Secretary TOBIN. That is where 90 percent of your secondary boyotts come from.

Senator TAFT. I am saying according to the report of the Board, 10 percent does come about, as I said, and 1 or 2 percent comes about hat way. Your secondary boycotts have been used as a weapon all ver this country, as weapon between unions, as a weapon to penalize mall employers.

We had a case in southern California where the teamsters came nto a small plant and insisted that the men join the teamsters' union. When they wouldn't join the teamsters' union they refused to deliver any goods to that man and finally put him out of business. The employees didn't want to join the teamsters' union, but they insisted he require them to join the teamsters and make a contract.

Those are the cases we have had. There are hundreds of those cases. Those are the things we are trying to get. As far as the matter of farming out goods to another employer is concerned, I think there is a case and it should be excepted.

Secretary TOBIN. How about sweatshop goods?

Senator TAFT. I don't see how you can determine whether it is sweatshop or not. If you can say that the strike is because those goods are made by men receiving substantially lower wages than the others, I think I would be willing to accept that, but that is a pretty difficult thing to prove.

Senator DOUGLAS. Mr. Chairman, in the Bedford Stone case that was the situation. That was the issue which was involved there. Stone was cut in nonunion quarries where the wage scale was appreciably lower than in the union quarries, and the granite cutters in the cities refused to use the nonunion stone because they felt that to do so would encourage the spread of nonunion areas with their lower wage scales and lower earnings and lower the general conditions in the trade.

And yet the Supreme Court declared that such a secondary boycott was illegal. As I see it, the sweeping terms of the Taft-Hartley law would also make it illegal. I don't want to put words into the mouth of Senator Taft and I am sure he won't let me do so, but it seems to me what the Senator is now saying is that there are certain secondary boycotts which are to be judged not by the methods used but by the ends sought which are socially desirable and that you do not pass a sweeping condemnation on all forms of secondary boycott.

Senator TAFT. What happened 2 years ago was this: We said to the labor people, "If you can show us and define a type of secondary boycott which is justifiable, we will accept it."

The labor people refused to do so. They opposed the entire bill. They came in with the same kind of suggestions contained in this bill, which doesn't prohibit any kind of secondary boycott for all practical purposes. As I say, they refused to try to work out the language on what might be a justifiable secondary boycott. It may be a difficult line to draw, however.

The number of cases that are not justifiable outnumber 10 to 1 those that are, according to the testimony we had.

Senator PEPPER. Mr. Chairman, the Senator from Illinois has referred to the stone cutters' case. May I just read a quotation from that opinion by Mr. Justice Brandeis?

Senator TAFT. Dissenting opinion.

Senator PEPPER. Mr. Justice Brandeis says:

Members of the Journeymen Stone Cutters' Association could not work any where on stone which had been cut at quarries by men working in opposition to it without aiding and abetting the enemy. Observance by each member of the provision of their constitution, which forbids such action, was essential to his own self-protection. It was demanded by loyalty to the organization and to his fellows.

Now what I want to observe is that the Senator from Ohio and others have spoken here about the cherished right of the individual to work and have been solicitous about preserving the rights of the individual to work if he chooses to do so.

Here it seems to me is presented the right of the individual not to work upon something if he chooses not to work upon that commodity because he thinks to do so might be disadvantageous to his self-interest. In every one of those instances the Senator cited there, certainly in the opinion of those workers, their self-interest was in some way related to their refusal to work upon these jobs. So aren't we going to protect the right of a worker not to work when he thinks it is against his selfinterest to do so?

Secretary TOBIN. He definitely should have that right, and if he doesn't exercise that right, he is destroying sound economy for himself, for his family and his fellow workers.

I would like to read the stated purposes of both the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act, and I will just take one paragraph:

The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract, and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership and association substanfíally burdens and affects the flow of commerce and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries.

Now the use of the secondary boycott, the economic secondary boycott, in my opinion is absolutely essential to the achievement of these stated purposes of both the Taft-Hartley law and the Wagner Act.

