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to our entire population, and specifically including agricultural labor. They have been deprived of the benefit of minimum wage-maximum hour protection. They are beyond the pale of child labor and other ameliorative legislation which apply in industries where conditions are much better than industrialized agriculture.

This bill preserves this situation of second-class citizenship intact, and it goes beyond that. As far as collective bargaining is concerned the bill specifically prohibits any encouragement by the Government of peaceful collective bargaining between big growers and agricultural wage workers. It seems to me that the Congress cannot consider the adoption of a policy which says "we do not want to foster peaceful collective bargaining." If Congress does not want to foster peaceful collective bargaining what do they want to foster? Industrial strife? I am sure that is not the intention, your intention, Senator, the intention of the Committee or the desire of the Congress, yet this is what it says in the bill.

In summarizing the effect of the bill on the agricultural workers themselves, the bill means debased labor, living, and working under wretched conditions and to the big growers it means cheap labor.

But the effects of the bill would spread beyond the agricultural workers themselves. They would spread particularly to the small farmer, the average American farmer, who does his own work on his own farm, with his family and an occasional hired hand.

If any kind of a depression ever hits us again, and farm prices go down, the small farmer will find himself in an intolerable competitive position. The big grower, using the great bulk of cheapened labor, will be producing at rock bottom operating costs, and in order to compete with the small farmer will have to voluntarily subject himself and his family to conditions of near peonage if he is to compete with the cheap labor which it will be possible for big growers to hire and use under the terms and conditions of this bill.

And furthermore, the big growers themselves, as they have found in the past, if they would only remember, will have sown a hurricane, because American workers grown up in a system which elevates the rights and dignity of the individual man cannot indefinitely endure the conditions of sordid poverty and second-class citizenship which the agricultural workers have had to bear.

Other industries have long since come to the conclusion that production in the United States must rest on at least some degree of stable labor relations. Large scale agriculture already has a history of particularly bitter conflict. No one wants conflict, Senator, and no one seeks it. But in all honesty I must say that this bill would certainly promote bitterness, conflict, and the loss of production. And thus the whole of agriculture, from the poorest migrant to the wealthiest large scale operator would ultimately suffer from the provisions of this bill.

Its effect will continue to spread beyond the confines of agriculture, because any further depression of the standards of agricultural labor is a prelude to an attack on the standards of all labor. And these standards are what add up to the American way of living.

Now the effects that spread beyond the agricultural workers themselves are not just limited to the question of wages and conditions. Those miserable shanties of the migrant agricultural workers and

those workers who camped without shanties on the irrigation ditches and drank out of those irrigation ditches in Imperial Valley, Calif.and I use this as an example because I saw it-hundreds and thousands of pea pickers in Imperial Valley, Calif., camped out along irrigation ditches, no sanitary facilities, drinking water, washing out of these irrigation ditches these are breeding spots for every communicable disease, and disease is no respecter of persons or stations in life. It strikes the rich grower and it strikes the communities around these agricultural centers as well as the poor and as well as the agricultural

workers.

If you deprive the agricultural worker of the barest protections which these camps have given in regard to housing, sanitation or medical care, he will surely fall victim to disease and these diseases are very likely to spread to the entire community. These are a few of the diseases which we have been informed by authorities can start in the migrants' cabin and then go on to affect all of us. They are, amoebic dysentery, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, smallpox.

Senator, there is little that is new in any of what I have said. Some years ago two congressional committees, the LaFollette-Thomas Civil liberties committee of the Senate and the Tolan committee of the House, spent not just a few days, but literally months and years investigating the conditions of agricultural labor, holding hearings in various parts of the country and finally making recommendations on the basis of those investigations. This was not a hasty job. There were carefully prepared, well thought out investigations and the recommendations were made, after months and years of study.

I would like to read to you the major recommendations, very briefly, which were made by the Committee on Education and Labor in 1942, over 5 years ago, after serious study. The committee recommended coverage of industrialized agricultural labor under the Wagner Act. They recommended an integrated public employment service to cover agricultural labor as well as industrial labor.

The committee recommended the regulation of private employment agencies. This particular recommendation, Senator, has been made so many times by so many investigatory bodies that it is simply scandalous that this bill which proposes to adopt some sort of a Federal program for agricultural labor should disregard it completely. The Senate committee recommended the regulation of child labor. They recommended coverage under old-age and survivors and unemployment insurance.

They recommended coverage under minimum wage-maximum hour legislation.

They recommended procedures for establishing fair minimum wages by area and crops for agricultural labor. They recommended a housing program. They recommended a health program.

They recommended coverage under workmen's compensation, and several other things, including a program of rural resettlement so that at least some of these agricultural workers, landless agricultural workers who had been farmers, who had been driven from their farms at that time by dust and drought, and by technological advances, would have an opportunity to resettle upon the land, and become again, as they had been, farmers.

Since these recommendations were made, the war intervened and perhaps other matters took priority. But no development has in any way impaired the validity of the findings of these committees of Congress which made these recommendations years ago. In fact, these recommendations were made with a view to exactly the type of situation which is developing today.

We now have the interagency report and recommendations on migratory labor which was made just within the past few weeks. The recommendations of the interagency report have in no way been taken into consideration, it appears to me, in their major respects, they have not been considered with respect to the continuation of a Federal operation, of a labor-camp program, with respect to an integrated farm placement service, or with respect to practically any of the other recommendations made again after a serious and careful study.

In closing, I want to say that there is a great need for a farm-labor program, but there is a need. for a program that will go forward. No legislation at all is better than legislation which would move backward as this legislation does.

