pose to cast reflections upon them. That was not my intention. It was not my purpose. I simply wanted to call their attention to the fact of the very cleverness of the gentlemen opposing this bill and this species of legislation, and to say under the presumption that their proposition is a fair one, and, superficially taken, it is; when the facts are not known their position is incontestable. They have quoted from or referred to these four volumes of printed hearings and arguments before this committee, dating-the printed hearings-from 1892, and there were many hearings which are not now in print and others that were not taken stenographically, and when all these facts are borne in mind is it not fair to assume that these hearings and these arguments ought to have been exhausted and concluded by this time, and that where matters are in print and easily accessible to the members of this committee, as well as to all members of Congress, their object is to take up time in order that time may be consumed I will not say wasted, but consumed-and thereby drag to the very death the opportunity of the enactment of this bill?

Gentlemen again this morning, in a milder form, but yet in its essence, made the same statement-that we are desirous of holding a club over you of our political power, to force you by using that political power to support or oppose any given number of men for the purpose of accomplishing this legislation. First, I would say that I do not know that appearing before this committee or before other committees of Congress, we have not tried to maintain ourselves as men with some conceptions of the rights and immunities among men. That we have been disappointed-and bitterly disappointed-is too true, and that we have been disappointed by reason of the ability of the opponents to make it appear to the Members of Congress that all that they wanted was fairness and justice, and simply that they might be heard and simply that they might submit testimony in order to convince you that we are wrong, is true. I venture to say this, that there has not been a committee of Congress, of either this House or the United States Senate, which has sat and heard the arguments of the opponents, as well as the poor appeals that we were able to make, that were not convinced that our opponents were wrong and that we were right; so much so that the Committee on Labor of the House of Representatives three times reported this bill-substantially this bill, the Gardner bill-favorably, and on two occasions the House of Representatives voted by an almost unanimous vote in favor of its passage, and the bill went to the Senate. And, further, there has never yet been a time when the Senate Committee on Education and Labor has had this bill under consideration but what it reported the bill favorably. If this measure had been a new proposition, I grant you, gentlemen, the time ought to be taken in order that a full understanding may be had of the proposition of this bill. I have been quoted time and again by the opponents as to what this bill means, and I have each time given my assent to its broadest interpretation. Let me say this: Judge Payson, at the last hearing, made some statement in regard to five months having elapsed before a hearing of this committee was had upon it.

Mr. PAYSON. Before a hearing was asked for, I said.

Mr. GOMPERS. Was asked for. Let me say that the bill had not been introduced until

Mr. PAYSON. January 12 was when the Gardner bill was introduced.

Mr. GOMPERS. January 12.

Mr. PAYSON. But the Sulzer bill was introduced the second day of the Congress.

Mr. GOMPERS. I do not think that we want to discuss the Sulzer bill. I do not want to do it.

Mr. HUNT. Mr. Gompers, you will pardon me; I do not like to interrupt you, but we have already gone over our time, and we have forfeited a roll call in the House.

Mr. GOMPERS. I want to revert to one statement that was made, and simply call your attention to it without making any argument upon it, and that is a statement made, I think, by Mr. Hayden, that it is essential to success of a certain process in making a certain product that the men who start the process at the beginning should remain with it until the final result is achieved. That statement was made time and time again by the opponents of the bill and was exploded by the practical men who work in the mills, who showed that under the present operations the changes occur without any loss of any sort in any of the processes to which reference has been made. In view of the statement of Mr. Hunt regarding the time of the committee, I will not say anything more than that now.

Mr. HUNT. Probably we have lost this roll call, and we will have to suspend the hearing now, but it is not from any desire to abridge your statement, or the statements of any other gentleman.

Mr. GOMPERS. I do hope, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that the committee may determine to report this bill without any further delay.

(At this point the committee adjourned until Thursday, May 24, 1906, at 10.30 o'clock a. m.)

STATEMENT OF JAMES H. HAYDEN, ESQ., ATTORNEY FOR THE CARNEGIE STEEL COMPANY, BETHLEHEM STEEL COMPANY, WILLIAM CRAMP & SONS SHIP AND ENGINE BUILDING COMPANY, AND UNION IRON WORKS COMPANY.

Mr. HAYDEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, at the opening of his remarks it was suggested by Mr. Gompers that the advocates of the bill had opposed the granting of hearings before this subcommittee on the plea that the measure had been fully discussed in former years and that delay incident to hearings would prevent this bill being reached for consideration in the House of Representatives. I appeal to each member of the subcommittee who has listened to the manufacturers and laborers of the country who have appeared here as opponents of the measure to bear me out in this. Each one of them has been earnest and sincere in his statements; each one has come to you with information that you never had before. A great deal of information has been furnished that the newer members of the committee never had at all; each witness has in good faith endeavored to explain to you what he believes would be the effect of a measure of this kind; that it would be detrimental not only to the interests of the employer, but to those of the employee, and would be deplored by both.

