Mr. GWINN. Let us go to the farmer. You speak of the farmer in your area. He has the same conditions somewhat as you described. He is training young men to learn farming, and while that young man is training he is breaking up the farmer's machinery, and going through the processes of the cost of learning to be a farmer. Under a minimum wage of 75 cents in towns and in the factories, he has to pay that 75 cents, does he not, whether it applies to him or not, in order to keep his workers on the farm?

Mr. ANDERSON. If there is a labor shortage of any degree he would probably have to, yes, sir.

Mr. GWINN. But he wants the brightest boys to stay on the farm, but the bright boys will be taken into the factories, and into the newspaper business and stores of the city, will they not?

Mr. ANDERSON. I would say a large percentage of them would unless they had a special yearning for farming, and were willing to sacrifice for it.

Mr. GWINN. Then the 75-cent law, whether it includes the farmer, or does not, fixes the market in towns so that it injures the farmer just as it injures you and your business, does it not?

Mr. ANDERSON. Being a farmer, I have difficulty in employing labor right now; yes.

Mr. BAILEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GWINN. Yes, I will yield to the gentleman from West Virginia. Mr. BAILEY. I would like to ask some questions about the newspaper business. You mentioned the fact you have 600 daily newspapers. How many of these have collective bargaining contracts?

Mr. ANDERSON. I would say a very small percentage. I do not have the exact figure.

Mr. BAILEY. Those that do have a bargaining contract are not affected by the 75-cent minimum because the wage of even an appren tice would be above the minimum here if they contraet?

Mr. ANDERSON. No. Most of the typographical union contracts provide for subminiumum rates for apprentices.

Mr. BAILEY. Below the 75 cents?

Mr. ANDERSON. Oh, yes.

Mr. BAILEY. They must be extremely small dailies, then.
Mr. ANDERSON. They are small dailies.

Mr. BAILEY. What about the 5,400 weeklies? I assume practically none of those are organized. How many of those 5,400 would be exempted by the 3,000 limit written into the bill?

Mr. ANDERSON. The present 3,000 exemption that is written into the bill?

Mr. BAILEY. Yes.

Mr. ANDERSON. Approximately 68 percent, I believe, are the last figures I have who are now exempt under the present statute.

Mr. BAILEY. I was just trying to narrow down your interest here. particularly the group that you were pleading for. I wanted to find out what part of them

Mr. ANDERSON. Unfortunately, a 3,000 ceiling within a segment of an industry, say, weekly and semiweekly newspapers, serves to discourage a paper from going over 3,000.

Mr. BAILEY. I could understand that, yes, but I was just trying to narrow down to

Mr. ANDERSON. And essentially they are all in the same boat. They are all published mostly in small towns. At least 63 percent of them are now exempt under the present act, but, on the other hand, while three or four of my papers are exempt from it I go under the act because of the fact that I am not going to stay back in the shop and police these boys to see who works 51 percent on job printing, and who works just 49 percent on it.

Mr. BAILEY. Does that exemption not apply if they are operating a job shop?

Mr. ANDERSON. No, it does not.

Mr. BAILEY. It has to be purely newspaper work?

Mr. ANDERSON. If they work in the job department of the newspaper 51 percent they they are under it.

Mr. BAILEY. I believe that is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GWINN. Mr. Anderson, let us go back to the farm. I think we have to start simply to understand this act.

You say even now you are having a hard time getting help to stay on the farm to help you run the farm?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, sir, that is correct.

Mr. GWINN. Your experience is the same as all of we farmers, then. If you have a 75-cent minimum wage in your town, and that is the market, and there are not too many people exempt in there, the farmer is going to have to pay that minmum wage to keep his brightest boys on the farm, is he not?

Mr. ANDERSON. I would imagine so, particularly if he is close to an industrial center where there would be draw on it.

Mr. GWINN. So even though we exempt you, and we exempt the farmer from the application of this 75-cent law, and that applies to all the other fellows, you are going to have trouble getting the kind of boys you want to train in the newspaper business, and the farmer wants to train to be a farmer?

Mr. ANDERSON. That is correct.

