Mr. PIERCE. You will always find that situation. My experience of 30 years in going into New York for men is that you always find this situation. You can go into Bleeker Street Park and you will see a thousand men sitting around there, but if you talk work to them they don't want it. You will always find a bunch of men of that class.

Mr. RAKER. Do you find the same thing in New Jersey?

Mr. PIERCE. I have not gone into New Jersey.

Mr. RAKER. In Connecticut, you find them in the cities, don't you?

Mr. PIERCE. Some; yes, sir. You will always find that, probably.

Mr. RAKER. Whether we will always find that or not, the men are there and they are not working?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir; some.

Mr. RAKER. And good, strong, healthy men?

Mr. PIERCE. But even if they would all work it would not be a drop in the bucket. Mr. RAKER. And in your own special business that you know about particularly and in which you are interested, how many men do you say you are short?

Mr. PIERCE. I would say in Connecticut, I might make a guess of 25,000 or 30,000 men that affect our business, like, for instance, in the building work. Here is a concrete example

Mr. RAKER. I was trying to keep you down to your own business and not go into the building business, but on the crushing portion of it, or the crushing end of it. Mr. PIERCE. But the crushing end of it is affected.

Mr. RAKER. But you are not in the building business, are you?

Mr. PIERCE. No.

Mr. RAKER. I am trying to get the information from the stone-crusher side, so as not to mix it up with anything else.

Mr. PIERCE. Of course that would be very much smaller than that.

The CHAIRMAN. You are here to speak for the stone crushers.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. SABATH. And manufacturers of stone?

Mr. PIERCE. That is what we are; yes.

Mr. SABATH. You have to do a lot of drilling and blasting, and so on,
Mr. PIERCE. Yes.

Mr. SABATH. And you need men for that, don't you?

don't you?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir. Here is the proposition. I do not want to take up so much of your time

Mr. RAKER (interposing). You do not call a man who is handling a drill common labor?

Mr. PIERCE. No, sir; I should not.

The CHAIRMAN. As a matter of fact, you do not pay the labor that is really known as common labor 60 cents an hour?

Mr. PIERCE. As a matter of fact, we are paying 50 cents an hour for common labor, and did pay 60 cents.

Mr. CHAIRMAN. And you can not get that labor away from the railroads or the steel mills?

Mr. PIERCE. No; we tried that.

The CHAIRMAN. And they pay 10 or 15 cents an hour less than you do?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes. They will work in the steel mills before they will work for us.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you housing facilities for housing these men you want to bring from other countries?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir; and they are vacant to-day.

The CHAIRMAN. There are vacant houses, then?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. CHAIRMAN. Where is that?

Mr. PIERCE. Well, at Middlefield.

The CHAIRMAN. In Connecticut?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir; 150 rooms in separate houses.

Mr. CHAIRMAN. You are prepared to take care of the families of these people?

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you prefer married men to single men?

Mr. PIERCE. Of course, we would prefer the married men.

The CHAIRMAN. And you would like to have these immigrants that come to you come with their families?

Mr. PIERCE. We would prefer it because we think then they would stay, but that is probably impossible.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know why it is that immigrants are not coming to your industry from Scotland or England or Wales or Germany?

Mr. PIERCE. No: I have not gone into that subject at all. I suppose your committee could tell us probably about that.

The CHAIRMAN. Are they coming to your industry from Russia?

Mr. PIERCE. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. In spite of the fact that the quota restrictions would permit them to come.

Mr. VAILE. The quota of Russia would permit 8,400 as of the 20th of last month. Mr. Box. That is the balance of the quota for this year.

Mr. VAILE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you employ many Greeks?

Mr. PIERCE. A few.

The CHAIRMAN. Do the Greeks try this work and get away from it?

Mr. PIERCE. No; but I would say we would prefer the Italians.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the Italian population of Connecticut.

Mr. PIERCE. I do not know, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it pretty heavy?

Mr. PIERCE. It is rather heavy around New Haven. I think there is the largest number of Italians in New Haven in proportion than any city in the United States. The CHAIRMAN. Is that a very good population?

Mr. PIERCE. Quite law-abiding: yes, sir.

