Mrs. GREEN. And you say that your profit, or the amount that is left after paying all of your expenses for the wages and salaries and material and fuel and electricity and everything else is 13.0 percent? Mr. VOGES. Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. GREEN. If we used that same figure in 1939 and 1952, the profits of the company would have doubled, would they not?

Now, I realize that you had a much greater profit in 1939 than you have now. But if you used that you still would have doubled.

Mr. VOGES. May I refer first to your figure of $16,270,000 in 1939 and the 1947 figure of $30,584,000. The dollar depreciated to almost 50 cents.

Mrs. GREEN. That is true, though, for both management and labor. The individual who was being hired by you, his dollar also decreased. Mr. VOGES. That is correct. But I am trying to say, ma'am, that the number of dollars involved does not show an increase in business; rather, it is just a change in money value.

Mrs. GREEN. Just from a humanitarian standpoint, do you think that with the average salaries that you quote, the average family can live on that and maintain a decent standard of living?

Mr. VOGES. Ma'am, I would much rather have 75 cents an hour in Dogpatch than I would a dollar an hour in Manhattan.

Mrs. GREEN. Let's go back to Dogpatch. Do you think 75 cents an hour is adequate for a family to maintain a decent standard of living?

Mr. VOGES. You have a living condition, ma'am, where they are not crowded into a one-room apartment on a back street; rather, they have a house that is out in the open and they have a yard, and they do have the ability to have a garden and grow crops for themselves. And they get by fairly well on 75 cents. I would say they live as well down there on 75 cents as could possibly be done in the metropolitan areas at a dollar and a dollar and a quarter.

Mrs. GREEN. Well, of course, I do not feel that a dollar is adequate in the metropolitan areas. So my question would still be, in Dogpatch do you think a family can maintain a decent standard of living on 75 cents an hour?

Mr. VOGES. If I answered that "Yes," I would be giving an answer that I am not qualified to make; and, secondly, I would be giving an answer that would be in direct contradiction to the Department of Labor figures on the cost of a family living.

However, I do think that a family can live comfortably on a 40hour week at 75 cents an hour in a small rural town.

Mrs. GREEN. A 40-hour week at 75 cents an hour?

Mr. VOGES. Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. GREEN. Thirty dollars a week?

Mr. VOGES. Yes.

Mrs. GREEN. Do you think they can live comfortably or do you think they can exist?

Mr. VOGES. It is more than an existence. It is a very comfortable life.

That is mostly take-home pay, ma'am.

Mrs. GREEN. The kind of life that you think is desirable for the average American family?

Mr. VOGES. The average American family puts a different answer on it. There are grades.

Mrs. GREEN. Your people are average, are they not? You are not coming here and saying that your people are way below average?

Mr. VOGES. I am saying that we can use a very common, unskilled laborer; yes.

Mrs. GREEN. You are saying that your people, then, are below average?

Mr. VOGES. Below average in what, ma'am?

Mrs. GREEN. Well, you define it. You are the one who is setting up the conditions on page 3. It seems to me you take the position of saying that those people do not need to eat in restaurants and do not need to have expensive recreation and do not need costly wardrobes, and apparently the medical services.

Mr. VOGES. Not medical, tonsorial.

Mrs. GREEN. Just the tonsorial?

Mr. VOGES. Yes.

Mrs. GREEN. They cut their own hair, you mean.
What about medical services?

Mr. VOGES. I mean by tonsorial they can buy a haircut for 75 cents, perhaps, where it costs a dollar and a quarter in a metropolitan area. Mrs. GREEN. Then you are setting up the kind of standard of living that you think is good enough for them.

Mr. VOGES. No, ma'am. I think that any of the men around here who are from what might be classed as a rural area in America will concur that a family's expense is not comparable in those areas. Mrs. GREEN. Is not or should not be, which?

Mr. VOGES. It should not be, because there is a different type of living. It is not at all essential that the pay scale be the same for a man in a small rural town as in a metropolitan area. Because if it were true that they were on an equal basis, the man in the small rural town would come along a lot faster than his city cousin.

