[Headquarters Central Trades and Labor Council, of Roanoke, Va.]

RESOLUTIONS.

Whereas the working men and women of the United States, by the imposition of unlimited hours of labor, are oppressed and cut off from opportunities of self-improvement and privileges guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and

Whereas the eight-hour workday gives the worker an opportunity in the race for life, promotes culture and citizenship, facilitates the use of improved machinery, elevates mankind, and makes the world better: Therefore be it

Resolved by the Central Trades and Labor Council, of Roanoke, Va., That a continuous campaign be made until a general eight-hour law shall have been passed by Congress; and be it

Resolved, That the Virginia Representatives in the United States Congress are hereby requested to advocate an eight-hour law applicable to all manufacturing establishments.

Adopted this the 2d day of March, 1908.

W. B. STEVENSON, President.
W. J. COMMINGS, Secretary.

[Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States and Canada, Branch No. 8.] BRIDGETON, N. J., March 18, 1908.

Hon. JOHN J. GARDNER,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: Branch No. 8, one of the largest branches in the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association, unanimously indorse the Gardner eight-hour bill, and trust that you will be able to overcome the opposition of its opponents and have it placed on the statute books.

Believing that you will be able to accomplish this, we wish to assure you of our support in the interest of the said eight-hour bill, as we believe that it will prove of great benefit.

Yours, very truly,

EDW. S. CHANNELS, Secretary of Branch No. 8.

SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR No. 1,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Thursday, March 19, 1908.

The committee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. John J. Gardner (chairman) presiding.

The following delegation, representing the board of trade of Newark, N. J., appeared before the committee: R. C. Jenkinson, George R. Howe, Abraham Rothschild. Edward R. Crane, Herbert Gleason, Franklin Conklin, and Peter Campbell.

There appeared also before the committee Messrs. Charles G. Ross, J. Pinckney Henderson Adams, William D. Forbes, and Wallace Downey.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. Chairman, we have a representation here this morning from the board of trade of the city of Newark. By appointment you have been kind enough to set this morning for hearing us. I have the honor of being the president of the board of trade, and I would like to introduce the members who will address you; first of all Mr. Jenkinson, who is the chairman of the committee on manufactures.

STATEMENT OF MR. RICHARD C. JENKINSON.

Mr. JENKINSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am, as Mr. Campbell said, chairman of the manufacturers' committee of the board of trade. I do not think it is necessary to introduce these gentlemen to

the chairman, because he knows the Board of Trade of Newark. We have about 1,300 members, representing about 3,000 men, because only one man of a firm or company is represented in the board. We have had this bill examined into and studied, and while we do not understand it thoroughly, there is enough in it to show us that it interferes with our rights as manufacturers to run our business as we want to, and in these times, of all others, we do not want any interferance. Personally, I want to speak for myself, because I make goods directly and indirectly for the United States Government, and have been doing it for a great many years, and while it is not a large part of my business, it helps to make up the total, and often where there is not a profit it helps to reduce the shop expenses. Now, we manufacture goods for the United States Government, for the military department mostly, and these goods, some of them, are manufactured special. We also manufacture for the different departments in a smaller degree. Some of these goods can be bought in the open market, and some are special. As a matter of fact, the majority of them are special. These goods are made on machinery which is in most cases entirely automatic, and one man often attends or runs five or six machines.

The CHAIRMAN. Where are these goods made?

Mr. JENKINSON. We manufacture all the metal parts that go on military uniforms, buckles, hooks, name plates, and we also manufacture for the United States Government parts of harness trimmings which are special, and there are other things I could name, but I have not a list of them now, which we manufacture in small quantities. Now, the difficulty with me is this in figuring out the bill, and I can not figure it out how I am going to run my business and manufacture the things that I manufacture for others and also keep the part that we manufacture for the United States Government. If we have a man running five machines, and one is running on the United States Government work, we must stop that man at the end of eight hours and send him home. That increases our expense, and I can not see why it will not demoralize our business. It appears to me that it would do so and that it would create dissatisfaction, and I can not see why it would not reduce the wages of the employee. You know, Mr. Chairman, because you know our State pretty well, that Newark has been very fortunate-exceedingly fortunate because we have never had any serious labor difficulties. We have lived at peace with our workmen. We live close to them; we live by them, and we talk to them. I know all my men by name. Some of them have been working for me ever since I have been in business, thirty-two years, and are there yet. I think the average working life of my men, exclusive of the boys and girls, is seven years, so that they have been there all of them at least on the average seven years. That is a condition that exists all over Newark. We have gotten along very well in the past with these conditions, and we do not want to change them. Mr. Chairman, I want to tell you, and the rest of the committee through you, that this bill is opposed by every member of the board of trade of the city of Newark. They do not believe in it. They do not want it. Some parts of it they do not understand and those parts they are afraid of. We ask you and the rest of the committee not to present this bill.

