Mr. SANDERS. That is right. Mr. VELDE. Down around Peoria, which is my home, they pay quite a little bit less than that. Mr. SANDERS. Yes. Mr. VELDE. Would not the State have some trouble in regulating the minimum wage as between Chicago and Peoria, or in the small districts around there? Mr. SANDERS. I think the way the States usually handle that, is that they classify their counties as A, B, or C and have different minimums, and a different application of the minimum in those different counties. Mr. VELDE. You would say, then, that if the State did not handle this problem, and there were sweatshops operating in the State, then the Federal Government should step in? Mr. SANDERS. It can do so on the basis of interstate commerce in competition with other State industries; I would think it would have a right to, and I think it should. Mr. VELDE. I think you can do almost anything under the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution these days. I think we might as well bring a bill to abolish it, the way this thing is going, but that is not the question here. I would like to pursue the flexibility of the minimum wage a little bit further. I know you have been talking to Mr. Sims and Mr. McConnell about it. How would you feel about taking off the lower limit and just leaving it up to the industry committee and the Secretary of Labor to set the minimum wage in these cases? Mr. SANDERS. I believe you would lose a lot of the value that comes from national policies and programs. There are certain problems in our economics that cannot be dealt with by local groups, because they transcend the geography of local areas, and that may be one. You see, it may be that to leave it up to local groups when the product is made in Podunk influences the price of the product that is made in some other place that has a much higher standard of wages, you do not get the national interest viewpoint in that, but it may be possible that the minimum wage could be dealt with adequately by States, and that we could have a Federal law that where the State has a law on minimum wage that it supersedes the Federal statute, or something like that, possibly. I do not know whether that is right from a legal standpoint or not. Mr. VELDE. I think you have a good point. We would have a Federal law that would apply except in those cases not covered by State law. Mr. SANDERS. We do have some laws in some States where that is the case. Mr. VELDE. Suppose that all of the members of the National Grange were exempt from the operation of this act, would you then be in favor of the act? Mr. SANDERS. I do not know whether you were in here, Mr. Congressman, but I tried to say that a minimum of 75 cents, regardless of whether a single Grange member came directly under it, would have a harsh impact on our agriculture economy. Mr. VELDE. I think you said it would have. Mr. SANDERS. Yes; I think I would then be opposed to it, because I believe it is a bad law from the standpoint of uniformity, and probably much too high for the rural areas. It may not be too high for the industrialized areas. I do not know enough about the details to know whether I am right in that statement, but it is inflexible, and that is bad. Mr. VELDE. You would be more opposed as a matter of principle and not as representing any of the smaller farmers? Mr. SANDERS. I would be opposed to it due to its economic indirect effect on the Nation, as a whole. Mr. KELLEY. Did you have some questions, Mr. Barden? Mr. BARDEN. Yes. Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Barden. Mr. BARDEN. Mr. Sanders, I have been interested in trying to do a little research work in this bill to see just where farmers are placed. On page 3 it gives a rather inclusive definition of agriculture. Mr. SANDERS. Yes. Mr. BARDEN. Then on page 6 it gives a definition of hired farm labor. Mr. SANDERS. Yes, sir. Mr. BARDEN. It includes the labor of any person employed on a farm except the labor of the operator and that of his parents, spouse, and children. Of course, I reckon they get around to saying that as long as it is his parents or his spouse or his children they do not count but, anyway, then we come just below that, on page 6, and you find the definition of farm enterprise comprises all tracts of land, whether contiguous or not, under one management, located in a county and immediately adjacent counties, on which any of the operations enumerated in section 3 (f) is carried on. Section 3 (f) goes back to the definition of agriculture. says: The provisions of section 6— which relates to the 75-cent minimum section (c) on top of page 31: The provisions of section 6 shall not apply to any employee employed in agriculture, during any calendar year quarter, by a farm enterprise which used less than 300 man-days of hired farm labor during each of the preceding four quarters. Then, later on in (d), following that, on page 31: The provisions of section 7 shall not apply to and go on down to (5), which says: Any employee employed in agriculture. Mr. SANDERS. Yes, sir. Mr. BARDEN. Then that takes us back over here Mr. SANDERS. To agriculture. Mr. BARDEN. To page 3. With all of that ramification, as I interpret it here and I must confess I think there is a little bit of a tendency to confuse somebody on this thing-the rabbit need not have gone all over the farm. We could have simply chased him around in a small place. About all I can see in here, Mr. Sanders, is the partial exemption of the minimum wage and the partial exemption under (c), which says: The provisions of this section shall not apply to any employee employed in agriculture during any calendar year quarter by a farm enterprise. Now, he does not say "farm"; he says "a farm enterprise." That is a new one. Mr. SANDERS. May I say I think that is a term that should not be used in the law-"enterprise"-because enterprise really, in terms of technical and farm management, means the cotton enterprise or peanut enterprise of a farm. I think it should say "a farm." Mr. BARDEN. What is bothering me about this is that I find more confusion than I do clarity. Mr. SANDERS. Yes, sir. Mr. BARDEN. And it says: which used less than 300 man-days of hired farm labor during each of the preceding four quarters. On the face of it does not that present to you a perilous fact of just how impossible it would be to try to carry on with an average small farm? Mr. SANDERS. Yes: I think that would be true, Mr. Barden. I do not know how big a farm this really would exempt. I have tried to figure it out. I think it would exempt a farm that used approximately less than four men during the entire four quarters. Mr. BARDEN. Let us not dwell on that, because the thing that has made America great has been that equal opportunity was presented to every man, as small as he may be, to become as big at the biggest if he puts himself in it and applies himself. Let us not begin to drop a gate and try to keep all the little farmers in one pen, and all those who have been a little more thrifty and worked a little harder and put them on the other side of the fence. You would then have a very impossible and impractical situation here. Here is a man who operates a medium-size farm, and through no fault of his-maybe he was stricken down sick, or maybe