Mr. DAVENPORT. When you speak of an eight-hour day, do you speak of a rigid eight-hour day, or a standard day?

Mr. FLETCHER. I mean any length of day, sir, that tends to increase the cost of our production to-day will operate against the people of the United States whose labors enter into that construction.

Mr. DAVENPORT. When you say you are in favor of an eight-hour day, you mean eight hours as a standard?

Mr. FLETCHER. I mean an eight-hour day in the sense that we have a nine-hour day now. I do not believe in this bill being prohibitive, to limit the work to eight hours if we choose to work longer. That is not fair. It is in restraint of trade. It is in restraint of the output of labor. It is to limit the output of a plant. Our money is in the business, and we can not take it out. Now, if you were to enact this bill, the Government would come along and, in effect, say "You can not do more than so much with your plant.' That would be practically taking money away from us.

These gentlemen who deal with laboring men know that laboring men like overtime. That is my experience of thirty years. If they do not get their share of it, there is trouble. They will flock to those shops where there is the most overtime; that is, to the repair shops and the dry docks.

Now another difficulty presents itself. There are times-like those last year, or the eighteen months past, 1906 and 1907, up until this depression that has come upon us began-there are times when our yards are pretty busy. During that time the shipyards generally were fairly busy. I do not mean to say they were crowded with work, but as a class all sorts of manufacturing plants were busy, so that there was a great demand for tool hands-men that run lathes, and planers, and machines of various kinds. We had some work under way, two turbine steamers, the Yale and the Harvard, that we wanted to get finished. It was a new business, and we tried to organize a double shift of men, because we wanted to finish the boats in time to have them running that season, which they did not do because we did not get them finished, and because we wanted to produce as much as we could with our plant in a given time. That effort failed; we failed in that because we could not find enough skilled tool hands.

The way we met that condition and got the boats floating early in September, instead of on the 1st of July, was by working what we called a "day and a half," and we did that for many months. We paid our men two or three hours longer, and they got a half day's pay for the extra time, and in that way we increased the output of our plant. I was satisfied to do it, and we did do it. It was a particular kind of work that we were on, and we could not very well introduce two sets of men. One man in one shift might spoil some work and lay it on the other. The conditions were such that it was beneficial to us and to the men to have them work this extra half day. Now, if that had been Government work and we had been under the heavy demurrage which the Government exacts in all its contracts that I know of for failure to make prompt delivery, it would have been difficult. You know, in many of the Government specifications it is said that particular attention will be paid to the time of delivery. In other words, time is a consideration in addition to the price; the time when you deliver the goods. I have a specification here to-day

with that very clause in it. Now, if our plant is limited in its production, then you are going to add to your fixed charges, because we produce just so many thousand dollars' worth of work less per year at the same fixed charges, and it would have the effect virtually of increasing the fixed charges on what we do produce. By this bill you would limit the production or earning capacity of the men who work for us. You would make it impossible for them to work overtime, no matter how much benefit they would get from it for themselves and for the use of their families. Therefore in that respect it would be wrong, because it is a discrimination against the earning power of the individual, whether he be employer or employee, and it is limiting the amount of production of the capital invested.

I hardly know what else I can say, gentlemen, in regard to this bill. Mr. GOMPERS. Mr. Chairman, have I the permission of the committee to ask Mr. Fletcher a question?

Mr. PAYSON. Before you begin your side I would like to ask Mr. Fletcher a question.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well. You will have opportunity, Mr. Gompers, when your time comes.

Mr. PAYSON. Mr. Fletcher, how many men have you?

Mr. FLETCHER. We have employed now only 150 men. We have had, during the period to which I have referred, 600 men.

Mr. PAYSON. What is the character of the cooperation between the employers and the men as to the hours of labor and the compensation they have been getting there? Are the relations pleasant or otherwise?

Mr. FLETCHER. They are pleasant.

Mr. PAYSON. There is no friction about working more than eight hours a day?

Mr. FLETCHER. There is no trouble.

In our business there is another peculiar thing, showing how particular conditions of business and localities govern these things. In the harbor of New York we work nine hours. That is a day's work. We work eight hours on repair vessels. That reduction came a few years ago from ten hours to nine hours. At many competitive points on the Atlantic seaboard I should judge, from statements which I see made in these books, that they work ten hours, as, for example, at Cramps. Now, Cramps are only 90 miles away from us, and they pay less wages. You can see from that, gentlemen, the peculiar condition of the trade I represent.

