particular time or it may be that it is standard practice in some areas-I am not sure-have more workers than you need.

Senator WILLIAMS. That used to be an economic theory, that it is good to have a pool of unemployed. I thought we discredited that, but maybe it still exists in certain areas. It costs more to go through the bookkeeping here than this poor fellow made. Isn't that amazing? Mr. BLACKWELL. What county is this?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. This is Monroe County or actually it is just over the border in Livingston.

Senator WILLIAMS. Rochester is in Monroe County?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes.

Senator WILLIAMS. It appears to me, as Fred Blackwell suggested, something ought to be done to check this transaction. Dr. RADEBAUGH. I think it is quite obvious. (The material referred to previously follows:)

Hon. HARRISON WILLIAMS,
Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

CURTICE-BURNS, INC., Rochester, N.Y., December 7, 1967.

DEAR SENATOR WILLIAMS: I have received a call this afternoon from Mr. John Heiney, Executive Vice President of the National Council of Agricultural Employers in reference to your Senate Subcommittee hearing in Washington this morning.

His call informed us about Dr. John Radebaugh's testimony before your committee. Dr. Radebaugh made reference to a Curtice-Burns check payable to a J. C. Gonzales net amount approximately twenty cents. Our firm operates five plants within a twenty mile radius of one another. Quite often a worker will work at more than one plant during a particular week. This is what happened in Mr. Gonzales' case. I am enclosing a photo copy of his returned check in the amount of $89.94 covering the same period (week ending July 30, 1967) as the check you saw this morning.

All I am attempting to do here is to set the record straight with your committee. We have been using Puerto Rican workers since 1951 and a great number of our workers have been with us, seasonally, since that time.

We have good facilities and working conditions and whenever it is necessary, we provide medical treatment including transportation for our workers.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

R. A. MYERS, Personnel Director.

DECEMBER 14, 1967.

Mr. FRED BLACKWELL,
Counsel, Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. BLACKWELL: The Curtice-Burns Company denies that Mr. J. C. Gonzales received a check for twenty-cents while in their employ. Accordingly, I have put together an exhibit with Mr. J. C. Gonzales statement of the cir cumstances. Further inquiry may be advisable if there seems to be continued doubt.

JOHN RADEBAUGH, M.D.

CURTICE-BURNS, INC., SEPTEMBER 22, 1967-DISCUSSION WITH J. C. GONZALES I am J. C. Gonzales. I was working in the warehouse this week where I got the check for $.20 where I worked for 71⁄2 hours. We are seven in the family. I got five children, my wife, and me. That's seven altogether. So after that day after that week when I got the check for $.20, Mr. Colon came around to the camp; and I showed the check for $.20 which I got for two weeks. He did not say a word to me. He did not say anything to the company either. When we come down here to Curtice-Burns, it was told us down in Puerto Rico we get 160 hours a month or 40 hours a week; and when we came here to Curtice-Burns, they denied to us the 40 hours a week. The past 1st month, 2nd month, and 3rd month the promise was broken down. After a month and a half, I was making around $100.00 a week, working three shifts and making $100.00 a week. Sometimes I work around 24 hours. That's the only way I can make some money here. I am short 12 hours this week. I went straight out to the main office, and I reported it. The office says we will get paid the next week.

(To obtain full information on this issue the following information was sent to Curtice-Burns:)

Mr. R. A. MYERS,

Personnel Director, Curtice-Burns, Inc., Rochester, N.Y.

DECEMBER 21, 1967.

DEAR MR. MYERS: Senator Williams has referred your December 7 letter and enclosures to me with instructions to obtain for inclusion in the record all facts and materials necessary to reflect accurately the pay transaction between Mr. J. C. Gonzales and Curtice-Burns, Inc., which transaction was raised by the testimony and exhibits presented by Dr. John Radebaugh in his recent appearance before the Subcommittee.

Subsequent to your December 7 letter, Dr. Radebaugh, by cover letter of December 14, submitted the enclosed September 22, 1967, statement of Mr. J. C. Gonzales. Contents of the Gonzales statement, as well as the procedure described below, were discussed with Mr. John Heiney, with whom we have held two discussions on the pay transaction.

You will notice that the statement of Mr. Gonzales broadens the calendar period in question, by alleging among other things, non-compliance with the guaranteed work period during the "1st month, 2nd month, and 3rd month" of his employment. In view of these allegations by Mr. Gonzales, apparently directed at the entire period of employment, it is suggested that you provide copies of Curtice-Burns, Inc. statements of Mr. Gonzales' earnings and pay checks for each of the thirteen weeks that Mr. Gonzales worked with you this year. On receipt of this material the following procedure will be followed to clarify this matter in the hearing record:

1. Your letter and enclosures of December 7 will be included in the hearing record at the page where the Gonzales pay transaction was first mentioned by Dr. Radebaugh.

2. At the page in the record where the Gonzales pay transaction is last mentioned, Dr. Radebaugh's December 14 letter and the Gonzales statement will be included in the record, followed immediately by the above described earnings record and pay checks.

In addition to these procedures, it has occurred to us that another definitive method to establish your company's contention regarding the pay transaction would be to have a representative of the Puerto Rican Labor Department, after examination of the Gonzales pay roll records, submit a statement to the effect that all pay transactions were in accordance with the contract provisions. We will,

of course, also include in the record any such statement made available to the Subcommittee.

You may rest assured that hearing records of this Subcommittee have always been compiled with meticulous care for fairness, and we assure you that you will have full opportunity to have included in the record material that truly reflects the facts of the Gonzales pay transaction.

Sincerely,

FREDERICK R. BLACKWELL, Counsel.