Senator TAFT. Why is that? In America can't we assume that workmen are intelligent people who can be persuaded directly by pointing out to them the advantage of unionizing, the advantage of demanding higher wages, joining the union, where they get low wages? As a matter of fact, aren't sweatshop conditions the most favorable conditions for the organizing of workers without any use of the secondary boycott?

Secretary TOBIN. That doesn't happen to bear out the record and the history of this country. I pointed out the other day to you gentlemen in this committee that most of the granite that was used in the great structures in Washington in 39 came from the northern part of the State of the Senator from Florida, and southern Georgia, and I am very proud of the contribution he has made to changing the economic lot of those people as a result of laws that have been enacted in recent years.

It took the NRA to make a change in that, and that was declared unconstitutional.

Then the Wagner Act was not accepted by employers until about 2 years after its enactment and it was declared constitutional. We have records in our department, I think, in the year 1936, showing

that the average wage of the quarry workers in that area was in the vicinity of $4.50 to $5 a week. What chance do the quarry workers in the State of Ohio have to compete with such a wage?

It bears out the contention of one recent case you read, and I think also the statement of Senator Taft's father in connection with unionization, that any low wage in any part of the country affects the whole economy from one end to the other.

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Senator TAFT. I fully agree with the Wagner Act, and the Wagner Act unquestionably prevented the practices on the part of employers that kept unions from organizing those men. But, having achieved that and having retained it in this law, I see no justification for the claim that you have got to have a secondary boycott in order to carry out the power of organization. That is the claim you are making. We have given every power to organization in the act as it is.

Secretary TOBIN. And then you cannot take from the employees the only economic weapon they have in addition to the strike, and that is the secondary boycott, because, if you do, you can never achieve the declared purposes of the Taft-Hartley Act and of the Wagner Act.

Senator TAFT. That I completely deny. I don't think it has been the best method of organizing in the past, and I see no reason to think it needs to be done. It certainly is an attack and hits right and left any number of people and the public, who haven't got the slightest interest in the dispute, and does them serious financial damage.

Senator PEPPER. Senator, I would like to observe that down in the South I know of my personal knowledge of large areas, a good many of them in the textile areas, where it is a nonunion atmosphere and where as a practical matter these employees don't really have an opportunity to organize.

Senator TAFT. You mean they don't want to organize. If they don't want to organize, why should the United States Government make them organize?

Senator PEPPER. I am not talking about the United States Government doing anything except letting people organize them if they

want to.

Senator TAFT. All they have to do is go in and organize them. The employer can't interfere for a moment. He can't form a company union. He can't fire a man if he joins a union. You have got protection under the law. Organization can be most successful without the secondary boycott.

Senator PEPPER. With all due respect to you, you haven't lived as long as I have in a part of the country where they fight unions and where unions have been so much in the minority as they are in my part of the country. I want to say there are areas down there where it is next to impossible, for one reason or another, under the Wagner Act or no Wagner Act, for the employees to form a union. The employers find effective ways to keep them from doing it. They hire people, they can tell by the look in his eye almost whether he is amenable to that kind of attitude, and they don't hire him or they fire him the first time he manifests such an attitude.

Now, if the workers in some area can come to the aid of these fellows with a secondary boycott, sometimes it is the only way they can effectively help themselves.

Secretary TOBIN. In doing this, they are helping the whole of America's economy, because they are making consumers out of those lowly paid people.

Senator TAFT. Even with those people in the South, education and persuasion and intelligence is the way to make progress and not by force and strong-arm methods to insist that they learn things which they apparently aren't willing to learn by persuasion.

Senator PEPPER. We have a big textile industry down there, not organized, and the owners of it are linked together into actual if not formal associations of one sort or another.

They act upon common policies, upon a concerted plan and policy. I don't know at all but what it would be appropriate for workers in other parts of the country who believe that those goods should be produced by union people to strike back economically.

