Mr. ROOSEVELT. Not one that is worth a hoot, no sir, that is true. Chairman BARDEN. How are you trying to determine something by X and Y when you have 160 million people and all of them that are old enough to think are thinking, if they are any good, how they can improve their standard of living? Didn't we take the step to improve ours some time ago? Some people think we set it a little too high. Personally, I don't think it was too high. I have been kind of looking forward to that for 20 years. So when we go to try to set up a standard of living and say so many calories

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mr. Chairman, you voted for it, I voted for it because we thought we needed it. Why shouldn't we do the same for the little fellow? Why should we deny him the same thinking that we did ourselves?

Mr. LANDRUM. He doesn't have the same paymaster.

Chairman BARDEN. That is true. I think I had better let that interruption stand.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. I agree.

Chairman BARDEN. Go ahead, Mr. McConnell.

Mr. McCONNELL. Resuming again another angle to this thing, in your judgment if we are not careful in the setting of our minimumwage level, do we not interfere with collective bargaining? Mr. TICHY. I think you do, unquestionably.

Mr. McCONNELL. I have a feeling when we get up around this dollar rate you have to be very watchful because you are putting into the economy a rigidity with this minimum-wage law which does not enable the employer to bargain with some of his employees. I will give an example.

Suppose he has a type of employee not entirely a capable worker, but a person who can do some work and he wants to employ him and can use his labor such as it is, he has the problem when the minimum wage rates gets to a certain level, as to whether he is going to drop him out entirely or, if it is possible, could he bargain with him for a lower rate? You run into this rigid law that you cannot bargain with him for a lower rate. I know of no more rigid law on the statute books, than the Fair Labor Standards Act. It gives no escape. You are allowed to pay lower rate for physically handicapped and for apprentice employees, but no one else. The employer either has to pay that exact amount or fire that particular worker, or in the extreme go out of business. He has no opportunity to appeal anywhere to set a little lower rate in certain specific cases. He has no opportunity whatsoever. It is purely rigid.

It says you pay that or else you go out of business or you drop that worker from the rolls if you want to pay him less than a dollar.

Now that particular rigidity I do not like and have never liked in this act. I certainly wish we could do something about it to correct such a situation. The large mass of industry is not concerned about raising the minimum wage to even a dollar, but we have marginal cases. We have little businesses here and there, scattered over in this county. I don't like to be in a position of saying to that man, well, if you can't pay it, go out of business. There is nothing nice about that. That is just talk.

There ought to be some way we can keep him in business even at a lower rate, shall we say, if we make a lower rate than a dollar, and do it legitimately. You ought to have some appeal somewhere in a way

that would allow him to continue on to employ certain people or to stay in business. They are in the little business of America.

I mean the business we think of as being in the stream of interstate commerce. They can absorb it but the little fellow often has trouble. That is the whole situation we run into all the time in this act. It is these borderline cases, these problems of application which affect people in such a way as it was never intended, would not be intended by a Member of Congress.

I didn't mean to get steamed up, but I always get upset when I think of what we may do to certain individuals who are trying to get along in the world, and we don't want to do that, but we have never provided any relief for such a situation. I think there should be some way of handling hardship cases.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mr. McConnell, I would go along with you on that. Mr. McCONNELL. Thank you. That would clear up a lot of doubts and worries in my mind, and in the minds of a lot of small-business

men.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. On the other hand, I think you will go along with me that the employee needs to be protected from the man who would use his power and say, here, you work for me for next to nothing or you won't have a job.

Mr. McCONNELL. We did that by having the minimum wage law. I would say that a man seeking some method of escape from the rigors or hardships of this situation should definitely have to prove his case. Mr. ROOSEVELT. I didn't want Mr. Tichy to have the idea that you were against the minimum wage law.

Mr. O'CONNELL. No, I stated that in this particular statement here. Chairman BARDEN. Thank you, Mr. Tichy.

