Mr. WALLACE. That may be true, but I do not believe there is any law that this committee or any other committee could recommend which would prevent those ill effects.

Mr. SABATH. I only asked that question to find out the effect on labor conditions.

Mr. WALLACE. I think it will have an ill effect upon the negroes and those who send them here. Of course, it will have an ill effect on the South, where they need them. But I do not know that there is anything we can do about it. I have not finished about this farmer proposition. In my opinion, if you insist in bringing foreigners to work on the farms you will drive the American boys away from the farms, just as you have driven them away from the factories-driven away the American industrial workers from the factories of the East.

Mr. WHITE. I am not taking a stand on the question that we should induce immigrants to come to this country to work on the farms, but I want to make the statement that there is a very strong tendency for our farm boys to leave the farm under the conditions as they now exist, because they get better wages in the cities. I do not say that they better their condition when they go to the cities. That has been stated on the floor of the House. I am not sure that they do, and I doubt it in many instances. But there is a great shortage of farm labor, and I am not insisting that we should bring them here for that purpose, because they are not the kind that is desirable.

Mr. WALLACE. You are fairly well along in years, as well as myself, and I remember the time when a fellow used to cut wheat with a cradle.

Mr. WHITE. I have done it myself.

Mr. WALLACE. Well, that is now a thing of the past. In Mr. Raker's State they have a machine that goes along and heads up the wheat, runs it up an elevator into a thresher, and it comes out in sacks.

Mr. WHITE. They do that in my neighborhood.

Mr. WALLACE. I understood you were a farmer, but I did not know that you raised wheat to that extent and cut it in that way.

Mr. WHITE. We have the greatest wheat-producing country in the world in Kansas.

The CHAIRMAN. Let it be so recorded.

Mr. WALLACE. I have seen those machines, and you have, too, Mr. Raker. Mr. RAKER. Yes; but I did not know they had any in Kansas.

Mr. WHITE. They run the big ones out there.

Mr. SABATH. Is it not a fact that 35 or 40 years ago, when machinery was being installed right and left, that labor was under the impression that machinery would cut the pay of labor and it would reduce the amount of employment?

Mr. WALLACE. That is absolutely the truth; yes, sir; and we have realized that is wrong and a mistake.

Mr. SABATH. And the fact is that the introduction of machinery has actually increased employment?

Mr. WALLACE. Yes; but in order to keep up with it we do not want to reduce the standard of living wages; if we reduce the standard of consumption and increase the productivity of the individual, then we will come to a peak where we can not work because we can not consume that which we have produced. As long as you increase the consumptive power of the worker then let machinery go as far as it will.

Mr. RAKER. Is not this the condition also, that a farmer, instead of being an ordinary man who can pitch hay, as was the case 20 years ago, must be a man who can run and handle practically every kind of machinery?

Mr. WALLACE. Yes; and he has to be a scientist sometimes.
Mr. RAKER. He must be able to run machinery?

Mr. WALLACE. He must be a mechanic and a scientist to be a good farmer. Mr. WHITE. Calling your attention to your answer to Mr. Sabath, Mr. Wallace, is it not a fact that you can not regulate those things by legislation; that is, production and consumption? You spoke of coming to a peak. Are not those things regulated under natural laws?

Mr. WALLACE. Yes, sir; and I do not want them regulated by legislation. If we continue to let in a flood of cheap labor, offsetting the law of supply and demand for labor, then, of course, labor will come down to a bare-existence standard; and with labor at the bare-existence standard and productivity at the luxury standard through the aid of machinery we would increase the fre

quency of the periods when work stops because the warehouses are full and the granaries are full.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other phases you want to present? Mr. WALLACE. I want to call attention to some of the statements made by the gentleman representing the Bethlehem Steel Works. He said they were only paying 28 cents an hour when they had the chance, yet the people were able to live pretty satisfactorily because they had children, 16 years of age and older, who worked in the silk mills in the vicinity. Now, children do not come to us at 16 years of age; they are not ready to work when they come to us, and at 28 cents an hour it is impossible for an American to marry and have a family.

