Mr. HALL. State inspectors? Mr. HALL. I am not familiar with their qualifications, but the information that I get, hearsay, is that the State departments have qualified inspectors operating in behalf of the State governments. Mr. VAIL. That was acknowledged by the Director of the Bureau of Mines. Don't you think that this bill attributes presumptively a degree of infallibility to Federal jurisdiction that hardly seems to be justified by what we have been reading in the newspapers recently? Mr. HALL. Yes, sir; I agree. Mr. VAIL. I have no further questions. Mr. LUCAS. I have one other question, Mr. Chairman. We had a witness yesterday who testified that it would cost the taxpayers of the United States an additional $6 million the first year to vest this power of inspection and control in the Bureau of Mines. They could not estimate as to whether the cost would go up thereafter or go down. There are two fields of thought on it. One is that with the increased power they would increase their costs of operation in the Bureau of Mines, and the other field of thought is that with the closing of the mines, which the Bureau of Mines would be compelled to close under their code there would be less and less mines to supervise and therefore less and less cost of operating the Bureau of Mines. I would like to know whether the National Coal Association has given any thought to the proposal or to the idea of whether or not the taxpayers might not be spared this additional $6 million and levy a fee on every mine that is inspected by the Federal Government so that this thing would be self-amortizing or self-operating. What would the owners of the coal mines think about that? Mr. HALL. Answering your first question, I can say that it is a matter that has not been considered. Secondly, I am not in a position to say what their view would be at this time, since it is a new and novel question. Mr. LUCAS. Would you care to venture an opinion as an attorney whether we might be able to draft a provision in such a bill as this requiring the payment of a fee by an inspected mine in order that the additional cost of this supervision might be charged to someone other than the taxpayers of the United States? Mr. HALL. I believe that that question would require a great deal of study. It suggests that the Federal Government would be going into the business rather than the duty of performing such an obligation. Mr. LUCAS. That is all. Mr. KELLEY. Do you have any questions? Mr. FORSYTHE. Just one, if I might, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hall, in answer to one of Mr. McConnell's questions I believe you said that if a bill was passed you would be in favor of adequate judicial review. That is true, is it not? Mr. HALL. I believe I did say that. Perhaps standing alone it doesn't wholly express my view. Mr. FORSYTHE. I don't want to press you, either, because I realize your position and perhaps you don't want to answer this. But could you take that one step further and say that you ts an attorney feel that it would be adequate to provide that the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act should apply to appeals from actions under the bill? Would you consider that to be satisfactory judicial review? Mr. HALL. As it is now written in the bill? Mr. FORSYTHE. I think you would have to draft a different kind of administrative procedure, possibly, to get judicial review of it, but assuming that type of change. Mr. HALL. Assuming Mr. FORSYTHE. Assuming you could get judicial review of the action, would judicial review as provided in the Administrative Procedure Act be adequate in your opinion? Mr. HALL. Our study of this bill has been confined to determining whether, as it is written, it would provide adequate judicial review. Our only conclusion was that it did not, because the exemptions in the Administrative Procedure Act would render its provisions useless to the mine owners and operators. We have not extended our study any further than that, Mr. Forsythe. Mr. FORSYTHE. Then you wouldn't care to say whether in theory you believe that the Administrative Procedure Act provides adequate judicial review for administrative acts? Mr. HALL. It has in some cases, and whether it would here would require study. Mr. FORSYTHE. That is all. Mr. KELLEY. Do you have another question, Mr. Vail? Mr. Hall, I believe that you as well as all other Americans are aware of the fact that traffic represents the major cause of civilian accident fatalities. If legislation of this kind is enacted, wouldn't it constitute a precedent since the States have widely variant speed laws, for the establishment of a motorcycle FBI eventually? Mr. HALL. Yes, sir. I have thought about that argument, and it was presented in past committee meetings in past Congresses. I haven't overlooked it because I thought it was not important. Some things had to be eliminated in order to conserve the committee's time. But it is true, sir, that in your State in 1950 there were 1,933 fatalities on the highways, while at the same time there were 44 in the mines. Obviously the force for taking congressional action to control traffic. safety conditions in your State would be theoretically very great if this legislation was adopted to take care of this. I think