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The Federal Interagency Committee on Migrant Labor recommends "no foreign workers to be imported to meet labor needs until maximum effort has been made on a local, State, and national basis to recruit domestic migrant workers."

The Secretary of Agriculture does not have to clear with the United States Employment Service to make this determination. (See H. R. 3367, sections 6 and 9, lines 21-23.) The labor supply may be adequate, but if the wage disparity between agriculture and industry is such that workers are unwilling to go into agricultural work, the Secretary may bring in foreign workers. The Secretary of Agriculture would not be allowed to offer domestic workers the same guaranties as would be offered to foreign workers, namely, wage standards, continuity of employment, housing standards, medical care, and transportation-all of which have been guaranteed to foreign workers by their contracts with the Federal Government.

Mr. FOREMAN. First, I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, how pleased I am that this committee has open hearings, and allows people to be

heard.

Secondly, I would like to say that I disagree with a considerable amount of the testimony that has been given before the committee to the extent that American workers are not prepared to do the work that is necessary on American farms.

It seems to me that American workers have in the past done the work and are still prepared to do it, provided they are given decent working conditions, and it is a part of the American idea of life that they insist on those decent working conditions.

I am very much opposed, and the organization which I represent, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, is opposed to the position in the bill of allowing such broad authority to the Secretary of Agriculture to decide when it is necessary or it should be permitted to import agricultural workers.

I was looking at the pictures on the wall there, Mr. Chairman, and that beautiful cotton farm in Arkansas, where there was that line of black workers pulling canvas bags through a white field of cotton there, and on the basis of the latest information that I can get about that farm, half of those people are now unemployed, looking for jobs, because of the mechanization of cotton culture in the South. I think that this is going to be an increasing menace to the whole agricultural system in this country, and not alone to agriculture, because those people are going to the cities, not only to the cities of the South, but the cities of the North, unless they can find occupation on farms.

I think it is very wrong to import labor into this country when American citizens are looking for jobs, and I do not believe that the proper efforts have been made to find the jobs for these people, or rather to look to these people for jobs, when it is possible to import into the country for seasonal work aliens without the right to vote, and with no protection other than that which they have because their own government insists that they have.

I think that we are needlessly jeopardizing our own farm labor by allowing the working conditions that they have to endure to be undermined by importing alien labor at this time.

It is true that most of the foreign countries are insisting on certain protections now, but we have no guaranty that they will continue to insist on those protections, and it seems to me that that particular provision of this bill is not only class legislation but regional legislation inasmuch as the South has so much at stake in this situation, and so many people that are going to be thrown out of employment by the mechanization of our agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. You have been present, have you not, during the hearings, part of the time?

Mr. FOREMAN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. My recollection of the testimony is that everyone who spoke of the provision of the bill relating to the importation of foreign labor insisted that they did not want foreign labor and would not use it except in cases where American labor was not available. In fact, I think everyone who spoke on the subject said that foreign labor was unsatisfactory, is that not your recollection?

Mr. FOREMAN. Well, I have not been here regularly, Mr. Chairman. I remember a discussion between Mr. Pace of Georgia and a man from New England with respect to tobacco. There is no reason why the tobacco industry in New England should import foreign workers, in my opinion, because there are plenty of workers available in the South for any kind of tobacco farming that is necessary in New England. They can do it; they are used to doing it, and I do not see why we should import people for that as long as there are unemployed people in the South.

Mr. HILL. We had a little experience that is interesting because I know as soon as you make that statement you have not watched very many of these imported workers.

Let me give you a little illustration. It is easy to make a general statement, but then it is quite different to carry it out.

We imported Jamaicans. Did you ever hear of Jamaicans?
Mr. FOREMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. HILL. Now, in our beet territory we imported Jamaicans. I wonder whether you know what happened to them when we imported them in our beet fields in Colorado? Do you know what happened to them?

Mr. FOREMAN. No, I do not.