At the last hearing, when you had your 3 per cent bill before the committee, I made a statement to the effect-and I thought I was saying something newthat in my opinion if there had been no immigration in the last 30 years the population of this country would have been approximately what it is now; that the people here would have had a chance to live in security, have families, and probably we would have had as many people here as we now have through immigration. Since that time I have read an article delivered before the Commonwealth Club of Los Angeles, was it not, Mr. Raker?

Mr. SABATH. Somewhere in California.

Mr. WALLACE. Well, it brought out that thing in splendid shape and, in fact, proved that theory.

Mr. Box. And does not the person who prepared that article also cite one of the Directors of the Census of the United States as sustaining that position? Mr. WALLACE. I believe he does; at any rate, he brings it out in splendid form, and I would suggest that that would present a better argument along that line than I can give. However, I still contend that wherever cheap immigration comes in the Nordic people are destroyed, and as a race they can not compete with it; they can not live in the congested quarters; they can not live as cheaply; they are eliminated, not because they can not do as much but because they can not do without or because they need more to live on, and they are as effectively destroyed as if we had a massacre and as if we killed them personally; they are destroyed as a race.

Mr. RAKER. I think your view is correct, and I would like to have inserted in the record the article which you say carries out your views.

Mr. WALLACE. I do not know where I can get a copy of it.

The CHAIRMAN. I think we have it here.

Mr. WALLACE. I think it ought to be put in the record.

I have no more to say, I think, and I appreciate the very patient hearing you have given me.

Mr. WHITE. I want to interrupt to say that, while I take no position on that question, there is a very great conflict of opinion on that subject. A witness before this committee stated a little while ago, in substance, that the Polish people and those people from the Balkan sections of Europe, and even from Asia Minor, were very quick to imitate the Americans and adopt the standard of the Americans; that they soon became as extravagant and as thriftless, if you want to use the word, as the Americans, but, without using that word, that they soon adopted the American standard of living, spent their money freely, and within a generation or two were living on exactly the same standard. Mr. WALLACE. Mr. White, did you ever consider the people of the Appalachian Mountain ranges of this country-the mountaineers of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee? They settled in a rather isolated country, but they were secure there and they throve there; they raised families there and are still raising families there, even though the conditions they live under are not so good, but thy are secure in their holdings. Now, here are the purest Americans I know of, the people of the Appalachian Mountain ranges of the South, or of the near South, Virginia, and so on. Those mountaineers do the hardest work in the world, and they thrive on it; they do not find any disgrace in it, and they will work because they have to work. And the pioneers of this country, the American pioneers, worked and worked cheaply; they had to; but they throve on it and raised big families. It is only when they are forced to come in contact with the people from the southern countries, who live in congested quarters and who can live cheaply

Mr. Box (interposing). You mean from southern European countries?

Mr. WALLACE. Yes. That they cease to compete and they disappear, and an attack is being made on these splendid mountaineers right now in West Virginia and in other places to displace them and replace them with the same kind of people that have replaced Americans in other sections of the country.

When I came to this country-I was born abroad-40 years ago, the workers in the Pittsburgh district were Americans, English, Irish, Scotch and a few Germans, but now all these are displaced. A short time ago there was a hearing on the steel industry and evidence was produced showing that an advertisement was put in the Pittsburgh papers to this effect:

"Men wanted to work in the steel industry; no Americans need apply; Serbians and Rumanians preferred."

That is the condition which has brought about this exhaustion of the American, and the influx from southern Europe, and they say they want more in the interest of the country.

Mr. WHITE. They come before the committee and ask for more.

Mr. WALLACE. Yes; and say they can not do without them.

The CHAIRMAN. You know that one of the principal witnesses representing the Manufacturers' Association argued that laborers could be brought to the United States, sent to certain places to work and retained at certain places, and then sent back to other countries when the work gives out.

Mr. WALLACE. I was surprised at that gentleman. He is a very able man and he knew better than that.

The CHAIRMAN. You think he knew better?

