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Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. HAYDEN. It is not material that you could go and buy in open market?

Mr. RICHARDSON. No, sir.

Mr. HAYDEN. You have to order it in advance and have it gotten out according to specifications and plans for that specific purpose, and it would be good for nothing else?

Mr. RICHARDSON. No; it has to be in accordance with the plans and specifications, and samples of the particular material have to be submitted and approved, so that we very often have we had a case not long ago where a granite contractor got financially embarrassed and could not complete his contract, and we had to complete it for him. We could not place the order anywhere else; we could not get granite anywhere else, because that granite had been approved for that particular work, and it is difficult to get two granites that will match up just alike, so that you can not go into the open market. It is impossible, in many cases, to go into the open market and buy what would be necessary to complete a noncompleted contract; you have to get it in that particular place. It is so in millwork. Of course, in steel, you might go anywhere and place another contract for it, but you could not buy it in open market.

Mr. EMERY. In placing a contract for structural steel for building, that structural steel is just as much made for that particular building as the steel ribs of a ship?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Undoubtedly.

Mr. EMERY. You could not use the structural steel in any other building?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Not unless by a great loss in recutting. It is all made to a pattern and worked out to a thirty-second of an inch in many cases, so that every part fits exactly when it goes into the building. All you have to do is to assemble it; the work is done at the mill.

Mr. HAYDEN. The same is true of the stone and wood work?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, the granite is cut and shaped at the quarry, ready to be lifted on the derrick, even with a Lewis hole cut in it, and each particular stone is marked, and there is a chart or a setting plan, with a number for each particular stone, and each stone must go into the place where it is numbered, like a piece of a watch, sometimes, but not quite as fine.

Mr. EMERY. That is particularly true of marble and all those finer materials, is it not?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. As a matter of fact, from your knowledge, is structural steel, so called, ever made except on order; is it ever made in any form for sale except upon order and by specification?

Mr. RICHARDSON. We have never had a case in Government buildings except where it was ordered by the specifications and for a specific purpose.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it ever made and offered for sale without being manufactured by specifications at all, as a matter of commerce at all, that you know of?

Mr. RICHARDSON. No, sir. You can buy a beam or a rod, but if it is going to be used in the construction of a building, it must be manufactured or shaped or cut or bored afterwards, and you can not

do that in the open market; you have to make a contract to have that done.

The CHAIRMAN. What kind of structural steel can you buy in the open market, so far as you know?

Mr. RICHARDSON. You can not buy any that is ready to go into the building.

The CHAIRMAN. Not ready to go into the building?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Not unless it would be a plain beam that might be laid over an opening, or something like that. Even the plain flooring beam would have to be cut the length and punched, sometimes not very much work on it, but they must be laid out by a plan, punched for certain sized rods, and at certain intervals.

Mr. HOLDER. I would like to ask Mr. Richardson if he has read this bill?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I have not read all of the bill.

Mr. HOLDER. There is one section that bears upon the subject that you have just been referring to which reads like this:

That nothing in this act shall apply to contracts for such materials or articles as may usually be bought in the open market, whether made to conform to particular specifications or not.

That is an exception clause. That lets you out of some of the difficulties that you have been contending against.

Mr. RICHARDSON. No; I would not think so. As I understand the portion of the bill that you have read, it does not apply to such articles as can be bought in open market.

Mr. HOLDER. "Whether made to conform to particular specifications or not;" that is specific.

Mr. RICHARDSON. That would not affect parts of a building at all, because you can not buy them. You can not buy parts of a building that is made by a plan, that is to be erected under the instructions of an architect in accordance with specifications. You can not go out into the open market and buy anything. That would apply to that building. If there is any finished part to it at all you could not find anything that would fit. That is in Government contracts. Even if you could find it so they would not permit it to be used. You have to have the article prepared in many cases, such as the manufacture of steel. You can not manufacture it until the inspector has inspected the material before it is manufactured, so that you could not go out into the open market for steel work in a Government building and buy it, even if it was already in shape and ready to be put in there, because the material that the beams were made out of must go under a test before the contractor can make it.