Mr. HASKINS. What is your workday; how many hours?

Mr. JENKINSON. Our working week is fifty-five hours, and by arrangement with our men we give them for five months in the year a half holiday on Saturday. The pieceworkers do not get paid for their work, but the foremen and help and the others get paid for full time during the summer months, five months, fifty-five or sixty hours. We pay them on the sixty-hour basis and give them fifty-five hours'

work.

Mr. HASKINS. Do they work overtime?

Mr. JENKINSON. Yes, sir; they frequently work overtime.

Mr. HASKINS. Do your men want to work overtime?

Mr. JENKINSON. They want all the work they can get overtime. They work all the time overtime and if they can get a chance they are delighted; they are delighted to do it.

Mr. HASKINS. What is their rate for overtime work?

Mr. JENKINSON. Their rate is just exactly, with us, the same as they get for their regular wages. We do not pay them any more. It would be impossible for us to run in our business and pay more for overtime work. We pay fair wages, and if we paid more for overtime it would increase the cost of our goods too much. The profit of our goods does not allow any extra wages. But the men are very willing to work overtime and are asking all the time for overtime work. A man came to us the other day who had been put on short time and asked if he could not have some work some other place, even a part of the night, or to clean up the factory, or something like that; he wanted more work. We have them come and ask us for more work all the time. Some of our work we might give out to be taken home, to be done by hand outside of the factory, but we have never done that. We have been asked to do it, but we never have done it.

Mr. HASKINS. That is piecework?

Mr. JENKINSON. We never have done that. We like to have the work kept in the factory.

Mr. EMERY. Has any demand ever been made on you by your employees, or have you ever known of any demand to be made by the employees in the industry you represent, for a rigid eight-hour day? Mr. JENKINSON. No, sir.

Mr. HASKINS. Is your shop composed of union or nonunion workmen?

Mr. JENKINSON. Our shop is an open shop. We have unions in the shop. For instance, our polishers are all union men, but we run the business ourselves. I am interested in other businesses besides the one I speak of now, but that shop, my shop, where I am in sole control, where I am the head of it, where I employ about 300 men, we run ourselves.

Mr. DAVENPORT. If the men understood that the provisions of this bill were designed to cut off the right of working people to work more than eight hours a day, to work overtime for overtime pay, is it your idea that they would be in favor of it?

Mr. JENKINSON. No, sir; I believe the men would be against this bill. Most of the people who work in Newark would be against it, in the factory where they do small work, because it is all piecework, and this really would cut down their wages. Those men of my own workmen with whom I have talked about it and told that I was com

ing down here, as I frequently do talk with the most intelligent of the men and tell them the conditions, were opposed to it. I gave them a copy of the bill and let them read it, and they came back then and said they did not think that would be a good thing for them; they did not see how they were going to make their full wages. They may make an increase in the wages of two hours at the start, but they would eventually get back to the same basis and the men would get four-fifths of what they did before. That has been the experience all over the country.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I should like to introduce next Mr. Rothschild, representing the leather manufacturers of Newark.

STATEMENT OF MR. ABRAHAM ROTHSCHILD.