Mr. WALLACE. Why, of course, because that would bring back the contract system; that would bring men from abroad and send them into certain sections to take the places of other men, and then when they were through with them what are they going to do?

Mr. SABATH. You mean he ought to know better.

Mr. WALLACE. He does know better, but he has a job, and he is getting a good salary for it. He is worth it, because that man can make black look as green as the driven snow.

The CHAIRMAN. He did not make that proposition stick?

Mr. WALLACE. No; he did not make it stick with this committee.
The CHAIRMAN. Now, if there is nothing further

Mr. WALLACE (interposing). I just want to say this: We found out that this drive was going to be made and, according to the evidence of the gentleman you spoke of and some others, it was initiated at about the time we had 6,000,000 out of work in the country. As soon as we found out the drive was going to be made we started to get some information of our own. We have canvassed every section of the country as to what is the real condition of employment there and we have reports from different parts of the country which I ask permission to introduce into the record.

Mr. SABATH. Those reports are from your officers?

Mr. WALLACE. From the secretaries of the central labor unions aud as to every kind of labor.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection they will be placed in the Record.

Mr. SABATH. Is not that the same matter that another representative of the American Federation of Labor put in the record? I am not objecting to this, because I think it ought to go in, but did we not have the same matter from Mr. Morrison?

The CHAIRMAN. No; I think not. What the gentleman has in mind is, no doubt, the report of the labor employment department of the Department of Labor.

Mr. WALLACE. It is possible that Mr. Morrison may have seen this and it may have been introduced in the record, and if it has been I do not want to have it repeated.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not think the material you refer to has been inserted in the records and, without objection, it may go in.

(The reports referred to follow :)

NO SHORTAGE OF LABOR-REPORTS FROM ALL STATES AS TO THE CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT.

The following statistics are answers so far received to inquiries to all State federations of labor and city central bodies asking the state of unemployment in the respective States and districts.

ALABAMA.

Gadsden: One thousand men out of work now; can't find jobs anywhere.

ARIZONA.

Tucson: No shortage of labor in Tucson or in all Arizona. A great superfluity of common labor in the large number of peons brought from Mexico, ostensibly for the purpose of picking cotton. These Mexicans are brought into Arizona under a war-time provision that specifies that they should be returned to their native country when the cotton-picking season is over, but the Cotton Growers' Association is careless about this latter phase of the matter, and the result is that there are many peons turned loose into the mining camps and other localities of the State to compete with native American labor. In addition this surplus of common Mexican labor there are many skilled craftsmen unemployed.

CALIFORNIA.

Richmond: Made thorough investigation and questioned several bosses of different jobs, and the reply was that there was no scarcity of laborers or workers of any description; 2,500 workers and mechanics out of work in this city and county.

Napa: No labor shortage. This is a grape country, and during the grapepicking season people are very busy. After that is over there are plenty of idle men. Mechanics in the building line are all busy, but no shortage of men. Los Angeles: Abundance of labor of all kinds, with a possible exception of the plasterers. Apparently about 10,000 men unemployed, and as there has always been an influx of workers of all occupations and trades into this city during the winter months, there is no doubt that the number of unemployed will be double that number by the first of the year.

Vallejo: The navy yard at Mare Island has laid off 40,000 men since July 1, 1922, thereby dumping a large number of extra mechanics of all trades on the labor market. No labor shortage, rather a surplus.

Oakland: We have had more people this month looking for work than any month this year. Prospects are not picking up in our line, and it is our opinion it will be another "tough winter."

Long Beach Long Beach is having quite a building boom now and the building trades men are quite busy, but there are from 300 to 400 common laborers at the labor bureau most every day looking for work. We can just about take care of our own here this winter.

COLORADO.

Colorado Springs: Six hundred unemployed.

Fort Collins: Nearly all unskilled labor in and about Fort Collins is at present working, due to the fact that a large amount of city and road paving is in progress; also, the sugar factory is in the midst of the beet harvest, which will close down about December 15. Road and street paving will soon be over, then I expect a large amount of men will be unable to secure work before spring.

