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Bethlehem Steel separately; it meets with Jones and Laughlin. It meets with all the companies.

The first fact is this: I am confident, and I state the fact to be, that there is no responsible company in the steel industry that would appear before this committee and say that the type of bargaining which goes on in the steel industry stifles the competition which exists in that industry.

Number two, I am entirely confident, and I state the fact to be, that there is no responsible company in the steel industry that would appear before you and subscribe to the point of view of the NAM or the chamber that this committee or any committee of the Congress ought to recommend legislation that in any way would interfere with the type of free collective bargaining which goes on in that industry.

I state that categorically, Mr. Chairman. I ought not to speak for the companies in the industry. I ought only to speak for the union, but I know as a participant in the collective bargaining in that industry that both the companies and the union are satisfied that our bargaining contributes to stability in the industry; it contributes to free competition in the industry, and does not promote in any way a monopoly or a state of monopoly in the steel industry.

Now, we are accused-and this is what I would like specifically to answer-we are accused of establishing patterns in our bargaining with the great corporations in the industry which become applicable to many, many firms in the great steel industry. There are two answers to that. One is that long before the union ever came into existence in the steel industry the wage patterns that were established by corporations like United States Steel Corporation became the pattern for wages in the industry. The union did not start that. The union has followed the historical tradition which existed in the industry long before the union came into existence.

And secondly, the union has, however, brought about some intelligent rationalization of the wage structure in the steel industry.

Before the union came on the scene there were thousands of individual jobs in the steel industry. Workers were paid by how they looked, and perhaps how they catered to their particular, specific, supervisor.

It was after the union came on the scene that a job of industrial engineering was done in the steel industry and jobs were classified, and a worker who fit into one job classification was given the pay applicable to that job classification pursuant to a scientific industrial engineering study of the steel industry, participated in both by the company and the union. And both the industry and the union are very proud of the fact that today when a man walks into a steel mill and is assigned to a job, he knows the rate of that job and is paid at the same rate as other workers who are doing the same job in the steel industry.

The CHAIRMAN. I must put you back on the track again. This is not a labor committee. It is the Judiciary Committee studying antitrust. Won't you follow the suggestion that I made and go back to that. Mr. GOLDBERG. I will. And the only reason I addressed myself to that fact is that other organizations apparently addressed themselves to that to you, overlooking the fact that your task was not the labor relations policy of the Government, but the antitrust philosophy of the Government. And these considerations, I agree with

the chairman, have nothing to do with the antitrust laws, but people have brought them in to you as having to do with the antitrust laws. The CHAIRMAN. I know. But as I indicated before, you need not have too great a fear on that score.

Mr. GOLDBERG. I would now like to deal, then, with the subject which is before the committee, and that is the report of the Attorney General's Committee, which you have been analyzing among other problems before you.

Now, when the President appointed the Attorney General's Committee it was given a very broad mandate. As I recall the mandate the President said the committee would provide an important instrument to prepare the way for modernizing and strengthening our laws to preserve American free enterprise against monopoly and unfair competition.

Now, in view of this very broad mandate that the committee was supposed to serve, its composition was singularly narrow. No attempt was made to secure any balanced type of committee. The committee is comprised largely of corporation lawyers, with a slight leavening of law professors and economists.

It is interesting that the preface to the committee's report states, and I quote from the report, "Members include lawyers who counsel all sizes and types of business enterprises, law professors and economists, all specialists in the antitrust and cognate fields."

Now, evidently

The CHAIRMAN. There was one labor representative, was there not? Mr. GOLDBERG. There was a very distinguished retired labor leader, a colleague and friend of mine, Clinton Golden. He has been retired and he has been teaching at Harvard. He is not currently in the labor field, and he did not participate in the active consideration of the report.

I can say for the CIO, and I know my colleagues in the A. F. of L. either have or could advise you to the same effect, that neither of the labor organizations was invited to participate in the study that was made by the Attorney General's Committee.

