have the utmost regard for both the sincerity and the intelligence of Judge McCammon, who appeared as one of the counsel in opposition to this bill; but I think it is a misapprehension of the facts, or my intellect is so dull that I can not comprehend the meaning of plain terms. He and I seem to have gained different notions of what Mr. Cramp said before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor at its hearing upon this very bill in the last Congress. Permit me to read from his testimony:

[Page 23 of Senate hearing.]

"The CHAIRMAN. I will put two or three questions to Mr. Cramp. The first question is, as to the contentment of the employees; the second, as to the practicability of letting subcontracts under the application of the eight-hour law; and thet hird, as to the possibility of replacing shifts of men.

"Mr. CRAMP. In my experience, which runs over a period of a good many yearsfrom the time I was 19 years old-I never knew one of our men to advocate this question of eight hours for a day's labor.

"Mr. PERKINS. How many men have you in your employment?

"Mr. CRAMP. About 5.000 now. We will have 7,000, perhaps, in a short time, if there is no disturbing element introduced. I have been in the business as a workingman, as a manager, and as an officer of the company, in one way or the other, since I was 19 years of age.

This is really where I ought to have begun:

(Continuing.)

"Mr. GEAR. You have recently done some work for Russia?

"Mr. CRAMP. Yes. In this Russian business we had to compete with Germany and France and, to some extent, with England.

"Mr. GEAR. Would the passage of this law interfere with the construction of those ships?

"Mr. CRAMP. Yes, sir; we could not have one set of men working ten hours a day and another set of men working eight hours a day for the same pay.

"Mr. GEAR. You would have to apply the same rule of labor to all of them?

"Mr. CRAMP. Yes, sir; we competed with Germany and France. The minister of finance in Russia desired that France should build these ships that we are going to take. He said France was a great holder of the Russian loan. His argument was an exceedingly good one. The French bankers came there, and the shipbuilders themselves came. They wanted a share of the Russian work, and so the minister of marine of Russia invited the friends of these bankers to send in proposals. The French wanted six months to prepare the drawings, to give the price, for the ships we are going to undertake to deliver in thirty months. We gave the price without a drawing, simply having a letter covering the general specifications, and we are going on with the work and with the drawings at the same time.

'As we have our own way in the work and no retarding inspection methods, we expect to deliver the ship in thirty months. The French wanted five years, and the Germans and Russians wanted more money and longer time."

Mr. MCCAMMON. Yau had better finish that paragraph.

Mr. GOMPERS. The Germans wanted more money and a longer time. (Continuing to read from testimony:)

"We secured these vessels because we could build them at a little less than they could and in a shorter time; but if we are to have an outside interference with our business by people who have no responsibility-a business that has taken three or four generations to build up-we might as well go out and get a basket with a pole and nail on the end of it."

Before continuing another question that has been asked and answered, let me say that you will observe the first part is a statement of fact—what he did secure-and the other is a matter of opinion that might occur. My statement in saying that Cramp, in the testimony and in the argument made before the Senate Committee on Labor and Education last year, admitted that he could and did manufacture ships at a lesser cost and in one-half the time that the French shipbuilders could construct these vessels, notwithstanding the fact that the French workmen in that line of trade worked longer hours, was based on that evidence.

Mr. FURUSETH. Twelve hours.

Mr. GOMPERS. Twelve hours, and receive lesser pay; that it did not destroy his opportunity to build these ships, but, on the contrary, gave him the opportunity, and my statement was correct and Judge McCammon in disputing that fell in error.

Mr. MCCAMMON. I will only say this, with the permission of the committee: That Mr. Cramp has informed me-informed me shortly after the testimony was published, and has informed me a half dozen times since-of his entire willingness to explain what he meant; what he did say was (and he has told me that he forgot to cover this

point when he was before this committee) that he would be out his money a less time, because he could build the ship in less time; he would be out the money that was involved in the purchase of material less time than either the French or the German or the Russian Governments. Therefore he could afford to bid less. It was a question of time entirely; whereas the French wanted five years the Cramps could build in thirty months, and for that reason they could afford to take the contract at less, or a little less, as he expressed it. It was a question of time and not a question of money. The CHAIRMAN. About what was the cost of one of those ships?

