if the Vermont Marble Company or the Ellis Granite Company or any of the other granite companies in Vermont are working their men nine hours a day, and they have a contract, for instance, as they did, to furnish the granite to build the capitol at Harrisburg and Milwaukee and other large buildings, you could not negotiate with them at all, because you work your men but eight hours a day, while they are working theirs nine hours; they would have to come to an eight-hour basis?

Mr. RICHARDSON. That would be the condition.

Mr. HASKINS. And again, you would be responsible for any penalties if your subcontractors permitted their men to work over eight hours a day?

Mr. RICHARDSON. That is as I understand the bill; yes, sir.

Mr. HASKINS. I understand it so.

Mr. EMERY. May I ask a question in connection with that, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Mr. EMERY. Mr. Richardson, I want to ask you, in view of the conditions stated by Mr. Haskins, would you, as a contractor, undertake in the future to enter into Government contracts where you had to be the guarantor of all the subcontractors under such conditions as Mr. Haskins describes, being a guarantor under penalty? Mr. RICHARDSON. No: we would not dare to do it. There would be very few people, if any, who could give bond under such conditions. I think it would be, as I said, suicidal for a man to attempt it. Mr. EMERY. You understand under the bill you become the guarantor of the subcontractor?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I understand it.

Mr. EMERY. So the penalty would attach to you for each violation of the law on his part?

Mr. RICHARDSON. We could not control those subcontractors, and right in the beginning it would drive a great many of them out of the competition; they would refuse. Some of those which have been mentioned, the Vermont Marble Company, for instance, I believe would refuse to bid on a job under these conditions.

Mr. EMERY. Would not that also have an effect on the bidding on public buildings for instance, on the public library-of some of the foreign companies, Mexican, for example, supplying onyx and fine marble?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I have never had a case direct with a foreign supply house; I have had contracts with American contractors who had contracts with Italians for Italian marble.

Mr. PAYSON. That is, two degrees removed from you?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. PAYSON. A subcontractor under your subcontractor?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir. I never had any contract direct with any foreign company.

The CHAIRMAN. We understand, of course, then that this testimony on this bill is being offered on the presumption that its construction warrants the statement that it would apply in the cases named? Mr. PAYSON. Oh, yes.

Mr. HAYDEN. I would like to ask a question. Do I understand you to take this position, that this bill, if enacted, would tend to establish a uniform eight-hour day throughout the country; or would it tend to

make firms now dealing with the Government, or which might deal with it, refuse to take Government work at all?

Mr. RICHARDSON. It would tend to make the firms refuse to take Government work at all. If it could be held in force long enough, then it would apply the other way, but in the beginning, or right on the start, it would force firms who are now competing on Government work in those lines to decline to bid.

Mr. HAYDEN. And some firms would make a specialty of Government work, and do nothing else?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Some, perhaps, would do that. There might be some cases where they would do that, where the job, we will say, for instance, a large job of granite, for example, where it was big enough, a quarry might agree to enter into that contract, but they would eliminate all their other business.

Mr. HAYDEN. For the time being.

Mr. RICHARDSON. For the time being. Now, on a small building of $200,000 or $300,000 they would not do that; they could not afford to; it would drive them out of all their other business. They could not compete. The competition is too close for them to compete where there is an hour's difference in the day, and it would simply drive them out of the other. They would have to confine themselves to these Government contracts, and they would not take them at all unless they were large enough to warrant the risk.

Mr. PAYSON. It would be an abandonment of the commercial business for the time being?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir; they would be compelled to abandon it, because they could not bid low enough to get it in 1 case out of 100, because the hour's difference would shut them out of competition.

Mr. HAYDEN. That is, work done on a rigid eight-hour restriction, like the one provided for in the bill, would make work more costly and delay its performance?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Undoubtedly.

Mr. HAYDEN. You are convinced of that?

Mr. RICHARDSON. There is no question about that.

Mr. HAYDEN. What proportion of your work is done for the Government; can you state that roughly?

Mr. RICHARDSON. For the past five or six years almost 50 per cent of it.