Mr. RAKER. You want some Italians to come in?

Mr. PIERCE. I do not care. sir, just any man that will come in and work.

Mr. RAKER. You stated a while ago what it was that you wanted.

Mr. PIERCE. They are very desirable. I have employed as high as 3,000 of them and I would just as soon have them as Americans.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you in your capacity as a citizen of the United States, and not in your capacity as a member of this immigration committee of the crushed stone industry, which you would think the most important of three problems-one to lift the quota so as to admit commen labor to the United States; second, to lift the quota to admit Greeks and Armenians and other refugees to the United States from stricken districts in the Near East; or third, to lift the quota to admit the wives, children and blood relatives of aliens now here? Which do you think is the most important?

Mr. PIERCE. I do not think I really could give you an intelligent answer except to answer the three questions in one and state that with your committee having followed this matter up, and knowing it so much better than I do, I know that perhaps I am speaking in a measure from a selfish standpoint, but on the other hand, I do not think I am, because I think that my whole life shows that I am willing to be fair. I believe that if we are going to have our houses built and have work go on while we have business coming along as it is now, we should have more help in this country that is willing to work. As Father McGiven, who is the founder of the Knights of Columbus in this country-not that I am one but I have a great regard for himsaid to me day before yesterday in expressing his opinion, "The trouble is we have got to have some people in this country and some good citizens coming here that will show their intention of becoming citizens who will work, because our boys here won't work."

Mr. Box. Why won't our boys work.

Mr. PIERCE. I wish you would tell me, sir.

Mr. Box. Mr. Chairman, may I ask him one or two questions along that line, beJause Mr. Pierce is a thoughtful man. Do you believe we will get our boys to work and develop the habit of working among them by bringing in great numbers of immigrants to do that work.

Mr. PIERCE. I think it has, sir. I think if we do less of this so-called relief work, although I am on a campaign of that kind now myself in our city and State, I still believe we could get along better, at least, if they were not given too much of this relief themselves.

Mr. Box. You are talking about the immigrants getting relief.

Mr. PIERCE. I am talking about our own boys getting relief.

Mr. Box. I did not know many of them were receiving charity.

Mr. PIERCE. Well, I am afraid they are.

Mr. Box. It is all right to state the facts. We are dealing with big questions and we ought not to be afraid to face the facts whatever they are.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. Box. What is your information about the effect that the coming of great numbers of Japanese has had on the disposition of the boys and girls of California to work in the berry and fruit fields of California. Have you any information on that subject? Mr. PIERCE. I have been out there and I have heard some very strong arguments, and I am afraid I am not well enough qualified to go into that subject. That is a pretty dangerous thing.

Mr. Box. Have you ever studied the industrial problems of the South, where we had great numbers of black people to do the work, and its effect on the disposition of young men and women of our own race to go into the fields and work?

Mr. PIERCE. No; I can not say I have made a study of that. I have been down there a great deal.

Mr. Box. Have you read the literature on the industries of New England, bearing on the effect of the coming of immigrants and the driving out of American boys and girls from those industries.

Mr. PIERCE. I think that is rot, sir. I must say I think that is rot; but, as I said before, your committee is so much more qualified

Mr. Box (interposing). Understand, I am not criticising you, but I am just trying to get your reaction to a situation that is often presented to this committee. I will say to you that the literature and everything I have read running back to the days of Charles Dickens is about as my question indicates. I find, for instance, the report of the Commission on Immigration, signed by several great New Englanders, among them Senator Lodge and Senator Dillingham, showing that first the factories of New England were filled with bright American boys and girls, who had music clubs and a bright social life and whose labor was quite productive; that was supplanted first by a high order of immigrants, which in turn was supplanted by another order, the older immigrants always having to give way before an ever-incoming tide and the American boy and girl of the older immigrant stock and of the later immigrant stock gradually being supplanted. Now, I am asking you, as a business man, whether you think there is anything in that? I believe you say you think it is rot.

