I discussed that with one or two employers in this State and they just had to do it, they said, because they were having to pay a little more money-$12 a week. And, mind you, that was $12 a week for skilled spinners-$12.19 and $12.42. And then they very piously said that they were maintaining code standards because they were paying skilled workers $12.19 or $12.42.

On the matter of 35 hours a week I have no doubt that they will say to the members of this committee that they cannot operate 35 hours a week. And we are willing to agree with them that they cannot operate 35 hours a week. They have proved that they cannot operate 35 hours per week. They said they could not operate 80 machine-hours, that it would ruin them. In 1930, 1931, and 1932 they were unable to pay dividends. In 1933, 1934, and 1935 they were able to pay dividends. But in paying dividends they paid them by operating two shifts of 8 hours. And many times they were unable to operate two shifts of 8 hours. The code had been in effect only about 3 or 4 months when they were asking for a program of curtailment. They could not operate 80 machine-hours and they wanted to operate 60 machine-hours.

Since that time they have curtailed, and sometimes in this way: Those who ride along through the South in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, and at night see the mills well lighted and hear the hum of machinery, may have a wrong impression. It does not mean that because you hear the hum of the machinery and see the lights that all of the machinery is in operation. Many times it is only 50 percent of the machinery or the equipment that is being operated at that particular time.

So we agree with them that they cannot operate 70 hours a week. We know they cannot do it. But if we had asked for 30 hours a week they would say that that was all wrong, that they would just have to go out of business because of the shorter hours.

The main object in that kind of an argument, as I see it, is this: They can operate by starts and bursts and jumps, and they can fill an order; but then the people are out of employment. They are out for a week, or 10 days, or 2 weeks, while the mill is getting another order.

So actually it should be 60 hours of machine operation instead of 70 hours of machine operation. They would come nearer being able to run 60 hours and furnish continuous employment than they would be to run 70 hours. And we are asking for the 35-hour week or 70 machine-hours of operation.

I am going to say something about the health of the workers in the textile industry in the South. However, I hope I will not be questioned too closely on this matter, because I am not a doctor.

We contend that the stretch-out is detrimental to the health of the workers. Of course, we have no way of actually proving that except by talking with the employees, with those who work in the mills, and their telling us their condition, telling us how they are so fatigued when they get through with the 8 hours of work, and when they come out of the plant they have to sit down and rest before they go home, or if they should go home they have to rest before they can eat because they are so tired and worn out. I have had plenty of them tell me that.

I believe it was in 1932 the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina did appropriate $1,000 for the purpose of making an investigation or study as to the effect of the stretch-out, as we term it in the South, or increased machine load, if you choose. That has to do with the effect upon the health of the workers.

A doctor was appointed to spend the thousand dollars or, rather, to make the investigation. Now, as to his report. And I would like to say also that all of us people in the South speak the same language. We speak the English language. Even the textile workers in the South speak the same language. His report was that it required approximately 4 months to learn the language of the textile workers. And that was the only report that he made. He doesn't know about it. So I don't think we can consider him competent to decide as to what the effect of the stretch-out is on the workers in the cotton mills in the South.

However, we do know this, that 99 percent of the cases of pellagra are in the mill villages of the South. I don't recall ever having heard of a case of pellagra anywhere else. I am not going to say that there are no cases elsewhere, but I do not remember ever having heard of a case except in the mill villages of the South.

Medical science says that this disease is not contagious. Medical science says that it does not come from uncleanliness, but that it comes from a one-food diet. I suppose they mean fatback, biscuits, and beans, the usual diet of us textile workers in the South.

Coming back to wages, if for no other reason than to protect the textile workers from this dread disease, pellagra, it would seem to me that the bill would be worth while if it accomplished nothing else but protected the workers against that disease.

I am going to say something about how they are maintaining the code standards now. In saying this I do not mean that every mill in the South has violated the code and is at this particular time violating the code provisions, and right at this time has slashed wages. But there is a tendency to break down wages. They have been brought down gradually 50 cents at a time for the past 2 years. I mean the wages of weavers and loom fixers. At this particular time when we are discussing the break-down of the code standards, there are many mills which are gradually reducing wages, stretching out the workers, and so on, and when they give them a few more machines to operate they do not give them any more money. If anything, they reduce the wage just a little bit.

The Mandeville Cotton Mills, of Carrollton, Ga.,-$6.36 for a spinner for 40 hours' work; for 40 hours' work, $3.55; and so on. Mr. KELLER. For what work?

