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house in there. Is that the happy family they have there? They have the chickens and the folks all connected together. Then there is a hog pen in the corner, and there must be a nice garden down there. Mr. LISK. I imagine so; if there is any nice garden there it is in that house.

I would like to make this statement relative to that picture-
Mr. WOOD. Is this really a company house?

Mr. LISK. No; that is not a company house, but that is where this man was evicted out of a house and driven into this place to live. I might say this, that there are some company houses down there that are no better than that place there. In fact, the lumber is not so good in some, because that lumber was torn out of a cowshed, and the man built the house and lived there. Some of the houses, as Brother Peel said, you could throw a baseball through. I think if a man got where he could own a pig or a cow he could throw it through it.

Mr. WOOD. This resembles some of the miners' shacks I have seen in Missouri, the mine workers not being thoroughly organized out there, and I thought this was a company house.

Mr. LISK. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Any other questions?
Mr. Wood. No; I have none.

Mr. KELLER. Any other questions?

Mr. WOOD. No; I have none.

Mr. LISK. I have one more mill I would like to mention, which is the Cramerton mill, at Cramerton, N. C. If you will remember, Mr. Cramer was one of the employers in Washington from the Tar Heel State at the time the textile code was drawn up, and if I am not mistaken he was the one that offered the solution that the wages in the South, the minimum wages in the textile industry, should be $12 instead of $10.

Mr. Cramer owns one of the most valuable mansions, I suppose, that there is to live in in that part of the State, and on several occasions he has told his employees and made boast, that he was responsible for the southern workers getting $12 a week, but here in his own mill spinners that were making $12 a week 2 weeks ago have had their wages decreased, averaging, about 9 to 11.5 percent. In addition to that, spinners were given two more frames, four more sides, to handle with a reduction in wages.

Mr. Chairman, there is no doubt

Mr. WOOD. How many frames did they operate before the reduction?

Mr. LISK. Spinners that were running 10 sides are now running 14 sides.

Mr. Chairman, here is something that I forgot to mention in regard to the Mooresville situation. Brother Peel was speaking about people being blacklisted and that he could not prove it. Well, I cannot prove that the overseer in this Cornelius Mill made the statement, but I do have a statement here that was written by a former employee of the Mooresville Cotton Mill, who went to work in the Cornelius Mill, Miss Florence Brown. She worked 2 days and 5 hours and the overseer came around and told her, "We have a list out at the office that was given to us by Mr. Will Summers." He is superintendent of the Mooresville Cotton Mill where the strike has been in progress since

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September 23. The overseer said that he advised them not to work anybody that came out on strike and therefore he had to fire her. This is her own statement that she wrote and asked that we bring it up here as evidence.

Mr. WOOD. Let us put it in the record.

Mr. LISK. All right, sir [handing].

(The letter referred to is as follows:)

I went to work in Cornelius, N. C., on January 8, 1936, worked 2 days and 5 hours. My boss man came to me, said he would have to lay me off. I asked him why, did he have anything against me? He told me he did not have anything against me or my work. man for you to fault." man for you to fault."

He liked my work. He said, "Miss Brown, I am not the I said, "Who is it then?" He said, "Will Summers is the My boss man said we have a list of names in the office and he said my name was on the list for them not to work, so he would have to lay me off.

My boss man's name in Cornelius was Mr. Bill Goodrum.

Very truly,

Miss FLORENCE BROWN.

Mr. LISK. Mr. Chairman, there is no doubt as to the benefits of the N. R. A. in the textile industry. In the State of North Carolina, which is a very big textile industrial State, and I might say that I happen to be right in the heart of the Piedmont section which is one of the biggest textile sections in the whole State, and when the N. R. A. first came in conditions improved wonderfully compared to what the conditions were before that time. The workers felt that the N. R. A. was something, you might say, that God had sent to them, something that they relied upon because it had reduced the hours-most of them were working 55 and 60 hours a week, but it was reduced to 40 hours a week.

I can say this, and I say it with knowledge because I can call the names and prove this statement: Workers that were working for $4 a week in textile mills, men who had families, on more than one occasion I have seen the children of these fathers and mothers go to school in the dead of winter barefooted and without coats on their backs.

It happened in the winter, in February 1933, before the N. R. A. was enacted, that a very good friend of mine who was in the mercantile business was stricken sick and he asked me to manage his store until he recovered, which I did. I have seen fathers and mothers come in that store day after day and week after week with their children around them and they would tell us that they had not had anything to eat in their homes for 3 and 4 days, and they had not had any coal, and were forced to go from one house to another where their friends were in order that they could warm their children.

When N. R. A. came in, the majority of these people were given jobs because of the fact that the hours had been reduced and more people were put to work, and the ones put to work were making better wages.

Since the N. R. A. has been declared unconstitutional these conditions are going back to the same state they were in before the enactment of the N. R. A.

This bill which is being presented here before this committee-I am not endeavoring to say that this bill is going to correct all of the evils in the textile industry, but I wish that a bill would be introduced that would correct them all-but I do say that this bill is going to correct a vast majority of the deplorable conditions that are existing today and that are getting worse and worse and worse.

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In conclusion, I would like to make this statement: This bill, enacted into law, is going to prove, not only to the textile but to every industry that we have in America, that the Government has got to make some provisions for the protection of the employees in these industries. The workers themselves, or part of them, do not realize how much help this is going to be.

Mr. KELLER. Thanks, sir.

The committee will meet tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. Governor Earle is to be here and we will be glad to have all hear him, and we will try to have the entire committee present.

(Whereupon, at 5:20 p. m., the committee recessed until tomorrow, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 1936.)

TO REHABILITATE AND STABILIZE LABOR CONDITIONS IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1936

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR,

Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met at 10 a. m., Hon. Kent E. Keller (chairman) presiding.

Mr. KELLER. The committee will be in order. Mr. Ellenbogen, you have a statement which you wish to make to the committee?

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I just had a telephone call from Gov. George Earle, of Pennsylvania, who offers his apologies to the committee and begs to be excused this morning, because he is unable to be here on account of some unexpected development. He will designate a representative to appear before your committee who, with your permission, will present the Governor's statement to the committee, incorporating the views of the Governor.

Mr. KELLER. Then the Governor is not going to come at all?

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. He cannot come today. His other days are engaged. He will have a representative here. He has prepared a statement and his representative will present his statement to the committee, with the permission of the Chair and members of the committee.

Mr. KELLER. Very well.

The first witness this morning is Mr. Madden, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

STATEMENT OF J. WARREN MADDEN, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL
LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

Mr. MADDEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen:
Do you wish me to make a formal statement?

Mr. KELLER. Yes; if you have a statement to make, and then we will ask you questions after you have finished.

Mr. MADDEN. Our board was created by the act signed by the President July 5, 1935. The act is known as the National Labor Relations Act.

The purpose of the act is to protect workers in their right to organize, if they desire to organize, and to determine the proper unit for collective bargaining; to ascertain which of the two conflicting groups have a majority and are therefore entitled to be representatives for the purpose of collective bargaining.

The present board was appointed in the latter part of August 1935, and we have set up a system of regional offices, dividing the country into 21 different regions.

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