Our testimony has not all been that of employers. They were not men who have always had large means and the control of workingmen and who have been opposed to them as one class might be opposed to another. Almost every one of them had himself risen from an obscure position, from one in which he had performed manual labor. These men spoke to you not only from their experience as employers, but from the standpoint of workingmen. Many of them were able to attribute their success and their advancement in life to the fact that they had been left free and untrammeled to use the faculties with which nature had endowed them. They had the opportunity to work, and save, and learn, and better their conditions. In addition to them, you have heard employees of the Cramp Company, men who are to-day wage-earners and who resent the proposal that their liberty, their right to work as long as they please daily, and thereby earn additional money, shall be taken from them by law that any law may be passed which will so abridge their liberties.

The two representatives of the Carnegie Company who appeared before you now occupy two of the most prominent positions in the business world. Those men started in life as machinists, or even as helpers, and by their thrift and willingness to work have risen. One of them said that he wanted his son, now entering the employ of the Carnegie Company, to have the same opportunity to work and to succeed in the world as he had had, and not to be deprived of it by any law which would limit his earning power.

Mr. GOMPERS. Will it be an interruption to ask you a question? Mr. HAYDEN. No.

Mr. GOMPERS. Is it not true that the gentlemen who have appeared before this committee have been and are superintendents and foremen and are not now wage-earners in the sense to which this legislation refers?

Mr. HAYDEN. Mr. Kean, of the Cramp Company, is on the regular pay roll, or the wage roll, of the Cramp Company. He occupies now, and has for a short time, a position as foreman shipwright, but he is a wage-earner, a man who works with his hands, a man whose work would be affected by this bill. If it were enacted, he could not work to exceed eight hours if his employment had to do with the production of a vessel for the Government. The same is true of Mr. Glocker, who said that he might at any time return to his place at a machine.

Mr. GOMPERS. He testified here, on page 217, that he is superintendent of the shops.

Mr. HAYDEN. Yes; but you will find that he said that he could not tell when he might be called upon to return to his work as a machinist.

Mr. GOMPERS. And Mr. Kean says that he is foreman shipwright. Mr. HAYDEN. Yes; that is true.

Mr. GOMPERS. And Mr. Tucker is the general superintendent of the South Chester Pipe Company.

Mr. HAYDEN. That has come about lately. Every one of those men has, within the recent past, worked with his hands and has been a laborer or mechanic within the meaning of this law. Mr. Glocker, the superintendent of the Cramp shops, has testified that he often takes the place of a machinist to carry on his work. He would therefore be subject to this law. That bears out precisely what I say, that the testimony which has been brought before you does not represent the attitude of what the President terms "predatory wealth," but comes to you from men who have worked with their hands and have attained higher positions in the world by industry and thrift, and who resent the notion of an invasion upon their rights by a measure like the one pending.

Mr. GOMPERS. Just a word, Mr. Hayden. Do you not think that it would be more in keeping with the effort to meet the provisions of this legislation if the wage-earners themselves, to whom the bill directly applies, would appear and express their own views and desires? This effort of the men who have risen from the ranks is very commendable, but I am speaking for the ranks, not those who have risen from the ranks.

Mr. HAYDEN. There would be not the slightest objection to the production here of men who are now drawing daily wages.

Mr. HASKINS. I understand a man came here before us who had been a wage-earner, and a good many of them had been wage-earners. Mr. HAYDEN. Most assuredly so.

Mr. HASKINS. Just the same as Mr. Gompers was, but now they are on salaries, the same as he is.

Mr. HAYDEN. Exactly. We would have no objection to the production of wage-earners. We brought men of broader experience who could speak from what they had experienced-could view t

situation from both sides and give a fairer idea of the relations between employers and employees than a man of narrower experience. Mr. GOMPERS. Let me just say one word, inasmuch as my name and my position have been brought into question. Let me say that in the case of these superintendents and foremen they may define their own thought as to what the workmen may want. I come before this committee by instructions and direction of the workmen themselves; I have their credentials to speak for them.

