Mr. RAMSPECK. I have the idea in my own mind that the only benefits we got out of N. R. A. were achieved before any of the codes were adopted, in the adoption of the President's reemployment agreement. What is your opinion about it?

Mr. FITZGERALD. That started it and then the codes came along. The President's agreement incorporated the minimum wages and reduction of hours, which were the fundamental principles of the N. R. A., in my opinion.

Mr. RAMSPECK. And the adoption of the codes did not bring us anything but trouble, did they?

Mr. FITZGERALD. A lot of confusion.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Is not this what happened? When they adopted the codes, different groups within an industry began to jockey for every position.

Mr. FITZGERALD. That is it.

Mr. RAMSPECK. And that is when we got into trouble.

Mr. FITZGERLAD. That has been my experience.

Mr. RAMSPECK. If we had stopped with the President's agreement we would have gotten all the benefit of it.

Mr. FITZGERALD. And I say this further, that if N. R. A. hours had been maintained in other industries, outside of the textile industry, that there would be thousands upon thousands more people employed now.

I know in Connecticut men have worked 16 hours a day since the N. R. A. has been declared unconstitutional, 80 hours a week, enough work for two people. And in the same town there were several hundred people on welfare.

I know of another company that worked 10 hours a day 7 days a week, and we had 125 girls between the ages of 17 and 21 on welfare in that city.

We made a survey of the youth in Connecticut, a survey of 40,000 between the ages of 16 and 24. We found that 76 percent of them had no training at all to fit them in industry.

I am not worried about the skilled worker in industry, so far as wages are concerned, because I have seen the wages of machinists go from 40 cents to $1.10, when the demand was created. A skilled worker will take care of himself because there is a shortage of them and they are paying machinists in Connecticut today $1 and $1.10, because there is a scarcity of them.

But in order to share this loaf, men of the committee, the only way is through regulation of hours.

Mr. WOOD. Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Ramspeck, in the question that he asked you about the codes under the N. R. A., intimated that they were more trouble than good.

I think the main thing in the N. R. A. was the elimination of child. labor and the regulation of wages and the reduction of hours. Mr. Ramspeck intimated that those were the principal elements; that all of the benefits would have been derived from the President's reemployment agreement if the codes had not been established; that the codes created a great deal of confusion.

Now, that brings up the question, what was the cause of that confusion? I think it is well to give N. R. A. the credit that is its due. The fact of the matter is that out of more than 500 codes that were established, in only 31 or 32 codes did labor have any representation

on the code authority. And on those 31 or 32 code authorities, labor did not have equal representation, they had equal representation on only three or four code authorities. But in these 31 or 32 codes, on the code authorities of which they had representationone or two members out of seven or eight or nine-it is very significant that in those industries there was no trouble. They got along fine, the employers and the employees. But as for the rest of the codes, on the code authorities of which employers had absolute and complete control, where they wrote the codes themselves, and the workers had no word at all in the making of them-that is where all the trouble arose and where all the confusion and turmoil arose.

Do you not think that if in the formation of these codes, labor had had equal representation, if the employees had had equal representation with the employers on these code authorities, and had had an opportunity to sit down across the table with them and work out their differences, there would not have been half as much trouble?

Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. Wood, I believe that if industry and labor would sit down together on all of their problems, a great deal of the conflict would be taken out.

During my remarks, if you remember, I recited the fact that for 30 years in the plant where I was working, we carried out an agreement that we had with the employers and we did not have 5 minutes of labor trouble, because our employers were willing to sit down and talk our problems over with the employees.

Mr. Wood. The assertion has been oft repeated by employers: that since the N. R. A. was voided, industry took a sharp upturn; that is, after the N. R. A. was declared unconstitutional. And they attributed the upturn in business to the destruction of the N. R. A. The picture that you draw here of the difficulty now confronting the Connecticut workers, such a difficulty that you have had four strikes in the last 6 weeks-do you think that difficulty would have been before them if there had not been this clamor for a reduction in wages after the N. R. A. was declared unconstitutional? Do you think there would have been this difficulty if N. R. A. were still in existence?

