the States and in the States, and particularly with respect to social welfare provisions and to the education and care of children.

The CHAIRMAN. Reverend, we are greatly obliged to you. It was a very interesting and helpful statement.

Reverend GIBBONS. Thank you, sir. We are glad to have had this opportunity.

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Elizabeth Sasuly?

Mrs. Sasuly is from the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of America, with headquarters in Washington, D. C.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ELIZABETH SASULY, FOOD, TOBACCO, AGRICULTURAL AND ALLIED WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mrs. SASULY. I am the Washington representative of the union, Senator. I am stationed here in Washington.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have you here.

Mrs. SASULY. Thank you very much, Senator. I appreciate the opportunity of appearing to discuss the very serious situation which confronts the millions of agricultural workers in our country. The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been in this work?

Mrs. SASULY. I have been in this work, Senator, since 1938. The CHAIRMAN. You ought to be pretty well informed about some of the problems.

Mrs. SASULY. I think our union has had a great deal of experience in this field, Senator, and we are very glad to have the opportunity of being able to bring some of the results of our experience before your committee at a time when you were discussing this subject.

I am sure that the very bitter memory of the 1930's is as fresh in your mind, Senator, and in the minds of every Member of Congress, I am sure that every Member of Congress would wish to take such legislative steps are are necessary to prevent the repetition of the scandalous situation in which migratory farm workers in the richest country in the world lived in conditions of virtual peonage during the period of the last depression, during the "dust bowl" days which we all remember so well.

We feel that this is exactly what we are facing again, unless remedial steps are taken, not after the crisis is upon us, but now.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Joads of the "Grapes of Wrath,” will be with us again unless these steps are taken.

Senator, you may remember that several months ago I appeared before your committee to testify on H. R. 2102, now Public Law 40, and at that time I detailed the conditions of labor surplus, increasing industrial unemployment and technological displacement within agriculture itself which were the danger signs pointing to a repetition of the days of the "Grapes of Wrath." It was on the basis of these signs that my union and the Congress of Industrial Organizations opposed the continuation of the importation of foreign labor and contended that the proposals for such importation, through the calendar year of 1947, were intended to create a surplus of agricultural labor and so depress wages.

I stated at that time that the big growers cries of "an emergency need to get through the 1947 crop season" were simply a camouflage

for the plans of special interest groups to establish a permanent program of importation and to establish as the basic policy of Congress that there would be no remedial legislation to improve the condition of agricultural workers.

The plans to which I referred at that time, several months ago, have borne fruit even earlier than we had anticipated. They do not stop with the preservation of the miserable status quo of agricultural labor. They actually propose to take away the pitifully few crumbs of Federal programs which are of any benefit to agricultural workers and, in fact to place a prohibition upon any Government attempt to foster decent wage standards, to provide the barest minimum of housing or medical care or to establish even a moderately rational program for the placement of migratory agricultural workers.

This is the program which is embodied in S. 1334.

During the war the general shortage of labor was such that the wages of farm workers rose enough to make possible some slight improvement in conditions. Now the war boom is over and Congress has several alternatives. They have, first of all, the alternative of proposing constructive legislation to extend the Wage Hour Act, the Social Security Act and the protection of the Wagner Act to agricultural workers, and to provide housing, medical care, regulation of abuses such as those which occur under the labor contractor system, and other positive programs. If this is done, we will begin to see our way out of the conditions of misery for farm workers and anarchy in the use of farm labor which took place before the war, during the war, and which is facing us again in a most acute form. That is the first alternative Congress has.

The second alternative is to pass no legislation of any kind. If this is done, if this course is followed, farm workers will remain in their present situation of second class citizenship and we know what that situation has meant. It has produced chaos; it has produced strife in the past.

During the years of the 1930's there were literally hundreds of bitter agricultural strikes, beginning in 1933, 1934, and running straight through the period up until the beginning of the war. And unless something positive is done, if there is no legislation this situation. will be repeated.