Now, our interest is a double interest, first, as citizens in the

The CHAIRMAN. I think it is well to state that it was the same with the agricultural organizations. They were not asked to participate. Mr. GOLDBERG. Now, Mr. Chairman, we do not only have a narrow interest in the application of the antitrust laws to labor, we have a broad interest in the application of the antitrust laws to our entire economy.

It is quite significant also in this connection that while the Secretary of Commerce was invited to serve as a member of the committee, the Secretary of Labor was not invited to serve as a member of the committee. He was only an observer.

The CHAIRMAN. Was the Secretary of Agriculture invited?

Mr. GOLDBERG. I do not believe he was. And all of these groups have a very important role to play in the antitrust policies of our country.

Now, I do not mean to belittle the very distinguished lawyers who served on the committee. I know many of them. Many of them sit across the table from me in collective bargaining. But it is hard to believe that a group of the antitrust bar should be entrusted with

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making a report on what the antitrust philosophy of our Government should be.

On the whole, considering the complexion of the committee, I am rather agreeably surprised at what they did, and it is a credit to the integrity of the members of the committee that they did what they did, because actually all they did was to compile the decisions, make an excellent analysis of what the state of the law is, and make no really constructive recommendations to the Congress or the country as to what the antitrust philosophy of the Government should be.

The CHAIRMAN. You are limiting that comment as far as labor is concerned; are you not?

Mr. GOLDBERG. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That does not follow with the matters appertaining to nonlabor situations.

Mr. GOLDBERG. No. That is correct. I was referring there to many of the fears and forebodings that I had as to what might happen in the labor field. I want to confess that they have not been warranted, because all they did in the labor field, with one exception, was to compile the statutes and the decisions dealing with the field.

Mr. Chairman, this is not the type of study, however, of your broader subject which the temporary National Economic Committee did when it studied the antitrust laws. This report only skims the surface.

Now, let me talk briefly upon the report of the committee as it deals with the labor field. The report makes a very vague and undefined recommendation that perhaps something ought to be done to tighten up the antitrust laws insofar as they relate to labor, but they do not tell us how it should be tightened up. They do not say that the present state of the law is not adequate to deal with conspiracies between employers and unions to restrain trade, which are already covered by the antitrust laws, and which no responsible official of labor can condone or support. We do not condone or support collusive arrangements between manufacturers and labor unions to restrain trade, and the report recognizes that. It is hard for me to understand in what area this report would like the Congress to enact amendments to the antitrust laws. The one subject that they deal with is a subject which the Taft-Hartley law already deals with, I think wrongly, but there is no area in which the antitrust laws can appropriately operate in this field.

Mr. Chairman, in other words, the reports and the recommendations of the committee with respect to labor can best be summarized by saying that this committee has really nothing to report on that subject. It only bears out what I said before the committee really began its serious deliberations, that a committee of this character, dealing with the subject of labor, has no scope to make any report and should not have entered upon the field. The question of labor policy of our Government ought to be dealt with appropriately by the labor committes of the Congress, not by committees dealing with antitrust policies, because we go back to the fundamental point: The labor of human beings is not really a subject of the applicaiton of the antitrust laws. Mr. ROGERS. At that point, do you think that there is a distinction between what a man has to offer in the form of labor as contradistinguished from one who has goods to sell?

Mr. GOLDBERG. I think there is a very important distinction.

Mr. ROGERS. Would you outline the reasons for that, if you have them?

Mr. GOLDBERG. Yes, Mr. Congressman.

The labor of a human being is what he has to support himself and to support his family. No civilized conception of the position of a man who works for a living can equate his labor with the sale of goods in the open market. It is inhumane to ask people to compete on the basis of selling their labor at low or substandard conditions. No one would desire that.

One of the shocking examples, which has just been eliminated under a Republican administration in New York was the situation which existed in the New York docks, where people were called to work in the morning and they bid for their jobs, and everybody said that that was subject to enormous evil and should be eliminated.