Mr. FITZGERALD. No, sir. I believe if the hours had been maintained, that the Connecticut manufacturer would have been given an equal opportunity to compete on equal terms. But where one man has an advantage as between 60 hours a week and 40 hours a week, or 48 hours a week, by voluntary agreement, as the textile industry in Connecticut has, then it is impossible to compete. Because the people do not give a damn whether the silk is made in Kalamazoo or in Maine. All they want to know is, How cheap can it be bought for? And the man who has the advantage of working his employees longer hours and of using child labor, of working them under conditions of poor ventilation and poor sanitation and poor housekeeping-he has the advantage of cheaper manufacture over the man who has higher standards and who is willing to let his people live as they should live.

I remember, men, in Connecticut, when textile operatives worked 12 hours a day, when women went into the factories with shawls around their heads. Thank God, that day is gone and I never want to see it come back again.

Mr. WOOD. Then the stretching of hours and the reduction of wages, since the voiding of the N. R. A. has retarded progress instead of giving an impetus to business?

Mr. FITZGERALD. That is the complaint that I get.

Mr. Wood. It has contracted instead of expanded employment. Mr. FITZGERALD. That is right.

Mr. Wood. And it has reduced the purchasing power of the workers.

Mr. FITZGERALD. And in a great many places it has not taken up the slack of unemployment, either.

Mr. WOOD. That is all.

Mr. RAMSPECK. For the sake of the record, I want to state what I had in mind. It has been my observation that under the N. R. A. the only benefits achieved were in the establishment of a minimum wage and a maximum hour limitation all over the country, which was achieved under the President's reemployment agreement.

Then, when the employers came in and began to write their codes, we ran up against the same old selfish chiseling 10 percent, who wrote into those codes provisions which caused confusion and inequities in the given trade that came under the particular code. That is what broke down the N. R. A.

If we had stopped with the President's reemployment agreement, we would have eliminated the very thing that Mr. Fitzgerald is talking about-unfair competition on the basis of hours and wages; and we would not have gotten into so many of these difficulties that were brought about, not between employer and employee, but a small majority who wrote such absurd provisions into the codes.

As an illustration, the lumber code provided that dealers in the South had to sell pine doors manufactured in their own backyard at the same price that they sold fir doors shipped from the State of Washington.

That is the kind of fool thing that broke down the codes.

Mr. WOOD. I am glad that Mr. Ramspeck has made his statement, because he has always been very fair in his attitude toward all the labor legislation that has been presented in this committee. I did not intend by anything that I said to reflect on Mr. Ramspeck, or suggest that he was not wholeheartedly for all the beneficial legislation that was introduced in this committee-beneficial to the worker.

I would like to ask Mr. Fitzgerald another question. I have heard something about a blacklist up in Connecticut, maintained by a manufacturers' association. Is there anything to that?

Mr. FITZGERALD. No, sir. A blacklist is a hard thing to prove. There is a State law against it in Connecticut. But it is impossible to get evidence of it. A man who wants to blacklist any one is clever enough to cover up his tracks.

Mr. WOOD. I am informed that they have an organization and that when an employee is discharged from one plant that news is disseminated to all the rest of the mills.

Mr. FITZGERALD. I have had no evidence of it in our department, Mr. Congressman.

Mr. KELLER. What is your opinion about it?

Mr. FITZGERALD. Upon what-the blacklist?
Mr. KELLER. Does it exist actually?

Mr. FITZGERALD. It is not only now, but it has been the history of the trade-union movement for the last quarter of a century, or 30 years, that the man who has been active in the trade-union movement, his penalty or his reward is being driven from town to town, from pillar to post. I agree that that has been the case. But there are no cases that I know of now.

Mr. KELLER. It is one of the things that you know but you cannot prove, is that it?

Mr. FITZGERALD. Exactly. But we have got the right in Connecticut, as Mr. Nickerson said yesterday, to organize, without coercion or intimidation.

That is another hard thing to prove. We have had only one case, in my memory in Connecticut, and that was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. People who would do that sort of thing are too clever to show their hand in the open.

But I know for a fact of men who have been persecuted, who have been driven all over the country, in my trade in particular when I worked at it, for those reasons.