Finally, Congress has the alternative, and a very bad alternative we believe it is, which is proposed in this bill, of passing legislation which not only freezes the bad status quo as it is, but actually moves backward and makes conditions even worse.

The CHAIRMAN. You think this pending measure will not take care of that objection?

Mrs. SASULY. I regret very much to say that that is our opinion. I would like now to go into some of the reasons why we think so.

Let us take first of all the question of wages for migratory agricultural workers. This bill specifically states that

no funds appropriated under this act shall be expended directly or indirectly to fix, regulate, impose or enforce wage rates or hours of work with respect to agricultural workers.

This means, Senator, that congressional sanction would be given to the notion that farm workers must receive no help whatsoever when it comes to getting better pay.

During the war, we found it necessary to enter into international agreements with foreign countries to bring workers into this country. That program is continued until the end of 1947 under Public Law 40. During all of this time, as part of these agreements, at least some effort was made to determine what would be a fair wage and to see that these wages were paid to the workers brought into the States.

It is simply inconceivable to us that guarantees which were provided during the war and are still provided for the importation of foreign workers should be denied completely to American workers in peacetime.

I would like to point out, incidentally, that what we are talking about here and this has been said many times but I want to say it again-it is not the solitary hired hand who shares the house and board of the farmer who hires him, Senator. That is the situation to a great extent in your state, I believe. You have the individual hired hand who lives with the farmer's family. But those are not the sitúations we are talking about. We are talking about the factory field worker, about the hundreds of thosuands of migratory workers who work for big corporate farms. They never see the farmer in kid gloves who lives off in the city and as an absentee owner or who may live there but whom the workers do not see.

These workers do not live in the home of the man who holds title to the land they work on, they do not have the conditions provided for the hired hand in the family type farm in the Middle West.

Fifty-two percent of all farmers employ no farm labor at all. We are not talking about them nor about the ones who employ one or two workers. We are talking about the 3 percent of the farmers who employ 43 percent of all the agricultural workers in the country. We are talking about the 11.7 percent who produce 44.8 percent of the total output, not about the bottom 51 percent of the farmers who produce only 11.9 percent of the total output. We are talking about the big corporate farmers who operate factories in the fields and about the conditions of the workers on these large agricultural operations because these are the farms, these are the gigantic enterprises which employ the largest numbers of seasonal workers. They have pay rolls approximating the pay rolls of big industrial establishments. These workers do not work by the month for room and board, plus a monthly salary, or even by the week. They work on a piecework basis and only in some cases are they supplied with any housing whatsoever. There are the people we are talking about, in States like California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Florida, and the sugar-beet area in the Rocky Mountain region.

The CHAIRMAN. I am glad you do not include Kansas in that statement. I think we do a little better.

Mrs. SASULY. I think so, Senator.

Now, on the question of housing, the bill specifically provides that nothing whatsoever shall be done "to fix, regulate, impose or enforce housing standards." It is proposed that nothing be done by the Federal Government to improve the housing standards of agricultural

workers.

As you know, Senator, one of the few tangible things ever done by the Federal Government for agricultural workers was the setting up, originally under the Farm Security Administration, of a system of

camps for agricultural workers and these camps did provide a bare minimum of decent housing and sanitary facilities. They were not too many in number, but such as they were they provided a model for the type of housing which should be put into effect.

When the need for agricultural labor was great during the war, although the greater part of the Farm Security labor program was done away with, these camps were maintained by the Office of Labor of the Department of Agriculture.

Now, by provision of section 7 of this bill this camp program would be handed over to the big growers and to growers' associations. Obviously no small farmer is going to have the resources to buy a camp. These camps are not going to be turned over to small farmers. They are going to be turned over to the people who have the money to pay for them. The bill says specifically "growers and growers' associations."