Mr. HILL. We live at a 5,000 feet altitude when you can get a cold rain and sleet in June. You could not heat the buildings warm enough to keep them warm, and we had them revolt, we had an insurrection.

Now, you cannot pick these colored folks where they are living in that cotton field that you see in the picture on the wall, and take them up to my territory and put them in a beet field; they cannot stand the cold mornings, and I do not blame them. They were not built that way.

It was not a question of our buildings; we have had plenty of good buildings. This was a schoolhouse.

Mr. FOREMAN. Of course, I am not advocating bringing Jamaicans in, Mr. Hill. I do not want them brought in.

Mr. HILL. We would not bring them in either if we could get other laborers. When you come in and say that these folks are going to lose their jobs because we have a cotton picker, why I was told that when I was in the third grade in school, when they invented that process called the jenny to weave cloth, everything would go wrong, and everybody would lose their jobs. Of course, they did not. We are going forward just as fast as we can in our territory to mechanize sugar-beet growing.

The sugar-beet companies and the farmers, going about working out new mechanical devices, too, so that we get away from this hand labor? Why do you suppose we are doing that?

Mr. FOREMAN. Just exactly for the reason you say.

Mr. HILL. I cannot imagine your bringing those boys up in my territory to work; they are not much force.

Mr. FOREMAN. There are a lot of them up there. You are introducing this Negro question. There is a lot of people being thrown out of work.

Mr. HILL. We have very few Negroes; we have a lot of Mexicans. Mr. FOREMAN. They come from farther south, even.

Mr. HILL. This is more than a problem of bringing a few men to a small community.

Mr. PACE. Just on that point, in my judgment, within a few years we are going to have a much more serious problem with surplus labor on the farms, than we are going to have with shortage of labor on the farms today.

Mr. FOREMAN. I agree with you.

Mr. PACE. Because mechanization is definitely and finally here, and you have heard me say in this committee before, that I think there are very few more serious problems that we will have in the future than surplus farm workers.

Mr. FOREMAN. I completely agree with the Congressman from Georgia, and I think that this committee, if it were more concerned about what we are going to do to get that problem met rather than to take care of the bringing in of imported laborers, it would be much more pertinent to the condition of this country.

Mr. HILL. That is going back to what I was talking about, that this committee has taken action and definitely said-now, if I am wrong some of the committeemen may correct me-that we definitely go along on the importation of foreign workers this year, but when they came back for more foreign workers we would say, "No." Am I not right? We are not interested in bringing them in.

Mr. FOREMAN. But this bill specifically allows it in the judgment of the Secretary of Agriculture to bring them in, and eliminates all kinds of provisions, even the registration.

Mr. HILL. Well, we are not discussing this measure as it has been introduced. Of course, there will be many changes made in this measure before it ever passes through this committee. I will say that to the gentleman.

Now, let us get back to transferring these folks. I am interested in that because we need them and we need them not only for transfer in the beet fields, but we need them for the picking of cherries, the harvesting of beans, and the harvesting of peas, and we would like to have a plan worked out where we can transfer these folks from one location to another in the United States.

Now, I, for one, I am in favor of some over-all type of organization whereby we can pick these men up and bring them into our countryand we need them only for 10 to 15 days. Now, certainly, you are in favor of some type of organization to handle those laborers.

Mr. FOREMAN. That is right.

Mr. HILL. They must return from whence they came so far as we are concerned because we cannot keep them.

Mr. FOREMAN. What I am interested in, Congressman, is that this committee and the Congress do nothing that would weaken the position of the farm laborer in this country, the citizens of this country, you see, by bringing in competition, competition which is not allowed

to vote, which is not allowed to have citizenship status and can be shipped back at any time.

Mr. HIL. Of course, we do not have much of that, I think, in the United States, do we?

Mr. FOREMAN. Such a condition would not even be contemplated in industry. If it were-this is being asked for by the large growers, but in industry, it would not even be considered by the Congress.

