where I knew people who could take me round. Mr. BARDEN. Did you pass any of those little country sawmills out here? Mr. GILBERT. A great many of them. Mr. BARDEN. Did you just take pictures of the homes of the men hat owned those? Mr. GILBERT. No, sir. I only had 16 negatives. Mr. BARDEN. You only had 16 negatives. Then you say you went to Few Bern? Mr. GILBERT. Yes, sir; I did. Mr. BARDEN. And you say this man was making $20 a week, this man that you mentioned? Mr. GILBERT. Something close to that; $22.75, or something like hat. He was making 55 cents an hour for 40 hours a week. Mr. BARDEN. Fifty-five cents an hour? Mr. GILBERT. That is right. Mr. BARDEN. Do you know anything about whether the man that was hiring him was able to pay any more than that? Mr. GILBERT. I rather assumed so, sir. I think that Mr. Cox here can back up this statement, having worked there, that Armour, Swift, and other such companies there would sell the same goods that the New Bern Provision Co. sells, selling them at about the same price Mr. BARDEN. Armour and Swift have a car coming in there. And they unload that car every week Mr. GILBERT. He manufactures it right there. Mr. BARDEN. They have a district man that travels there every week. Now, I want everybody to make money. I have been a whole lot poorer than you ever were, as far as that is concerned, and Santa Claus did not come to see me. I had to dig it out. And when I got out of the Army, they did not give me anything like they did the boys coming out this time, either. They gave you railroad fare home, and told you to go digging. I want to make it better for somebody else, but I am a little bit alarmed at what seems to be in your mind. That is, you want to be antagonistic toward the fellow who probably has built up something and lives in the nice home. Mr. GILBERT. Sir, my whole background belongs to the same people that you are speaking of now. I am not antagonistic to the owner of the Green Bros. Lumber Co., nor am I antagonistic to the Atlas Corp., that my family is connected with in New York. All I do know, sir, is that I went down into this section and took the testimony of these people. I saw where they lived. I went down to some union mills, the textile mills in Goldsboro, where the wages are high. I have seen the living conditions that those workers live under. They get paid more money. That is the purpose of my presentation here. Mr. BARDEN. Let me ask Mr. Cox who operates the New Bern Provision Co. ? Mr. Cox. G. C. Hunnicott. Mr. BARDEN. That is out where the Kerzy plant was? Mr. Cox. Yes, sir. He bought it out a little over a year ago now. Mr. BARDEN. And you say they went up to 70 cents and then back to 60 cents? Mr. Cox. Yes. Mr. BARDEN. Where do you live? Mr. Cox. 78 Trent Court, New Bern. Mr. BARDEN. What is your rent? Mr. Cox. Twenty-nine dollars a month. Mr. BARDEN. And that is the Government housing project? Mr. Cox. Yes. Mr. BARDEN. And you say there are how many in your family? Nine of you? Mr. Cox. Yes. Mr. BARDEN. How old is your oldest child? Mr. Cox. Fourteen years old. We have seven children; nine of us in all. Mr. BARDEN. Where are you working now? With a taxi? Mr. Cox. Yes, sir; Colonial Cab Co. Mr. BARDEN. Things are pretty tight down there? Mr. Cox. They are pretty tight. Of course, I can make more money driving a taxi than I could out there at 60 cents an hour. Mr. BARDEN. And we want to see it get back like it was when Cherry Point was in bloom, do we not? Mr. Cox. Well, we want to extend a little of it, I guess. Mr. BARDEN. Do you know where I live there? Out on Nashville Avenue? Mr. Cox. Yes, sir. Mr. BARDEN. How are we going to pick up down there, Mr. Cox! You know how most businesses are run there? I mean, some man owns a small business and he hires two or three or four. They are all not like the New Bern Provision Co. That was sold out by Mr. Kerzy. I do not know whether he lost money or made money. Do you? Mr. Cox. Yes, sir; I do. He made money. Mr. BARDEN. You have an idea? Mr. Cox. He made money. Mr. BARDEN. Anyway, he got out at a good time, I think; don't you? Mr. Cox. They are doing practically as much business now as they did then. They have more territory to work in. Mr. BARDEN. I am a little bit on the practical side about this thing. Just the day before yesterday I experienced something that rather opened my eyes. I bought a bushel of sweetpotatoes down there. It cost me $2, and I went to send them by express to Washington, and it cost me $2.03 to send them to Washington. Now, that bothers me. when you double the price of food by shipping it 300 miles, and we wonder about the cost of living. It would cost you $2 to buy them and $2.03 to send them to Washington. So that fellow out there in the country is not having any heaven, is he? Mr. Cox. He is not. Mr. BARDEN. Do you know where all that crowd hangs out on South Front Street, besides the New Bern Implement Co. down there? Mr. Cox. You mean that bunch of colored people? Mr. BARDEN. That is right. Mr. Cox. Yes. Mr. BARDEN. Have you ever seen any one of them go down there and try to do any work on the farm? Mr. Cox. I do not think you could get one of them. Mr. BARDEN. They do not want to work on the farm, do they? Mr. Cox. They do not want to work at less than $1 an hour. Mr. BARDEN. And the tendency is that many of them do not want to work down there. They do not have waterworks; they do not have lights. Many of them live in bad homes, and they do not own their homes, and they have to make a living out of what they sell, because if they send it up here it costs too much, and then everybody hollers about the cost of it. Is that not right, Mr. Cox? Mr. Cox. I do not know about that part of the statement. Down there living costs are pretty high. Mr. BARDEN. But it is getting pretty tight down there now? Mr. BARDEN. That is all I want to ask. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Kennedy? Mr. KENNEDY. No questions. Mr. GWINN. Mr. Chairman, may I ask Mr. Sifton a question? Is he a witness? Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Sifton will testify later. Mr. GWINN. Mr. Edelman, are you working for the Government? Mr. EDELMAN. I am a registered lobbyist. I am employed by the Textile Workers Union of America. I represent the national CIO legislative committee at this hearing. Mr. GWINN. That is all. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Smith? Mr. LESINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Edelman. Mr. EDELMAN. Mrs. Gertrude Jones will be our last witness before Mr. Sifton. She will take just a very few minutes. TESTIMONY OF MRS. GERTRUDE JONES, HAGERSTOWN, MD. Mrs. JONES. My name is Gertrude Jones. I live at 127 Elm Street, Hagerstown, Md. I am 34 years old and have 2 children, 14 and 15 years old, going to school. My husband works in a shoe factory, but does not earn enough money to support the family, so I help out by working in the laundry. I started to work for the Troy Laundry about 12 years ago. At that time we were getting 18 cents an hour. Then I left for about 5 years and went back to work for the laundry about a year ago. By that time the union had come in and our basic wage is now 53 cents an hour. Once in a great while I can make as much as $25 a week, before deductions, but usually it is much less. Last week my salary was $19. After taxes and insurance were taken out, I only had about $15 left to take home. We have a 5-room house for which we pay $15 for rent. But we do not even have a bathroom in our house. Even with my husband and I working at these low wages, we cannot make ends meet. I hope that Congress will do something to help us get a living wage. I think that if this bill, H. R. 2033, was passed it would help us a great deal. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Kennedy? Mr. KENNEDY. Do you think, if your wage was raised to $30 a week under this minimum wage and everybody else's in the company, it would push the price of laundering up to such a point that a lot of people would do their laundry at home? Mrs. JONES. I do not think so. Mr. KENNEDY. Do you send your laundry out or do you do it at home? Mrs. JONES. I do my own. Mr. KENNEDY. You do your own. A lot of people who own laundries have raised the argument that the price would go up to such a point that the people would do it at home. Is the reason you do it at home because it is unreasonably expensive? Mrs. JONES. Because I do not earn enough to pay to have it done: that is why. Mr. KENNEDY. Might that not be true of a lot of other people in your town if the price of laundry went up to take care of this increase in wages? Might not a lot of other people in your town do their laundry at home instead of sending it to the Troy Laundry? Mrs. JONES. I do not think so. It has gone up, and they still have plenty. Mr. KENNEDY. They still have plenty of customers? Mrs. JONES. Yes, sir. Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you. Mr. BURKE. I would like to ask one of the same questions that I asked one of the laundry owners who was in here a few days ago. I notice you have worked over a long period of years in a laundry, Mrs. Jones. Mrs. JONES. Yes. Mr. BURKE. It has been my experience during the war and even yet that laundries are turning down certain types of services that they performed during the war. In fact, our home newspaper during the campaign made a great deal of noise about the fact that in the summertime I had a penchant for wearing sport shirts. Those sport shirts, I find, the laundries refused to finish completely. They say that they just do not have enough capacity; they have too much business. At least, that is the answer that they give on a local level, but the laundry owner says that is not the fact, that it was economically impossible for them to do it. Does the laundry you work for do that same thing? That is, refuse to do certain services because they say they do not have enough capacity to do it? Mrs. JONES. No: they do everything. I am in flat work, and I do not know anything about how they do the shirts. Mr. BURKE. Thank you. Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Ġwinn? Mr. GWINN. Mrs. Jones, are you the sole support for your family? Mrs. JONES. My husband works at the shoe factory. Mr. GWINN. What does he make? Mrs. JONES. He hasn't been making hardly anything since Christ mas. Mr. GWINN. What did he make before that? Mrs. JONES. He averages around $40 or $15, when he has good work. Mr. GWINN. And when you make $25, that gives you a total of, say $70 a week. Now, do you think the laundry company that you work for could raise prices to the consumer? Is that your idea, that it could raise its wages to the worker, and it would be easy for them to raise the price of laundry work to the consumer? Mrs. JONES. I don't know. Mr. GWINN. You do not know whether they can or not? Mrs. JONES. No. Mrs. GWINN. If they did raise your wages, you assume they would have to raise the price to the consumer; that is, the consumer will pay your wage in the end. You understand that, do you not? Mrs. JONES. Yes. Mr. GWINN. And whatever it costs to produce this service has to be paid by the consumer? That is plain, is it not? Mrs. JONES. Yes. Mr. GWINN. Now, while you want the Government to pay you more for your service, you want the Government also to make the consumer, for whom you work, pay more for that service. Is that what you would like to have Congress do? Mrs. JONES. I would just like to have them work so that we can live right, so that we could have plenty to eat and pay our bills and get my children to school. That is what I would like to see done, and have an education, just like Mr. GWINN. Do you think the Government Mrs. JONES. No, I do not say that. Mr. GWINN. Do you think the Government should arrange these things for us? Mrs. JONES. I cannot answer that. Mr. GWINN. If you cannot make as much as you would like to make by going to a laundry company and rendering service to the consumer through a company, why don't you be a little old-fashioned and tell |