Mr. PAYSON. As to tensile strength, and all that sort of thing? Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir; it must be accepted and approved. Mr. HASKINS. You could go into the open market and buy lathing for roofs and flooring?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, sir; flooring; but you could not buy roofing. Of course, you might buy stock for roofing, such as tin, but 99 per cent of the contractors who build public buildings make their contracts with some man who makes that a special line of business, just the same as the boiler man, a man who manufactures and places that tin work on the roof of the building. That is also under contract. While you could buy tin, or material, by the sheets in the box and carry it to the buildings and employ tinners to put the tin roof on

while that would be quite possible, it could not be so with granite or steel work, or such things as that.

Mr. EMERY. Mr. Richardson, I would like to ask one question with respect to the question asked by Mr. Rainey as to the policy of an eight-hour day. It is a fact, is it not, that the eight-hour day in private employment is generally with building trades?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes; it is.

Mr. EMERY. Do you know of any instance in private employment, whether in the form of a collective bargain or otherwise, where it is agreed not to work more than eight hours, or where overtime is not usual and customary?

Mr. RICHARDSON. Not in private employment.

Mr. EMERY. That is all I speak of. Of course, in public work we are prohibited by law. I say, is it customary and usual to provide for overtime under trade agreements, or what we term the "open shop?"

Mr. RICHARDSON. In all trade agreements with the union they insist on that being one of the articles that is inserted in the agreement, that overtime shall be paid for at such a rate, and holidays and Sundays, and so forth, would be paid for at such a rate. That is always provided. There is always a provision, in any trade agreement that I have ever seen, for overtime, so that you could work your men overtime or not, as you saw fit.

Mr. DAVENPORT. Did you ever know of any agreement in private work where it was tipulated that they should not work overtime?

Mr. RICHARDSON. I do not think there ever was one; I have never heard of one.

STATEMENT OF MR. E. C. GRAHAM, OF WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. GRAHAM. I am the president of the National Electric Supply Company, of Washington. Our business has been built up largely on Government business. I have not given this bill close study, but there are a few things in it which seem to be so indefinite we would not know where we stood if the matter came up. The manner of furnishing supplies to the Government is, for instance, an exception. A question comes up in my mind, What are supplies? If we had a contract, as we have at the Soldiers' Home at the present for $90,000, including the installation of a certain cable system, that is supplies to a certain extent, and yet there is labor in connection with it; it can not be put in without labor, and it seems to come under the conditions of the bill, as I see it. A cable is a commercial article, but entirely special for the particular job. It could not be bought in the open market, and we must enter into a contract with the General Electric Company, for the cable.

Mr. PAYSON. Under the specifications for the place where it is to go? Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir. So it would seem that we would be responsible in that case for the material furnished by the manufacturer; it would be beyond our contract to prevent it or to know anything about it, and this cable is, perhaps, a very small amount of a lot of stuff they are making. There might be something in the ground that would necessitate ten hours' work, but we would be penalized every day we worked the labor ten hours. That applies to switchboards. You can not go into the open market and buy switchboards; they are not stock articles, except a very few types. That stuff out there was

worth in dollars and cents perhaps $2,000. The mechanics are working nine and ten hours on it, to the best of my knowledge; on particular parts of it they surely are. The manufacturer who makes that stuff makes but little Government stuff, and he is on a nine-hour basis. In that way it would affect our material. Of course, as I understand it, we furnish material to the Government, as we have to this building, large quantities of lamps, which is excluded in this, but suppose we were furnishing up here in the Dome some lamps in connection with the contract, or the wire that went into it would be the same; it would be such a mixed-up affair that we would not know where we were in the

matter.

Mr. EMERY. Would you be willing to undertake a contract in a large amount, become a guarantor under penalty that the work specified under the specifications fixed by the Government would be done in each instance by laborers or mechanics who under no circumstances worked over eight hours a day?

Mr. GRAHAM. I could not and be honest with my company.
Mr. EMERY. Would you take that risk?