Mr. HILL. Well, they are not going to be; I do not think that this bill will get out of this committee with any such provision as that. Mr. FOREMAN. I hope you are right.

Mr. HILL. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you finished?

Mr. FOREMAN. Yes, I have finished.

The CHAIRMAN. The next witness is Mr. Walter J. Mason, representing the American Federation of Labor. We will be glad to hear from you, Mr. Mason.

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

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

I have a prepared statement here which outlines briefly the objection of the American Federation of Labor to H. R. 3367, which is now being considered by your committee. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to read this statement to the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Proceed in your own way.

Mr. MASON. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to appear here today and present briefly the views of the American Federation of Labor with reference to H. R. 3367, a bill to enable the Secretary of Agriculture, through the Federal Extension Service, to cooperate with the land-grant colleges and universities in carrying out a program for the collection and dissemination of information with respect to the supply of, the need for, and the effective use of, agricultural workers, and for other purposes.

Before commenting on this particular legislation, I would like to draw your attention to some of the human problems confronting agricultural workers. This large segment of our population, through community and State neglect, has been robbed of so many normal American and human rights that it is almost unbelievable.

Agricultural laborers, by and large, lack the protection afforded other workers by labor laws, unemployment compensation and social security laws, and migratory agricultural laborers, in particular, lack the educational opportunities and such health, medical, and welfare services as are available to residents of a community.

There has been an ever-increasing gap between the few protections afforded workers in other industries. The need for a farm-labor program which would narrow this gap and bring our agricultural economy more nearly in line with our industrial economy has for some time been recognized.

Ambitious and significant attempts to move in this direction have been made. Repeatedly, however, these efforts have been blocked.

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For more than a year a Federal Interagency Committee on Migrant Labor has been at work and has just published a report, namely, Migrant Labor-A Human Problem. The recommendations of this committee provided a program to insure for agricultural workers standards equal to those available to workers in all other occupations. This bill does not include any of the recommendations of the Federal Interagency Committee on Migrant Labor that would correct some of the unfair labor standards and working conditions of the agricultural workers; but, instead, the bill provides class legislation of the most vicious kind, serving the needs of a small group of individuals interested in only an adequate labor supply and ignoring completely the much greater needs of this large segment of our population.

The major objectives of this bill are: One, to permit the importation of foreign farm labor into the United States; and two, to permanently establish placement of the farm labor function in the Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture, instead of the United States Employment Service of the Department of Labor.

The main provisions of this bill are:

One. Puts recruitment and placement of workers under the Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture in cooperation with State agencies.

Two. Calls for liquidation of Federal housing facilities through sales to private farmers and associations.

Three. Allows Extension Service to arrange for the migrants to pay in advance for health, medical, and burial services. Eliminates present Federal health program now available to foreign workers.

Four. Prohibits use of funds to fix, regulate, impose, or enforce wage rates and hours of work.

Five. Prohibits use of funds to fix, regulate, impose, or enforce collective bargaining requirements of union agreements.

Six. Calls for dissemination of information on supply and demand of labor, assistance to farmers in adopting improved practices for performing farm-labor operations, and aiding the orderly movement of workers.

Seven. Permits the Secretary of Agriculture, whenever he deems the domestic supply of farm labor inadequate, to arrange for the importation of foreign workers.

This bill, if enacted, will eliminate even the few benefits now enjoyed by agricultural migrants, principally housing and medical care, which have been gained by these workers beginning with the farm security migratory labor camp program of 1935.

The American Federation of Labor is firmly opposed to the enactment of this legislation, or any other bill of similar character and nature, and specifically legislation providing for the importation of foreign labor, particularly at a time when employment is decreasing and unemployment is increasing daily and is now well over the 2,000,000 mark. It is our sincere and considered judgment that the enactment of this legislation will be a menace to labor in this country and becomes a serious threat to our entire economy.

A discussion of some features of the bill follows:

Placement of program: The permanent placement of the farm labor function in the Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture will result in a duplication of the existing facilities available in the

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