the employees petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election there as the management of the Gate City Cotton Mills said they were in doubt as to whether the local union had a majority and they did not know just who to talk to because they did not know just who represented the workers. So they petitioned for an election. And they have carried it as far as they can, except to the Supreme Court, I think. They have had it in court for some time and will try to prevent the election. As I understand it, if the National Board has not been enjoined they are restrained temporarily until such time as they can perfect their complaint or allegations.

The Southern Brighton Mill, at Shannon, Ga., is violating the code standards. And if you ask me why we do not go in and organize the workers there, I will say that the sentiment for organization is very strong, but it is almost worth a person's life to go into Shannon and talk organization when they have so many paid deputy sheriffs ready to commit murder in order to prevent organization.

And that is true throughout the South. Deputy sheriffs are paid by the mill companies. They are deputized and paid by the mill companies.

The Fulton Bag & Cotton Mill, Atlanta; the Harmony Groll Mill Corporation, Commerce; and the Hightower Cotton Mill, at Thomaston, Ga., and the Callaway Mills, which I have already mentioned, the Beaver-Lois Mill, at Douglasville, the Aragon Mills at Aragon, the Crystal Springs Bleachery, which is located up near the Tennessee line, the Mandelville Mills, at Carrollton, and the mill at Macon, I will mention in this connection.

Mr. Chairman, I have no intention of being insulting or of becoming sarcastic. I merely want to get at the truth of this matter.

Mr. W. D. Anderson is president of the Bibb Manufacturing Co., and when he comes to Washington to appear before a committee or in regard to legislation, he brings his prayerbook with him, which is quite all right with me. But in 1930 or 1931 Mr. Anderson-I will not say that he caused it to be done, but for some reason 1,500 employees of the Bibb Manufacturing Co. got together at a Labor Day rally. Well, it was not a Labor Day rally; it was a Sabbath day. Mr. Anderson addressed the 1,500 employees and he presented food budget for a family of four textile workers which amounted to $1.38 at that time. It included 24 pounds of flour, 8 pounds of lard, 8 pounds of potatoes, and a peck of meal. As an afterthought he added that if they wanted to they could add such luxuries as coffee and meat. And the total budget was $1.68.

Mr. KELLER. Did he add a little tea?

Mr. PEEL. No; he did not.

Mr. KELLER. I just want to stop you long enough to make a comment there. In carrying on my research work, as I have the past several years along this line, I happen to recall that toward the end of the eighteenth century when English workmen were trying to organize, and when some of them managed somehow to sip a little tea, they were denounced in the press and on the platforms of Great Britain, saying that they were aspiring to things beyond what a laboring man ought to ask for, and that the granting of any such luxuries would destroy the hardihood and discipline among British workers. And I cannot help thinking of it in this connection here. But I don't like to.

Mr. PEEL. May I proceed, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. KELLER. Yes; go right ahead. I did not want to inject that, but there are some matters that do come up.

Mr. PEEL. Now, as to the 8 pounds of potatoes, anybody can see just what that means. A family of four means 4 times 3, which is 12. That is 12 meals to be eaten each day. Seven times 12 is 84.

I weighed a pound of potatoes; and I did not get the big potatoes nor the small potatoes, but I tried to get average-sized potatoes. I found that four potatoes weighed a pound. Four times 8 is 32. There are 84 meals to be eaten and there are 32 potatoes.

As I said, I am not a mathematician, but if you can figure out just how much of a potato each member of the family had you are a better mathematician than I am.

In submitting this food budget of $1.38 a week for a family of four, it shows it is less than some of the good women of our land pay for a bottle of bath salts with which to wash Fifi, the poodle dog.

In Alabama there is the Saratoga Victor Mills, at Guntersville and Albertsville. There were evictions, and the people were thrown out of their houses because they dared to become members of a labor union.

Mr. Comer is president of the Avondale Mills, of Birmingham, Stevenson, Sycamore, Sylacauga, and perhaps there are others. I happen to know of those that I have mentioned. Mr. Comer was a member of the Alabama Manufacturers' Policy Committee. And Mr. Comer was doing yeoman service in trying to get his fellow manufacturers to cooperate with the Textile Board. And Mr. Comer has been doing the same thing that the other fellow was doing that he was trying to bring into line, that is, insofar as our members were concerned.

