member of the O. R. T. for many years, in fact, my father was one of the founders. Mr. LUHRSEN. What road? Mr. GATHINGS. The Missouri Pacific. Is he eligible for any union? Mr. LUHRSEN. I think he is a member of our organization, that is, the American Train Dispatchers organization, because he moved out of the O. R. T. Mr. GATHINGS. That is what I wanted to get. Mr. LUHRSEN. He is not represented by the O. R. T. as a train dispatcher on the Missouri Pacific, because we hold a contract there, and we hold it on all the railroads in the United States for train dispatchers except one or two company unions. The CHAIRMAN. Will you proceed? Mr. SPARK MAN. Let me ask you this question. You said a few minutes ago that one effect of this special contract arrangement on the Southern Pacific would be to cause the wage of the worker after the war is over to remain at 46 cents an hour. Mr. LUHRSEN. That is right. Mr. SPARKMAN. Instead of 85 cents an hour. Mr. LUHRSEN. That is right. Mr. SPARKMAN. Of course, you do not contend if the 85-cents-anhour rate should be a correct rate now, that necessarily it would be the correct rate when the war is over? Mr. LUHRSEN. No; I am not contending for that. Mr. SPARKMAN. You recognize that the wages are flexible. Mr. LUHRSEN. And should be handled in accordance with the Railway Labor Act at all times, as far as that is concerned, and that is before a tribunal in Chicago now under Executive order of the President. You will recall that under the Railway Labor Act, section 10 very clearly provides that before you can get the full benefits of our law, it was compulsory on our part to take a strike vote because a board of mediation would not certify to the President the necessity for creating such a board unless we could show that there was substantial interruption of transportation. Well, we did not like that when we got into this war. If we would take such a strike vote, public opinion would just be against us, so we asked the President to issue an Executive order whereby we do not first have to take a strike in order to get a panel. There are 13 men on the panel all told, from which 3 are chosen to a panel. Dr. Leiserson is the chairman. So the dispute in Chicago is being handled before such a panel appointed by the President. Mr. SPARKMAN. Let me ask you about another thing. You mentioned the tenant farmers up in Tennessee, Missouri, and The CHAIRMAN. Kentucky. Mr. SPARKMAN. And Mississippi, that could be moved down to Florida. Are they on submarginal land? Mr. LUHRSEN. Quite many of them, a lot of them. Mr. LUHRSEN. Yes. A funny thing, I was talking to Mr. Mitchell, who is the executive secretary of the Fram Tenant Farmers at the Carlton Hotel night before last. He sent 500 men down there that they did take, and they brought in the Bahamans, and they sent those 500 back to Tennessee. They were willing to stay there and work. Mr. SPARKMAN. I have heard a good many complaints from people against moving these farm people out of particular counties. I believe under the set-up now they will not move them out unless the county agent certifies that they can be spared. The CHAIRMAN. That ought not to be permitted even that way, this thing of migrating everybody from place to place. I am just against it. Mr. SPARKMAN. Now, first of all, who is going to decide whether those lands are submarginal or not? Mr. LUHRSEN. I would say that if the men who are living on some of these submarginal lands or small plots, they could only work, say, during the cotton planting season and then they are through until you harvest the cotton, and they are willing to go some place else, which they used to do when we had rubber, but they do not have that opportunity now, if transportation was afforded, then they would be willing to go. Mr. SPARKMAN. Suppose that they got down there, though, and did not come back. What would you do? Mr. LUHRSEN. Well, they have come back in the past, and Mr. Chandler, the president of the Planters in California, said that they went back each year. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sparkman asked you what would be the situation if they did not come back. Now, describe that. Mr. SPARKMAN. The point I am trying to bring out is this: It is up to us to get the most out of every person that we can in this country during these times. That applies to the producers of war crops as well as the producers of munitions. Now, I agree with you that if that person wants to help out in the crop, for instance, if he wants to move to Florida to help harvest a crop down there, fine, he ought to be allowed to do it, but I am wondering what is going to happen if he gets down there, gets to liking it and makes good money, and the particular job has not run out when the time comes to harvest his crop back in Tennessee. What are you going to do then? Will you let the crop go to waste in Tennessee? Mr. LUHRSEN. I am going to take you in the way that you first asked the question, Congressman. You said for the best interests of the war