I wonder whether all the members of Congress have read the answers of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. It is really most interesting reading. These answers are on page 4 of the report of the Secretary. To the first question the Secretary of Commerce and Labor makes this answer: It is clearly impossible to give a definite answer to this question. The Secretary proceeds then to give you his reasons, showing that it is impossible to answer that question. To question 2 his answer is: This inquiry can not be answered definitely for the same reasons as are stated in connection with the first inquiry. To question 3 he answers: This question can only be answered by the contractors themselves, and it is doubtful whether a definite reply could be given by them, etc. Mr. GOEBEL. Mr. Gompers, I know that he starts in with that sort of thing, but you ought to read on there. He goes on there and he says that there will be an increased cost, and so forth. You do not give his answer in full. It is not because of the difficulty to answer. Mr. GOMPERS. Let us see. He says in his answer to question 3Mr. GOEBEL. Take question 1. He says that it is impossible to give a definite answer to this question, and so on. Mr. GOMPERS. He says: It is clearly impossible to give a definite answer to this question. Mr. GOEBEL. Now he gives his reasons why. Mr. GOMPERS. Certainly; but they are reasons why it is impossible to answer the question. Hence, does it not seem an unwarranted procedure to ask a question that is impossible of definite answer? That is a matter that I desire to bring to the attention of this committee. Mr. GOEBEL. But would it not probably follow that the question is so serious a one that it is hard to give a definite answer as to the effect that it would have? It is not because the question is irrelevant or improper, but because of the nature and the circumstances that he could not give a definite answer. But if you will read on, he gives the reasons. Mr. GOMPERS. The reasons why he can not give a definite answer. His reasons do not change the statement that it is incapable of a definite answer. He supports his statement that it is incapable of a definite answer. To question 4 he replies: This inquiry offers the same difficulties when a reply is sought. To question 5 his reply is: This inquiry is likewise not susceptible of definite reply. To question 6, as to the position of the working people-and this is the only definite answer that he makes or that he says he is capable of making-he replies in this language: This question has already been answered by the representatives of organized labor who have appeared before the committee from time to time. As to the seventh question, he says: The same difficulties are met with in this question as with the preceding questions when a definite reply is attempted. In other words, the Committee on Labor of the last Congress asked a series of questions which officially were communicated to another Department of the Government, and that Department is compelled to say that the questions are incapable of definite or intelligent or proper answer. And the fact of the matter is that the attention of the members of the committee who voted for that proposition-for those questions-was called to the fact that they could not be answered, and that they were simply submitted by the opposition to the eight-hour bill for the purpose of dragging the thing along through the Fifty-eighth Congress, and in order that the legislation which we sought might be defeated. Now, there is no additional argument that can be made here before this committee in support of the bill. There is not one additional thought or fact that could be submitted to this committee in opposition to the bill that has not in some form or other been presented at some hearing and therefore is in print in the official records of this committee and of other committees of Congress and of Congress itself. Time and time again it has been my duty, with others not always a pleasurable duty-to ask the consideration and time of the Committee on Labor of the House to hear what we have to say; and it has not always been a pleasurable duty, either, to be compelled to call attention to the impatience of the working people of our country with the dilatory methods employed either by the one or the other, the negligence, the indifference of some members or parties regarding the interests of labor and the hostility manifested by many and under the tongue of glibness and kindly expression for labor. But when anything tangible was suggested or offered or proposed it was met too often with indifference and hostility. I am not here, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, to ask for any hearings upon this bill. We believe that the facts that are obtainable have been obtained either in support or in opposition to the eight-hour bill. The working people of this country want it. They are in earnest about it. And when I say that they want it, I mean not simply as a mere fad or fancy. They want it because it is an absolute necessity to their own well-being and the well-being of our country. Some men have said that we are indulging in threats, because we have expressed our dissatisfaction