Mr. HAYDEN. And I say that the men who have testified before this committee are closer to the workingmen, and have more recently left what Mr. Gompers pleases to term the "ranks" of the workingmen, and who may have only left them temporarily that they are closer to those men and speak with more authority when they say that the workingmen would resent the invasion of their rights and liberties contemplated by this bill. They would resent the denial of their right to work overtime for increased pay. The measure is not one which would be satisfactory to them in any particular.

Mr. GOMPERS. And in their effort to make such a resentment manifest they frequently go on strikes to secure the eight-hour workday. Mr. HAYDEN. That does not appear; nothing of the kind.

Mr. PAYSON. Let me interrupt you for a moment, Mr. Hayden. Mr. Gompers, tell me a single instance in this whole Union when there ever was a strike for an eight-hour day in any industrial plant affected by this bill. Give me the name of one.

of

Mr. GOMPERS. There are numbers of them.

Mr. PAYSON. Do not give me numbers, but tell me one, or let any your friends who are here tell me, one where there has been a strike for an eight-hour day.

Mr. GOMPERS. The Union Iron Works.

Mr. PAYSON. No, sir; the strike was not for an eight-hour day in San Francisco. There was a threat of a strike that led to this late agreement, but the labor authorities in San Francisco were for a ninehour day and for a ten-hour day.

Mr. GOMPERS. Then why should the employers propose a gradual reduction in the hours of labor until the eight-hour workday shall be obtained, if that was not one of the contentions?

Mr. PAYSON. You and I both know that the labor situation in San Francisco is not typical of the labor situation in any other portion of this country.

Mr. HOLDER. No; but you asked for one instance. If you recall, on last Friday President McGregor, in reply to one of my questions

Mr. PAYSON. I was not here.

Mr. HOLDER. Then for your information I will say that Mr. McGregor replied to me that their men and their competitors' men had been out for seven weeks in the city of San Francisco for an eighthour day.

Mr. PAYSON. I am leaving out San Francisco. I do not know about that.

Mr. HAYDEN. I do not exclude San Francisco. The object of the strike was not to limit the working day to eight hours. Mr. McGregor testified, and it is well known to you, that what the men desired was to get additional wages. They wanted the day shortened

nominally, and then actually to work for nine hours, but to receive overtime pay for the ninth hour.

Mr. PAYSON. And a recognition of the union.

Mr. HOLDER. That has always been the case out there; that is no innovation.

Mr. HAYDEN. The conditions were anomalous. The rebuilding of the city after the earthquake was in progress and the demand for labor was far greater than the supply. The men were in a position to ask for anything within reason or out of reason.

Mr. NICHOLLS. May I just ask a question on that point of Judge Payson? Did you include in the question all employers who would be affected?

Mr. PAYSON. By the operation of this bill, yes, sir.

Mr. NICHOLLS. I imagine you would include in that list, then, all of those who appeared here and claimed that the bill would affect them?

Mr. PAYSON. That is a matter, possibly, of construction, but I will repeat the question, Mr. Nicholls, for the record, and I challenge any friend of this bill in this room to name, within the last seven years, a single instance, in all the strikes that have occurred, with all the disagreeable, not to say terrible, incidents connected with them, a single instance of a strike on the part of any labor organization in a plant affected by the operation of this bill for an eight-hour day;

name me one.

Mr. GOMPERS. For instance, the granite cutters.

Mr. PAYSON. No, sir; the granite cutters are not affected by the operations of this bill, as conceded by Senator McComas and the entire Senate committee; by Mr. Gardner, the chairman of this committee, and every member of the committee who has talked upon the subject.

Mr. GOMPERS. But which you undertook this morning to demon

strate was erroneous.

Mr. PAYSON. I think it is erroneous, but I am repeating what the friends of this bill are claiming. I repeat the question again.

Mr. NICHOLLS. The reason I asked the question was that there was an association of builders here one day before the committee, a large number of them, from Baltimore, and later on some other number of employers who had to do with contracting for the erection of public buildings, and so forth, who claimed that this bill would interfere with their contracts and their subcontracts.

Mr. PAYSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. NICHOLLS. So I wanted to know whether or not those men were included in that question.

Mr. PAYSON. Yes, sir; they are structural-iron workers.

Mr. GOMPERS. Bridge and structural-iron workers-they struck not more than three years ago for an eight-hour day.

Mr. PAYSON. In New York City?

Mr. GOMPERS. No; throughout the country.

Mr. HAYDEN. Where? What plants?

Mr. GOMPERS. Bridge and structural-iron workers.

Mr. HAYDEN. What plants?

Mr. GOMPERS. I have said practically throughout the United States. Mr. HAYDEN. We should have more definite information on that point. It is hard to rebut so general a statement. Before we leave