Now, I started out to answer a question here a few minutes ago about the conditions of the shipyards and plants. Neafie & Levy's plant is, or was, in the hands of a receiver. Harlan & Hollingsworth's plant I know is not busy. It was dull for a long time. I noticed also Pusey & Jones's plant as I came down on the cars, and from the condition of things on the stocks I conclude there is nothing much doing there.

Mr. RAINEY. How large a plant is that?

Mr. FLETCHER. It is quite a large plant. Pusey & Jones, and Jackson & Sharpe, and

Mr. HOLDER. There are peculiar conditions down there in Wilmington, are there not?

Mr. FLETCHER. That condition was in existence for some years. It was so in 1906 and 1907. We happened to be busy in our plant for an exceptional reason, but

Mr. HOLDER. When Harlan & Hollingsworth, at Wilmington, was existing on its own individual basis, the same as W. H. Fletcher & Co., at Hoboken, you had a live competitor, and the work turned out from that yard was considered to be work of a high standard. Since the ownership of that yard is changed, however, the work has deteriorated and decreased, and therefore your comparison, in my opinion, is hardly fair.

Mr. FLETCHER. Harlan & Hollingsworth's place changed hands. Mr. Gause and the others sold out their interests to the shipbuilding trust. The shipbuilding trust, as we all know, was a failure. Mr. HOLDER. It put them all "on the bum. "

Mr. FLETCHER. It was taken over by Mr. Schwab, who is one of the owners, but that has not taken Harlan & Hollingsworth out of the market.

Mr. HOLDER. It has reduced their standard of work. Mr. FLETCHER. I do not know that that is so. I would not say so, even if I knew it to be a fact. It is not good policy to talk that way about your competitors. It is not good business judgment. But Harlan & Hollingsworth have built a number of boats for the harbor of New York, ferryboats, and the result has been that there is a plant with a certain corps working in it, and certain fixed charges that are going on every day and every night, and therefore they have bid low, far lower than you might say the actual cost was, because whatever they can get back on those fixed charges is a reduction of the loss which they are obliged to incur, and that is their measure of profit at the present time. You understand what I

mean?

Mr. HOLDER. Yes, sir.

Mr. FLETCHER. Now, I am not sure whether the Harlan & Hollingsworth Company built any ferryboats for the municipal ferry of New York or not. I know they did build some ferryboats for the Erie Railroad and also for the Jersey Central Railroad. That is the class of work that we particularly do, and they have been competitors with us, and they have come in with lower bids than we could take; and people who have patronized them heretofore have gone back to them again and given them orders, and that disproves the statement you make to the effect that they do not do good work. But, taking the shipbuilding industry as a whole, excluding the Great Lakes that is an inland sea; it is a thing by itself-on the Atlantic coast you know, if you know anything about the subject at all, that there is almost no commercial shipping to-day. Just think of the United States Government and the peculiar position it was in when it wanted to get colliers recently to furnish our battle ships with coal.

Mr. HOLDER. You have not answered that question I put to you, Mr. Fletcher.

Mr. FLETCHER. What was that?

Mr. HOLDER. That was, that if the business has become so utterly demoralized as you and other shipbuilders have testified, why is it that the capital invested in the business has almost doubled in five

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years, according to the statement of the Commissioner of Navigation in an official document that has been quoted from here?

Mr. FLETCHER. I do not know that I can answer that except by saying this, that people have been led to put money into the shipbuilding business either by misconception on their own part or on account of misinformation from others. The Fore River Shipbuilding Company was established with capital furnished by a man, I think, who made his money out of the typewriter business. He made his money in that business and put his money into the Fore River Shipbuilding Company, and then went out of it practically a

pauper.

Mr. PAYSON. That was Mr. Watson.

Mr. FLETCHER. That plant could not live to-day if it did not get Government work. The plant which this gentleman [referring to Judge Payson] represents at Newport News could not possibly live without Government work. The Cramp Shipbuilding Company would close its doors without Government work, and I do not believe the Bath Iron Works in Maine, which is a smaller concern comparatively, would find its business worth running if they did not get Government contracts.

