COMMITTEE ON LABOR, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met at 11 o'clock a. m., Hon John J. Gardner (chairman) in the chair. The CHAIRMAN. This hearing was called at the suggestion of the president of the American Federation of Labor, Mr. Gompers, he having expressed a desire to the chairman to meet the committee and to be heard on matters of legislation pending before the committee at this time, and, as I understood him, particularly with reference to the eight-hour bill, and so, Mr. Gompers, if you are ready to proceed, we will hear you. STATEMENT OF MR. SAMUEL GOMPERS, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR. Mr. GOMPERS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, Mr. Gardner, the chairman of the committee, stated that I requested that a meeting of the committee might be called for the purpose of hearing the representatives of the interests of labor, or the representatives of labor in matters of interest to the wage-earners of the country, not necessarily for hearings in the generally accepted sense of that term, but rather that we might urge upon the committee, as briefly as we can find words to state what we have in mind to say, the necessity for legislation, the necessity for the enactment of some of the bills which are now before this committee. I take it, of course, that it would not be appropriate to discuss matters or measures or bills that are in the hands of other committees of Congress, but there are a number of them in the hands of this committee, the Committee on Labor, and we are strongly desirous that the Committee on Labor of the House, that the House itself, that Congress shall pass bills which are pending in this Congress and which have dragged a very weary existence through several previous Congresses. Among them I think I should urge the enactment of the eight-hour bill introduced in the House by the chairman of this committee, Mr. Gardner. The child-labor law, which, although it has now passed the House and is now in the hands of the Committee on Education and Labor, was received by that committee, and, as passed by the House, in such a form that it is practically incomprehensible and contradictory in the very terms. I had the pleasure of appearing before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor when the committee had that bill under consideration, and the Senators in attendance expressed themselves as entirely favorable to the bill. They wanted to have the bill properly formulated to mean something, and to be enforceable, to eliminate the objectionable or contradictory and meaningless terms. I take it therefore that the Senate is in a mood to pass that bill, and I trust that if it is passed in anything like a tangible form, having some meaning, that it may receive the support of the members of the House constituting the Committee on Labor, and thus secure the enactment of such a bill. Mr. GOEBEL. Is there a copy of that bill here? Mr. GOMPERS. I do not know that it is here as passed by the House, but my attention was called to it by the contradictory terms in the bill which was referred to by Senator Clapp in the committee, and there was no escaping the conclusion that the bill certainly needs amendment and change. The CHAIRMAN. Let me interrupt you here, to say, if it has any bearing, the child-labor bill has never been before this committee, and on its return from the Senate it will not come before this committee. That bill was referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia Committee considered it and reported it, and under their management it was passed. It being a District matter, Mr. Cannon referred it to the District Committee. Mr. GOEBEL. I never saw it, and that is the reason I asked if it was here. Mr. STANLEY. It is the bill 17562 that Mr. Gompers refers to. Mr. GOMPERS. While attending the Senate committee, suddenly the discussion arose in regard to the child-labor bill, or rather the investigation into the extent of the labor of women and children, and I gleaned that there was some objection to that bill, to the Senate committee having that bill under consideration for the reason of the indefiniteness of that bill as reported to the committee and passed by the House, for the reason that it did not stipulate the salaries and the parties to receive them; that it was too indefinite, and there would be objection on that score. The CHAIRMAN. Not to interrupt you, let us get clear our position. The child-labor bill was referred by the Speaker to the District Committee, and that committee retained jurisdiction of it until its passage through the House, and it went to the Senate. About that bill we know nothing in our records here. As to the bill that did go through the House, this is the history: The President, in his message, recommended an investigation by the National Government, intended to be sociological, of the child-labor question and the woman-labor question. Mr. Gardner, of Massachusetts, introduced a resolution reading as follows: Resolved, That the Secretary of Commerce and Labor be, and he is hereby, requested to investigate and report on the condition of child labor under 14 years, wherever employed, and to furnish to the House of Representatives a complete statement as to the various State laws regulating child labor and the effectiveness of their enforcement. Taking all the papers together, this committee substituted a bill for a national investigation of the child-labor question, but that has no relation to the child-labor bill for the District of Columbia, which