Mr. ANSON. It is altogether different, Mr. Irving, because you are talking about a different man. As far as the race is concerned, they are the finest people to be around. They are a happy race; they are very congenial. They try to please to the best of their ability. The workers you talked about were under contract, and a specific contract, to the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Mr. IRVING. They were paid by the hour or the day.
Mr. ANSON. That is right.

Mr. IRVING. They got $4.56 a day for 8 hours.

Mr. ANSON. That is right.

But you made a contract with the Mexican Government, and you transported them to San Francisco, and you put them to work on that basis there.

Mr. IRVING. I actually believe that they were citizens of the State of California.

Mr. ANSON. Then you are not talking about the same Mexicans that I am, sir.

Mr. IRVING. That is probably right. My personal belief is that they lived right in Los Angeles, and probably were citizens of that State, the great majority of them anyway. I did not intend to contradict your experience, because I realize it could be a great deal different. Mr. ANSON. The majority of our labor is Mexican, and we have a world of fine laborers. And what percentage of them are Mexican born and what percentage are Americans is determined when the immigration officer comes looking for them.

Mr. IRVING. As I remember, particularly the stevedores who loaded the cars were pretty efficient. I do not remember too much about the truckers, but the ones who loaded the cars were quite efficient.

Mr. ANSON. I would say this in justice and fairness to them: If we could keep them in the lower brackets on the job, which we cannot, they would make wonderful workers. They have been working for 100 years down there, and they have not been able to keep them on the job long enough to train them and keep them there. The ones that you filter out and keep going along make wonderful workers. Mr. IRVING. That is all I have.

Mr. LUCAS (presiding). Mr. Sims?

Mr. SIMS. No questions.

Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Wier?

Mr. WIER. Weren't you connected with the fruit growers out in Salinas, Calif.?

Mr. ANSON. I was; yes, sir.

Mr. WIER. How long ago did you leave there?

Mr. ANSON. In 1942.

Mr. WIER. I was glad to have you mention the fact that you did have some good times, because, if I know the Salinas fruit growers, they have done a remarkably fine financial job.

Mr. ANSON. They have done a what?

Mr. WIER. They have done a remarkably fine financial job. Their finances have been very good.

Mr. ANSON. You mean the growers in the Salinas Valley?

Mr. WIER. Yes.

Mr. ANSON. I believe that you had better refresh your memory in the last 12 or 14 months, because they are not as flush as they were.

Mr. WIER. You heard what I said. I said they had done a very good job.

Mr. ANSON. That also applies to Texas, Mr. Wier.

Mr. WIER. I do not know about Texas.

Mr. ANSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. WIER. Did you not have a contract at one time with the union out there in Salinas?

Mr. ANSON. Salinas? Yes.

Mr. WIER. You paid more wages than you quote here.

Mr. ANSON. They were not the same class of laborers, sir. They were not Mexican laborers.

Mr. WIER. That is what I thought. Well, I am not going to say anything about Texas. I am not going to go down in that area. But the fruit growers and the growers in the vegetable sheds-is that the rame of it?

Mr. ANSON. There is the Growers and Vegetable Shippers Association in Salinas.

Mr. WIER. I just happen to know that at one time they were making plenty of money.

Mr. ANSON. That is correct, sir.

Mr. WIER. I am not going to go into the rest of it, but I just wanted to know if you were the same Mr. Anson.

Mr. LESINSKI (presiding). Are there any further questions?
Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Smith has a question.

Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Smith.

Mr. SMITH. When you say they cannot grow vegetables at that price, you had better say, had you not, that they will not grow them? Mr. ANSON. That is better; yes, sir. They will not, and when a Texas farmer says he will not, he means it.

Mr. SMITH. That is all.

