has increased from 40 to 45 hours in all departments for a period of 8 weeks.

Beauknit Rayon Mill, Cohoes, N. Y., Mr. Rogeson, owner and president. Loomfixers run 80-loom section. Looms were speeded up from 148 picks per minute to 156 picks per minute in October 1935. Weavers' looms speeded from 148 picks per minute to 156 picks per minute with no increase in wages. Winders received one more side to run and were reduced from $14 to $13 per week in December 1935. Colonie Fibre Co., Green Island, N. Y., manufacture wool shoddy. Men working 60 hours per week, 6 days. Receive $19 per week. Picker tenders run three machines. Machine load for this job is one machine. Average wage of shoddy workers is $20.80 for a 40-hour week. This plant started these hours and wages in September 1935. Root Manufacturing Co., Cohoes, N. Y., Charles Douglas, owner and president. This plant at the present time is in a slow period, but when they receive short orders, they run their help in the carding and spinning departments as many as 12 hours, instead of putting on a second crew. These hours and conditions were started after July 5, 1935.

Report on mills which have lengthened hours and decreased wages. Holden & Leonard Woolen Mill, Bennington, Vt. Women sewers and entire finishing department working 45 hours per week, since September 26, 1935.

Amsterdam, N. Y., Mohawk Carpet, Bigelow & Sanford Mills. Some departments have decreased wages 12 percent and also increased from 40 to 48 hours. Chalners Mill cut wages 10 percent.

Cohoes, N. Y., Beauknit Rayon Mill, winding and dye house workers increased hours from 40 to 48, also adds more sides for girl winders, which is an indirect cut in wages. Weaving department runs three shifts.

Report of the textile manufacturers who have changed wages, hours, and machine load since codes have been declared unconstitutional.

American Woolen Co., Champlain Mills, Winooski, Vt. Increased work load in finishing departments. Put in new machinery in spinning department which will eventually eliminate one-half of old mule spinners. Doubled machine load in woolen spooling departments. Affects 200 workers.

Nantanna Woolen Co., Northfield, Vt. Weavers are working from 40 to 60 hours per week, in this case the mill management did not post official notices of increased hours, but overseers ask workers to work overtime. Affects 100 workers.

Verdmont Mills, Ludlow, Vt. Increased speed in picker department and added work load on cardroom help, and thus eliminated a second shift.

(NOTE. This condition was later brought back to origional code conditions through a united effort of members of local union 2424 of Ludlow, Vt. Affects 150 workers.)

Saxons River Woolen Mill. Small mill, excessive machine load in all departments, workers putting in as much as 65 hours per week. Affects 50 workers.

The Skinners Mills of Holyoke, Mass., has increased the loom load on certain soft silk qualities from three looms to four.

For a period of 2 weeks this firm operated their soft-silk weavers 12 hours per shift.

They have increased the work-load in the quilling department about 20 percent.

They are now getting up sets of eight looms in the automaticweaving department where weavers were operating four looms.

These changes affect approximately 200 employees.

The proposed increase in the automatic department will affect 24

weavers.

Although most employees can make over the code minimum there is no guaranty of this minimum and workers receive only the actual earnings.

Mr. WOOD. Do you know anything about the Merchants Mills, in Fall River?

Mr. WHITE. That is not in my territory.

Mr. WOOD. I understood they moved to the Argentine Republic. Mr. WHITE. I think you will get that when Mr. Reviere testifies. Mr. KELLER. Suppose Congress does write and pass a bill embodying the ideas that we have in this Ellenbogen bill, and suppose we do our level best to beat the Surpeme Court to it and the Supreme Court decides we have not done it but wipes the whole thing out; then what?

Mr. WHITE. Just as soon as you do that the workers are going to take the law into their own hands. They are going out and demand those things. We will have hell.

I made a speech in Georgia on Labor Day. I don't have to tell the employers that I made it because they paid a fellow $25 to take it down. And I asked the employers then on Labor Day in all earnestness to give their employees a year-I did not use the expression of "a breathing spell"-that they cooperate with their employees for a year and give them the same rights that they had, and I said that I was willing to come back a year from that date and they would agree that it was the best thing they had ever done, because they could prove it.