with things as they are going with regard to the interests of labor and the affairs in which labor is interested, and we have been held up to scorn and contempt before several committees of Congress because we dared to say that our patience has been tested to the limit. It has been construed that we have threatened members of Congress and Senators with our displeasure, if you please, or threatened them that we would try to supplant them with other men representing the people in Congress, and this is the kind of threats about which so much is said. For heaven's sake, when has it become a crime or an offense for an American citizen to express his preference for one Congressman or another? I imagine that it is not so grave an offense for the workingmen to exercise their sovereign political power, accorded to them equally with all other citizens, in furtherance of their interests or in furtherance of the principles in which they believe, in the protection of the rights to which they are entitled or think they are entitled. I am sure I am within the limit of truth when I say that the representative men in the organized labor movement have exercised a healthful and a rightful conservative influence over the working people of our country. If you do not believe it, look to other countries. Mr. HASKINS. Right here let me ask you a question, whether it would not be better for the laboring organizations of the country to quietly exercise their right of suffrage, as all other people do, rather than to send out letters threatening men who are acting under an oath of office in order to induce them to conform to their particular wishes in the enactment of certain legislation? Mr. GOMPERS. I think the question is scarcely a fair one, for it leaves the inference that the workingmen have done a thing which they have neither a lawful nor a moral right to do, and I deny that the workingmen have done anything of the sort. What they have done is what every other citizen in the United States is expected to do, and that is to ally themselves with those who are similarly situated, who hold similar views, for the purpose of having those interests and those views enacted into laws by Congress. Pray tell meI might turn the Yankee-what was this movement for the declaration of the gold standard? What was the movement for the maintenance of the free and unlimited coinage of silver? And a man who stood upon the opposite platform was threatened with dire political defeat. We are interested in the matter of our employment, in the matter of our hours of labor, in the exercise of the rights which every other citizen exercises, and we find that Congress has turned a deaf ear to our complaints, to our memorials for relief, to the petitions which we have presented for redress; and the back of Congress is turned against us by negligence or indifference or hostility, and nothing comes from our efforts. What shall we do, continue to come here year after year and year after year and decade after decade and still go back reporting to the men who select us to come here and present their claims," Defeat. defeat, defeat; nothing accomplished? Mr. HASKINS. I understand that the Attorney-General has recently rendered an opinion that the present eight-hour law applies to all Government work. Mr. GOMPERS. Have you a copy of that? Mr. HASKINS. I have not. Mr. GOMPERS. Nor have I. Mr. HASKINS. I have seen a copy of it within the last two weeks. Mr. GOEBEL. That is what you have reference to? Mr. HASKINS. Yes; I suppose so. Mr. GOMPERS. There are several things in reference to that, and I am glad that is brought up for this reason, because it matters a great deal what suits Government work. The purpose of this bill is to reach the work done by contract and subcontract, affecting those things which can not be bought in the open market. But shall we be compelled to depend upon the varying influences and varying conceptions and varying interpretations? We want something a little more substantial; and as for the eight-hour law in the construction of the Panama Canal, the first great work, the first one great undertaking, or, rather, one of the great undertakings that our Government proposes to build, the eight-hour day so far as it applies to foreign laborers is not operative. And who is there who is going to complain now? What American workman who may be there and who may be called upon to work in excess of eight hours is going to complain? Who is going to complain? If they complain there it means simply the absolute loss of their situation; and, as I say, the eight-hour law, the first eight-hour resolution of Congress was not only a means for the shortening of the workday, but it was a declaration of an economic principle established by the Government of the United States, and that principle has been destroyed or vitiated-not_destroyed, but vitiated to a considerable extent-by the action of Congress. Mr. GOEBEL. It was suspended. Mr. GOMPERS. Yes; suspended. That will do just as well as any of them. Mr. HASKINS. You understand, do you not, that Congress can not enact any law but what it is subject to interpretation and construction by the courts hereafter? Mr. GOMPERS. I understand that very well, and it has seemed to me that