Senator WILLIAMS. Isn't Justice Keating from Rochester?
Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes, sir.

Senator WILLIAMS. When he sat here as a Senator, he was very helpful. However, we are interrupting you.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. That is all right.

However society in attempting to bargain itself out of responsibility for health services, often incurs a greater hidden debt, as shown by the following example. Each State has a sanitary code and New York State has a sanitary code. I quote from chapter 1, part 15.6, for farm labor camps:

Where a stove or other source of heat is provided, it shall be installed in such a manner as to avoid both a fire hazard and a dangerous concentration of fumes or gas. Use of portable kerosene heaters shall not be permitted.

On October 20, 1967, Mrs. Caroline Cooks was looking over the shoulder of her husband who was filling their portable kerosene heater. They lived in a building with six rooms without central heating in Steuben County of New York State. There were other seasonal workers living in some of the other rooms.

Mr. Cooks had requested heat from the owner of the camp in which he was living. The camp owner merely laughed and said, "You've got a wife, haven't you; let her keep you warm."

Mr. Cooks was finally able to borrow a portable kerosene heater, the type which is shown on this slide. We will take a look at this next slide.

(Slide.) This is taken from another migrant camp fire which occurred in 1967 in Wayland, N. Y., in which a man was burned to death. Here is the same type of heater, no outside venting, an extreme fire hazard. This heater exploded.

Mr. BLACKWELL. Doctor, this is not the Cooks' heater? This is an example of the same type?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. It is an example of the same type. The heater exploded, and Mr. Cooks received some flash burns of his face and one hand. His wife received severe burns of the body and face and was rushed to the hospital with 65 percent second- and third-degree burns.

She was placed on the danger list at the Strong Memorial Hospital and was treated in the intensive care unit with three special nurses. Estimates were that she would be in the intensive care unit for 4 or 5 weeks and then in the hospital for another 6 months.

The costs in the intensive care unit for your interest are $250 per day or $7,500 for 4 weeks' period of time.

The total estimated cost, $21,000 for the 7-month period of time. The cost of this would be covered by the local community and the State, a cost which this rural poverty-stricken community could ill afford.

I will mention by paraphrase that conditions in this community are part of Appalachia and the infant death rate, to give you an example, is the highest in the State of New York.

Yet, with an adequate health program which included sanitary inspection, such as those under the Migrant Health Act, this accident could have been prevented. The Migrant Health Act provides for such preventive programs, thus saving the Government thousands of dollars.

Senator WILLIAMS. Will you pause there just a moment?

You said, "Yet, with an adequate health program which included. sanitary inspections, this accident could have been prevented." But earlier you said there was a code.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. That is right.

Senator WILLIAMS. That code does prohibit dangerous stoves, so the problem is that there hasn't been adequate inspection. Is that what you are saying?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes; this is true. One of the reasons given is that the State itself is unable to afford adequate inspectors.

Senator WILLIAMS. Well, that is hard for me to understand. Isn't New York State considered, I think, to use the word, the wealthiest State in the Nation?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes; it is.

Senator WILLIAMS. Yet you say the State can't afford something as simple as inspecting or saying to your grower, "You fix up or get out of business"?

It is almost that simple.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes, it is, and it is a basic problem I think in the migrant camp situation. Those who do inspect, for reasons that may be clear to some, do not enforce the regulations in many situations. Perhaps it is because the community itself doesn't support them. In other counties in the same State inspections are enforced considerably.

Mr. BLACKWELL. The inspection authority in New York is composed of the county and the State levels?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. In the counties in which there is a county health department, it is at a county level. In counties such as Steuben County, in which there is no county health department, it is at a State level. Senator WILLIAMS. And this was at what level?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. State level.

Senator WILLIAMS. If I were Governor of the State of New York I wouldn't go up there. I would stay away from that place.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. There are problems easily seen in a number of areas. The inspection group in September saw similar situations of inadequate enforcement.

Senator WILLIAMS. The harvesting season goes into the cold of winter. Apples are harvested into October; aren't they?

Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes. Potatoes and cabbages, which are big crops in this area, are also.

Senator WILLIAMS. Housing is one of the whole range of problems that the committee is concerned about and responsible for. However, in terms of the legislation presently being considered, you tie this tragedy to the sanitary and the inspection code and the failure to make the grower live up to the code and the sanitary conditions? Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes.

Senator WILLIAMS. That is a health problem.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. It is a health problem. It is as basic as the health problem of treating somebody with tonsillitis, or somebody with an infectious disease, or somebody with a chronic illness, and in this particular population it presents a far greater problem than it does to the ordinary person living in an established community.

Mr. BLACKWELL. Dr. Radebaugh, isn't there a health problem involved in the kerosene heater that probably affects far more people than the heater explosion? This heater just doesn't provide enough heat, and in the camp we visited in the Rochester hearings, the occupants there stated, I believe, that eight or 11 people had become seriously ill just a week or so before from a cold snap.

When the temperature drops, this doesn't provide anything near the amount of heat that is needed to keep infants, or an adult with perhaps low resistance, warm enough to ward off diseases; so this type of heater should be condemned per se.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. Yes, this kind certainly.

Mr. BLACKWELL. It was rather nippy when we were there and it was just September.

Dr. RADEBAUGH. I agree that this type of a heater is illegal and the State health code further states that the building should be capable of being heated to 68° F. after October 1 and obviously this could not possibly do that.

I think that the Migrant Health Act can have a great effect on situations such as this because wherever there are health programs people are aware of some of these problems and the effect that they have on health, and the Migrant Health Act in some States has provided sanitary supervision.

In other States, because of the health program, there has been a close liaison with sanitary inspectors so that things have improved in those particular areas.