effort. Mr. SPARKMAN. Yes. Mr. LUHRSEN. Now, I am just wondering if that fellow refused to come back from Florida and stayed down there where they claim that they are short of people and losing crops-tomatoes and everything else if he would not be doing more for the war effort by refusing to go back to Tennessee and pick cotton when you already have a 2 years' supply on hand. Mr. SPARKMAN. I did not say "pick cotton." Mr. LUHRSEN. Or whatever it is. Mr. SPARKMAN. Let us say it is peanuts. Mr. LUHRSEN. All right, peanuts. Now, you would not harvest them this time of the season. Mr. SPARKMAN. I did not say anything about "this time," and you do not lay by cotton at this time of the season. Mr. LUHRSEN. I know you do not, but I think it has worked out in the past that they have migrated back and forth. Mr. SPARKMAN. But we have had an abundance of labor in the past, an abundance of labor when it did not matter whether they came back or not. Now, let me ask you this: Upon whose whim is going to depend the decision as to whether or not he is worth more in Florida or Tennessee? Mr. LUHRSEN. Well, whim or caprice, whatever you want to call it. Mr. SPARKMAN. Probably I did not use a good word. Upon whom is to depend the decision? Mr. LUHRSEN. I think you have today in the Agricultural Department enough authority that if a man would not go back they could force him back, through previous means. Mr. SPARKMAN. You would not force him back, would you? Mr. LUHRSEN. If they wanted him to go, I think they could. I would rather have them go voluntarily. Mr. SPARKMAN. Suppose the Department of Agriculture should say that those peanuts up there in Tennessee ought to be taken out of the ground, and the only way we can get them out is to get these people out of Florida, and they refused to go. Suppose they have gotten in a shipbuilding program when they went down there. Then do you think that somebody ought to have the right to say to them that they must go back? Mr. LUHRSEN. I do not know that you could, but I still think that if you have got 200,000 men down there that are working only a few months a year, when your peanut crop comes along, if they took out all they needed for Florida and they stayed down there, you would still have enough men to give them more on a yearly basis of work with the peanuts and everything else. Mr. SPARKMAN. You are assuming still, Mr. Luhrsen, and I am not disposed to quarrel with you-I will try to develop my point-you are still assuming that you have got a surplus of labor down there in Florida. From what I hear there is not any surplus down there. From what I hear there is not going to be any surplus down there, either. Now, let us assume that there is not a surplus there and that these people want to stay there and your peanuts are going to waste in Tennessee. I saw hundreds of acres going to waste last year right in my district because we could not get enough labor there to harvest them. Now, would you use any compulsion whatever to get those harvesters back? Mr. LUHRSEN. I do not think so. I think that a man should be left free to toil and work where he chooses to go. Take, for example, some of the districts now where they get 17 cents an hour for cutting cane. I would not consider that a healthy condition. If the substandard conditions are removed, the men will go to work, and certainly some of the rates of pay are not commensurate with the performance and the duties of the war effort that these men perform, I do not care where it is. Mr. SPARKMAN. You know as well as I do that you cannot pay as much to dig peanuts as you could to harvest cabbage, for instance, that we are paying 20 cents a pound for now. Mr. LUHRSEN. $75 a ton. Mr. SPARKMAN. I do not know what it is a ton, but I know one little head of cabbage that I used to buy for nickel is now costing 60 cents. The CHAIRMAN. That is an incentive to the farmer to produce more. Mr. LUHRSEN. The trouble is when he produces too much it goes to waste. We have just dumped I don't know how many tons of raisins in Buffalo. We have returned 24,000,000 cans from the Army to the Department of Agriculture in just the last few weeks. Mr. SPARKMAN. We are still having to give coupons for them. Mr. LUHRSEN. Oh, yes; you bet you do. I was in a grocery store with my wife last night and had to pay 65 cents a pound for chicken. Mr. SPARKMAN. The farmer who raised that chicken is not getting that. Mr. LUHRSEN. The very butcher that was talking to me is a farmer out here, and he said, "I raise a chicken and I get 30 cents for it." Mr. SPARKMAN. Thirty cents a pound? Mr. LUHRSEN. Mr. Chairman, the difference between what he was getting and the 65 cents, somewhere in between, is brokerage, commissions, and whatever it may be, and the consumer is paying that. Mr. SPARKMAN. I believe that we have gotten a little off the subject, but do you not believe that is a fertile field for exploration? Mr. LUHRSEN. A big field. Mr. MARTIN. Are we going into the agricultural question here? Mr. LUHRSEN. I think that we have gotten away off. The