Mr. McCAMMON. The Russian ships?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; in a general way.

Mr. McCAMMON. I have no means of knowing, but a battle ship costs between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000, I suppose.

Mr. GOMPERS. Let me say that the statement is in exact accord with our contention; that is, our contention that a reduction in the hours of labor means better workmen, quicker workmen; that that means brighter workmen; that it means better machinery; that it means machinery driven at a greater velocity; that it means getting out the work in shorter time, and hence you can produce cheaper and drive every long-hour country out of the world's market. If that were not a fact, where would we be in the competition with China, with the products of China? Where would be be in competition with that 6 cents a day labor with our $2 or $3 a day workmen? What we object to in the Chinaman is that they shall come here and deteriorate our manhood; but in the world's market they can not hold a candle to the smallest pigmy among the Americans.

But I will read briefly further from this testimony. Mr. Perkins asked Mr. Cramp another question (reading):

"Mr. PERKINS. You have also built ships for the Japanese Government, have you

not?

"Mr CRAMP. Yes. That was lower by 20 per cent than Armstrong; and the Germans were bidding also."

Armstrong, supposed to be the greatest shipbuilder now extant, could not bid against the Cramp Company. It is the false position of the old school of political economy which can not see beyond their noses. Cheap laborers do not mean cheap labor. Dear laborers mean cheap labor and the best results. Long-hour workmen are cheap laborers, but those cheap men are really dear laborers, and short-hour men are, as a matter of fact, the cheapest labor. If there is any doubt in the mind of any man here he need not go to any class in political economy for the verification of that. The facts, as they are patent to all men, demonstrate it beyond the peradventure of a doubt. Who would think of getting out a 64-page paper for one single issue, as we see the product of a morning paper quite often? Yes; I have seen, I think, an issue of 100 pages. Think of it, of anything like that being done by 6 cents a day laborers; it being gotten out by 6 cents a day laborers. Electric railroads. Imagine their operation in countries where the laborers earn 6 cents a day. Imagine steam railroads, thousands and thousands of miles, traversing from one end to the other end of the continent within a few days, operating successfully financially in a country where the laborers earn 6 cents a day. Think of the homes of the workers, where the toilers earn small wages and work long hours, and compare them with the homes of the workers in America. Look at the comparative intelligence of the men there and their productive power, their consuming power. And, after all, what is the purpose of production? Is it simply that we may produce piles of goods and wealth, or is production carried on with that one purpose of use and consumption? The consuming power of long-hour workmen as compared with the minimum-the consuming power of poorly paid workmen— need not even be stated, for it carries with it its own answer.

A short while ago I read a statement by the honorable Commissioner of the Department of Labor, Mr. Carroll D. Wright, in which he compared the great horsepower now employed by the people of the United States in production and distribution; I think it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000,000 of people. He gave a detailed statement of the increased productivity of each laborer in the United States now as compared with twenty years ago. If I have your permission, and can find that statement, I should like to include it in my remarks, for I think it will be a most remarkable showing as to the wonderful increase. We have so long regarded man the worker as a wealth producer that we have brutalized our sensibilities until we hear statements made, before this very committee, that manufacturers who come here in opposition to this bill have no regard for their machinery or for their men.

Is it not peculiar how solicitous many of these employers have been for the welfare of their men? Is it not peculiar that they are so solicitous that their men be not permitted to work more than eight hours a day? They have not only appeared here as so solicitous to protect the interests of their employees against being permitted to work

no more than eight hours, but they have had the presumption to say to this committee that they represent their men; that in their name they protest against the passage of this bill, and yet they have never taken one of their employees into consultation or conference as to what the wishes of those employees are. Yes; in spite of the pretenses of these men to say that their employees do not want this eight-hour bill and are opposed to it, and that these employers appear here in their name to protest against this bill, we find that in at least two instances witnesses who have appeared before this committee have been witnesses whose employees have been out on strike in order to convince the employer that a reduction of the hours of labor is necessary.