Mr. GWINN. Is that correct?

Mr. ANDERSON. I think so, yes; unless we pay their rate.

Mr. GWINN. And you say you cannot pay it as a newspaper man, and the farmer says he cannot pay it as a farmer.

Mr. ANDERSON. I say to you we are confronted with the same thing in our weekly newspapers now. We are having to pay practically the same rate the daily newspapers are paying. That is an economic fact that always exists, and particularly is true when there is a shortage, as there still is, of skilled printers and linotype operators, that with a gradual recession, which we are feeling very strongly in small towns right now in our business, is declining, and our ability to continue to pay those high rates will gradually go down.

Mr. GWINN. But the real place where it hurts is when you take a bright boy and get him trained up past that 6 months or a year, when he is no longer an apprentice, and begins to have some earning and producing power, and then the fellows are forced to pay 75 cents, or have someone come along and take him; is that not one trouble? Mr. ANDERSON. That is one of them, I would think; yes.

Mr. GWINN. Then why is not the whole law bad for our economy, bad for everybody?

Mr. ANDERSON. I think that is a question that you gentlemen of the committee will determine. I am sure you will whether it is or whether it is not.

Mr. GWINN. But we need editorial support.

That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LESINSKI. Gentlemen, we are way over our time, so I must excuse you gentlemen. Thank you.

Congressman Boykin.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK W. BOYKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA

Mr. BOYKIN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, we have 140 people who want to be heard.

Mr. BARDEN. Tonight?

Mr. BOYKIN. Not tonight, but we have 140, and I have talked to my friend, the chairman, and he has agreed to give us an hour.

We have a group of Congressmen here, but we are not going to talk, because you hear us talk all the time, but I do want to introduce some of the men to you. We only have three men who are going to talk:

Mr. Sam Adams, of Mobile, my good friend and constituent.
Mr. LESINSKI. Do you want him to make a statement?

Mr. BOYKIN. No, sir; I am going to ask somebody to make his talk.
He would only have a minute and it would not do any good.
Judge Turner is going to speak for him.

And then I want to introduce Mr. Bob Darrah, who will make just a brief talk. Mr. Darrah represents all of the Southern States belonging to his organization, over a quarter of a million people. Mr. LESINSKI. He is from Birmingham, Ala.?

Mr. BOYKIN. Yes.

Mr. LESINSKI. Ask him if I ever bought lumber from him.

Mr. BOYKIN. Yes, he told me about that. He is one of my old friends, and I have sold him a lot of timber. I hope you will do just what he says.

I want to introduce Mr. R. D. Wilcox, of Laurel, Miss. I should also like to introduce Mr. Carl Gibson, from Wilmington, N. C. Mr. BARDEN. He is from Wilmington, Jacksonville, and Lumberton?

Mr. BOYKIN. That is right, and he has been looking for you. Mr. BARDEN. You are always behind. He has been in touch with me today.

Mr. BOYKIN. He has been here two or three days, and I have been feeding him.

Mr. LUCAS. I have constituents here I want you to start feeding. Mr. BOYKIN. John Williams. He is a Congressman from Mississippi, as you know.

Larry Battle and Bill Colmer, and we could have had 100 here if we had asked them to be here, but we told them we would try to attend

to this.

I now want to introduce Judge Ben Turner. He is going to talk first. He was circuit judge for several years, and he is now down here

at one of the largest law firms we have in Mobile, and he is here representing the Chamber of Commerce in Mobile. He is representing over 225,000 people.

Judge Turner will speak for the chamber of commerce.

STATEMENT OF HON. BEN TURNER, REPRESENTING THE MOBILE
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, MOBILE, ALA.

Mr. TURNER. May I stand?

Mr. LESINSKI. Any way you are the most comfortable.

is

Mr. TURNER. The way I got into the chamber of commerce game a little difficult for me to understand. We, in Mobile, have a very active chamber of commerce. It is composed of membership represented by big businesses and small businesses, as well; but the principal industry around Mobile, outside of the larger factories, is the paper and allied products, and unless you gentlemen know the country, it is impossible for you to understand the difference between logging operations in the South and logging operations on the west coast. You have been so kind to us I am not going to bother to read the statement. I hope you gentlemen will read it.