has passed, and is now in the Senate. The bill which passed this committee for the investigation of the women and child labor questions is still on the Calendar of the House, and has been made a special order. Mr. GOMPERS. It was because of the previous statement by you, Mr. Chairman, in regard to this matter that I passed this entirely over, and then came to the suggestion of this bill, which passed this committee and is reported to the House. Mr. GOEBEL. For the investigation? Mr. GOMPERS. The investigation. I will say that the same bill is, in effect, before the Senate, and I heard such criticism made of it, and the reason that I mention it is that if it may occur to the committee that if the criticism is justified it may be changed, in order not to encounter that opposition, either when the House bill goes to the Senate when it passes or when the Senate bill may come to the House. The CHAIRMAN. Let us determine if that criticism is fair. We think it is not. This bill (H. R. 17562) reads as follows: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of Commerce and Labor be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed— There is nobody to receive a salary there. That is the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to investigate and report on the industrial, social, moral, educational, and physical conditions of women and child workers in the United States wherever employed, with special reference to their ages, hours of labor, term of employment, health, illiteracy, sanitary and other conditions surrounding their occupation, and the means employed for the protection of their health, person, and morals. SEC. 2. That to enable the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to make this investigation he is hereby authorized to expend the sum of three hundred thousand dollars, or so much thereof as may be necessary, for per diem in lieu of subsistence of special agents and employees while traveling on duty away from their homes and outside of the District of Columbia, at a rate not to exceed three dollars per day for their transportation and for the employment of experts and temporary assistants, and for the purchase of materials necessary for said report; and for the purposes of this act the Secretary of Commerce and Labor is hereby directed to utilize, in so far as they may be adequate, the forces of the Bureau of Labor and of the Bureau of the Census. Now, that is an investigation to be made by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor through the Bureaus of Labor and of the Census. He is allowed $300,000 for the per diems of the experts, and it is not possible that there is anything in the criticism that the bill is indefinite in not designating the persons to receive the money, because, as a matter of fact, I suppose it is an open secret that the bill was drawn in the Department as containing every word that they need to carry on the investigation in the most definite and thorough way. Mr. GOMPERS. I am not making the criticism. I am simply calling attention to the fact that criticism was made, so that you may know what you may have to meet in the matter. The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. GOMPERS. We ask that the committee report the Gardner bill, H. R. 11651. Mr. Chairman, this bill has been before five Congresses; hearings extending over periods of five or six months have been held in both this committee and the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. It was reported favorably by the Committee on Labor several times, and passed the House of Representatives twice. It was reported favorably once by the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, after it passed the House, and only by reason of the Senator who took charge of the bill himself signing a minority report against it was it that its defeat was encompassed. We were at the point of a decisive vote in the Senate upon three different occasions, and we had reason to believe that the bill would have been a law if a decisive vote could have been reached. The only time when the Committee on Labor of the House did not report the eight-hour bill favorably was in the last Congress. In fact, the committee made no report at all upon the bill. Instead, the committee adopted a series of resolutions containing several interrogatories and referred these questions to the Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor. The questions themselves were proposed by the opponents of the bill. At the time that they were proposed attention was called to the fact that they were suggested simply for the purpose of procrastination, of dragging the thing along so that no action could be taken by the then Congress. And further attention was called to the fact that the questions were absurd upon their face and unanswerable. The committee, however, saw fit to take the view of the opponents of the eight-hour bill and adopted the resolution with the questions, and referred them to the Department of Commerce and Labor, and we have seen what the Secretary has said. For convenience and to recall the matter to the minds of the gentlemen who are members of this Congress and who were not members of the last Congress, I just want to read the resolutions as adopted by the committee: RESOLUTION OF THE COMMITTEE. Be it resolved by the Committee on Labor of the House of Representatives, That the Secretary of Commerce and Labor be, and he is hereby, requested to investigate and report upon the bill, now pending in said House (H. R. 4064), entitled "A bill limiting