Mr. Lucas. Mr. Anson, for the record I think you should elaborate a little on the hazards of this industry. Please describe the conditions under which the growers are operating down there right now. Mr. ANSON. It is most timely to tell you the hazards. There are 16,000 acres of tomatoes, and I also imagine there is about $500,000 invested. It is very questionable whether the grower will harvest any percent of them, as the freeze got them all. There are something like 25,000 to 30,000 acres of tomatoes that were planted for the spring crop, and what we will salvage we do not know. There are peppers and all the soft crops, which are completely gone. That is money invested by a grower, or a grower-shipper, and the money is gone. In citrus, we are very optimistic at the moment, because we have experienced 48 hours of very fine warm rains since the freeze. We think it is going to minimize our loss. We figured at one time there was $18.000.000 lost in Cameron County on vegetables alone. That is the county agent's own statement, and the other counties, such as Hidalgo, which is heavy in citrus, would run many, many times that figure if that crop should be lost. That can happen to us in the perishable industry. There can be a freeze; we can have a case where we cannot get water; we can have excessive hot weather, because, Mr. Chairman, you know with that cabbage and that grapefruit there are three stages. They are green, ripe, and rotten. They are just so many days from the garbage can from the day they are picked off the

$5539-49-vol. 1- 41

tree. And if they are not picked off the tree or picked off the vine they are not going to wait until tomorrow, especially in vegetables. The fruit will stand it a little better than the vegetables. But when the vegetables are ready o go, it is nothing uncommon to see a field of 40 to 140 acres of broccoli that on Monday was perfect. For some unseen reason, maybe market conditions, maybe a shed break-down, or something, they cannot harvest it. Tuesday afternoon, it is in full bloom, and is not worth a tinker's dam to ship to any market in the United States. It is gone. There is nothing you can do with it but plow it up.

Now, that happens to perishable crops the United States over. They call our crop a great risk crop. It is. Some people call it a gamble. I guess it is, because you do not know whether your horse is going to win or not. You hope so. But they put in a lot of chips betting on

him.

Mr. LUCAS. Now, what is that going to do to employment in the valley during the coming months?

Mr. ANSON. It is going to cut it materially.

Mr. LUCAS. And what effect will it have on prices of fruits and vegetables we buy here in Washington?

Mr. ANSON. That will depend entirely-let us say it selfishly-on what happens to Florida, because Florida still has plenty of fruit and vegetables, and, God bless them, they will not do anything different from what we would do. They are going to ship their heads off, and probably they will keep the price at a normal basis by keeping the markets flooded in their desire to get it all that your prices may be all right. If not, I hope they go up so that we can get a little bit for what we have left.

Mr. LUCAS. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WIER. May I ask one more question?

Do you have crop insurance on your vegetables?

Mr. ANSON. No. I wish to goodness we had. The agent would do a good job in our country. We get hail insurance, but that is all. Mr. WIER. That is all.

Mr. LESINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Anson.

Mr. ANSON. You may have the blocks, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LESINSKI. Thank you.

Is there any other witness present who wanted to testify tonight? Mr. EFFERSON. Yes.

Mr. LESINSKI. What is your full name?

Mr. EFFERSON. E. Norman Efferson.

Mrs. ZIMAND. I am willing to put my time at your convenience.

Mr. LESINSKI. Have you been on the list?

Mrs. ZIMAND. I was on for 4 o'clock.

Mr. LESINSKI. Are you a local person?

Mrs. ZIMAND. I am from New York. I am here today and tomorrow, but I could come down again.

Mr. LESINSKI. We do not have you listed for tomorrow. If you want to make a statement now, I think the gentlemen would rather have it now.

Mrs. ZIMAND. I will be very brief.

Mr. LESINSKI. You may proceed.

TESTIMONY OF MRS. GERTRUDE FOLKS ZIMAND, GENERAL SECRETARY, NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE, NEW YORK CITY

Mrs. ZIMAND. I am Mrs. Gertrude Folks Zimand, general secretary of the National Child Labor Committee.

The National Child Labor Committee is a private agency, organized in 1904 and incorporated by an Act of Congress in 1907. It has worked for 44 years in the field of child labor and related educational problems; has participated actively in the development of Federal and State child-labor legislation, and followed closely the results of such legislation.

I am confining my statement to changes specifically relating to the child-labor provisions of the act : namely, section 3 (1), the definition of oppressive child labor; section 12, the basic child-labor provisions; and section 13 (d), the exemptions to the child-labor provisions.

