undoubtedly would reduce corporate earnings in the absence of price increases or other forms of compensation. The industries in which these conditions prevail and the individual corporations in other industries whose gross margin is too low to absorb overtime labor charges, however, are not representative of the important group of defense manufactures examined. The study concludes that defense contract price or compensation policies should be sufficiently flexible to care for the exceptional case or for the marginal producer whose output is needed for defense, but that in general there is no need for an increase in prices or in other forms of compensation to offset the payment of overtime wages within the range of weekly hours through which overtime does not exceed 20 percent of nonovertime hours, or up to at least 48 hours per week. Generally speaking, the change in earnings that would result from accelerating production by a 20-percent increase in hours of work at full overtime rates would be small, but in the direction of improvement. With the exceptions noted, the yield on business investment would be sustained or improved without increased prices after the full absorption of overtime wage payments. Continuous Industries Some of the industries included in the study here summarized, such as metal smelting and coke-oven operation, are of the continuousprocess type. The conditions under which a continuous-process industry must resort to overtime hours and overtime payments, if there is to be an expansion of output, are somewhat different from the conditions confronting intermittent industries. A plant or an industry that is operating continuously at full capacity cannot, of course, increase its output by lengthening the man-shift, and in this respect differs from an intermittent plant or industry. Nevertheless, a continuous plant or industry rarely operates constantly at full capacity and it reduces or increases output either by a variation in the number of units in operation or by shut-downs. The average hours of work in continuous industries tend to vary with the percentage of capacity in operation, even when there is no scarcity of labor. Even when an industry is operating at full capacity, if the competition of other industries for workers makes no longer possible the maintenance of fullcapacity operation on a straight-time basis, the industry would lose less by paying overtime and thereby continuing at full capacity than by reducing operations and output for the purpose of maintaining a straight-time basis. Overtime A considerable increase in the amount of overtime is apparent from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' reports of average weekly hours. Figures for most of the 16 industries covered herein are available and are given for the year 1939 and for December 1940 in table 5. Average weekly hours reflect primarily the prevailing length of the scheduled working week but are affected by both part time and overtime, because they are calculated by dividing the total hours of work during the reporting pay-roll period (usually the week ending nearest the middle of the month) by the number of workers on the pay rolls during the same period. Usually the average hours worked are significantly lower than the scheduled hours or the full-time working week. The sharp rise in average weekly hours in most of the 26 industries indicates both a reduction of part time and an increase in overtime. The increase in overtime was, however, much greater than is indicated by the increase in average weekly hours. In 1939, maximum straight-time hours of work under the Fair Labor Standards Act were 42 per week but in December 1940 only 40 per week. TABLE 5.—Average Weekly Hours in Specified Industries, as Reported by Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1939 and December 1940 1 Industry Average weekly hours Year 1939 December 1940 Agricultural machinery and tractor manufacturing (agricultural implements, including tractors).. Copper producing and manufacturing (smelting and refining-copper, lead, and zinc) Cotton-textiles manufacturing. Electrical machinery and apparatus manufacturing.. Engine, turbine and water-wheel manufacturing (engine, turbine, water-wheel, and windmill industry). Gray-iron and malleable-iron castings manufacturing (foundry and machine-shop products industry). Lead and zinc producing and manufacturing (smelting and refining-copper, lead, and zinc) Leather boot and shoe producing and manufacturing. Machine-tool manufacturing.. Machine-tool accessory and machinists' precision tool manufacturing. Steel-castings manufacturing (blast furnaces, steel works, and rolling mills). 35.5 40.4 Steel works and rolling-mill products (blast furnaces, steel works, and rolling mills).. 35.5 40.4 Woolen and worsted manufacturing. 36.4 38.9 1 Average weekly hours for the industries in table 1 not here included are not reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2 Classification of industry group used in compiling labor statistics is not entirely uniform with Federal Trade Commission grouping in previous tables. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' designation is in parentheses. LABOR AND AGRICULTURAL MIGRATION TO CALIFORNIA, 1935–40 By SEYMOUR J. JANOW and WILLIAM GILMARTIN 1 Summary A CONTINUOUS westward migration, to California, of people obviously in need of manual employment has been noted at all borders of the State during the past 5 years. This movement reached a peak in 1936 and 1937 following the drought and dust storms in the Plains States. However, these were but peaks in an uninterrupted migration of population to California which is still in process. By far the greater number of distressed agricultural migrants have come from the South Plains, where the dislocating forces of depression, mechanization, and drought sent thousands westward in search of economic rehabilitation. Agricultural families migrating westward in search of new homes were the predominant part of the border count. However, a steadily increasing proportion has consisted of seasonal laborers moving back and forth between California and other Far Western States to temporary job opportunities in agriculture. Some of those who were undoubtedly in search of permanent resettlement have been forced to join this itinerant army. This relocation of population in response to changing economic opportunities may be expected to continue, especially since the relative attractiveness of California may be greatly enhanced by the extension of defense industries. The California and Arizona border counts will remain an important source of data on the westward migration of manual workers. Also, in a time when a relative scarcity of agricultural labor is anticipated, the border counts will continue to be valuable indexes to variations in the seasonal movement of agricultural