the hours of daily service of laborers and mechanics employed upon work done for the United States, or for any Territory, or for the District of Columbia, and for other purposes," his said report to state his conclusions with regard to the following questions: 1. What would be the additional cost to the United States of the various materials and articles which it customarily procures by contract, which would be governed by the limitations set out in the said bill? 2. What damage, if any, would be done to the manufacturing interests affected by the provisions of the bill if enacted? Mr. DAVENPORT. Would it interrupt you, Mr. Gompers, if I asked you whether the bill there referred to was not an entirely different bill from the bill No. 11651? Mr. GOMPERS. No. 11651 is the original eight-hour bill, which was introduced by Congressman Gardner, the chairman of this committee. and is the bill for which the American labor movement has stood and which it has advocated. It was changed by the Senate Committee on Education and Labor in the last Congress, and, rather than get nothing, we preferred that; but I think that we have about changed our minds and gone back to the demand of having an effective bill. Mr. DAVENPORT. But the point is that the report of Secretary Metcalf is directed to an entirely different bill from this bill 11651. Mr. GOMPERS. As a matter of fact, while the first paragraph of the resolution names the bill, yet the questions have no reference to the bill, but to the essence of the proposition involved and are equally applicable, or inapplicable, to the present bill or to any consideration. of the proposition to reduce the hours of labor. Mr. DAVENPORT. But the solicitor, Mr. Collier, was first asked by him to define the limits of that bill, so that the inquiries might be directed to those matters. The CHAIRMAN. In what particulars does this differ from that? Mr. DAVENPORT. Oh, in such ways that as I understand the solicitor to say, it narrowed the operation of this bill so much that when the Commissioner came to inquire as to the probably increase of cost to the Government it was not 95 per cent. In fact, it practically con fined it to the shipbuilding and steel-producing interests. I will not interrupt Mr. Gompers any further. Mr. GOMPERS. Mr. Chairman, the difference in the bill now before this committee and that originally before the committee years ago and the one amended by former Senator McComas, of Maryland, is very small. They are essentially the same. There is different language employed, or certain language omitted in Senator McComas's bill, which we believe ought to be retained in a bill, but I want to say that the questions propounded by the committee were not changed in any particular and had as much reference to the McComas bill of the last Congress or the Gardner bill of former Congresses as to the Gardner bill of this Congress. Mr. HUNT. Might I ask if this is an exact copy of the bill which passed the Fifty-sixth Congress? Mr. GOMPERS. I think so. Mr. HUNT. The same, practically? Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir; practically the same. Mr. HUNT. If not exactly the same? Mr. GOMPERS. If not exactly the same, it is practically the same. Mr. HUNT. Which passed the House in the Fifty-sixth Congress? Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir. I want to make this clear, that on the questions propounded by the committee to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor it would not have made any difference, if the question was that the Government of the United States was to place all industries of our country under the eight-hour day, or if it only applied to one particular industry. The committee undertook to ask questions of economics, and speculative questions-theoretical questions-and it did not make any difference whether it applied to the then bill, No. 4064, or to the present bill, No. 11651. I want to continue reading the questions of the committee. Mr. PAYSON. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question of Mr. Gompers here? As Mr. Gompers knows, I am largely interested in this, and so that we may understand one another as we go along I would like to ask him this: Is it your contention that this bill in substance is the bill of the last Congress? Mr. GOMPERS. Substantially; yes, sir. Mr. PAYSON. Very well. Mr. HUNT. With changes made necessary to secure action at the other end of the Capitol? Mr. GOMPERS. It is the original Gardner bill. Mr. PAYSON. In substance the bill of last year? Mr. GOMPERS. I think it is more ample, inasmuch as it is more clear. Mr. PAYSON. I am not asking that, but I ask you if it is your contention that it is substantially the same bill as that of the last Congress. Mr. GOMPERS (reading): 3. Whether manufacturers who have heretofore furnished materials and articles to the Government under contract would continue to contract with the Government if such contracts were within the peremptory eight-hour limitation provided by said bill? 4. What would be the effect of the enactment of the said bill upon the shipbuilding industry? 5. What would be the effect of the enactment of the said bill, if any, upon the export trade of the country? 6. Are the laborers of the country, organized and unorganized, who would be affected by the proposed legislation, willing to have taken away from them the right to labor more than eight hours per day, if they desire to do so? 7. What effect will this proposed legislation have, if any, upon the agricultural interests of the country? |