Mr. VANIK. I think subsidies could be checked and decreased if wage standards were leveled out throughout the country, and if decent earnings were provided to workers in all segments of the country. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You sound almost more like a Republican than a Democrat.

Mr. McCONNELL. I was going to suggest that you would save yourself a lot of trouble if you just said it is an approximation. I have not been able to find any exact way of arriving at a figure for minimum wages, and I have been fooling around with it for about 9 years now. It is an approximation. You say that the cost of living has gone up so much since it was made 75 cents and I think if you applied that formula to it you would come out with about 89 cents. If you applied the standard of living for a family of four, decent standard of living, you could come out with $2 an hour. You know as well as I do if you came out with $2 an hour that would be $80 a week for a man who would empty a wastebasket. You know what that would do to unskilled workers. They would be getting around $200 a week and you would just start a spiral.

So what we are trying to do is make an approximation of a correct figure, and trying to be as scientific in our talk as possible, but actually it is an approximation. The $1.25 has been mentioned by various people, and so one hears it and the other says it. Ninety cents has been said by somebody else, and they hear it and it is repeated. Actually, what we have to do is to figure the whole business out and to make an approximation also with an eye to how the men will vote on the floor, because you cannot get legislation through without votes, speaking in a very practical manner. That in substance is the way you arrive at a minimum wage rate, and what we will have to do here in figuring it out.

Mr. VANIK. As far as our goal is concerned, I do not think any Member of Congress can support anything that would fail to recognize our obligation to provide a minimum decent standard of living for any worker.

Mr. McCONNELL. That is a very general term.

Mr. VANIK. It can be scientifically arrived at.

Mr. McCONNELL. I do not think it can be scientifically arrived at, and I have heard many figures through the years. I do not know what would be the standard to apply to everybody in every section of America, and a law does not apply to Ohio, and it does not apply to North Carolina alone. It applies to all over the United States, and many areas. I do not know as anybody can come up with an exact figure and say "That is a standard cost of living." It varies with many people. We know that, and we might as well be frank about it. We will approximate in our minds what is the best we can do to give a decent standard of living to people in connection with the minimum wage, and we will also figure on votes on the floor to be practical about it, and we will also figure where we can stop and not cause an inflationary move in the country.

All of those have to be put together. They are approximation and not scientific. I think every one would save themselves a lot of trouble if they would cease trying to be scientific about fixing the minimum. wage. I do not know how you do it.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I would like to say that I strongly agree with Mr. McConnell on that point. I do not think that we can come out

with any scientific conclusions in the matter and it might vary from one part of the country to another. What might be suitable for New Jersey might not be necessary in another part of the country. So we must make some adjustment which is perhaps lower than some of us would like to see.

In conclusion, Mr. Vanik, I would like to ask you about your own district. You suggested that there has been a serious displacement of workers. Do you feel that this has resulted from the present Federal minimum wage? Has that anything to do with your problem?

Mr. VANIK. No, there are many causes that I think have resulted in the displacement of workers. There is an industrial movement to suburbia which is a part of the factor, and there is a desire to abandon old plants and build new ones, since that becomes a favorable or easy thing to do with Federal tax advantage. That has caused a lot of the move. And there are a lot of factors that have contributed to the exodus of industry from my area. I think this is only one of the several things that has been a factor.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Your interest in this legislation is not in an effort to prevent a movement of industry from a district and you do not think it would have any crucial effect on it?

Mr. VANIK. My interest in this legislation is to try to arrive at a better level of decency for the marginal worker. I would like to see the marginal worker earn enough money so he can provide for his family decently, and provide for an education and health and all of the other things that are necessary for that family. I do not think he can do it on much less than $1.25 an hour. Back home I cannot get anybody to cut my grass for that. I have to buy a gasoline motor and everything else to get it done.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You talked about working mothers and the advisability of keeping them home and the increase in juvenile delinquency. Is it your suggestion seriously that an increase of 50 cents in the minimum wage level would either reduce juvenile delinquency or keep working mothers at home, or how do you arrive at those conclusions? Why do you think it is so vital that we should try to keep the mothers at home if they like to go out and work?