There is a mill in my territory-I say one because I am positive of this one, and nobody can contradict me. They have not had a strike since 1912, and they have made no violation, even since N. R. A. But the answer is 1,200 union cards. And when they go down and meet that management, he is one of the finest men in the country, and they get together, and they know one another's problems. My theory and my whole thought is that unless Congress does something and unless the Supreme Court

Mr. KELLER. Learns something.

Mr. WHITE. Don't let me say it in just those words.
Mr. KELLER. That is just what I mean exactly.

Mr. WHITE. Unless the Supreme Court wakes up to the fact that when Washington, Jefferson, and those fellows drew up the Constitution we had one section of the country growing hogs and another section of the country growing wheat, and it was a question of swapping one thing for another. We had no cotton mills in the country. There wasn't the human element that there is now.

I am willing to agree with the great President of the United States that even if Jackson were here and all of those men they have talked about, that they would agree we must control industry for industry's own sake.

Mr. KELLER. Now, you have said something. I tried to get you to say this, and I want to see if you are willing to do it. Isn't it a fact that beginning with the very first laws in England to protect labor and labor conditions, from that day to this, without a single important exception, the mill owners, or, in other words, the owners of industry, have absolutely resisted the passage of every law looking to the rights of humanity?

Mr. WHITE. That is true.

Mr. KELLER. That being true, ought we not try to see and try to convince our Supreme Court to see that when this Constitution of ours, written before any of the labor-saving inventions were in existence, and a couple of years before the steam engine was patented, and certainly before any labor-saving machinery had to any extent affected the living of men, and ought we not do our level best to get the cooperation of the men who own the industries with the men who are doing the labor for the industries and try to convince the courts that it is their duty to do what all of us want to have done, that is to so interpret the Constitution as to permit us to meet the economic conditions as they develop in this country? I do not want to sit here and lecture. That is not my job.

Mr. WOOD. That is in accordance with the preamble of the Constitution.

Mr. KELLER. We will adjourn at this time until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

(Thereupon, at 5:30 p. m., the committee adjourned, to meet again tomorrow morning, Thursday, Jan. 30, at 10:30 a. m.)

TO REHABILITATE AND STABILIZE LABOR CONDITIONS IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1936

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 a. m., Hon. Kent E. Keller (chairman) presiding.

Mr. KELLER. The committee will be in order. Our first witness this morning is Mr. Batty.

Mr. Batty, will you give your name and whom you represent, for the record?

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM E. G. BATTY, SECRETARY, NEW BEDFORD, MASS., TEXTILE COUNCIL

Mr. BATTY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen:

My name is William E. G. Batty; I am secretary of the New Bedford, Mass., textile council.

This bill is appropriately entitled "the National Textile Act."

This act sets forth required fair-trade practices, production-control measures, and minimum labor standards. It proposes that licenses be issued to those manufacturers subscribing to these conditions. It sets up a national textile commission to issue, suspend, or revoke these licenses and to otherwise concern itself with the stabilization of the industry. Also it authorizes the adoption of an identifying stamp or label for use upon products made by duly licensed manufacturers and denied to nonlicensed manufacturers. Products without this stamp or label are denied transit between the States. United States mail privileges for purposes of sale or distribution of products of nonlicensed manufacturers are denied.

Government departments may not purchase goods from nonlicensed manufacturers or goods not bearing the label. No Government or other loan may be made to nonlicensed manufacturers by any Government agency or any institution in which the United States Government directly or indirectly holds a controlling interest.

The act establishes 35 hours as the maximum work week for all employees except maintenance crews. Minimum wages of $15 for 35 hours for unskilled workers and occupational minimums for the various classifications of skilled workers are provided. Work loads are made the subject of arbitration. Child labor under 16 years of age and hazardous occupation under 18 years of age is prohibited. A normal two-shift limitation on the machine with a 5-percent bonus to employees of companies permitted by the commission to operate a third shift. Bona-fide collective bargaining is provided for.