Mr. ROGERS. Haven't we heretofore in Congress recognized that problem in exempting the workers and our unions from the antitrust laws?

Mr. GOLDBERG. Yes, you have.

Mr. ROGERS. And what you are expressing here is the philosophy in connection with that which resulted in that legislation?

Mr. GOLDBERG. I am. I am merely repeating what the Congress, way back at the time of the Clayton Act, recognized was the appropriate humane and civilized way to handle labor problems.

Mr. ROGERS. Then you do not say that the Attorney General's Committee recommended that that law be changed?

Mr. GOLDBERG. No.

Mr. ROGERS. But you do feel that other groups that testified here, the NAM and the Farm Bureau, want to go back to the philosophy that existed prior to the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts?

Mr. GOLDBERG. I do, Mr. Congressman, and that is why I address myself to the subject.

I see no disposition, either on the Democratic side of the Congress or on the Republican side, to turn the clock back and go back to the discredited economic thinking of a century ago.

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions, Mr. Congressman?
Mr. McCULLOCH. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Apparently there are no further questions. I think we have asked the appropriate questions, and we are grateful to you, Mr. Goldberg, for your testimony.

Mr. GOLDBERG. Congressman Celler, I want to thank you for this opportunity to appear before this committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness is the Honorable William Mc-
Chesney Martin, Jr., chairman of the Federal Reserve System.
Mr. Martin, will you come forward, please.

I think this is Governor Robertson?

Mr. MARTIN. This is Governor Robertson, my associate on the Board of Governors, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very glad to have both of you. You may proceed, Mr. Martin.

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STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MCCHESNEY MARTIN, JR., CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, ACCOMPANIED BY J. L. ROBERTSON, MEMBER, BOARD OF GOVERNORS, FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM

Mr. MARTIN. I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the opportunity to appear before this committee. It is our understanding that one of the purposes of these hearings is to explore possible legislative measures for restricting the development of monopolistic tendencies in the banking field.

In the prepared statement which is in front of you, in the next two paragraphs, we summarize the evidence

The CHAIRMAN. I read your statement, Mr. Martin. I like it very much. I think it might be well if you read it.

Mr. MARTIN. Would you like that?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. I think it is a very good statement.

Mr. MARTIN. According to our information, then, Mr. Chairman, a total of 100 bank mergers, consolidations, and absorptions took place in 1952, which was the largest yearly number since 1939. The number grew to 116 in 1953 and 207 in 1954. For the first 4 months of 1955, the figure was 81, indicating that, if growth continues at the same rate, this year's total may reach around 240. Since 1933, the merger movement has been the major factor in the gradual decline in the total number of banks. This is in contrast with the 10-year period just prior to 1933 when bank suspensions were more numerous than mergers and were the major factor in reducing the number of commercial banks by about one-half.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Martin, do you know whether there were any rejections of applications for mergers during this wave of mergers? Mr. MARTIN. By the Federal Reserve Board?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. MARTIN. No, sir, there were not.

The CHAIRMAN. There were none?

Mr. MARTIN. There were none.

The CHAIRMAN. And would you say, as a very distinguished and very efficient head of the Federal Reserve Board, that this merger movement is a matter of deep concern to you and your colleagues on the Board?

Mr. MARTIN. It is, indeed, Mr. Chairman. As we note in a later paragraph, it is a matter that we have given a great deal of thought to.

In general, these consolidations have taken place between relatively small banks or through the absorption of small banks by much larger banks. In the 5-year period from 1950 to 1954, both inclusive, there was a decrease of 598 banks as the result of mergers, consolidations, and absorptions. Of this number 274 were absorbed by large banks having total assets of $100 million or more; and of the banks so absorbed 153 had total assets of less than $10 million, 88 had assets of from $10 million to $50 million, and 33 had assets of more than $50 million.

The reasons for which banks in recent years have decided to merge or consolidate have varied widely.

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