Mr. GRAHAM. No; I would not. Permit me to give an illustration. I would no more accept a contract of that kind than I would accept the contract for the installation of an electric system on a building here in town under course of construction where the general contractor submitted to me a specification in which he stated that the mechanics you employ on this work must be satisfactory to the other mechanics on the job." It is well known what they meant by it. They wanted union men, but it was such a clause that they could employ any kind of men they wanted; we could employ union men and the others be nonunion and refuse to work with them. It was too general. The eight-hour maximum in Washington has been established, you might say, from the fact that the Government institutions here were working eight hours. Our workmen who work on buildings, work eight hours a day, the same as other building mechanics. The men in our shop, between 15 and 20, are not union men, and never have been. To prevent them from coming under control of somebody else besides our concern, I gave them the same rate per hour that we pay the mechanics on the outside, and I gave them their preference of working eight hours at 50 cents an hour or nine hours at 50 cents an hour. The result was that they adopted a nine-hour day in the shop. The men want to work overtime every time they get a chance. An illustration of that is that if anybody has a rush in town, the mechanics want to work for him. In general, that is all I can say on it, unless there are some questions I can answer.

Mr. DAVENPORT. Do they seem to be injured by working nine hours rather than eight?

Mr. GRAHAM. No; they no not; they are better men. I would rather have nine-hour men than eight-hour men; the nine-hour man man is a better workman the next day; he has a better head on him; he has not dissipated so long.

Mr. EMERY. Do you find, as a matter of fact, in the skilled labor you employ or have employed, they can accomplish as much, normally speaking, under an eight-hour day as they can under a nine-hour day? Mr. GRAHAM. They can not, absolutely. At the time of the last inaugural ball that work necessarily had to be done in a very short. time. The room was turned over to the contractor one week.

Mr. PAYSON. You mean the Pension Office.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir; the Pension Office. The carpenters and other mechanics worked as much as eighteen hours a day, sometimes. I personally supervised the installation of the electrical work in there, and our men worked twelve hours a day for a full week, some of them, and in many cases eighteen hours. Their unit of work per hour was just as great for the full time as it would have been for the eight hours. In fact, if you take a lot of mechanics and you start them in on work, it takes them an hour or so to get in on the particular work they are working on unless it is the same work day after day. If they worked four hours before they start work, it is natural that they can make more headway as they get more used to the work, and at that time we could have employed every man in town in our business. They worked for other people in the daytime and wanted to work for us at night. It was not a case of men who were out of work, either, but they wanted to work.

Mr. DAVENPORT. Were they union men?

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVENPORT. In your experience, did you ever know of a union man to be unwilling to work overtime for overtime pay?

Mr. GRAHAM. I never heard of it.

Mr. DAVENPORT. Do you think that a law which deprives them of that privilege would be satisfactory or pleasing to them, as far as you know?

I

Mr. GRAHAM. To the individual, it would not, absolutely not. have asked men, "Do you want to work a little longer? We are rushed now; if you want to run an hour longer for a week or two, you can do it." He said, "Well, if it is on work so the union will not know it, I would be glad to do it." I have never had an individual say he did not want to work overtime. I have been in business here sixteen years in the District, and I have never heard any complaints of a ninehour day, and we used to work nine hours when I first went into the business; except that they have more work to go around if they only work eight hours and that is the theory, but the claim that a man can do more work in eight hours than he can in nine has not worked out. Mr. PAYSON. One question. In these days is not competition among contractors so sharp that in justice to the contractor himself he should know beyond question exactly what he is undertaking to do, without assuming any uncertain risks of construction in the contract that he enters into?

Mr. GRAHAM. Most assuredly, he should have everything clear. As every year goes by we see contractors who close their doors and go out of business. We people who have been fairly successful in business say, "He did not know how to run his business." But it comes right back to the point you have raised there, that he did not know by experience that he could not take that risk, and some individual on the outside who backed him financially is the man who suffers.

Mr. EMERY. Drawing on your experience, Mr. Graham, what would be your own attitude and that of your firm toward future Government contracts if you were required to make them under the conditions fixed by this act, where you were not permitted to work overtime and where you had to become the guarantor of subcontractors who supplied articles under specifications fixed by the Government?

Mr. GRAHAM. We would first try to get the subcontractor to give us a bond that he would live up to the conditions of the contract, which,

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