I am It is

Mr. HOLDER. Are you not working on Government work? Mr. FLETCHER. I think possibly on only one contract. down here to try to get a contract that I fear I can not get. the second time I have done so, and it is absolutely because we have no other work to do. Under ordinary conditions we prefer not to work for the Government.

Mr. EMERY. You stated a moment ago something as to the number of men you employ individually, and you said you appear here in a representative capacity. Can you state the number of men employed by the associations you represent?

Mr. FLETCHER. No, sir. I pay very little attention to the associations. I was asked to come down here, and I felt it was a subject upon which anyone who had any knowledge on it, however slight, would be welcome to come down here and make known his views to those who are here to legislate on that particular thing.

But I might say this: When I speak of our own plant and the number of men that we individually employ, that does not represent the number of men that are indirectly employed through us. For instance, we contract for a vessel complete. We submit that contract to some shipbuilder, and then the contract for the journey work, the plumbing, we contract for with some journeyman individually, and the work is done and brought to our works, and there the journey work, the painting and plumbing, is done. To-day we have two vessels on which the work is stopped because of the financial condition, and one is about to be launched, and, inasmuch as there were about a thousand men busy in the various parts of the work on those two vessels, that has thrown a good many men out of employment. The work has been stopped because the money can not be raised to go on with it. That is due to lack of ability to raise money, and construction has stopped for the moment.

Mr. EMERY. Have you noticed that if this bill should become a law you would become a guarantor not only on all work done by you, but on all work done by your subcontractors, for the observance of the terms of the law?

Mr. FLETCHER. I meant to mention that. I spoke about our using the products of the various mills simply as raw material. I want to say right here that we would be in a great predicament if we took a Government contract under the eight-hour law and it should be ruled that that should apply to a product of the United States Steel · Corporation. For instance, as to bar, iron we might be exempt under the provision on the ground that is was purchasable in the open market, but we probably would not be on the castings that we have made. That would cause at least confusion and doubt, and I fear it would be construed that they did not come within the exemption of the law, and we might be compelled to guarantee that the United States Steel Corporation should only work eight hours while they were rolling our plates, and the chances would be that we might not be able to buy the plates unless the Government would be willing to relieve us, and it has never shown itself a very easy taskmaster. Mr. GOMPERS. Would you have any objection to stating whether you employ a smaller number of men now than you did six months ago?

Mr. FLETCHER. Oh, we do. I have stated that we have now only about 150 men, whereas six or eight months ago we had 600 men.

Mr. GOMPERS. In the first part of your statement to the committee you objected to the passage of this bill, and one of the grounds you gave was that it was a discrimination against one class of employers in favor of another.

Mr. FLETCHER. Yes.

Mr. GOMPERS. Would you please state in whose favor such a bill, if enacted into law, would discriminate?

Mr. FLETCHER. Yes, sir. If, as the chairman has said, the army coat is exempt because it can be purchased in the open market, that exempts the seamstress who might work twelve or fourteen or even eighteen hours, whereas the law would prohibit a machinist or a blacksmith or any other artisan in the employ of a shipbuilder from working more than eight hours under any conditions. It would allow the man who did any part of the work in the fabrication of a button, for instance, to work as much as he liked, whereas it would prohibit the pattern maker from working more than eight hours.

Mr. GOMPERS. Then your idea would be that the man who would work twelve, fourteen, or sixteen hours a day would be placed in a favored position?

Mr. FLETCHER. In other words, he could work longer and make more money out of his labor than if he worked a lesser number of hours.

Mr. GOMPERS. Did you not say that if the eight-hour day was established the employer might have demanded of him or be required to pay the same wages as he now pays for nine or ten hours?

Mr. FLETCHER. That has been history, sir, and that is why I make the statement. When we reduced the hours-you know when it was better than I do, eight or ten or twelve years ago-from ten to nine, we paid the same wages.

Mr. GOMPERS. Would not that indicate, then, that the wages would not necessarily be reduced if the hours of labor were reduced? Mr. FLETCHER. Yes, sir.

Mr. GOMPERS. Where is the discrimination, then, in favor of the man who works longer hours?