CHAIRMAN. I do believe that you gentleman have gotten off the subject here. We are on the Railroad Labor Act, but I did want to ask the witness if he believes that somebody in the Department of Agriculture, for instance, some of these smart-aleck boys that have invented the phrase "submarginal land" ought to be the sole judges of whether 500 people ought to be taken out of some county and taken to another? Mr. LUHRSEN. I will answer that-absolutely not. The CHAIRMAN. Fine. Go ahead. Mr. DURHAM. At the present time, are the railroad people able to get all the employment that they need, do you think? Mr. LUHRSEN. Well, I cannot answer that specifically. We do not have so many places where they have complained of a shortage, although some of them are working excess hours, and I think doubling up. I think that we will find a shortage of manpower in the railroad industry. Mr. DURHAM. Have you had the opportunity to read the Office of War Information report which was sent out this morning with regard to transportation? Mr. LUHRSEN. I think that I read it last night. It is to be released Sunday, is it not? I pondered over it last night at home, but I really did not digest it as thoroughly as I should have. Mr. DURHAM. You are a railroad man and have had a lot of experience. What do you think of that report? Mr. LUHRSEN. Well, I think I know who wrote most of it, just from the language. I think that it is too flattering. I do not think it is as good as that report represents because I do know that there are some greater avenues for greater efficiency and economy. Mr. DURHAM. You do know that we are having serious transportation troubles? Mr. LUHRSEN. Well, Mr. Durham, Mr. Eastman, for instance, said that they were having trouble around Baltimore and different places, and that a shortage was showing up. Mr. DURHAM. For instance, we are still having to operate on A cards in the eastern seaboard area. Mr. LUHRSEN. Yes, that is right. But until we reached an agreement with management-and that, by the way, is better than anything you can do here with legislation on this very subject—we agreed to 13 points by having 6 railroad presidents appointed, 2 from the eastern region, 2 from the southeastern, and 2 from the West, the Railway Labor Executive Association, the Engineers, and Mr. Whitney, and we came to a complete agreement on 13 points, which is for transferring from one point to another, and so forth, or one road to another, and have now placed that in the hands of each chairman of each railroad. Mr. DURHAM. We are scraping the bottom for employment all over the country. Mr. LUHRSEN. No, I would not say that we have scraped the bottom. I could give you an example. Not over 4 months ago we had on 1 eastern railroad 26 extra conductors who were only working 2 and 3 days a week. Two other roads said that they needed them very badly, and they wanted to go there. The controlling railroad of those 26 men said: "We don't want to release you." They wanted to hoard them because of possibilities in the future. Mr. DURHAM. You mean the management did that? Mr. LUHRSEN. Yes, absolutely. Now, by having come to that agreement, they will be a party to it, and they will release them. They will give them a furlough, so if a conductor goes to another road he will retain his seniority in his own road. The CHAIRMAN. He ought to retain his senority. Mr. LUHRSEN. Sure, but the railroad would not do that, Mr. Chairman, at first, until we reached this agreement. They declined to give him a furlough, so if he went he would forfeit 20 or 25 years' seniority. That has all been taken care of now in a practical way by an agreement between management and the organization. I have a copy of it here with me. The CHAIRMAN. Let us get back to your subject. Mr. LUHRSEN. Now, there are some 100,000 of these various supervisory officials on the railroads that are represented by the different organizations besides the independent one that I speak for. Mr. GATHINGS. Will you put in the record right at this point the names of the brotherhoods? Mr. LUHRSEN. I put them in right at the very beginning. Mr. GATHINGS. Pardon me. Mr. LUHRSEN. They are all in right at the begining. Here is a booklet [indicating] that was adopted in 1921, with Interstate Commerce Commission approval, that show 130 classifications of the railroads. It describes the duties of each and every one, and these foremen, their duties are prescribed all the way through it, and they are being represented in the shops, out in the signal department, out in the maintenance-of-way department, all throughout the country. All of this is going to be disturbed if this bill passes, so far as we are concerned. Whenever there is a dispute arising as to whether or not a man is a subordinate official, the Interstate Commerce Commission, after a hearing, decides what is a subordinate official, and I will take the yardmasters, for example. They said that yardmasters should be included but with respect to general yardmasters in big cities, there was an exception. They had |