Mr. PEEL. For 40 hours of work.

Mr. KELLER. But for what work?

Mr. PEEL. For spinners. Then, here is 16 hours, $2.12. If you ask me why there is a variation in the wage, I will not be able to tell you. The only thing I know is that the party who gave me these wage stubs put the hours that she worked on the wage stubs; and that is as far as I can go. I cannot swear that she worked the number of hours indicated. All that I know is that that is what she said, that she worked 40 hours for $6.36, and the number of hours mentioned for the other amounts listed.

Here is another one-32 hours, $3.73; 40 hours, $3.52.

And there is quite a bit of wage slashing in the State of Georgia. I might mention the Callaway Mills as being amongst the worst offenders, they having reduced wages, stretched the workers out, and they are still able to operate their mill, and they are considered very fine gentlemen. And I am not saying that they are not. am only pointing out what they are doing to break down code standards. Yet, we read in the newspapers that they are maintaining code standards.

And these that we read about are by no means all of them; they are only some of them that have reduced wages. They stretched out the workers and have increased the machine load of the employees, and they are those who have lengthened the hours from 40 hours to 50 and 55 hours.

In North Carolina there are the Mooresville Cotton Mills, the Carter Mills

I might say that the Carter Mills, of Lincolnton, N. C., also secured a loan of $70,000 from the R. F. C. But never, so far as I know, have they complied with any provision of the N. R. A. They were going to reinstate the workers following the general strike, but they never did do it. I think they made a statement to the Textile Labor Relations Board that they would reinstate them, but they did not do it; they just let it drag along and did nothing about it.

I will mention the Alexander Mills, Forest City, the Groves Thread Co., Gastonia-and the Groves Thread Co. did not receive a loan. If they did, I have never seen anything of it in the newspapers. But they evicted quite a number of people because of union membership and union activities.

Then there is the St. Paul Manufacturing Co., of St. Paul, N. C. The management of the St. Paul Cotton Mills sold stock to their employees. They gave them $12 a week as a wage and then they sold them $4 of stock each week. And it was not voluntary on the part of the employees that they bought $4 of stock each week in the St. Paul Cotton Mills. The $4 was taken out of the wage envelope for approximately 4 months; and the employees were never able to recover any part of that wage taken out by the St. Paul Manufacturing Co.

Next is the Spofford Mill, Wilmington, N. C.; and then comes the Highland Cordage and Shuford, Hickory, N. C.; the Cone Mills, Greensboro, N. Č., where it is almost worth your life to go around and talk organization.

The bill provides that we shall have a right to organize and bargain collectively. We should like to have some collective bargaining; we should like to have some law passed that would give us an opportunity to bargain collectively, whether we get anything or not, because we are tired of collective arguments. We have had that since July 17, 1933.

Next come the Hannah Picket Mills, Rockingham, the Eton Mills, Phoenix Mills, Kings Mountain, the Canon Mills, at Concord and Kanapolis and the Pickett Cotton Mills, of High Point.

Mr. WOOD. What State were those in?

Mr. PEEL. They were in North Carolina.

Following the general strike, of course, there was a condition of chaos. The manufacturers in the States I am talking about appointed a policy committee, as I understand it, to cooperate with the Textile

Labor Relations Board. And the policy committee was to contact the different manufacturers who were not cooperating with the Board and who were discriminating against the employees. It was their duty to try to contact them and get them into line. And the members of the policy committee in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, were doing the same thing that their fellow manufacturers were doing and that they were trying to get them to quit doing. Yet they were doing the same thing.

Then follow the Edna Mill, of Reidsville, N. C. They made a wage cut recently, and they are making $6 or $7 a week.

Then come the Chadwick-Hoskins Mills, of Charlotte, the Worth Spinning Mill, Stony Point; the Stonecutter Mills, at Spindale; the South Side Mills, at Winston-Salem; the Henrietta Mill No. 2; the Cliffside Mill, which is a Haynes mill. It belongs to the people who make the Haynes underwear and who have a plant in Winston-Salem. Then there is the Gambriel-Melville Mill, at Bessemer City, working 55 hours a week and paying weavers as low as $5 a week.