Mr. ROTHSCHILD. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. I have not very much to say on this question. I only want to state in a general way that I believe in surrounding labor with every proper condition, but I believe when you attempt to limit the industry or the producing capacity of the people by trying to standardize an eight-hour day you are proceeding on lines which, I think myself, are economically wrong. So far as our own industry is concerned-the patent and enameled leather industry-there are certain peculiar conditions of processes in which it would be impossible to limit a man to an eighthour day. For instance, in the boiling of composition; when a man starts a batch of composition it has got to be finished to the proper consistency in that one boiling, and when his batch of composition for that day is done his labor for that day is done. Sometimes he is lucky and he gets it done in four hours, and he empties his kettle and fills it for the next day, and then he goes home, and I have known those men that work in that part of the business to be through at 12 o'clock, and they have gone home. At other times they have been unfortunate; we have had a bad lot of oil, and they have worked ten, twelve, and even seventeen hours; and you can not absolutely limit it in that peculiar process. But, on the average, that man does not work eight hours a day, I believe. However, you can not say to him that when his eight hours is done he must stop and let that stuff spoil.

Now, in other parts of our factory we work mostly on piecework, and I do not believe our men would want to be limited to an eighthour day. We have lots of men who work industriously and who want all the work they can get. I know of instances where the men have bought their homes and have paid for them and have bought other property besides, and some of them have been with us twentyfive years, as long as we have been in business, and if you would try to limit those men to an eight-hour day and say to them, You shall not do more than eight hours' work or earn more than so much money," I think they would kick. We have never had any demand, and we do not know of any demand, so far as I know, for an eighthour day. Those men do not want to be limited. They want to earn all the money they can. I have known some of the men come very early in the morning and work late, and when there is no work they kick. They want all the work they can get, and they do not want their producing capacity limited; and if were limited to the eight-hour day, so far as the day laborer is concerned, it would only

mean that it would reduce the wages to that amount, because it would simply increase the cost of goods on time work. When you get only 80 per cent of the labor you figure your cost on, you have got to reduce the price by just so much, and I do not believe the men would want that. With the demand of organized labor for a shorter day on the one hand, and the demands of capital and financial conditions on the other, the merchant and manufacturer being between the two, his lot is not a happy one, especially under existing conditions, and with all due respect I would warn you, gentlemen, to be careful how far you go in interfering with the interests of this country by trying to curtail the producing capacity of labor.

Mr. HASKINS. Why can you not pay your men what you have been paying them for nine or ten hours for their eight-hour day, and then increase the cost of your product to the purchasers?

Mr. ROTHSCHILD. Well, you see the price of hides fluctuates, and we can not limit that at all times. Of course it could be done, but of course it would increase the cost of the goods. Now, I do not see why the Government should force an increased cost upon itself for the goods which it buys, and of course which would really result in increasing the cost all over, everywhere. I do not believe it is a good economic principle to try to make goods more costly. I believe it is a good economic principle to try to make goods as cheap as possible, which would redound to the benefit of the manufacturer as well as the laboring man. Anything that increases production is good; anything that retards it is bad.

Mr. EMERY. Do you find that an increase in the cost of goods tends to increase the consumption of them?

Mr. ROTHSCHILD. No, it does not; it certainly does not in the export business. I know when we have to compete with Germany and France we would be out of it entirely. We have a large export business, and it would certainly knock that in the head.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I would like next to introduce Mr. Howe, president of the Manufacturing Jewelers' Association.

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE R. HOWE, PRESIDENT OF THE MANUFACTURING JEWELERS' ASSOCIATION OF NEWARK, N. J.

Mr. Howe. Mr. Chairman, I have the honor of representing not only our own firm to-day, but I am the president of the Manufacturing Jewelers' Association of Newark, comprising some 65 or more of the leading firms in the city, and our association as a unit is opposed to any legislation which interferes with present conditions in our trade, as Mr. Rothchild has clearly set forth to you. I have no desire to take up your time, but I would like to put one thing before you that is not generally understood. The jewelry business is an exception to all lines of manufacture from the fact that a man to succeed in jewelry-I am talking now of gold jewelry, fine jewelrymust have considerable of the artist about him; he must be much more than a mechanic. We are catering to a whim always, and as you gentlemen know, the designs of the world come from Paris, and have through all the centuries. We are now in this country doing a good deal of designing, but the whole tendency of our business is constantly to disintegration rather than to concentration, because of the artistic faculty that must come in, and our men are, if you choose,