inasmuch as Congress does not mind to take a chance as to the constitutionality of a measure when it affects other interests, I do not see why this continuous harping upon judicial interpretation and constitutionality as to measures that have for their purpose the benefiting of so large a mass of the people as the wage-earners are. Mr. STANLEY. As I understand it, Mr. Gardner, you prepared this bill with great care. I do not think there is any question but what this bill is clearly within the right of Congress. There is no serious question but what you have a constitutional right to circumscribe the hours of labor on Government work, or to define what Government work is, as has been done in this bill. The CHAIRMAN. I do not know whether that is seriously disputed by anybody, now. I think very generally the position has been abandoned. Mr. STANLEY. Of course, what you want to do is to get a bill through, and then what the courts will do with it is another thing. Mr. GOMPERS. Yes; we will take our chances with the courts. There is considerable discussion and rumor as to when Congress will adjourn. Of course we understand that Congress may adjourn, and any bill that is unadopted or which is not passed in this first session may be adopted or passed in the next session. I do not think that Congress ought to adjourn this first session without passing that bill and having it become a law. I urge it, and I trust that the members of the committee may see the wisdom of so doing. I said that the report of the arguments in extenso, with testimony to a very great length which was submitted, are all in print. In those committee hearings the last Congress was urged to pass this legislation, and we said that we were perfectly satisfied that the committee might take a vote upon the bill without a word from us on the subject and submit our case upon the record, upon the arguments and facts submitted in former Congresses. We do not want to add anything more. I am sure there is not a new thought, there is not a new fact, that can be submitted by the opposition. Mr. STANLEY. Are there any new conditions-I mean intereststhat you would like to present to the committee? Mr. GOMPERS. I have not really any desire to do that, now. Of course if the committee should so decide to undertake hearings or arguments, I presume that we should be compelled to submit. But we shall do so then very reluctantly. We do not want to take up the time of the committee, and we do not want to burden your record. The facts, the theory, and the arguments are all in print. Mr. HASKINS. There is nothing additional? Mr. GOMPERS. There is not anything in addition that we care to present other than what is already in print. We might present facts anew, but they would simply support the first contentions. We might make another argument or arguments and clothe them in different language, but in their essence they would be the same. I trust that the committee may report the bill. Mr. DAVENPORT. In the original Gardner bill which has been introduced at this session, and which you ask the enactment of now, in lines 12 and 13 on page 1, it is provided that no person "shall be required or permitted to work more than eight hours in any one calendar day." In the bill that was before this committee at the last session, the bill as it is in the report made by Secretary Metcalf, are these words, the language used is: "Shall be required or permitted to work more than eight hours in any one calendar day upon such work." Now, we are not novices in this discussion. The insertion of the words upon such work" was made, of course, after a great deal of discussion before this committee and before the Senate committee. Do you object to the insertion of those words in the Gardner bill? 66 Mr. GOMPERS. I think that the Gardner bill with those words omitted should be enacted. I think that to make it an effective bill, to make it an effective law, those words should not be retained. Mr. DAVENPORT. That is, that the words "upon such work" should not be inserted? Mr. GOMPERS. Be not inserted. Mr. DAVENPORT. Then, it is your desire to have a bill enacted which. will require the contractor to stipulate that no workman working upon any part of the work contemplated shall be required or permitted to work more than eight hours at all in any one calendar day? Mr. GOMPERS. In his employ. Mr. DAVENPORT. In his employ. Mr. GOEBEL. Does not that refer to the contract? Mr. DAVENPORT. It does not; that is the precise point. Mr. GOEBEL. Can it mean anything else but the contract? Mr. DAVENPORT. It is in the contract, but the question is whether the man stipulates that no employee of his shall work in any one calendar day more than eight hours. Mr. GOEBEL. On that contract. Mr. STANLEY. That is, four hours might be upon the Government work and six hours upon some other work. Mr. GOEBEL. Under the contract. Mr. STANLEY. The only way it could affect it would be that they would work him eight hours on that contract and two hours on something else. Mr. GOEBEL. It would not apply. The CHAIRMAN. That language is lifted bodily from the act of 1892, which had been in effect for a number of years, but we propose to pass this, under which no difficulty of the kind suggested has |