Mr. PIERCE. As a father and as a grandfather several times, I am perfectly willing for my children to grow up in that competition, and if we do not have it, this country will go to dry rot, because we need something of that kind. We are simply a lot of immigrants ourselves coming in there, and it seems to me that what we want is that very kind of competition in order to let our American boys know where they stand. The CHAIRMAN. Following that up, how much immigration would you admit in a year under your plan?

Mr. PIERCE. As I said before, I have not the statistics, and as I say

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). You have the problem as it now develops right in front of you. We have either got to admit that the United States must have a cheap, ever-weakening type of labor coming in with its people

Mr. PIERCE (interposing). I would have restriction.

The CHAIRMAN (Continuing). Or else we must shut off the stream, which would easily be a 1,000,000 a year as it was prior to the war, in the hope that pay will go up to the point so that those who are so frequently idle around the country will not be dependent upon charity all the time but will seek these jobs.

Mr. PIERCE. I think the history of the charity and relief given in our State is largely to the American born.

The CHAIRMAN. Why?

Mr. PIERCE. That is what I would like to know. Perhaps, they have not enough of the foreigners there.

Mr. RAKER. To what class are they giving relief?

Mr. PIERCE. It is the American-born class.

Mr. RAKER. What class?

Mr. PIERCE. I can not go into the details of that because I do not know the classification of it. I have not made a study of that, but I have made a study, to a certain extent, of what relief we have been giving.

Mr. RAKER. Is it your view, and is it your experience and knowledge that the American boy or the young man from 16 years up to 30 years is not working to-day? Mr. PIERCE. Oh, yes; I think they are working, but the trouble is we have too many bosses and we must have some more common help for these bosses.

Mr. SABATH. Is not that due to the fact that a great majority of the boys of the farmers and the business men and the laboring men go to high schools and colleges and universities, and they are not looking for work at common labor such as you need, or like they need on the railroads, or like they need in the steel mills or on the farms; is not that one trouble.

Mr. PIERCE. Unfortunately, my observation is that a young man who gets out of a high school wants to go to work at $5 a week in somebody's office with a stiff white collar on rather than go into our quarry at $12 or $15 a week.

Mr. RAKER. Are there any number of the class you have just named in your community that are not working?

Mr. PIERCE. Are there any number of American boys that are not working?

Mr. RAKER. You just described the class.

Mr. PIERCE. No, sir; I should not say there were any number at all.

Mr. RAKER. Then why do you put up the fact that the American boy won't work. He is either working or not working.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes; but there are a number of them that will sit back and that same class of boys is always present, and they are the fellows who are hollering about this immigration question together with some few patriotic associations.

Mr. RAKER. Are they sitting back in your community?

Mr. PIERCE. Well, I will tell you about a young man who came in to see me who was about 24 or 25 years old, and had been over on the other side in the war and was in fine shape physically. He was selling some ribbons or something like that, and I said, "All right, I will take a few of these ribbons, but don't you want a job?" He said, "Yes; I want a job.' I said, "What will you do?" And he said, "Anything," and I said, "All right, you go up to one of our quarries and we will give you 60 cents an hour and all you will have to do is to ride on a few cars and when they get to a certain point stop them and pull something which is just like pulling a trigger and the car will dump. Now, did he go? No. He would rather be around town selling these 10-cent badges.

Mr. RAKER. That is all good, honorable American work that you have described this morning, every bit of it.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAKER. Any boy, whether he was a graduate of a high school or not, until he gets in shape to do something else ought to be willing and ready to do that work. Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAKER. It would be good for him.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAKER. You would have no objection to your son doing the same kind of work? Mr. PIERCE. Anything that was honest I would want my boy to do.

Mr. RAKER. I mean now the kind of work you have described, because I do not want to go beyond that.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes, sir.

Mr. RAKER. Now, ought we not to so arrange the matter that that boy gets to work? Mr. PIERCE. How are you going to do it?

Mr. RAKER. That is not the question I am asking you. I am asking you if it is not an obligation upon us to do that.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes; if possible.

Mr. RAKER. Now, instead of bringing more men in to take the place of these boys and simply making the condition more acute, should we not do that instead of driving more of them out of work because if there is somebody who will take their places easily there is no pressure to bring these boys to work.

Mr. PIERCE. But there are more jobs than there are men, even if every one of these drones was put to work.