I think Congressman Phillips who testified before your committee just a few minutes ago, and who if I may say so, I know very well from California because Congressman Phillips was one of the early organizers for the Associated Farmers of California- the history of that is detailed in the Senate Civil Service investigations-I think Congressman Phillips knows that the people in the Imperial Valley who are going to buy those camps are not going to be the small farmers but the grower-shippers in Imperial Valley who have been spearheading the program for importing foreign labor from Mexico to depress wages in the Imperial Valley, a subject on which I testified at some length some months ago before your committee.

In other words, the program which did a little bit for agricultural housing is being handed over to the very people who are responsible for making agricultural workers housing a shame to the whole country and known, I might say, throughout the whole world.

John Steinbeck's book, Grapes of Wrath, I think has spread throughout the world, Senator, the conditions under which migratory agricultural laborers work and it became not only a national but an international scandal.

In the field where there is the most apparent need for housing to be provided by the Government, even the State governments are prohibited, as I understand the bill, from carrying on the program started by the Federal Government. Section 7 (c) provides that after liquidation all sales or dispositions shall be made only to farmers and associations of farmers.

So here we have two subjects, wages and housing, and on both counts it seems to us that this bill takes the most negative and the most backward approach possible.

A great deal of attention has been given in the bill to the recruitment and placement of farm workers. All the provisions of this bill I regret to say add up to one simple proposal; to give the big growers as comfortable a margin of surplus labor as possible.

The major effect of these proposals is to continue the wartime separation of the agricultural labor recruitment and placement program from the recruitment and placement of other workers. Farm placement is put in the hands of those most directly vulnerable and responsive to big grower pressure. This is true in the major States where migratory farm workers are employed.

Our organization does not for one moment detract from the very excellent services performed by the Extension Service for farmers. But the Extension Service is an agency responsive to and set up for meeting the needs of farmers and not of farm workers.

As a final measure of insuring big farm labor surpluses, the bill continues in principle what was conceived as a purely wartime measure, the recruitment of labor from foreign lands. And no restrictions, no qualifications are put upon the circumstances under which the Secretary of Agriculture may set in motion the recruitment of foreign workers.

The language of the bill states "whenever the Secretary determines that the supply of domestic workers willing and able to perform agricultural work is inadequate, he shall so certify." It seems to me that that language is at least realistic. It is entirely possible that selfrespecting American workers might not be willing to work under the conditions imposed by this bill and if they were willing they might not be physically able.

I know the conditions under which there are thousands of people on relief and agricultural jobs available, and I know the conditions under which those people might not take agricultural jobs. They are conditions in which agricultural workers were offered wages of 10, 15, and 17 cents an hour. Those were the conditions that Congressman Phillips was referring to in California. I know, because I was there. When there were people on relief and when there were jobs available the reason they did not take those jobs is because they were not offered enough money to keep body and soul together, and the growers were not offering them free housing, sanitary facilities or medical care, either.

That brings me to the question of the health program. Certainly, Senator, to give some aid and comfort to the sick is the smallest thing we can do for the people who are living on the very bottom rungs of the economic ladder. The Farm Security Administration did set up-and this was continued in the Department of Agriculture-a small scale health and medical program for agricultural labor. This program is also thrown into discard by the bill under consideration. Instead there is a feeble shadow of a medical program which in effect is a vicious program under which agricultural workers might be allowed to pay in advance for health, medical, and burial service. And without any desire to be facetious, I might say that it is significant that burial service gets equal emphasis along with health and medical service. If anything, perhaps this emphasis should be increased because under the provisions of this bill there would certainly be more burials of agricultural workers.

Now it has been apparent for a long time that agricultural workers enjoy status which can only accurately be described as second-class citizenship. They have never had the protection of the Wagner Act which simply states that certain perfections will be given to workers to allow them to organize. Oh, yes, they have the right to organize under the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, but they have no protection in that right to organize, such as was given to other workers. They have specifically been excluded from the Social Security Act and this exclusion has continued in spite of the fact that both political parties have gone on record for the extension of social security benefits