Section 3 (1): We urge the proposed minor change in the definition of oppressive child labor which modifies exemption of children under 16 years employed by their parents so that a parent will not be permitted to employ his child in an occupation which has been declared to be particularly hazardous for minors under 18 years. Through a technical defect in wording, the present law prohibits 16- and 17-yearold minors from work in occupations declared hazardous, even for their parents; but, illogically, minors under 16 may be employed in these same hazardous occupations for their parents. The reason for this change seems obvious. I will merely point out that many of the industrial accidents to children which are reported in the press occur to children working for their parents in types of work which would be barred to them as hazardous if the employer were not their parents. Section 12: We strongly urge the inclusion of proposed subsection (b), which contains a direct prohibition of oppressive child labor. This will accomplish three things:

1. It will take care of what we call the 30-day loophole. The present child-labor section does not directly forbid the employment of child labor; it merely forbids the shipment in commerce of goods produced in an establishment which has employed child labor within 30 days prior to shipment. Certain industries have found it feasible to hold goods for 30 days after employing children before the goods are shipped. In this way they can evade the child-labor provisions. This is especially true in the logging industry where it is sometimes necessary to wait for the spring freshets to float down logs which have been cut the previous winter. This loophole has also been used by canneries.

2. This new subsection (b) would also plug up the loophole pointed out by the United States Supreme Court in its 5-to-4 decision holding that Western Union messengers did not come under the child-labor provisions of the act, even though they are covered by the wage provisions of the act. The Court's opinion was based on the fact that Western Union did not actually produce goods-I presume dots and dashes are not considered tangible goods. It certainly was not the intent of Congress, when it originally passed this act, to make the childlabor provisions narrower than the wage provisions, and this technical difficulty should be taken care of. Justice Murphy, in his dissenting opinion in the Western Union case, said: "To sacrifice social gains

for the sake of grammatical perfection is not in keeping with the high traditions of the interpretative process." The proposed change would in no way alter the basic child-labor standards set by the act. It would merely give the act the "grammatical perfection" which is needed to accomplish its intended purpose and to extend the child-labor provisions to Western Union and to other transportation and communications industries which do not technically produce "goods."

Mr. John H. Waters, general attorney for Western Union, in his testimony before your committee on Monday, built his argument against the inclusion of Western Union messengers under the childlabor provisions of the act on the possibility that the Department of Labor might impose an 18-year instead of 16-year minimum for employment, under the power granted the Secretary of Labor to declare occupations hazardous for minors under 18 years and to forbid their employment therein.

I would like to point out that this power of the Secretary of Labor (formerly lodged with the Chief of the Children's Bureau before that agency was transferred from the Labor Department) has been exercised with extreme care. It has proved to be, in the opinion of the National Child Labor Committee, one of the soundest provisions of the act. In the 10 years that the law has been in force, only seven hazardous-occupation orders have been issued. These have been issued only after exhaustive study of the processes in the industry, and of accident-frequency and accident-severity rates in the various processes, and after public hearings. The power has been imposed only for such obviously hazardous work as is involved in the manufacture of explosives, coal-mine operation, work in logging and sawmills, powerdriven woodworking machines, motor vehicles, radioactive substances, power-driven hoisting apparatuses, and-an eighth order is now pend-ing-in the operation of certain kinds of cold-metalworking machines.

Not only are these orders issued only after careful study and public hearings, but they are not industry-wide orders. They distinguish between those processes in an industry which are hazardous and those which are not, and the order is drawn accordingly.

I believe that Western Union has voluntarily given up the use of motorcycles for its messengers because of the high accident rate. This is the type of operation for which an 18-year minimum would be considered desirable. In fact, there was an 18-year-age minimum for motorcyles at the time the Supreme Court decision was given. but this was the only application of the 18-year age minimum to Western Union messengers during the 5-year period Western Union messengers were covered-i. e., from 1938 to October 1943, when the opinion of the United States district court was handed down. There is nothing in the 10-year history of the administration of this act to give any cause for apprehension on the part of Western Union that it would be singled out for discrimination by the Labor Department and a general 18-year minimum age clamped down. On the contrary, the record is completely reassuring on this point.

The suggested change would impose a 16-year minimum for Western Union messengers. According to the statement of Mr. Waters. on Monday, Western Union now employs 700 messengers under 16 years. It is interesting to compare this figure of 700 messenger boys under 16 years actually at work with the figure 1,760, which is the