Mr. RAKER. Let us suppose there is not.

Mr. PIERCE. But there is.

Mr. RAKER. Let us take it the other way: Suppose there are more jobs than there are men, ought not these American boys you speak of be taught, and should not the communities teach them to go to work.

Mr. PIERCE. Yes; we try that.

We have all sorts of institutions.

Mr. RAKER. During the war we found all these men at work. When the communities made up their minds that the men should work and have a job, they had a man appointed for that purpose, and he saw that every man who came into the community had a job, did he not?

Mr. PIERCE. To some extent, but not altogether. We had some men-
Mr. SABATH. A lot of them did not work during the war.

Mr. RAKER. Oh, yes; they did.

Mr. PIERCE. Oh, no; they did not. We had lots of them. However, gentlemen, you are so much better posted on this subject than I am that you could get me up here and probably corner me.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you want to make a statement, Mr. Schmidt?

Mr. SCHMIDT, Yes, sir.

STATEMENT OF MR. F. W. SCHMIDT, OF THE NORTH JERSEY QUARRIES CO., MORRISTOWN, N. J.

Mr. SCHMIDT. You raised the question a few moments ago as to the Russian immigration, stating that there were so many more that could come, and asked Mr. Pierce whether he had employed them. I have employed Russian help and it is unsatisfactory in this line of business.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think the United States can pick and choose immigrants? Mr. SCHMIDT. No; I do not know that they can, but you asked the question and I only wanted to reply. The class of help that we want is the same class of help that the railroads employ for their maintenance work.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you pay your help-the common labor?

Mr. SCHMIDT. From 40 to 45 cents.

The CHAIRMAN. What did you pay them a year ago?

Mr. SCHMIDT. A year ago 35 cents and 40 cents. ;

The CHAIRMAN. About how many in number of common labor does your concern employ?

Mr. SCHMIDT. About 500.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you employing them at this season?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Not at that time, only perhaps one-fourth of that number.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it your opinion that State road building in the Eastern States will continue at a very great clip.

Mr. SCHMIDT. As long as the taxpayers will furnish the money; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Have they not about reached the point of exhaustion?

Mr. SCHMIDT. It does not seem so. There is more money to spend than there are men to work it up.

The CHAIRMAN. How many men do you think you need now in your industry at 50 cents or 40 cents an hour-which did you say?

Mr. SCHMIDT. We do not know what we will have to pay next year. That is an unknown quantity. We were short last fall about 25 per cent.

The CHAIRMAN. That would be 125 men.

Mr. SCHMIDT. One hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty men.

The CHAIRMAN. How many men could you employ to-morrow if they were available? Mr. SCHMIDT. We could not employ any more than we have because we are shut down, waiting for snows and frost to blow away.

The CHAIRMAN. When do you think you will need 500 men again.

Mr. SCHMIDT. About the 1st of April.

The CHAIRMAN. And how long would you employ 500 men.

Mr. SCHMIDT. Eight months in the year.

The CHAIRMAN. Up until December then.

Mr. SCHMIDT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Then what would they do?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Many of them go back to the old country. Most of them flock for what we call indoor jobs.

Mr. CABLE. If they go back to the old country, they have a right to come back here. Mr. SCHMIDT. I have numbers of our men who go back every fall and come back again in the spring. Unfortunately, we have found that some of our men have overstayed their leave. In other words, I think they have a certain number of months in which they can return, and when they overstay that they have to take their turn. The CHAIRMAN. What type of aliens are you speaking of?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Those that we prefer to employ and find most satisfactory are Italians and the Slavish people.

The CHAIRMAN. Are those the ones that went back?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Many Italians went back to serve and have been unable to get back. The CHAIRMAN. They went back several years ago.

Mr. SCHMIDT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you had any coming back within the year?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Many?

Mr. SCHMIDT. I have a half dozen over there now whom we expect to be back in the spring for one plant only.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you housing facilities around your plant for men and their families?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Yes, sir; unoccupied.

The CHAIRMAN. So there are vacant houses in your part of New Jersey?

Mr. SCHMIDT. Yes, sir.