It is said that it is none of the Government's business how long these people work; that they should be permitted to work as long as they pleased; and this morning we heard a statement that these men should not have their liberties curtailed by a limitation of the hours of their labor. You have heard these great men who have appeared here as witnesses before this committee, and who, it is stated, have risen from simple beginnings, from workmen on small wages to attain these great positions in the world of industry, and are powers of finance. I would commend to Mr. Hayden the consideration of the question of the changed conditions obtaining when these men started and the conditions of to-day, with a concentrated wealth, a highly developed and concentrated industry and machinery, and see where the opportunity comes in for a man to rise by long hours of labor. He will find that, strange as it may appear, paradoxical as it may appear, that the men who work the longest number of hours are those who receive the smallest wages in that trade. If Mr. Hayden or any other gentleman doubts that proposition, that universal law in economics and fact and life, I commend him to go to any industrial establishment in the United States, and he will find it verified.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean in the same class of employment?

Mr. GOMPERS. In the same class of employment-not necessarily, either; different classes of employment, of wage labor. You will find, for instance-I will put it in this way-two industries. Take any two industries that one can think of, and they should, of course, be comparatively of the same extension, and you will find that where the hours of labor of the employees in the one industry are longer than the hours of labor in another industry the wages of those who work the longest hours are lower than those who work in an industry where the hours of labor are less. You will find where there are two establishments of the same industry, doing exactly the same class of work, that the men who are employed at the various classes of the one trade that work the hours of labor which are the longest, that the wages of those who work in the longer-hour establishments are less than the wages of those in the establishment where the lesser hours obtain.

I say upon the surface it appears paradoxical, because we have been told so often, we have been told so frequently and with such seeming persistency, that the more you work the more you will own. The fact is the longer hours you work the less of it the worker owns. One of the reasons is that he has less time to think and to act that he may come to his own. Not only does that proposition apply to industries or any one industry, but it applies equally to different countries. It has the same force and effect in two different States in our Union. It has the same application to two establishments in any one city, or, if they be remotely removed from each other, in afly part of the world.

There is a strange contrast, just a little light in a dark spot, when we come to the testimony of Mr. Hamilton Carhartt, of Detroit, who appeared before this committee. I regret exceedingly that I did not have the pleasure of shaking hands with Mr. Carhartt. He spoke of his own experience. He spoke of the result of the effort to establish the eight-hour day, and that it was made with the honest desire to see whether the eight-hour day could be put into active operation and successful operation, and he attests that the product in his establishment was never better, was never as good, was never as great; that the feeling of genial interest in each other between the employees and the employer was never so good as now, and he attributes it to the enforcement of the eight-hour day in his establishment and the organization of the working people. Is it not fearful to contemplate that, as we have heard one witness after the other appearing before this committee and admitting that their establishments have existed from thirty to, in one case, I think, nearly ninety years, and having progressed from almost primitive conditions of industry, until to-day they are equipped with the highest development of machinery and improvements, is it not fearful to contemplate upon the fact that they have almost boastfully contended that the hours of labor in their respective establishments have not changed one minute? You may know, gentlemen, that the American labor movement had its first inception nearly a hundred years ago; that here and there, where unfair conditions might obtain, an effort was made to organize and to secure redress, if it were possible without resort to a cessation of work or a strike. In other cases a strike was necessary.

