Mr. ELLENBOGEN. What I wanted to bring out was that you could not have one minimum wage applying to all industries.

Mr. CONE. You could if it were figured on a subsistence level. That is my point.

Another illustration that I would like to call to your attention is a hypothetical case suggested by a reading of section 2 of your revised bill, starting at line 13, under section (j):

The term "manufacture" shall include sorting, dyeing, bleaching, mercerizing, weighting, printing, finishing, throwing, or other processing of any of the foregoing fibers or products, but shall not include the ginning of cotton.

My point is that there are a great many little cotton mills located throughout the South that employ exactly the same type of labor to run the cotton gin as they do to run the cotton into the opening room in the cotton mill. Both of them are colored help. If you are going to have a minimum wage to the textile mill why not apply it to the men who run the gin?

Mr. KELLER. Why not?

Mr. CONE. The point I make is that minimum wage should apply to all industries, on the same terms, in the same territory.

Mr. KELLER. Why should you limit it to territories?

Mr. CONE. Because of the cost of living.

Mr. KELLER. If a man gets a minimum wage he can live just a little better down South if he wanted to, could he not?

Mr. CONE. I may be wrong in my idea about the minimum wage. I figured a minimum wage was designed to stop the exploitation of labor. There are some people who get wages on which they cannot live. That is the point.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. That is not the reason so far as I am concerned. Mr. CONE. If you have a minimum wage like that, then you should look to the maximum skill and bargaining power, or whatever the man has to get the higher wage. As I see it, if a minimum wage at all is passed it should be fixed as a starting point for all labor; that is, it should be a figure below which no manufacturer of any product should be permitted to employ a person, and this minimum should represent the very minimum at which a man can support himself and his family in decency. In my opinion there is little danger that this minimum will become the maximum, at least as far as the textile industry goes, because help is already quite scarce and experienced mill operatives are able to sell their services for a great deal more pay than they were able to some time back.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. How much would they have to have in order to support themselves and their families in decency?

Mr. CONE. I have some figures right here.

Mr. KELLER. Go on until you come to them, Mr. Cone.

Mr. CONE. I would like to quote from a report which the Consumers Goods Industries Committee made on May 7, 1937:

Present employment in producing industries, including durable as well as consumer goods, is up to 1929 levels as a general rule and in excess of that year in numerous manufacturing centers.

Shorter working hours are now being observed throughout all manufacturing groups the 40-hour week the general prevailing basis.

Hourly and weekly rates of pay are higher today than during the period covered by the committee's two previous surveys, i. e., July 1935 and May 1936, respectively, and much higher than during 1933 or 1934.

There is practically no unemployed skilled or semiskilled labor in manufacturing industries with a definite shortage reported in many important branches.

To show that these conditions obtain in the textile as well as in other industries I would like to quote a few figures from one of our own mills. The following is a list of full-time average wages paid by one of our plants in Greensboro, N. C. In 1926 we paid an average of 29.8 cents for 55 hours of work, giving a weekly earning of $15.40. In 1931 the average went to 33.4 cents and the hours were 40. The earnings were $13.32.

I will say right here that 1931 should not be taken as a criterion because at that particular time we were curtailing. Forty hours was not the regular rate of run, but it was in just our particular case at that time.

In 1932 our average hourly wage had gone down to 30.3 cents and we worked 50 hours a week, an average of $15.14. In 1933, just prior to the N. R. A., our average had gone down to 27.1 cents an hour. We worked 55 hours then, and it gave us an average weekly earning of $14.91. In 1935 there had been no change made since the N. R. A., so these are the figures right after the N. R. A. The average hourly rate had come up to 39.9 cents an hour. Forty hours of work gave our folks $15.96 a week.

The last pay roll I had analyzed, in 1937, gave an average hourly earning of 44.9 cents an hour, and 40 hours of work gave a weekly earning of $17.96. And it is interesting to note the cost of living of those people in those particular years that Mr. Ellenbogen was asking about, because I have some figures here of items which they buy. Somebody wanted to know just what a minimum wage should be I think that was your question.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. It depends upon what items you include.