the answer is that the end of saving lives is a very great and laudable end but this is not the means of accomplishing that, and it would not be the means of accomplishing the same laudable end to State highways.. Mr. VAIL. This program could go on endlessly. Mr. HALL. Yes, sir; it could. Mr. LUCAS. If the gentleman will yield I will state to him that there were 37,500 people killed last year on our highways. There were around 700 people killed in our mines. Mr. KELLEY. If the gentleman will yield, I want to say there are a lot more people riding automobiles than there are working in the coal mines. Mr. LUCAS. If the gentleman will yield I will say they are just as dead. Mr. KELLEY. The committee will stand in recess until 2 o'clock. (Whereupon, at 12:10 p. m. the hearing was recessed until 2 p. m. the same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Thurmond, when you are ready, you may proceed. STATEMENT OF WALTER R. THURMOND, CHARLESTON, W. VA.; SECRETARY, SOUTHERN COAL PRODUCERS' ASSOCIATION Mr. THURMOND. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Walter R. Thurmond. My address is Charleston, W. Va. I am the secretary of the Southern Coal Producers' Association, a corporation existing under the laws of the State of West Virginia. I represent it in these hearings. The association is made up of about 300 coal-producing companies, located in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. These companies have an annual production of about 120 million tons of coal, or a little less than one-fourth of the normal annual national production. They employ approximately 125,000 men. It is my understanding that the subcommittee is conducting hearings looking to Federal legislation on mine safety throughout the several States. Several bills have been introduced in the House of Representatives on this subject and referred to the Committee on Education and Labor. It is my further understanding that the subcommittee is not sitting to hear testimony on any particular one of these bills to the exclusion of the others, but that it may hear evidence on the general subject embraced in each of them and then either prepare and report out a subcommittee bill, or find that no legislation is necessary. My appearance is in opposition to any Federal legislation. There are two principal reasons for my position and the position of those I represent. 1. The Federal Government would by such act arrogate to itself powers never delegated to it by the Constitution and take from the States rights reserved to them. It would be an unwarranted and illegal invasion of the rights to the States. 2. It would contribute nothing constructive to the work already being done by the coal-mining industry and the mining departments of the several States, in cooperation with the research and educational programs of the United States Bureau of Mines to eliminate hazards, prevent accidents, and advance safety in coal mining. Briefly, may we look to the first objection? May I say, before proceeding, that I am not a lawyer. In youth I went to school and studied an old-fashioned subject called civil government, and did learn a little about the Constitution and was taught to revere and respect it. I regret that that subject seems to have passed out of the school system. In the writing of the Constitution, great care was taken to delegate specifically to the Federal Government only those powers which the authors and the States were sure they wished it to have. It has no implied powers except to protect its own sovereignty, all those not so delegated being reserved to the States. Upon such doctrine, the doctrine of local self-government and States' rights, this country was founded; it grew, it prospered, and became a great nation. Such is still sound doctrine; nothing is present or on the horizon to suggest a change. But, in recent years, there have been those who have sought to controvert and upset it and supplant it with the theory of a strong, benevolent, and centralized government, centered in and directed from Washington. Many years ago, Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, one of the greatest editors and orators of his time, in an address before the societies of the University of Virginia, made what now appears to be a statement made with little less than inspiration. I quote in part: The unmistakable danger that threatens free government in America is the increasing tendency to concentrate, in the Federal Government, powers and privileges that should be left to the States and to create powers that neither the State nor Federal Government should possess. If Mr. Grady lived today, he could recall his timely warnings. Everywhere, on every hand, we have paternalism and centralized power run mad. We have some people running to the Federal Government for every ill, either real or imaginary, that affects them, whether it be physical, financial, moral, or governmental. Some ask for a subsidy, others for relief, and we find those in power quite often not only willing and eager to extend a benevolent and protective hand, but to go beyond and develop plans and schemes, of their own making, for extension of these powers. Little do they realize that this continuous practice, moving as it is at an accelerated rate, eventually