Senator TAFT. You mean march in and organize automobile caralcades and march into the place and, in fact, bring force and coercion to bear in order to force unionization? Isn't that what you are advocating?

Senator PEPPER. No; I am not advocating that. I know the Senator is trying to put words in my mouth. I am saying that if the teamsters don't want to deliver goods to that kind of textile mill, if other union workers don't want to do business with employers who process those goods, they have got a right to do so, and it is in their self-interest to take that step, and all the Secretary is suggesting is that the Government stay out of it and let these neighbors help these people if they want to help them.

Senator TAFT. Secretary Tobin, I want to finish, if I can, for a minute. On page 11, you say:

The Taft-Hartley Act was passed during a period of great emotional stress, arising from abnormal disturbance and readjustments, which was an inevitable accompaniment of the return to a peacetime economy.

I want to call your attention to the fact that the Taft-Hartley Act was passed after at least 6 weeks' hearings instead of 2 weeks; it was passed a year after a somewhat similar act was passed, the Case bill. It was passed after the most complete consideration, the most complete debate that I have ever seen in Congress.

I want to know what your justification is for claiming it was passed during any period of great emotional stress.

Secretary TOBIN. On the basis of the strike record, to begin with. Furthermore, we had a tremendous increase in the cost of living. Between June 15, 1946, and June 15, 1947, there was, roughly, a 20-percent increase in the cost of living.

(The Secretary of Labor subsequently stated for the record that the increase in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumers' Price Index for this period was 17.9 percent.)

Of necessity, wages dragged a little bit more slowly because they are based on annual contracts, and they didn't follow the inflation. As a result, you had tremendously high amounts of labor-management disturbances due in great measure to the inflation.

Senator TAFT. I agree there were a lot of strikes, but where was the emotion? I agree there was emotion in 1946 when the Seventy-ninth Democratic Congress passed the Case bill, and when the President demanded that we draft all strikers into the Army. I agree there was

emotion then, but after that there was an election in 1946; the President vetoed the Case bill, which did many of the things this bill did. We had a whole year to think it over.

Do you think that emotion lasted for some 14 months? Don't you think during that time this Congress was able to free itself from emotion and act on the logical testimony of the hearings?

Secretary TOBIN. My honest opinion is that the great majority of the Members of Congress thought they were curing national emergency situations and had no conception of what was in this law. I might remind you, Senator, that in New York

Senator TAFT. That certainly is a reflection on the intelligence of Congress, because it was debated for 3 weeks, at least 3 or 4 weeks, on the floor of the Senate.

Secretary TOBIN. You could debate Taft-Hartley for a year and you still wouldn't have covered all its provisions.

In New York City you stated that the building mechanics of the country were not included in the law, and at the same moment when you made that statement

Senator TAFT. In my opinion, I didn't think they should be.
Secretary TOBIN. You stated they were not.

Senator TAFT. I don't agree with the extension to intrastate com

merce.

Secretary TOBIN. Congressman Hartley in Washington on the same day said definitely they were in. There were the two men who wrote the law, and they were differing in their opinion.

Senator PEPPER. Taft versus Hartley.

Senator TAFT. The Supreme Court has differed for years as to what is interstate commerce and what is not, and they have changed their minds a hundred times. That question of whether a thing is interstate commerce or not has nothing to do with the question of emotion. It is the least emotional question I know of.

Secretary TOBIN. This is affecting commerce, not interstate com

merce.

Senator TAFT. I don't think the law ought to apply to work which results

Secretary TOBIN. When the term "affecting commerce" is used, you cover a great deal of ground.

Senator TAFT. Compared to what this committee is trying to do in a period of emotion, compared to 1946 when we passed the Case bill and almost passed the President's bill drafting men into the Army, this Taft-Hartley law was passed in 1947 with the greatest care and consideration that I know of in the case of any legislation in any Congress I have been in.

Secretary TOBIN. Furthermore, it is the policy of the United States to organize these workers. The declared policy in the TaftHartley reads:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.