Mr. VANIK. I do not know what delinquency problems are in your part of the country but I know throughout my district I would say that 50 percent of the mothers in my district are involved in work outside of the home in order to supplement the family income. Now, they cannot be in two places at once, and they cannot take care of their families as well if they are going to spend part of their time employed. Now they need the additional income. Now, if the head of the family can come home with a little bit more, it is not going to take an awful lot more to take that mother out of her job and keep her in the home. That creates a job someone else can fill.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Do you seriously think that an increase in the Federal minimum wage is an effective weapon to keep the mother at home?

Mr. VANIK. I think it will be a very helpful eventuality that will certainly help.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. You suggested that the main reason for your testimony today, which I think is very commendable, is to improve the living standard of the marginal worker?

Mr. VANIK. That is right.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. That in essence is what you said?

Mr. VANIK. Those are good words and I will be glad to have them. Mr. WAINWRIGHT. Then you would also be in favor, as you know the scope of this committee is only to deal with the figure and the amount, of broadening the coverage to include as much and as many people as humanly possible?

Mr. VANIK. Yes, sir.

Mr. WAINWRIGHT. Thank you.

Chairman BARDEN. Well, I will not trouble you, Mr. Vanik, because I think it is unnecessary for me to ask you the $64 question, since they have asked you 2 or 3 times how you arrived at the figure of $1.25. But I will do it just to keep my word that I expect to ask everybody that. I understand your answer is that you do not have the answer, and it is an opinion.

Mr. VANIK. Well, I suggested a formula which I think has to be supported in morality as well as economically. That formula provides that the minimum wage should be that wage which will be the base average throughout the country for providing the minimum decent requirements for a family of four in America. I think that is a very simple formula.

Chairman BARDEN. You know, during the 20 years I have been here, there have been enough bricks thrown at my area to build 40 capitols. And my father, and even my granddaddy said there were some folks up in your area picking on us away back that far. We tried then to run that section of the country and you folks would not let us.

Mr. VANIK. You have been running it for a long time.

Chairman BARDEN. It would have avoided all of this trouble if you had not interfered with us and let us run it. Of course, we proceed on the theory that we do not do it, but apparently some of you folks think all of this country is just alike, and that God lets the sun shine the same number of hours on all of us, but He does not. You think the temperature is the same, but it is not. And that the earning capacity is the same, but it is not. That the standards of living are the same, but they are not. And you think everybody is just alike.

I understand there are some areas of Texas where everything is doing so well, and everybody is getting along so well, and everybody has so many conveniences that every flea has his own private dog.

Now that is just not correct. Industry does not work the same. The little storekeeper down there who is running a store must compete with some big chain store. He just barely makes a living, about what he pays his employees-and he does not pay them very much. The little sawmill that cannot buy the automatic machinery must use the labor, and when the labor goes to where it costs so much more than the automatic machinery, the mill blows the whistle and everybody quits. That ends it.

Now, we do not want too many whistles to blow, and we do not want too many small folks hurt. I can go in my hometown and rent just as good an apartment as I live in now, among much more friendlier people than I live among now, at $50 to $75, and now I pay, including for space to park my car, I think it is $259. But according to your theory, everything is equal or everything ought to be

made equal. I remarked the other day that some fellow came up with an average, that the Mississippi River averaged 4 feet deep, but you know, a man was drowned down there near New Orleans trying to wade it. He just found it was deeper there than it was up here at the other end.

Now, you have oversimplified this thing. To men who have the responsibility it is just oversimplified. We have 48 States, and 48 different climates, and 48 different times for the sun to set and rise. Down my way the hens have already done a day's work and laid an egg before the hens in your State wake up.

We just have to get around to these things that we are troubled with. I am just as concerned over lifting the minimum wage as you are, but I do not want to lift something up that is going to fall on a lot of people's heads.

You can go out in Ohio and spend more in 1 night club-I do not say you can but some of your friends can, that do-in 1 night than you can make as a downpayment on a home in my town.

So things are not equal. It is not simple. But they are so dangerous, and I say to this Congress and to this committee, we had better be careful how we guess at them. You can do a lot of damage that will be hard to undo to a lot of people who do not deserve it, and who work harder and deserve so much more than they get.