There is the Dwight Manufacturing Co. at Alabama City, and there is the Pepperell Mills at Opelika. I will also mention the Alabama Mills Co., Dadeville, Fayette, Haleyville, and Russellville. All of those I have named are violating the code standards. And many others are doing so. Just because I have read those does not mean that they are all doing it; but those were some of those I selected. With respect to Tennessee, the Bemis Bag Co. discriminated against our members. We have appealed to the National Labor Relations Board and a hearing was to be held. Yesterday a week ago it was to begin. At that time the attorneys for the Bemis Bag Co. went into the courts and sought an injunction. They wanted to enjoin the National Labor Relations Board from continuing to or holding the hearing.

Federal Judge John T. Marshall denied the injunction, and the hearing started last Friday. I am informed that today they are to go into court again on some other charge. They have raked up something else they say is unconstitutional in the Wagner law or National Labor Relations Act, and the hearing will be halted while that is threshed out in the courts.

I just want to read what the attorneys for the Bemis Bros. Bag Co. said as one of the reasons why they did not want the hearing to proceed or did not want a hearing.

In asking a temporary stay order preventing the hearing pending further proceedings in behalf of a permanent injunction, the Bemis Co. averred the hearing would force its representatives to disclose

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confidential information and might cause irreparable damage. They did not want the hearing to proceed because the witnesses for the Bemis Bros. might have to tell the truth, I suppose.

The Kingsport Mill, Kingsport, Tenn., is a silk mill. That is one of the mills that moved down South from up North, I think. Mr. J. Shapiro is the agent or is the president. At any rate, he is the official who seems to be holding up the proceedings just at the present time.

The employees of the Kingsport Silk Mill decided that they wanted to organize about 3 months ago and they asked that an organizer come in and assist them. Notices were posted that if they proceeded with the union that the mill would close down. They did not believe it and they proceeded to organize. And the mill did close, and it is closed yet because they wanted to join a labor organization. The Kingsport Silk Mill is still closed.

Cleveland Woolen Mills, Cleveland, Tenn., and the AmericanBimberg Corporation, Elizabethton, Tenn., I will now mention. In the South we are patriotic, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, and we are so patriotic in the South that a few years ago we were advertised by our chambers of commerce as being a 100-percent Anglo-Saxon people-cheap, ignorant people, willing to work long hours and for low wages. We southerners were not only advertised as such in America but we were advertised to the civilized world-"Bring your mills down here where you have the benefit of cheap, white, ignorant labor."

And this German corporation, the American-Bemberg Corporation, built a plant in Elizabethton. And some of our so-called statesmen were so patriotic that it was all right to use troops to force girls to work in the mills for low wages when the wages were so low that they had to buy silk hose on this basis. I know they had no business to buy them, but they bought them at 25 cents down and 15 cents a week.

Yet we talk of patriotism in this country. We invite the civilized world to come into the South and bring their plants. And they are going to force us southern people to work in those plants for whatever wage the employer wants to give us and under the banner that they are going to force us to work under.

How many times do the people say, "The people of the South have not as much intestinal fortitude and brains as they have in other sections of the country?"

We have the brains, we have the intestinal fortitude. But what we need is a break. That is what we need.

When we have people out of employment, and who have been out of employment since September 1934, walking the highways trying to get jobs but unable to get them because they are blacklisted, Mr. Chairman, it is not lack of intestinal fortitude; it is just that we need a break. We need a law to help us. It shows that they have intestinal fortitude when they continue to remain true and loyal to their principles under such conditions.

The Dyersburg Cotton Products, Dyersburg, Tenn., the StandardCoosa-Thatcher Mill, Chattanooga, Tenn., who also have a mill at Piedmont, Ala., and the Brookside Mill, and the Cherokee Spinning Co., of Knoxville, I will now refer to. I have already said that they obtained a loan of $400,000 from the R. F. C. And this is not

intended as a destructive criticism. But I think that the Government, when it is lending money to a certain employer or manufacturer to continue in business, should know something about what that employer is going to do, whether he is going to chisel the wages out of the envelopes of the employees in the industry or whether he is going to be decent and pay decent wages.

The statement was made yesterday by some gentleman from the South appearing for the employers that we are not as efficient in the South as they are in other sections of the country.