Mr. GWINN. You had better read it, Judge.

Mr. TURNER. I was going to put it in the record.

Mr. LESINSKI. You can make your statement, and then with unanimous consent we will just place that in the record.

Mr. TURNER. I have been read to late at night myself, gentlemen, and I thought I would spare you that.

Mr. LESINSKI. We will put it in the record.

Mr. TURNER. But what I wanted to say to you gentlemen is that industry in the South, small business corporations, cannot stand an increase in the minimum rate of pay. They are already paying to the highest concept of what is economically possible. Those engaged in this lumber and pulp wood industry cannot absorb this increased price. Already in the building trade all over the South there is a definite depression and decline in the volume of business.

We have one concern in our town that is a great manufacturer. It is a big corporation, a manufacturer of building material, and they are warehousing it now. They cannot dispose of it, and it will take more shots in the arm than a federal housing project to revive the now rapidly declining demand for building material and lumber and gypsum board and things of that kind. We just feel like the time has We need fresh air and come when we do not need a shot in the arm. an opportunity to breathe and live a little bit on our own. I feel we can meet the situation and I feel we can continue in business sufficiently to give employment to these men who depend upon the lumbering industry alone. In other words, in the South our problem is not to shut down those factories and individuals who depend upon the production of raw materials for their livelihood.

We confidently feel that if you would leave it the way it is, through a process of negotiation and bargaining, as we are now doing, we will pay more than the minimum, as we now are paying more than the minimum; but if under this proposed bill you put the minimum at 75 cents and put it in the power of the Administrator or committee

to raise that price to a dollar, thousands of small businesses will fail before the Government can ever begin to function.

Another thing, gentlemen, the people of the United States are looking to the Congress of the United States to lead us out of this threatened chaos into which we may be heading. We do not want a rule, as this gentlemen ably said, whereby one man can determine the destiny of the American people. If it is a good law and passed by Congress, Congress should write it into the statute books so plain that a man can read it, and let us know what it is. There should be an abandonment of government by rule and regulation, and let us get back to the scource of all law, all Federal law of the Congress of the United States, and in this day and generation it is the only hope of continued existence.

Gentlemen, give small business a chance and it will weather the storm. If you put this wage increase on it, it is going to be the beginning of a spiral to raise wages in every field, and you know it. Some of the economists say it is not true, but we have seen it work, those of us who have fooled around with the matters of this kind. It its not a theory.

If you pay your yardman 50 cents an hour, and you pay your chauffeur 60 cents, and you raise your yardman to 60 cents, your chauffeur has to get more or he will quit, and you know it.

I am not going to keep you, because you have been too kind.

I also represent, in addition to the Mobile Chamber of Commerce-and I had a telegram asking me to say something about the Brewton Chamber of Commerce. That is one of the strictly rural communities you gentlemen have spoken so much about.

I once had a fellow ask me if I would vote for him as superintendent. of a rural school, and I told him I thought the more rural it was the better school teacher he would be for it.

(The telegram referred to is as follows:)

Judge BEN B. TURNER,

Care Congressman Frank Boykin,

House Office Building, Washington, D. C.:

BREWTON, ALA.

Kindly accept authorization of membership Brewton Chamber of Commerce embracing most of big and small business in Brewton, for you to express their firm opposition to bill increasing minimum wage to 75 cents. Employers, especially in small business, strongly oppose compulsory future wage floor based on inflationary conditions.

E. M. LOVELACE, President.

We have plenty of communities all over the South, Louisiana and Texas, who depend for their livelihood upon men who work with timber and timber products, and they cannot make a living any other way; they do not know anything else, and they do not want to do anything else, but that argument will be taken care of by the gentleman who represents the pulpwood industry.

Before leaving, I would like to introduce some resolutions adopted by the Mobile Chamber of Commerce and by the Wholesale Dry Goods Institute in opposition to increasing the minimum wage. I think that is all, and I thank you very much.

Mr. LESINSKI. Thank you, Judge. Without objection, the resolutions will be made part of the record.