1936, and stood at 123.7 in March 1937, as against an average of 112.5 in 1929. Carpets and rugs are above 1929 levels. Only silk employment is below that of 1929. I would attribute part of that loss to the extension of rayon weaving in mills engaged primarily in the production of cotton goods with employment consequently credited to the cotton industry. Now let me turn to total pay rolls. Pay rolls declined more than employment, for, during the depression, some mills resorted to short time, and, I presume, every mill cut wage rates. The N. R. A. codes raised hourly earnings, but total pay rolls lagged behind employment. This condition held until the most recent months but in March 1937 the gap has been closed in knit goods, and carpets and rugs. It has almost disappeared in cotton and in dyeing and finishing. In woolens and worsteds and in silk the pay-roll index still lags behind the employment index. The gap between employment and pay-roll indexes reflects itself in the index of per capita weekly earnings. These indexes are shown in table 6, which I could not have typed in time for this morning's session. In cotton goods, the index of per capita weekly earnings stood at 97.3 percent of the 1923-25 average in April 1929. The index of what the average worker received each week fell to 55.9 in July 1932. It rose to 68.5 in July 1933, and to 80.3 in August, after the code was adopted. Under short time, the index fell to 70 or less in the summer of 1934, thus contributing to the strike in 1934. In the early months of 1937, the index of average weekly earnings in cotton again reached 1929 levels. The greatest lag shown in this table, referring to weekly earnings, is for silk and rayon. On the average, in 1936, workers received less than four-fifths as much per week as in 1929. Though there is almost always a rise in average weekly earnings in silk in the busy season in the winter, which also occurred in 1937, even in this period of 1937, weekly earnings in silk were barely four-fifths of those in corresponding months in 1929. Let me refer back to table 3, in which I presented absolute figures rather than indexes. These weekly earning indexes, whether they are up to the level of 1929 or not, do not necessarily imply adequacy. In March 1937, the average weekly earnings in reporting mills were $15.27 in cotton, $16.56 in silk and rayon, and $17.79 in knit goods. Mr. KELLER. How much were the wages of those mills not reporting? Mr. HINRICHS. I cannot say. I can only guess what mills pay for which we have no information. I think our figures may be slightly higher than the true average for the industry, because the employer with better labor standards is somewhat more likely to report to us than those with low standards. Essentially, however, in the case of textiles, I think our figures may be accepted as giving pretty nearly a true cross-section of the industry. Mr. KELLER. You heard Mr. Gorman state this morning that some of them are paying $8 a week. Mr. HINRICHS. There are a number of mills reporting to us which are not paying wages at code standards. The number, relatively speaking, in all branches of the textile industry, except silk and rayon, is not as large as it is in many other industries. I must also except knit goods, but only because I do not know the situation in any detail. The cotton industry has done pretty well, and woolens and worsteds have done pretty well, in maintaining code standards. But even in these branches we find a number of mills which are paying wages substantially under the code standards. I can show something of the effect which such competition has had on the distribution of business, but I prefer to come to that later on in my statement. Mr. KELLER. Is that in your statement? Mr. HINRICHS. Yes, sir; and I will come to it later on, if I may. May I add one other word in connection with that $8 figure? I think Mr. Gorman was referring this morning, not to the average wages in a mill, but to the minimum wages in a mill. Mr. KELLER. Yes. Mr. HINRICHS. The figures that I have given here are the average wages, insofar as we know them, of all mills in the entire industry. Mr. KELLER. That means the wages of skilled and unskilled labor all put together?. Mr. HINRICHS. Yes, sir; that includes both skilled and unskilled labor, with short-time and long-time included. Mr. KELLER. What would be the minimum wages in those mills? Have you any way of finding that out? That is, the minimum wages for the unskilled labor? Mr. HINRICHS. We are, at the present time, engaged in making one of our regular biennial surveys of wages and hours in the cotton textile industry, and until that survey is completed, it is very difficult to do more than to guess at it. I am positive that I can produce, or that I could produce, if it would not reveal information given in confidence, particular mills that are paying as low as 20 cents an hour. I know of a very small number of mills which are averaging less than 25 cents an hour in cotton goods, and that means almost certainly, a minimum wage in those mills of less than 20 cents an hour, but the number of those mills is small. The standard in the South, under the codes, was a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour, as you will recall, and 321⁄2 cents an hour in the North. Virtually all of the mills reporting to us would show a wage substantially higher than those minimum rates, and rightly so. I mean, they could not pay the minimum and still have the average come up to the index figure. These figures of $15.27, $16.56, and $17.79 are to be compared with an average of $25.54 in all manufacturing industries for March 1937. The averages for woolen and worsted was $20.18, for dyeing and finishing, $22.04, and for carpets and rugs, $23.71. Weekly earnings are a product of hours worked and hourly earnings. The Bureau's data on these two items only extend back to January 1932. The averages in this month are regarded as 100 percent in tables 7 and 8, which present monthly indexes from January 1932 through March 1937, which is for both the average hourly earnings and the average hours worked per week. (The tables referred to are as follows:) 1 See footnote on hours, same applies to average hourly earnings. Source: U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. |