So we find the strike already in existence in 1806 in New York, and several strikes occurred within a period of ten years thereafter. But from the moment of the development of industry in this country up to the present day there has not been a cessation of one moment of the effort to organize the working people. There is, and has been, a continuity in the labor movement of America, growing in numbers, in intelligence I hope, in effectiveness I know, and in spite of these efforts, in spite of sacrifices borne by men who have suffered the privations of hunger, it has failed to have the slightest influence upon these captains of industry and powers of finance who have appeared in opposition to this bill. It has failed to have the slighest influence in changing them to have the slightest consideration for their men. Consideration for their men? No. As it was said by one of the witnesses, "We have no consideration for our machinery or for our men. And, by the way, I want to say that I honor that man's candor. You remember that when Mr. Harrah, the president of the Midvale Steel Company, was upon the stand he told you that he was not a philanthropist; that his concern was not conducted for that purpose, but that when the men were operating a machine, the life of which was ordinarily two years, for instance, if that machine was not destroyed or broken within eight or ten months he would want to know why that machine lived, because he proposed to get everything possible out of the machine and the men.

It is true that the other witnesses stated that they were very solicitous for the welfare of their employees; it is true that they wanted to convey to this committee that they had the interests of their employees at heart, but do you not know that Mr. Booth, also the representative of the Midvale Steel Company, used the very same oily, smooth statements and arguments and words, and if Mr. Harrah had not been so frank in his statements we would have upon the record that the Midvale Steel Company is just as solicitous for the welfare of its employees as are the other employers who appeared before this committee, and not that it, like they, was desirious of driving the machines and the men to their utmost capacity.

(At 1.25 p. m. the committee took a recess until 1.45 p. m.)

Mr. GOMPERS (Continuing). I think it is due to you, as it is due to a better illustration of this subject, that some attention be given to the testimony of some of the witnesses and the argument of some of the counsel. I regret very much that Mr. Cramp, of the Cramp Ship Company, should have deemed it necessary to substitute abuse of the men who advocate this bill for argument in support of his contention against it. Before reverting to that, however, I will quote a remark he made, and which is repeated by some others, that “all industry has, by common consent or usage, gone to the basis of ten hours." I do not know whether Mr. Cramp is aware that it required more than half a century of effort on the part of the working people of the country to secure even the ten-hour day. The history of the struggles undertaken and the burdens borne by the working people of the United States to convince the employers that a tenhour day was better, more advantageous in every way, than the old longer-hour system has not yet been written.

But the statement of Mr. Cramp that all industry, by common consent or usage, has gone to the basis of ten hours is faulty. It does not conform to the facts. It is true that in his establishment to a considerable extent, ånd in the establishments of the companies whose representatives have appeared before you against this bill, the basis is ten hours; but it is equally true that industry has departed from that basis within these past ten years and that this departure had its inception in the labor movements to inaugurate the nine-hour day, and the eight-hour system subsequently. Imight say that in the sixties there was a strike of more than 100,000 workmen in the city of New York for the eight-hour workday, and it was even very largely enforced for a time, but not for a sufficient length of time to be given a proper test, nor to secure its final establishment, for, as a rule, the employers of labor who have conceded, either by mutual consent or as the result of a strike, the eight-hour workday, they hold in mental reservation the hope, or the effort, to get back to the old régime, the old system.

It is only after the system has been given a fair test, after it has been established for a period, say, of one year, that there is not a single instance in the entire industrial history where the eight-hour day has obtained for a year or more where either the employer or employees have desired to go back, much less have gone back, from the eighthour workday. In 1884 the American Federation of Labor, being, as its name implies, a federation of the trade unions of the United States and Canada, or practically on the American continent, endeavored to establish an eight-hour workday, to go into operation on May 1, 1886. The methods employed were agitation, public meetings, public press, pamphlets; and men of known ability, economists, writers, students, were asked to contribute toward the literature upon that subject. Ministers of the gospel were asked to deliver sermons upon the question. Employers of labor were appealed to to inaugurate the system, and as a result of that effort more than a half a million of the working people of the United States secured a substantial reduction in their hours of labor, many of them going to the eight-hour system.