Mr. CONE. To show that the people in the textile industry are really far better off in 1937 than they were in 1926 I have compiled a table showing the cost of groceries for a family of five in 1 week. I am not sure whether the items would be those that you gentlemen would select, or whether the quantities would be those that we would like to see our people have. However, the table is merely used as a yardstick, because in each year the items and quantities have remained the same. I think I have these quantities and items from some Government publication, but I am not sure. There are 23 items here, and they include a bag of flour, 3 pounds of lard, 3 pounds of fat meat, 2 pounds of beef roast, 2 pounds of pork chops, 1 pound of bacon, 4 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of Irish potatoes, 5 pounds of sweet potatoes, 2 packages of corn flakes, 5 pints of milk, 1⁄2 peck apples, 3 pounds of snap beans, 3 pounds of tomatoes, 1 pound of coffee, 2 dozen eggs, 4 pounds dried beans, 1 pound of prunes, 1 pound of onions, 1⁄2 peck of meal, 1 pound of butter, 1 pound of wienies and a pound of cheese. In other words, it was estimated that that was the aggregate for a family of five. I would like to submit this table.

In 1926 the total amount of those groceries was $11.90.

In 1937

the same items cost $7.41. In the year 1926 our wages were $16.40 and in 1937 $17.96.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. That is the average, is it, Mr. Cone?

Mr. CONE. Yes; that is the average. In other words, there is quite a spread between what the people get and what it costs them to buy groceries. I am not arguing that they do not have a lot of time payments on radios, automobiles, and so on that they probably did not have back there in the earlier years. But I am talking about the subsistence level.

Mr. KELLER. If everybody could have a radio it would be a very desirable thing, would it not?

Mr. CONE. Yes, sir; it would be desirable.

Mr. KELLER. And electric washing machines?

Mr. CONE. Yes, sir. I agree with you there. And I am sure the man who gets the average wage here has the ability to have those things. But if you are going to fix your minimum at $12 or $13— Mr. KELLER. But we are not going to do that.

Mr. CONE. Well, he could not have those things.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. An average of $16 is about $800 a year?
Mr. CONE. Yes, sir; that is right.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. Do you believe a man with $800 a year can buy a radio and an electric washing machine, an automobile, and all of of those things?

Mr. CONE. I am not prepared to say at this time as to that. I don't know what the time payments are on them.

Mr. KELLER. And he does not know what kind of an automobile the man would buy.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. What is the minimum you pay now, Mr. Cone? Mr. CONE. The minimum that we pay now is $14 a week. That is our minimum.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. Then the question arises, Mr. Cone, if you are going to have a minimum wage you take no exceptions whatever to this bill. You want to be governed by living costs?

Mr. KELLER. Are you through, Mr. Cone?
Mr. CONE. Yes, Mr. Keller; I am through.
Mr. KELLER. I wanted to be sure you were.

We wanted to give

you the opportunity to say everything you wanted to say. Mr. CONE. That is all I wanted to say, I believe.

Mr. KELLER. Thank you, Mr. Cone.

The next witness is Mr. Kemp P. Lewis.

STATEMENT OF KEMP P. LEWIS, PRESIDENT, THE ERWIN COTTON MILLS COMPANY, DURHAM, N. C.

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Chairman, my name is K. P. Lewis, president, the Erwin Cotton Mills Co., of Durham, N. C. Our company operates six mills, making a variety of fabrics. It lived up in full to the Cotton Textile Code, and has continuously operated since the invalidation of the N. R. A. on a 40-hour basis. Our present minimum wage is considerably higher than the code standard.

I am opposed to the Ellenbogen bill. I do not think it is either fair or desirable to single out one industry to be operated under a commission. The industry has made great improvement in operating