You talk about children working. You should have been in my car coming up here from North Carolina and seen whole families of them. I saw a little boy running a tractor and I do not believe he was over 4 feet tall. They were working, and they are good people. Now I want to see them get more.

But what happens? If you were to produce down there on those little farms and pay $1.25 per hour, to produce the vegetables you eat-brother, you would object then-and then what would we have to do? We would raise the minimum wage again, and then when we did that we would raise the price again, and when we did that by that time we would raise it again. Well, that pole is going to give out up there somewhere. When it does it is going to have a fall and that will be our history if we keep on guessing at it, Mr. Vanik.

I believe the working people of America are entitled to a sensible solution of this thing. More money to hold in their fingers is not going to do them any good, if that money buys less. I want something to base my judgment on. Up to now I am still wandering around in just as much fog as the Members have been that came and talked to us.

Mr. VANIK. I would like to respond just briefly to that, Mr. ChairI would like to say first of all that I have not been watching the hens up in our part of the country and I think they get up just as early in Ohio as any other part of the country.

Chairman BARDEN. You mean it is light up there as early as Louisiana?

Mr. VANIK. That is right. I want to say that anything that is produced at the expense of someone else's standard of living is better not produced at all. Now, by that I mean we need certain things in this country that we have to have, and we will have them. But anything that is produced at the cost of someone's decency is better not produced.

Chairman BARDEN. All of us will subscribe to that. I do not want to sacrifice decency. In any law that is passed, you can sometimes look to see if you are not sacrificing some decency with that, too. It works both ways.

Mr. VANIK. We take the same risk of an increased cost, and the tomatoes that I bought for 63 cents-I do not know, but they certainly were not worth that much money, and someone along the line has raised the price of those tomatoes, because they were worth about 25 cents, even at today's prices.

Chairman BARDEN. How many did you get, a half bushel?

Mr. VANIK. I got 4 tomatoes, and I paid 63 cents.

Chairman BARDEN. You come down my way in about 30 days and you will get them for 63 cents.

Mr. VANIK. You can get them in Ohio for 25 cents a basket, in the

season.

Mr. THOMPSON. But none of them are as good as New Jersey's tomatoes, either.

Chairman BARDEN. This is not the place to drink tomato juice. Thank you very much, Mr. Vanik.

Mr. HUSSEY. Mr. Chairman. I have statements from three Congressmen, Congressman Dorn, Congressman Granahan, and Congressman Lane to be inserted in the record. I also have a statement concerning the problems of the growers and processors of fresh fruits and vegetables in relation to proposed amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 submitted by the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, of Orlando, Fla., with a request that pages 9, 10, and 11 of this statement be inserted in the record.

Chairman BARDEN. Without objection, they will be inserted in the record.

(The statements are as follows:)

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANCIS E. DORN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. Chairman: I should like to offer my strong support of the pending legislation to increase the minimum wage to $1.25 per hour.

The present 75-cent minimum wage, which was established by the 1949 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, has become inadequate because of the changes in our economy and the rising cost of living in these 6 years.

It is both just and essential for economic progress that the incomes of low-paid workers increase at a faster rate than incomes generally. Since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in June 1938, the minimum wage has failed by a considerable margin to keep pace with the general advances in wages. Thus, from June 1938 to June 1953, average hourly earnings of factory workers increased by $1.19. During the same period the minimum wage increased by only 50 cents. Moreover, the inflationary rise in the cost of living since World War II has worked a particular hardship on the lowest paid workers. It is clear that a substantial increase in the statutory minimum wage is long overdue.

It is strongly urged that the Congress act in behalf of millions of low-wage workers and their families to overcome the burden of substandard wages. I believe it is most vital that the Nation's statutory minimum wage be raised to a realistic level fully reflecting the increase in the general level of wages, thereby giving a powerful boost to the purchasing power of low-income workers and help restore prosperity and full employment throughout the economy. I, therefore, strongly urge favorable action in behalf of the proposed increase of the statutory minimum wage to $1.25 per hour.