We resent that. We are just as efficient in the South as they are in any other section of the country. They have used that expression to the detriment of the textile industry, both the employer and the employee, for years, saying that we are not as efficient as they are in other sections of the country.

A loom fixer in the South can fix looms anywhere. He can fix a loom if it is aboard a ship and is in the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. The weaver can do the same thing.

And the very people who came here and told you we are not as efficient know this to be true. If you take some goods that are made in other sections of the country and take some goods that are made in their own mill and put them on a table side by side and then roll them around and let the man turn his back, he cannot pick out his own goods. That is how efficient we are. But they say that we are not as efficient. But that is in an effort to try to keep wages down.

Mr. KELLER. Did they say that when they were asking the mills from the North to move down there? Did they say you were not so efficient then?

Mr. PEEL. No, sir; they did not. They said we were a great people. This same gentleman also made the statement that we are not as efficient and that they were bringing in people that had an abundance of health, and they would come in and go into the mill. They come into the mill village off of the farm because they are induced to come in by paid agents of the mill. That is why they come into the mill. I would like to give you an illustration as to how it is done; but I will not do that now. Paid agents are sent out.

If they are interested in efficiency, instead of going out into the country or the surrounding territory and inducing inexperienced people to come into the mill to go to work, why do they not put these hundreds of people back to work who are out of employment and who are efficient and experienced workers? They do not do that simply because of their union activities. But they will go out and spend some money in an effort to destroy the organization, in an effort to keep those persons out of a job because of their union activities.

They are not going to get together this year or next year, as I have stated, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen. And I doubt if they will get together in 2036 and change conditions voluntarily.

Conditions are going to be changed when the United States Congress passes a law, if, when that law is passed, sufficient teeth are placed in that law to make the manufacturers comply with the law, and if the people themselves are sufficiently interested to see that the management of the plot in which they were complies with such law as may be passed by Congress. It will not be done until then.

The question was asked yesterday of one of the gentlemen what the objections to the law were. I can answer as to that. I am not a manufacturer, but I can answer the objections to the law. They object to any law that is going to touch them. I make this statement without fear of contradiction, unless you are talking about a tax law-they may pay taxes-I do not know of any law that the textile manufacturers in the States that I have spoken of comply with. You say there is an hour law. They have never complied with that hour law regardless of what State it is. If it is South Carolina with its 55-hour law, they have never complied with the 55-hour law; they have worked 60, 70, 80, and 100 hours a week. Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee all are the same, and they work any number of hours regardless of the law. If there is any kind of law on the books they pay no attention to it.

So, they are not going to comply with any law; they want no law; their objection to any law is that it is a law, and I say again that they will not voluntarily remedy conditions until the year of 2036, and it must be done by some law, and it cannot be done by a State law. A State law is more or less of a superfluous nature.

They have said themselves that if it were universal they would be glad to cooperate, but here is one that is universal. Here is one that is going to remove-if not removed entirely, to reduce to a minimum-some of their complaints, that of unfair trade practices and unfair competition. I think that is all I have.

Mr. KELLER. Do you want to ask some questions?

Mr. WooD. Yes; you mentioned about company stores and company theaters. I would like to ask you how many of the textile mills of the country have company stores in connection with the operation of the business?

Mr. PEEL. Now, I can only speak

Mr. WOOD. Do all those mills in the South that you mentioned have company stores?

Mr. PEEL. I would say 98 percent.

Mr. WOOD. I have here a statement made by Edward F. McGrady, legislative representative of the American Federation of Labor, which was placed in the record of the 1933 hearings, on the Connery 6-hour bill. You mentioned the Bibb Manufacturing Co.?

Mr. PEEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. Wood. They bought some five or six mills in the South, did they not?

Mr. PEEL. Yes, sir.

Mr. WOOD. This investigation relates to the Bibb Manufacturing Co., which was incorporated under the laws of Georgia of June 13, 1876. The company started with a nominal capital of about $25,000, and no additional money has been obtained since that time through the sale of common stock. The present capitalization of $20,000,000 was created out of earnings.

It goes on further to say that by totaling these annual dividends it will be found that the Bibb Manufacturing Co. during the 17-year period under consideration has returned to its stockholders 148 percent in cash dividends and 370 percent in stock dividends. These enormous earnings and returns on investment have been possible partly owing to the original very small capitalization of the company,