But the net result has been bad food, cold food, and it is doing for 15 or 18 men or 14 men a definite injustice just because they said "Don't exempt anybody and don't have any consideration for that." Mr. CANFIELD. That, I think, probably is an accurate picture of what has happened in some instances. Chairman BARDEN. I know it is accurate. Mr. CANFIELD. In some other instances, however, the big camps have been maintained, and with good foods. But they pay this silly kind of wages. Chairman BARDEN. Sure, they can do it on the mass-production basis. Mr. CANFIELD. To give you an example of the curious effects of that, I would suppose that no place better than a wood camp could expect a supply of fuel. It is right there at hand. But I know one company that is trucking cylinders of bottled gas into wood camps and running gas stoves there because it saves about an hour of cookee's time a day in stoking up fires. They don't want to pay time and a half for that. And it is actually cheaper to do such an utterly stupid thing as that, to put in gas ranges and truck in truckloads of cylinders of gas, than to let a guy go out and collect the wood that is right there at hand to run the stoves. That is an equally silly kind of result that comes by applying a law, the whole philosophy of which is something that applies to controlled factory-type operations, to a thing that does not fit that pattern at all. Chairman BARDEN. That is the trouble, Mr. Canfield. That disturbs me greatly. The pattern of this is for big business and big labor. Mr. CANFIELD. Yes. Chairman BARDEN. I mean the pattern, the records, the handling, the supervision, the keeping up with it, everything-the pattern of it. But for the operator of the type that you are referring to, and of the type that has been parading in here for the last 2 or 3 days, they are in for serious trouble. Mr. CANFIELD. They sure are. There is no doubt of that. Chairman BARDEN. There is not any question about it. They are in for serious trouble. And the thing that worries me apparently nobody cares about. Are there any out-of-town witnesses here who would like to be heard today? Mr. CANFIELD. There are no more witnesses as far as the pulpwood industry is concerned. I do not know who you have scheduled after that. Chairman BARDEN. Are Mr. Myers and Mr. Baggenstos here? Mr. CANFIELD. Mr. Myers is from the Forest Farmers Association. He was here this morning. He said he would be back later. But I do not think he is here now. Chairman BARDEN. I do not see anything for us to do now but to recess until tomorrow morning. We will get over on the floor, and there will be a call for a vote on this tariff question. We will meet at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. Just talking between you and myself, you were discussing a while ago such things as seasonal operations. Mr. CANFIELD. Yes, sir. Chairman BARDEN. I think I have had every kind of a difficulty and trouble that anybody in the world could have with the interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The thing that has disturbed me from the very beginning is that the attitude is to put you in and let you get out if you can. Is that not your experience? Mr. CANFIELD. Yes, with very little opportunity to get out. We got into seasonal crops. They began to swish that around. I do not know yet how they finally decided. But on some crops that were gathered in 1 area in 1 season, if they found that it went up the coast as the climate changed, that was not seasonal. Because of the fact that 1 State would have it 1 season of the year, and another another, it was not seasonal. Well, to me, anybody with any commonsense at all knows exactly what we meant. We meant seasonal in the area where the commodity was being gathered. But those kind of things you cannot reason out. And when we got to the question of coverage, if we did the kind of job that ought to be done on the act, we would just take it apart and put it back together and leave out a lot of the parts that are causing the knocks. Mr. CANFIELD. I would suggest going further and just take it apart. Chairman BARDEN. But I cease to be optimistic about doing a sensible thing with this so long as there is so much pressure that does not appear on the surface and so many commitments made that are probably not backed with good reason. The reasons may be satisfactory to those that made them. And when you get up to the proposition that affects an area like these pulpwood people who have been here for the last few days, it is pitiful to me that we are not more patient about getting more fact and more information. To me, I again repeat, it is a very serious thing. I do not know what is going to happen. I know they are in trouble. The ones that are now pushing don't care how much trouble they are in. Then they needn't come pleading around me and saying how much they love the poor people for whom they are going to do this, that, and the other. They just don't do it. That is all there is to it. When it is wrapped around their necks they can just take that and live with it. I do not like that attitude, and that is the reason why I have taken all of the cussing and abuse and everything else for contending for a full hearing on this matter. This matter was scheduled to go out in 5 days or less time. I would resign the committee before I would handle a matter of this importance that lightly. It could produce tragic results. Mr. CANFIELD. It certainly could. Chairman BARDEN. And I know it is going to hurt. It is going to hurt bad. And I know they are going out. I know these old fellows who cannot lift much at a time and who are not nimble on their feet and do not have anything to rely on: no savings and no income, no retirement pay. I know they are going off the payroll, and you know it, too. Mr. CANFIELD. Certainly. Chairman BARDEN. Certainly they are going off. And that does not represent 100 or 1,000; it represents millions. A man with any sense, if he is operating right close to his margin, is going to save the good producers just like he does in a herd of cattle. The cow that does not produce the milk turns into hamburger pretty quickly. And while they won't shoot them, they will just do something that will produce suffering by just firing them. But I cannot get many folks interested in that kind of consideration of this thing. And it troubles me. But I am now getting ready to get closed out on this, and to those who have all the answers, 1 will let them assume the responsibility. The committee will recess until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. (Whereupon, at 12:35 p. m., the committee was recessed, to be reconvened at 10 a. m., Thursday, June 23, 1955.) AMENDMENT TO INCREASE THE MINIMUM WAGE THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 1955 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10:15 a. m., pursuant to recess, in room 429, House Office Building, Hon. Graham A. Barden (chairman) presiding. Present: Representatives Barden, Bailey, Perkins, Wier, Elliott, Landrum, Metcalf, Bowler, Roosevelt, McConnell, Gwinn, Smith, Bosch, Wainwright, Frelinghuysen, Coon and Fjare. Present also: Fred G. Hussey, chief clerk; John O. Graham, minority clerk; Edward A. McCabe, general counsel; Russell C. Derrickson, chief investigator. Chairman BARDEN. The committee will come to order. The first witness on the list this morning is Mr. Myers. Will you identify yourself for the reporter, please, sir, and proceed. STATEMENT OF J. WALTER MYERS, JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOREST FARMERS ASSOCIATION, ATLANTA, GA. Mr. MYERS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is J. Walter Myers, Jr. I am executive director of the Forest Farmers Association of Atlanta, Ga. Our president, Mr. J. V. Whitfield of Burgaw, N. C., testified the other day. Our original idea was that there were three of us scheduled to appear, Mr. Whitfield and myself and one of our directors, Mr. Baggenstoss. However, due to various circumstances, we have appeared separately, or will appear separately to present our views and the views of our members on certain proposed amendments to the present Fair Labor Standards Act. The Forest Farmers Association, incidentally, is an organization of timberland owners in 15 Southern States. There are some 3,700 individuals and companies affiliated with our association who own some 50 million acres of forest land in these States. The majority of these, incidentally, are small owners and operators. Speaking for these 3,700 individuals and operators, I would like to point out how certain of the proposed amendments would affect them. Actually, in considering all of the proposed amendments to increase the minimum wage, they would tend to hurt the small-forest owner and timber operator as much or more than anyone else in this business of raising and processing crops of trees. How much these proposed amendments would hurt the small people is almost directly proportional to the amount of increase proposed. |