I would like to say this to you. Mr. Roosevelt referred to the little man. They are the folks that we have been hearing about today. You know it is so often the case, and I do not know who is responsible for it, but it certainly is running riot in this country now, that if a man employs two people he then becomes an employer, a vile character, who is willing, ready, and sometimes able to exploit and pillage, and so forth and so on, when the little two-man employer, 3-man employer. 10-man, 20-man, are the very ones keeping this economy in this country going now.

In my district they constitute, I would say 90 percent of the business and employ 90 percent of the employees, not the big business. I don't think just because the man is an employer that he is a stuffed shirt with no heart and out to do no good. I think the small employers of this country come mighty near being the backbone, and it is not the Big Steel and it is not General Motors and it is not Mr. Ford. It is those small employers that provide the money that buys the Fords and the Chevrolets that keep Mr. Ford and General Motors operating, and the quicker we realize that these small employers constitute a real foundation stone in our economy, the better off I think we will be.

Mr. BAILEY. Is it not true, Mr. Chairman, that the plea this gentleman is making and the man who just preceded him from Georgia, is it not true that all those little portable sawmill operations that were cutting pulpwood as well as lumber are exempt from the Federal law!

Chairman BARDEN. No. I want to say this to the gentleman, what he is here testifying to is absolutely against his best interest from a

selfish point of view of the people he represents because he represents the west coast and they are in direct competition with the southern pine industry.

If the southern pine industry is wiped out that provides a many times greater market for the west-coast products.

Now, I will say that for the gentleman. He has impressed me as being very sincere about his statement, not only that but well grounded in the information, but if he was here purely on a selfish mission, why Heaven's above he would be lashing into the southern pine industry and say, do away with them, they are no good, we already pay more than the minimum and the quicker you do away with them the bigger market we will have.

Now I want to ask the gentleman to join in that.

Mr. TICHY. You are correct.

Chairman BARDEN. I know I am correct because I know what your situation is. Frankly, his appearance is totally unselfish so far as the industry is concerned.

Thank your, Mr. Tichy.

Mr. TICHY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I wish to thank you for this opportunity of appearing before you. Chairman BARDEN. The committee will stand in recess.

(Whereupon, at 5:45 p. m. the committee proceeded to other business.)

AMENDMENT TO INCREASE THE MINIMUM WAGE

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1955

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10:25 a. m., pursuant to recess, in room 429 of the House Office Building, Hon. Graham A. Barden (chairman) presiding.

Present: Representatives Barden (presiding), Kelley, Bailey, Perkins, Wier, Elliott, Metcalf, Bowler, Roosevelt, Udall, McConnell, Gwinn, Smith, Bosch, Rhodes, Wainwright, Frelinghuysen, and Coon. Present also: Fred G. Hussey, chief clerk; John O. Graham, minority clerk; Edward A. McCabe, general counsel; Russell C. Derrickson, chief investigator.

Chairman BARDEN. Please come to order.

The first witness this morning is Mr. Wilcox.

Mr. Wilcox, will you identify yourself for the reporter, and proceed.

STATEMENT OF R. D. WILCOX, HARRIS-WILCOX TIMBER CO.,

LAUREL, MISS.

Mr. WILCOX. My name is R. D. Wilcox, and I speak for myself and my associate, Tom Harris, doing business as Harris-Wilcox Lumber Co. at Laurel, Miss.

Our business includes the buying of pulpwood from independent wood producers and/or farmers, and the selling of this pulpwood to the paper mill. In this capacity we are considered pulpwood dealers. We operate in the extreme southeast part of Mississippi. The area is often referred to as being the coastal area. This area is made up of small farmers and public workers who produce some pulpwood at irregular intervals as a means of supplementing their income.

The reason for my appearance before this committee is due to pending bills before the Congress to increase the minimum wage of 75 cents per hour to a figure ranging from 90 cents to $1.25 per hour, and to try and show what effect an increase in the minimum wage would have on the economy and lives of many people in the coastal area of Mississippi, namely, the small operator whose income is derived or partly derived from the pulpwood and lumbering industry and others similarly situated.

At the risk of going contrary to what appears to be the trend in the other direction, I find that I must state that I am opposed to the idea of a minimum wage of any kind because it is socialistic in nature. Our whole way of life in this country is opposed to any sort of planned