laborers. Migration to California The more than half a million persons, in parties, judged to be in need of manual employment, who entered California by motor vehicle in the 5%1⁄2 years since July 1935, have been only a small fraction of the total traffic across the borders of the State; they were only a portion of the general population movement to California during the last decade. More than a million persons moved to California after 1930 and were still in the State in 1940, according to studies made by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Drawn from virtually all occu 1 Mr. Janow is an assistant economist, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U. S. Department of Agriculture. Mr. Gilmartin is a teaching assistant in economics at the University of California. The authors acknowledge their indebtedness for the cooperation of the California Department of Agriculture and the Arizona Department of Agriculture and Horticulture, and to Elizabeth Fine, of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics staff, who was responsible for the tabulations. pations, from servants and unskilled workers to highly trained professional people, they came from every State and in considerable numbers from as far as the large industrial centers of the Atlantic seaboard. 2 Agricultural people were by no means a majority in the total movement of population into California. Approximately one-fourth of all the newcomers had been engaged in agriculture either as farmers or farm laborers before coming to California, according to the Bureau of Agricultural Economics survey. However, the migratory agricultural workers have been the most distressed part of this migration and have attracted most attention. Old automobiles, piled high with poor household belongings and crowded with persons of all ages, have been so obvious as symbols of this migration that the term "migrants" has become almost synonomous in California with "indigents," "drought refugees," "transients," "migratory workers," and "Joads" of the Grapes of Wrath. These "migrants" arrived in California with little money and were unable to buy or rent decent housing. They built shackhouse aggregations that created new rural slums. Many became nomads and followed the far western harvests. These are the people whose problems have focused attention upon recent migrations to California. Technique of Border Count To measure this movement of distressed manual workers into California, a continuous count was established at the borders of the State in July 1935.3 Motor vehicles entering California must stop at border stations of the plant quarantine inspectors, where the cars are examined to see if they contain any fruits, vegetables, or plants which cannot be brought into the State. During this inspection no questions are asked of the car's occupants as to whether they are seeking "manual employment." However, the appearance and the household or camping equipment of agricultural and other laborers are familiar to the inspectors, and with the aid of these and other criteria they are able to tell which parties are in need of "manual employment." Inspectors report the number of persons in each vehicle, the State of car registration, and the race of the occupants. Persons traveling by bus are not counted. The figures presented in this study are useful as an index to the movements of a special kind of job seeker-one who, in the judgment For further explanation of border count see note at end of article. U. S. Congress. House of Representatives. Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. San Francisco Hearings, September 24 and 25, 1940 (pp. 2269–2326): Volume and Characteristics of Recent Migration to the Far West, by Seymour J. Janow. Washington, 1941. 3 For the greater part of the period covered, the border-count statistics present only the gross movements into the State. The flow of manual laborers out of California has not been counted except for those leaving by way of Arizona since January 16, 1941. of the border inspector, is "in need of manual employment." Because of the subjective element involved in the determination of the figures they cannot be used as a strict measure of the absolute size of the migration of manual workers to California. However, as approximately the same subjective judgments are made continuously, the border count can be regarded as a significant indicator of variations in the volume of the seasonal and annual migration of manual workers.* Origins and Characteristics Between July 1935 and December 1940 border inspectors counted 411,916 manual workers entering California in parties in cars registered in other States and 88,353 such persons returning to the State in California cars. These parties were made up of men, women, and children and included persons crossing the borders of California for many reasons and with a variety of destinations. Typically, they moved into the State in family groups. On the basis of a study of 2,648 families in migratory labor camps in California, it was found that the average family there had 2.1 persons actively in the labor market. This number is significantly high, as nearly half of the members of these families were less than 19 years of age. Almost all adults, including women, and nearly half the teen-age children were seeking employment. Most of the manual workers were migrants primarily in the sense that they have left a residence of years as farmers or as laborers in the Plains States and were migrating to establish new homes in the Far West. Some of the persons counted by the border officials were seasonal agricultural workers moving in their regular work patterns from short-time jobs in the intensive crop areas of Arizona or the Southwest to the crops of California and the Pacific Northwest. Among these were not only white American families, but also single Filipino, Mexican, and Negro men following crop harvests over as many as five or six Western States. Approximately 7 out of every 10 of the manual workers entered California in cars registered in the 15 States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Oklahoma alone was the source of nearly one-fourth of the total, and four States-Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri-were the origin of approximately 50 percent of the 52-year total. The other States most important were Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Montana, in the order named. One-tenth of these migrants came in cars which had been registered in Oregon and Washington, only 4 percent had their origin in the industrial States of the Great Lakes and the New England and Middle "Persons, members of parties in need of manual employment," is the designation used by plant quaran. tine inspectors in making this count. Hereafter, they will be referred to in this article as "manual workers." |