Now a bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives to which I would like to refer briefly. I am not informed at the moment whether it has been introduced in the Senate or not. This is bill H. R. 3856, introduced by Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas and known as the Migratory Farm Labor Act of 1947. This bill takes some steps in the direction of proposing a proper program for migratory agricultural labor. I want to refer to just a couple of its major provisions to indicate its general orientation.

It provides, first of all, that such a program shall be under the Secretary of Labor and this is a basic point. The Department of Agriculture is a fine institution; it gives excellent services to farmers and we have great respect for the services which it does give. However, the Department of Agriculture is no more capable of giving services to a group of workers than the Department of Commerce would be to give services to industrial workers. Putting a program for agricultural workers in the Department of Agriculture is just like putting the enforcement of the Wage-Hour Act, for example, or the National Labor Relations Act in the Department of Commerce. I think we recognize in our Government that one department serves one function, and another serves another function, and they serve different sections of our population.

The proposal in H. R. 3856 that the Secretary of Labor have jurisdiction over a farm-labor program is a basic point which certainly should be recognized. This bill provides further for the collection and compilation of information, in conjunction with other Government agencies, for a recruitment and training and placement program.

It provides for continuation of the federally operated farm labor camps under the Department of Labor. And it provides that there shall be no shifting of workers from one place to another, until and unless the Secretary of Labor has determined, after public hearings, that these workers who are so shifted and recruited will be paid at least the prevailing wage and that is a small enough guaranty. It does not say a decent wage; it just says the prevailing wage.

This bill also provides for continuation of health services which have been in effect and are in the process of being virtually liquidated

by lack of appropriation and by emphasis on the foreign importation program.

I should like-without going into any more details on this bill, and definitely qualifying my statement with respect to it, by saying that it is only a small first step in the right direction-to refer this bill to the attention of your committee, Senator, because I believe that it is. a step in the right direction for formulating an effective program for migratory farm workers.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Sasuly.

Mrs. SASULY. I want to thank you again for the opportunity of appearing.

The CHAIRMAN. Reverend Keehn?

STATEMENT OF REV. THOMAS B. KEEHN, LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL ACTION OF THE CONGREGATIONAL-CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

Reverend KEEHN. I would like to say that this statement, which is the official policy of the Council for Social Action of the Congregational-Christian Churches, I have been authorized to submit to these hearings. I would like to say further it has been supported by Miss Edith Lowery, who is the associate executive secretary of the Home Missions Council of North America, an interdenominational organization of Protestant churches which has for many years carried on an extensive program with migratory workers.

Certain types of agriculture are so organized and operated in America today as to demand at peak seasons of planting, cultivation and harvest, large numbers of temporary agricultural workers. This condition has given rise to a force of approximately 1,000,000 migrant agricultural workers in our population.

We believe that these workers and their families are entitled to enjoy an economic and social status equivalent to that of other manual workers. Because of their frequent movements from place to place, the irregularity of their employment, the interstate character of their movements, and the sorry record of their past and present conditions. of work and living, we are convinced that certain Federal regulations are necessary to guarantee them equitable treatment.

We welcome, therefore, these hearings which the Senate Committee on Agriculture is conducting on this subject. We regret, however, that a study of the proposed bill, S. 1334, convinces us that it fails to provide adequate guaranties and protections for migrant agricultural workers.

Therefore, we are forced to oppose S. 1334 in its present form, and to urge that it be amended, or an alternative bill be substituted, to conform to the major recommendations of the Federal Interagency Committee on Migrant Labor published in March 1947 after extensive study of the migrant-labor situation.

Specifically, we support the recommendations of the interagency committee concerning regulation of child labor, establishment of minimum wage rates, continuance of federally sponsored labor camps, licensing and regulation of labor contractors, regulation of private transportation of migrant agricultural workers, extension of the benefits of workmen's compensation laws and the Social Security Act to

cover migrant agricultural workers, and Federal grants-in-aid to the States to stimulate development of better housing, health, education, and welfare services for migrant agricultural workers.

We further urge that the responsibility for recruitment and placement of migrant workers and the other services mentioned above be assigned to an appropriate administrative agency of the Federal Government, not to the Agricultural Extension Service and the landgrant colleges and universities which are primarily educational agencies.

In one sentence our statement says that we are very critical of many features of this proposed bill and we favor as constructive alternatives many of the features in the Federal Agency Committee report on magriatory farm labor.

Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

The committee will adjourn until 1:30 this afternoon, to conclude the hearing.

(Thereupon, at 12:15 p. m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene at 1:30 p.m.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

(The committee reconvened at 1:30 p. m., upon the expiration of the recess.)

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

We will hear from Mr. Mason. I am sorry we have not more of a committee here, but we cannot continue this tomorrow as we have other matters to consider.

STATEMENT OF WALTER J. MASON, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. MASON. Senator, as long as you can convey my little message to them, it will be all right.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Then we will hear from you, Mr. Mason.

Mr. MASON. Mr. Chairman, my name is Walter J. Mason. I am national legislative representative of the American Federation of Labor.

The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been representing the American Federation of Labor?

Mr. MASSON. For the past 15 years.

The CHAIRMAN. You are an old-timer.

Mr. MASON. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you been located here in Washington most of the time?

Mr. MASON. No; in Ohio. I have been in Washington for the past 2 years.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. MASON. I have prepared a statement which outlines briefly the objections of the American Federation of Labor to certain features of S. 1334, which is now being considered by your committee.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I will read this statement to the committee.

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