Mrs. GREEN. Let us just take necessities then. Let us take out what you evidently refer to as luxuries. What about just food, shelter, and clothing and medical expenses?

Do you think that the average family can exist on $30 a week?
Mr. VOGES. They seem to do it, ma'am.

Mrs. GREEN. You would recommend that as being adequate for the people in your area?

Mr. VOGES. No. That is putting a different construction on it than I do.

Mrs. GREEN. Is that not what you are doing, in effect? You are coming here and recommending that that should be the standard of living for the people in your area?

Mr. VOGES. No, ma'am.

First of all, we are saying definitely that we are opposed to minimum-wage legislation by the National Government in any amount. We do not think it is a proper field for Government legislation.

Mrs. GREEN. But that is not the real point you make. The point you make in your testimony is that this is adequate for them to live on, is it not?

Mr. VOGES. Again I say the laboring family on $30 a month in a rural community can get along.

Mrs. GREEN. I thought it was $30 a week. Now you are advocating $30 a month?

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Mr. VOGES. Thirty dollars a week. I stand corrected.

Mrs. GREEN. The $30 a week is bad enough. I would hate to make it $30 a month.

Mr. WIER. Will you yield?

Mrs. GREEN. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. WIER. In connection with what she is interested in, when she started to figure out 52 times 30, I think your industry is quite substantially seasonal so that they do not get that income 52 weeks a year, at least in some parts of this country, is it not? It is very seasonal. Mr. VOGES. Years ago that was more true than it is now, sir. Mr. WIER. It still exists?

Mr. VOGES. Today it does fluctuate in seasons, but the manufacture is constant. The manufacturers do build inventory in the slow period, and the fluctuation in number of employees at any given period among most plants is not very great.

Mr. WIER. The answer is that you cannot guarantee and you do not guarantee your employees 52 weeks a year income?

Mr. VOGES. That is right.

Mr. WIER. At $30 a week?

Mr. VOGES. That is correct.

Mr. WIER. Many of them have to take a layoff?

Mr. VOGES. That is right.

Mr. WIER. That is all.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Bailey?

Mr. BAILEY. Just a question or maybe two.

Mr. Voges, your concern or your type of industry 15 or 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, was almost exclusive in the field. Since then there has come into the field the manufacture of cardboard boxes. How much has that cut into your industry in the way of competition? In other words, are they using them to the exclusion of the products your group manufactures?

Mr. VOGES. I think I can give you my answer in this way, that the increase in productivity on these farm products by an increased population has mostly offset any loss we would have made by reason of the inroads of competition. However, we have not been able to gain.

Mr. BAILEY. You do not think that that new competition coming in, say, in the last 5 or 6 years has accounted for the closing of some of those plants rather than the increased minimum wage of 1950?

Mr. VOGES. Yes, I think that competition has had some effect. But the overall industry picture is such that production today is not a great deal different than it was 5 or 10 years ago.

Mr. BAILEY. One more question: Where are those plants that make cardboard? Where are they located? Are they contiguous to your plant in the area or are they specialized somewhere?

What I am trying to get at is this: There was testimony given here the other day, and the gentleman from Georgia will remember-that right now southern pine lumber is meeting competition from redwood lumber from California and Oregon.

Has that entered into the manufacture of these crates? What percent of them are made out on the west coast?

Mr. VOGES. Not those two items that you mentioned. Pulpwood plants are located throughout the South and converting plants are located throughout the Nation, as close as possible to their source or to their actual place of use.

Mr. BAILEY. One more question and then I shall have concluded: It was my privilege to hold a hearing during some labor discussion and difficulty back in 1950 at DiGiorgio Farms in the San Joaquin Valley in California. There I noticed the company itself operated its own box factory and employed largely Mexican labor. And the area immigration and naturalization man in that area testified that during the 90 days just preceding the hearing, he had taken 315 wetback Mexican employees off their operations.

To what extent are you losing business to these big fruit companies and produce companies that are going into the same line of business you have themselves, and to what extent are they taking advantage of the normal operations of that type of a plant by the employment of Mexican labor?