I was fortunate in that we had a company that was willing to sit down and take up those questions and give us an opportunity to sell our labor, to bargain for it.

But then the time came when it was impossible, because of States that had lower standards, for that factory to continue, and it had to fold up. It had to go where they could get that kind of help, and we were left holding the bag.

We wanted to enjoy a few of the good things that rightfully belong to the people who work. There is no question about that. They belong to the people who work, if you want good American citizens.

Is there anything wrong with legislation that is going to provide a man with a livelihood, enough of food and shelter and clothing, and to put a little away for his old age? There is nothing wrong with that. Of course, they will say that is socialism and communism, but if that is communism and socialism, then Christ was a socialist, and He has been one for 2,000 years; because that is the gospel that He has been preaching.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Mr. Fitzgerald, the statement has been made, or the charge, at least, has been made, that under the N. R. A. there were more strikes than there were in the previous 20 years. What do you think about that?

Mr. FITZGERALD. There were in Connecticut. I believe that in Connecticut, during the N. R. A., there were over a hundred strikes. I sat in on strikes. I settled strikes in Connecticut. I have acted as arbitrator in strikes.

I found that in a great many cases some of these people were not living up to the code conditions and there were charges of discrimina

tion.

Mr. RAMSPECK. What was the chief reason for those strikes? Mr. FITZGERALD. Well, a demand for better conditions, better hours. Stretch out was the most of it. That was the greatest complaint. Machinery had been added and speeded up.

Mr. RAMSPECK. What about section 7-A?

Mr. FITZGERALD. Of course, that was the old bugaboo, in the whole. thing, in my opinion. The right of the people to organize was the hard pill to swallow.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Was the 1934 textile strike the biggest the industry ever had?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I believe it was the biggest they ever had. That was when the general strike took place.

Mr. RAMSPECK. That is all.

Mr. KELLER. Is it not a fact that strikes generally take place when things are beginning to come up, that they seldom take place when things are falling down?

Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. Chairman, my way of describing it is that it is like a football game. You have got the football today and you are kicking it around and when business gets a little better, and I get hold of that football, I am going to kick it around. But until such time as we are able to sit down and get our feet under the table and work out these problems together, we are going to have a conflict. It all depends on who has got the football.

Mr. RAMSPECK. That is a very neat way of putting it.

Mr. KELLER. That describes it. Now, what I would like to ask is this. As long as the N. R. A. wage was accepted and N. R. A. hours were accepted, there was no difficulty wherever that was done, was there?

Mr. FITZGERALD. No. The industry in general subscribed to it. Mr. KELLER. And went along?

Mr. FITZGERALD. Yes.

Mr. KELLER. And as soon as the Supreme Court annulled that

law.

Mr. FITZGERALD. Then the Labor Department had to go back to work and get busy chasing.

Mr. KELLER. You say that some such regulation as we have here proposed has got to come. Do you think that it can come about through State action, through the action of individual States? Mr. FITZGERALD. No.

Mr. KELLER. How has it got to come about?

Mr. FITZGERALD. By national regulation. There are no State limitations because, as I said before, it does not make any difference to the people whether the silk is made in Kalamazoo or whether it is made in Maine. The question is, How cheap can it be sold for? And today we can cross America in about 9 hours. It shows you about how fast we are traveling. We are traveling fast, but the States that will break the system down are the States that refuse to bring their standards up to the American standard of living. If they do not do it themselves, then they should be made to do so by Federal regulation.

I do not mean to compel them to do anything out of reason. But I mean to bring them up to standards where other States have been for years, and which standards those States are on the verge of having to sacrifice; for instance, in Massachusetts, when they were forced to change their 6 o'clock law to 10 o'clock, and so on, because factories were moving out of the State.

How can Massachusetts, with a 48-hour law; how can Connecticut, with a 48-hour law; how can New York, with a 48-hour law, compete with Rhode Island with a 55-hour law, with New Jersey, with a 55hour law, with Pennsylvania, with a similar law? And then it keeps on going down toward the South, where the hours become greater. It just cannot be done.