Grand Junction: Five hundred idle workers at present; will be multiplied by four within the next month.

Greeley In from four to six weeks there will be the usual number of common laborers walking the streets without work. The Great Western Sugar Co. are the only people claiming a shortage. There perhaps is a shortage at 23 cents an hour.

Trinidad: Two hundred federated shop craftsmen idle; 100 laborers, not counting idle coal miners.

Pueblo Fifteen hundred unemployed of all trades.

Denver: There is plenty of unemployment at this time. I have inquired at the labor department also, and have been informed that there is plenty of unemployed throughout the State. I would estimate that there are at least about 5,000 unemployed in this city.

FLORIDA.

Jacksonville: No shortage of labor.

GEORGIA.

Atlanta: Many men in building trades unemployed. All elevator constructors working only two-thirds time. Carpenters in far from normal condition; many men available for jobs. Forty per cent contract machinists without employment.

No shortage of street car men. Sixty per cent of molders working. No shortage among railroad machinists. Three hundred out of 700 carmen walking the streets. Unskilled workers far in the majority of the unemployed. All of this in the face of an unprecedented building record for Atlanta.

Valdosta: There is no shortage of labor in this city and I have heard of none in this State. I can go out any day and hire 50 men if I wanted them. A few weeks ago an oil company put an advertisement in the daily paper which came from the press at 4 o'clock for one man to tend the filling station which only required a common laborer, and he got 14 applicants before 7 o'clock that night.

ILLINOIS.

Bloomington:. Within a month present work will be finished and then there will be an abundant supply of help.

Blue Island: Between 1,300 and 1,500 unemployed.

Chicago Heights: Unemployment in this section is about the average before the war. Plenty of men for factory work are to be had, even at small wages. Quincy Five hundred unemployed. Building trades were busy for a while, but work is slack now. Foundries are not working steadily at present. Street improvement being done now, but will soon be over. Brewery trade working only two days a week. Ten molders left Quincy for other cities to secure

work.

Danville: No scarcity of labor in any line. One thousand unemployed at this time, with hour rate for common labor down as low as 25 and 30 cents. Decatur: Number of carpenters and painters out of employment and something like 1,600 shopmen on strike. The only cry here is for common labor, but the firms that want this kind of labor do not want to pay a wage that the working man could live on. We have had quite a good deal of streetpaving work going on; if some of the contractors would pay a decent wage they could get plenty of men to do the work.

Benton Took matter up with the central labor body, also with mine workers, and there are at least 25 per cent of them out of employment and possibly more. The only exception is in the bricklaying trade. Bricklayers are scarce. Herrin: Fully 60 per cent of all labor is idle, at the very least, 75 per cent of the time.

Hurst: Two hundred and five mechanics unemployed. At the mines 15 to 20 men turned away at each eight-hour shift each day.

Kankakee: Supply about equal to the demand.

Marion: No shortage of labor here: all kinds of men wanting work. Mines running about half time, and other work is slow.

Ziegler: Plenty of men in all trades. Good many common laborers idle and 50 coal miners at the mines every day looking for work. Mines running about four days a week.

Westville: Fifty unemployed.

IDAHO.

St. Anthony: In this vicinity and the small outlying towns the number of unemployed will reach in the neighborhood of 600 and the list is being added to every day. A great many laborers are quitting the farms and this will add greatly to the unemployed during the winter.

Wallace: Plenty of men to fill all jobs that are open; no shortage whatever.

INDIANA.

Bloomington: Two hundred and fifty unemployed.

Brazil: No labor shortage.

Kokomo Possibly 500 unemployed. One automobile factory continuously advertising for men from other cities. They hire and fire continuously. Linton No labor shortage. Basic industry is mining, working about onethird time.

Elkhart: Common or unskilled labor is the only kind of labor that is unemployed.

IOWA.

Dubuque: About 300 idle men for the winter.

Mason City: Plenty of labor to cover all industries.

Newton No labor shortage. Many men out of work. This will doubtless be relieved temporarily during corn gathering as there will be a demand