There are a lot of other large fruit and produce companies in California other than the DiGiorgio people.

Mr. VOGES. With reference to Mexican labor, I do not believe that it has any effect at the present time on our industry.

Mr. BAILEY. You think they are not employed in those operations? Mr. VOGES. I do not believe it has any effect on our industry at this time. I know of no instance where Mexicans or wetbacks, as you call them, are being employed.

On the west coast the Sunkist group did have, and I believe still do have, box-manufacturing operations. However, the citrus industry of California has gone to a considerable extent to paperboard. And I believe that Sunkist has discontinued manufacture in those plants and they are now using paperboard. Therefore, that has gone out of existence. And they were never competitive other than what they used in their own plants.

There are 1 or 2 other instances where growers or shippers do have a manufacturing operation, but they are insignificant in the whole total.

Mr. BAILEY. You are well aware of the fact that the DiGiorgio operations out there are immense. They control most of the fruit outlets for fruit and other produce all over the country. They own completely the food distribution center at Baltimore and they own about 80 percent of the one in New York. They own completely the one in Chicago.

I am just wondering to what extent they are responsible for what you say is happening to your industry.

Mr. VOGES. I do not believe at all, sir.

Mr. BAILEY. You do not think so?

Mr. VOGES. No, sir.

Mr. BAILEY. That is all.

Mrs. GREEN. Will the gentleman yield for a question?
Mr. BAILEY. I will yield to the lady from Oregon.

Mrs. GREEN. I have one other question: You paint a picture of your particular area that your particular industry is being hurt and then, in the last paragraph, you ask that you be excluded.

Mr. VOGES. Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. GREEN. If your industry were excluded, would you have any objection to a raise in the minimum wage? You say the metropolitan areas have to pay much higher, and so on, and it costs them more to live. If yours were excluded in your rural area, then would you object?

Mr. VOGES. To the extent that we are opposed to wage legislation at the national level in its entirety.

Mrs. GREEN. Any type at all?

Mr. VOGES. Yes, ma'am.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Udall?

Mr. UDALL. No questions, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. McConnell ?

Mr. McCONNELL. I have no questions.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Gwinn?

Mr. GWINN. Mr. Voges, what percentage of your workers are women?

Mr. VOGES. I cannot answer that, sir.

Mr. GWINN. Could you guess?

Mr. VOGES. No, sir.

Mr. GWINN. How is it in your plant?

Mr. VOGES. I do not operate a plant. I simply represent the industry.

Mr. GWINN. You do not know how many are single or what ages they are, how many are working from one family or any of those things?

Mr. VOGES. No; I do not, sir.

Mr. GWINN. I thought your testimony was a very good illustration of the number of industries there are in these United States that most of us know absolutely nothing about. And for us to try to legislate covering all of these businesses that we know nothing about, or don't even suspect that they exist, seems to me a part of the foolishness of Government management, regulation, control, and compulsion on a national basis.

Mr. VOGES. Thank you, sir. I agree with you entirely.

May I make one additional remark: In addition to representing the folks whom I mentioned, we also represent manufacturers of veneer, particularly in the State of Alabama.

And these folks manufacture nothing but veneer. They sell their veneer to box manufacturers and to private manufacturers for the inner core, not the outside surface. Their position is exactly the same as ours. It is the same operation as ours, forestry, the buying of timberland, the cutting of timber, and bringing timber into the plant and then going through the veneer process which, as you all probably know, is the unrolling of wood from a log as you unroll a piece of paper from a roll of paper.

Mr. GWINN. Thank you for giving us a picture of that little garden that we would like to get back to ourselves.

Mr. VOGES. Fine.

Mr. GWINN. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Smith?

Mr. SMITH. I have no questions.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Coon?

Mr. COON. I have no questions.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much, Mr. Voges, for your testimony and the information you have brought to the committee.

Mr. VOGES. Thanks to you and the committee for your attention and for the questions asked.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Our next witness is Mr. L. D. Kellogg, of Southern Hardwood Producers, Inc.