In South Carolina there are the Springs Mills, at Lancaster, S. C., and at Chester; the Fort Mill, at Fort Mill and Chester, all operating 50 hours or more a week, with wage reductions. Then there is the Aragan Baldwin Mills, at Rock Hill and Greenville; the Saxon Mill at Spartanburg; the Clinton Cotton Mills, Clinton, S. C.

And here is a case I want to mention, gentlemen. Mr. W. J. Bailey, president of the Clinton Cotton Mills, held four people out of employment following the general strike. A hearing was held by the Textile Labor Relations Board in December 1934, and Mr. Bailey testified that there was no trouble of any nature during the strike, not even a pebble thrown. He also testified on cross-examination that these people were held out of employment because of union activities. But he never returned any of them to work. The Textile Labor Relations Board's decision was that they should be returned to work. But Mr. Bailey never returned any men to work but discharged still others who were active in the local union.

A hearing was held recently by the National Labor Relations Board, and a decision was rendered which, in effect, was that he should put 96 people back to work and pay them for the time that they had lost. I might say that these 96 families lost the time from August to the date of the hearing, but they are still out because these people refused to sign a company union, because Mr. Bailey entered into a closedshop agreement with a company union, and these people who refused to sign up with the company union he refused to take back. He refused to take back those who refused to sign up with the company union and who refused to become members of that company union. They were held out of employment. And 96 of them who continued to refuse to sign and become members of the company union are still out, or were still out when the hearing was held. Mr. Bailey has never returned any of the 96 to work but, instead, has evicted from the mill houses 35 families, and 16 families are living down there in tents in this kind of weather.

The Pacific Mills, Lyman, S. C., presents a similar case. I will not go into the details, but Mr. Corby, president and treasurer of the Pacific Mills gave to the Textile Labor Relations Board a statement of policy as to how the people would be returned to work following the general strike and following several conferences. The people at

Lyman have not been returned to work. And everything is being done by them, even to working people 16 hours a day in order that they will not have to return the others to work. That is how they are working other employees.

The Dunean Mill has reduced wages of weavers $4.50 a week. I am not saying anything about how much a man should receive in the way of salary. But Mr. Henry, president of the Dunean Mills, received last year a salary of $24,999.96. And it was during the latter part of the year, the last quarter of the year, that the wages of the weavers were reduced $4.50 per week.

The American Spinning Co., of Greenville, and the Victor Monoghan Mills, of Greenville, Greer, and Walhalla, have reduced wages and increased machine load.

The R. S. Norris Manufacturing Co., of Cateechie, S. C.; the Winnsboro Cotton Co., of Winnsboro, S. C.; the Marlboro Cotton Mills, of Bennettsville, and McColl, S. C., have reduced this year the wages of the employees in those plants 25 percent. Mr. McColl, president of the Marlboro Mills, received as salary and bonus last year $96,485, according to the newspapers.

Mr. KELLER. What did he pay as wages? What wages did he pay? Mr. PEEL. Just barely above $12. And now he has reduced them by 25 percent.

The United Merchants & Manufacturing, Inc., in what is known as the Horse Creek Valley section of North Carolina, at Clearwater, Bath, and Langley, have plants located. I think it was mentioned here this morning about how they moved down from the North and brought along machinery. Perhaps there was a difference in machinery. We will get to that after a little while.

There is a great hue and cry raised about improved machinery that the mills do not have. They are hiding an intolerable stretch-out system behind an invisible cloak of modern machinery. Some few manufacturers do have modern machinery; yes. Possibly they have installed improved machinery. But in most of the cases where you hear the employer talk of modern machinery he has no modern machinery; he has the machinery that has been in the plant 30 years. And all he is doing in order to compete with the manufacturer who has installed the modern machinery is giving the workers a double load.

The Republic Cotton Mills, Great Falls, S. C., is another one I might mention.

Now, in Georgia—and I am taking into consideration the fact that the Honorable Mr. Ramspeck is present. I am merely going to say that conditions in Georgia are just a little bit worse than they are in North Carolina and in South Carolina.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Don't withhold any of the effects on my account. Go right ahead.

Mr. PEEL. I only mentioned, as I said it. Not all are violating the code standards in Georgia, just as I said about North Carolina and South Carolina, but just some of them, some of the worst ones are doing so.

The Atlanta Woolen Mills, of Atlanta, and the Gate City Cotton Mills, I will mention. As to those two, we have had trouble with the Atlanta Woolen Mills since the general strike in September 1934. As to the Gate City Cotton Mills, perhaps you read in the newspapers