that is the year that his son wanted to go to college-he has to hire his farm to be worked. That would put him under this, because he cannot work a farm that many hours and get along. Mr. SANDERS. With hired labor. Mr. BARDEN. No; with hired labor. That would put him in one category, and on exactly the other side of the fence there would be a man who kept his son home from college and who worked his spouse and his children and worked himself, and he was out from under it, and yet they are right there trying to get along. How would you work that kind of a situation? Mr. SANDERS. Of course, it is a hard question to answer. Mr. BARDEN. It is one that I cannot answer, and I do not think the man who wrote this bill has sense enough to answer it either. Mr. SANDERS. I do not know the man who wrote it. I would not want to make that statement because I might get called off the stand. But, in answer to your question, I would say any time you undertake to legislate on any economic situation you get border-line problems such as you mentioned. Mr. BARDEN. Let us take this situation now. The farm is subject to weather conditions, and it is subject to the elements, and it is subject to every kind of an unpredictable situation from the grasshopper pest to the boll weevil, right on up, but you are up against the prac tical situation. If a man is going to operate a farm like this with farm labor, that someone must be there at 5 o'clock to feed that team, and someone must be there late in the afternoon to look after everything. Mr. SANDERS. That is right. Mr. BARDEN. And there is always some hog breaking out of the lot; you have to go mend fences; and it does not make any difference when it is. Mr. SANDERS. And if you have a hired hand you are not going to ask the wife to mend the fence. Mr. BARDEN. How could you man the average small farm, when the farmer has to pay 75 cents an hour and time and a half overtime? How can he come out and support his children, and so forth, if he has to throw himself out of adjustment into a very risky market and pay this man who feeds the mules in the morning time and a half for overtime and time and a half for overtime in the afternoon? How can he do it, even though the man who does the work has his home as a tenant and his family lives there, and the majority of them have all their hogs and have all their chickens and have all their garden, and they never buy an egg. A farmer who is worth a hoot never buys an egg or vegetables and those things; that would not make a particle of difference under this bill. It would not make any difference if he got everything in the world he used except his clothing, he would still have to pay time and a half for overtime. He would feed the mules in 15 minutes in the morning, and until the time he went to work it would be the most expensive time he would have, just waiting for the mules to eat. The bright boy that set this thing up down in the Department could not explain it. I want somebody else to explain it and tell me if there is any way to work it out. If we can raise the living standards of the agricultural people in this country, make no mistake you will raise the living standards of the real backbone of this country. Mr. SANDERS. I am sure the fellow who wrote this did not have in mind raising the standard of agriculture. Mr. BARDEN. He would not know which end of the mule to put the bridle on. Mr. SANDERS. No; he would not. He would after the mule kicked him, probably. Mr. BARDEN. He would just know that was the wrong end. Mr. SANDERS. But, seriously, the point which you have so admirably brought out illustrates exactly why it is an absurd thing when you undertake to apply it even to the large farm, because you are dealing with such a complex set of factors where labor cannot go to work and quit work on a punch-clock basis, and you cannot apply such a law as this to economy. Mr. BARDEN. I will give you an illustration. A man perhaps will cut down his winter supply of hay, and it is on the ground curing. He sees a cloud coming, and he knows he is going to lose his hay if it rains on it and mildews it and it rots on the ground. The right kind of a farmer goes out there with his crew, and if they work until 9 o'clock that night-I have done it, and anybody else who was reared on a farm has done it-that would mean that he would be paying time and a half for overtime to gather his hay, and if the good Lord would just send him a sunshiny day he would not have had to do that. If someone can tell me how the farmer can protect himself against that situation, then heaven knows I want to do it. The average farmer is more resentful of unfairness than anyone I know in the Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Lucas, did you have some questions? Mr. Sanders, I recall a great Democrat once said, "When the people must look to Washington to know when they shall sow and when they shall reap they will soon be without bread," and I wonder if you, as a representative of the Grange, still believe in that philosophy which was enunciated by Thomas Jefferson? Mr. SANDERS. Yes; I believe that statement was literally true, and I believe, in the main, the membership of the Grange believes that that is right. We do have members who have a strong belief in control of production. I believe that is literally true, but I do not wish my answer to that to be interpreted that we believe the Federal Government does not have legitimate functions. We believe as our Nation becomes more complex and our economy becomes more world-wide that naturally the functions of the Federal Government must increase in order to take care of problems that are not local and cannot be solved locally but must be solved at the Federal level. Literally, I think, however, the statement you quoted is believed very strongly by the major part of the Grange, because we have three guideposts that are very important as determinates of all of our policies. I want to read those to you: All prosperity springs from the production of wealth, or anything which retards the production of wealth is unsound; second, the compensation of each should be based on what he contributes to the general welfare; thirdly, the prime purpose of government is to protect its citizens from aggression both physical and economical. Mr. LUCAS. A very splendid statement. That is all. Mr. Chairman. Mr. KELLEY. Did you have a question, Mr. Gwinn? Mr. GWINN. You made two statements that I think are perfectly splendid, but I wonder how you square them. Anything that retards production is unsound? Mr. SANDERS. Yes, sir. Mr. GWINN. Then, any law that fixes a price out of line with the going price, the market price, that throws a man out of employment because he cannot get work at that price, retards production, does it not? That is, if a man comes to you and says, "I will not work for you for less than 75 cents," and you have cotton to pick, then that retards the production of cotton, does it not, if you cannot pay him the 75 cents? Mr. SANDERS. This applies to general situations, and you can take a specific instance and make it look inconsistent, but it may be entirely possible that a low wage that grinds great masses of the people down to where they could not maintain American standards of living might |