It is within the recollection of the members of this committee that the employees on the street railroads of our various municipalities toiled from twelve to eighteen hours every day. It is well known that there are but few cities in the United States to-day where the employees work more than ten hours a day. Employees on the steam railroads of our country worked from ten to twelve and sixteen hours a day. Now there are few roads and few runs that involve the labor of eight hours in any one day. The bakers, who worked proverbially as long as they could stand, and, as sometimes I have had the occasion to facetiously state, when exhausted would lie down on their dough and rise with it-the hours of the bakers have been reduced since that period from those long, wearisome hours of labor until the rule among the bakers is ten hours a day; in some instances nine.

The printers and compositors, and all employed in the printing trade, used to work from ten to fourteen hours a day. To-day the printers and allied trades seldom work more than eight to nine hours a day. The iron and steel workers toiled from early morning until late at night, and in no branch of the industry was it less than ten hours. In many instances the hours of labor to-day are eight, nine, and ten, in some less than eight. The iron molders toiled-and by the way, when these long hours obtained in the iron and steel industry the same specious pleading was indulged in, that the industry could not be successfully carried on unless these men worked these long hours in the iron molding, the rule was twelve hours a day. To-day it is usually eight, and only seldom nine.

In the tailoring industry the hours of labor were any time as long a time as the men and women and children could stand or sit and work-so long as they were awake; and their hours of rest were stolen in short relays while lying down on the garments they were making. The hours of labor of the tailors to-day are usually nine, in some of the branches eight, and it has been a demand of the organization that the employers furnish workshops for the tailors; so that the sweatshop and home industry has been abolished for sanitary reasons and for reasons of economy.

Another industry, the brewery industry, perhaps not so important, it is true, as industries generally, but it is an industry in which the delicacy of the work and the importance of one set of men taking up the work where another set left off is none the less than in any other in the country. We all know that the old-time idea of the managers in the brewery industry was that the men were required to rise in the morning at 3 o'clock, work continuously until 7 or 8 in the evening, with the interruption of a few siestas for meals-luncheon and dinner-that work was thought necessary to be done on Sundays, and without this system, or by any departure from it, the entire brewery system would be destroyed, because it could not be successfully conducted. I heard it from Colonel Seifert, the secretary of the Employing Brewers' Association of New York, when he made the statement to me that the labor organizations have clearly proven beyond the question of a doubt that the industry can be conducted upon the ten-hour basis. He said it was a dear lesson that they had learned, “but the employers have been taught that lesson by your labor organizations and we admit it." And I want to say to you gentlemen, that the brewery industry has been conducted for the past fifteen years upon the ten-hour basis, and that now there are two centers two of the largest centers in this country where the brewery industry is carried on, St. Louis and Milwaukee—where the nine-hour day prevails generally. And we have no doubt but that we shall convince the brewery employers that eight hours is even better, more economical, more successful.

I presume that the bicycle workers can scarcely be cited, for their trade as bicycle workers has not been in existence for such a period that it can be used as a comparison; but they are machinists, screwmakers, wheelmakers, buffers, polishers, and assemblers, and these trades have been long in existence. They are the branches of the bicycle trade, and the hours of labor of these men have been reduced from twelve, until to-day ten, and many even nine hours a day.

In the trade which I have given twenty-six years of my life to, cigar making, the system was there that men worked from early morning until late at night. The organization prescribed no limitation of the hours of labor until 1884, and then we adopted the rule that ten hours should be the limit. In 1885 the convention of the organized cigar makers of the country made it a part of its fundamental law of the organization that no member be permitted to work more than eight hours a day on and after May 1, 1886. From that time until the present day the steady moral and material improvement of the cigar makers and their condition can not be measured when compared to their previous condition, and so great has been the effect of that system upon the cigar makers that within the past month 2,400 cigar makers in the city of New York, working for the firm known as Kerbs, Wertheim & Schiffer-2,000 of whom are nonunionists have been on strike; for what? To secure the eight-hour day. The clerks, who are always required to toil in the stores from early morning until late at night, have secured early closing, or, in other words, a reduction of the hours of labor,