Mr. HAYDEN. About 50 per cent?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes.

Mr. HAYDEN. And you would feel obliged to abandon that work if this bill were enacted?

It

Mr. RICHARDSON. Oh, there is no question about that. Mr. HAYDEN. In order to save your commercial work? Mr. RICHARDSON. I would refuse absolutely to compete. would be folly for me to compete; I could not get a bonding company in the United States to go on my bond if I had one of those contracts under those conditions, because they would know it would be utterly impossible for me to complete, in any reasonable time, a contract under those conditions.

Mr. HAYDEN. You could not control your subcontractors?
Mr. RICHARDSON. I could not control them.

Mr. HAYDEN. Are you able to state, approximately, how many subcontractors you have on a building, we will say, costing $500,000? Mr. RICHARDSON. Probably 12 to 15.

Mr. HAYDEN. And where are such subcontractors located, with reference to Washington?

Mr. RICHARDSON. All over the United States. In our locality that we bid in they are from Atlanta, Ga., to New Hampshire and Maine; and from Chicago this way. Our subcontractors cover that territory.

Mr. HAYDEN. The entire territory?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir. We confine our Government work almost entirely to the New England States and the South, and we have never gone West farther than Pittsburg with any particular Government work, so that we do not get any of the Western contracts.

Mr. HASKINS. Do you employ a large number of laborers?
Mr. RICHARDSON. At times we do; yes, sir.

Mr. HASKINS. Do you employ them in the city of Washington?
Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. HASKINS. What are the hours of labor a day?

Mr. RICHARDSON. The mechanics' are eight hours; the laborers', the ordinary laborers' are nine hours.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that on public buildings?

Mr. RICHARDSON. That is on all our buildings here; the mechanics' hours here on the buildings in Washington are eight hours a day. In fact, all of our work on the building itself, whether it is for the Government of for private parties, is eight hours with our skilled mechanics. Mr. DAVENPORT. Do they sometimes work overtime; not on the public buildings, but on private buildings?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Invariably; yes, sir; a great deal of it.

Mr. DAVENPORT. This bill would cut all that out if it was applied to all work done in preparing material for the building; it would neither require nor permit any person to work more than eight hours?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I understand so; yes, sir. You see, there are times when we are compelled to work overtime in order to carry our contracts through. We may have a piece of stone condemned or a dozen pieces, as the case may be; after they have been made and delivered to the building they may be damaged, and in order to get through with our work it is necessary to work the men overtime on that. It is not always convenient to work two shifts unless your plant is fitted up for that purpose. So you continue to work an hour and a half or two hours or until dark, as the case may be, as long as the men can see to work, on that piece of work, in order to hurry it through.

Mr. DAVENPORT. Do not these men value the privilege of working overtime for overtime pay?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Undoubtedly they do; they covet it.

Mr. PAYSON. Get that clear in the record.

Mr. EMERY. They seek overtime frequently, do they not?
Mr. RICHARDSON. They do; yes, sir.

Mr. DAVENPORT. And if this act was passed and cut them off from any such privilege, do you think they would be in favor of it?

Mr. RICHARDSON. No; the majority of them, I think, would not be. I do not think they would be. We have cases here in Washington on our private work where our men have repeatedly left us and gone to work on buildings, such as the Fuller Construction Company is erecting, where they were working overtime and nights and Sundays; they leave us where they have been working for us perhaps for years.

and go to work for the Fuller Construction Company in order to get that overtime; sometimes make two weeks' pay in one.

A man will Mr. DAVENPORT. So that the working man is not absolutely devoid of sense, then.

do that on every opportunity he can get.

Mr. EMERY. That is particularly true of trades that are not employed constantly throughout the year, is it not? I mean in trades that are not employed, for instance, twelve months in a year; for instance, structural iron workers, as a rule, seek overtime, do they not, during the time when they are able to work?