means slavery for our people and ultimately the destruction of our form of Government. I do not qualify that statement. Look at the history books and, without exception, you will find dictatorship immediately preceded by benevolences and by gradual centralization of power. Let me quote from another great American, General Eisenhower, president of Columbia University, now on leave, having been recalled to active service in the Army for a time: If we allow this constant drift toward centralized bureaucratic government to continue, it will be expressed not only in the practice of laying down the rules and laws for governing each of us, our daily actions, but finally it will be the actual field of operation. There will be swarming bureaucrats over the land. Ownership of property will gradually drift into that central government and finally you have to have a dictatorship as the only means of operating such a huge and gigantic organization. That statement comes from a man who commanded and led to victory the greatest army ever mustered in the cause of individual freedom and human liberty, and significantly the statement was made only a few days after he was recalled to active duty by the President of the United States, and was made by one whose whole life had been molded by the military which of necessity must in large measure operate on centralized authority. Yet, he adjures his countrymen to resist, with all their might, bureaucratic and centralized power in the Federal Government because it will eventually lead to a dictatorship. The type of legislation under consideration tends in the direction which General Eisenhower says it is dangerous to travel. The danger of this tendency to dwarf the State and local governments and magnify centralized authority is fast becoming a Frankenstein monster that will inflict a dreadful retribution upon those who are creating it, and upon those who by indifference are failing to arrest. its progress. These various bills are more far reaching in their true aspects than would appear in a superficial reading. If the Federal Government can enact a law that will take over and away from the States the establishment of safety measures in coal mines, it can also supersede the duties and powers of State labor commissioners and health commissioners and establish the laws of conduct in factories and mills. It can also establish laws of health and safety in buildings and in offices. In fact, it could establish any number of safety bureaus and police their rules and regulations up to the point where it would totally destroy all State laws and render impotent State statutes. Then we would have every action of our lives from the time we arise in the morning until we go to bed at night regulated by the Federal Government, and we would become a country where a dictatorship would be established. Even in the War Between the States, State sovereignty was never an issue. The Republic that came out of that war, in the language of the Supreme Court, "An indissoluble union of indestructible States." That is a good interpretation today; but within the last two decades, there had sprung up a philosophy that tends to emphasize, magnify and make glamorous the "indissoluble union" and at the same time to deemphasize and dwarf the "indestructible States" and make them impotent before a strong and authoritarian Federal Government. Long before the Federal Government was established, States existed and grew in their own right and later within the Confederation. May the time never come when either the Federal or State Government shall cease to exist but may it be said without hesitancy that if only one of them should remain, it would be far better that it be the State government. George Washington, looking down into the future, expressed the hope that this Nation, then in its infancy, would not be as other nations, rise, totter on the peak of its greatness and then fall, only to occupy a page in the history books of the centuries to come. Let the Congress ponder over that statement before taking away from the people the right of self-government. I might go on and discuss this question at length, but State sovereignty and the right of the States to make laws best suited to their needs requires no advocate. It has been an accepted principle since the beginning of our country. The States are the corner stones upon which the superstructure of our Government rests and upon which our institutions are built. Weaken those stones and the whole structure will eventually collapse and like many of the great civilizations of the past, our Republic will fall and be lost in the trackless sands of time. The enactment of a Federal law destroying one of the very fundamental principles of our Government would tear out one of those stones and would be a weakening influence that would hasten such a day. Now, concluding this part of my testimony, may I read to you from a document that has guided us through the years, which I believe still to be the abiding law of the land. I know that among some, it is an old-fashioned and outmoded document. Even a late President when told by a friend that he, the President, was advocating laws definitely contrary to its principles is reported to have replied: "So what?" 96177-52-11 |