Mr. RICHARDSON. You see with the mechanics on the building they are not, as a rule, employed constantly; they are employed by the day or by the hour, and when we get slack we are compelled to lay them off, and when we get busy we pile them on and sometimes work a week and then they are off. We never hire our mechanics for any longer period than a day unless it might be a superintendent or something like that, so that I am speaking of a man who works for a day, not about a man who has a yearly job, as in factories.

Mr. EMERY. Then whenever employment is slack, the tendency to seek overtime work becomes greater on the part of the building trade employees, does it not?

Mr. RICHARDSON. It would naturally do so.

Mr. EMERY. And in that way they endeavor to compensate for the period of time when they may be out of employment; is that it? Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir; every hour they could get in would help to make up for this loss.

Mr. HASKINS. Your observation has been somewhat extensive; what do you say of this claim that is made sometimes, that a man will perform for his employer as great an amount of labor in eight hours as he will in nine or ten hours?

Mr. RICHARDSON. No; that is not so.

Mr. HASKINS. And you make that statement from your extensive observation of laborers?

Mr. RICHARDSON. In our line of business; there may be certain lines of business, perhaps we might say glass blowing, where they could do as much in eight hours as they could in ten, but not in the mechanical line-in the building business.

The CHAIRMAN. From what you have said about your employment of men, how much of it relates to your private employment and how much to employment upon the public buildings?

Mr. EMERY. I think, Mr. Chairman, he said a while ago that about 50 per cent was Government work.

The CHAIRMAN. It is in the statement that the time of mechanics is eight hours and the time of laborers nine hours. Does that refer to your work on public buildings of the United States or the District of Columbia, or upon private employment?

Mr. RICHARDSON. The nine hours refers exclusively to private work; on public buildings it is all eight hours whether it is skilled mechanic labor or whether it is unskilled.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, in that statement, you are simply talking about your private employment, and not about the public employ

ment?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Regarding the nine hours, yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. So that, as to public buildings, those laborers work only eight hours?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. HASKINS. All you have said about the effects of the bill is based upon the idea that it applies to all the subcontractors that you have named, like those who furnish granite and steel and nails and lath and every other kind of stuff, wherever you get it?

Mr. RICHARDSON. No; not necessarily; referring to nails or laths, it is a rare case where we make subcontracts for such things as nails. Sometimes we would make contracts for lath, and it would apply in that, but not in all cases. A great many of those things we buy without any contract; when we need them we order from some house we are dealing with.

Mr. HASKINS. You have subcontracts for heating and lighting, have you not?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes; I was referring to subcontractors who supplied us with a price to do a certain thing and we entered into a contract with those contractors.

The CHAIRMAN. What kind of a thing?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Stone, iron, wood work, sheet-metal work.
Mr. PAYSON. Heating?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Heating.

Mr. PAYSON. Electric-light work?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Electric-light work.

The CHAIRMAN. One moment, Judge; you are intermixing things that are under established law along with things that are not.

Mr. PAYSON. I beg your pardon; I do not think any of those things come in under existing law. I think a contract for electric-lighting machines made with a man in New York to go into the District building down here does not come within the law.

Mr. HAYDEN. The Attorney-General has so held.

Mr. PAYSON. And I am glad to be indorsed by so distinguished a man as the Attorney-General. That is my opinion of the law; is it not yours, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. My opinion is that the putting in of the pipes for heating and the wires for electric lighting and all the other things that are done upon the building are under the old penal statutes.

Mr. PAYSON. Fixing, that is one thing; and furnishing, that is another. The electric motor or the odds and ends that go to make up a steam-heating plant-the boilers, pipes, raidators, and all that sort of thing-I agree with you that the fixing of the things may come under the law, but the contract for the furnishing I do not believe does.

The CHAIRMAN. Your contention is that that contract would come under the proposed law?

Mr. PAYSON. My contention would be, in that kind of a case, yes. The CHAIRMAN. I only want to show in the record that the testimony only bears upon the situation at all unless the act applies to the cases named.

Mr. PAYSON. Undoubtedly; speaking for myself, I agree with you. Mr. HAYDEN. Mr. Richardson, the structural steel, the stone, and the wood work that you have referred to as procured by subcontractors is all specially designed for a particular building, is it not?