Today, a few months back, he put a poster in every department stating that he was closing down the mill and moving south because the Japanese were coming into the country and he was forced to move south. I hope that something can be done.

Senator PASTORE. Are you working now?
Mr. SIMAS. Yes, sir, at Wamsutta Mills.

Senator PASTORE. How long have you been working there?

Mr. SIMAS. Twenty years, next month.

Senator PASTORE. Your age is what?

Mr. SIMAS. My age is 56. I started at 14 working in the mill. The Wamsutta Mill shut down around Christmas. It is running out gradually. Every week they are laying off help, every week.

Senator PASTORE. Thank you.

Mr. Doolan.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD F. DOOLAN, MANAGER, JOINT

BOARD, TWUA

Mr. DOOLAN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Edward Doolan, I am vice president of the Textile Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, and manager of the TWUA Joint Board in Fall River, Mass.

What some of my colleagues have told you today about the plight of the textile workers and the industry in New Bedford, Woonsocket, Providence, and Pawtucket and in the south county area of Rhode Island is typical of what has happened in Fall River. If there is any distinction between those cities and my own, it can be summed up in one brief sentence. In Fall River it is even worse.

Beyond filing a list of more than 125 textile mills which have closed down since 1946 in the State of Massachusetts alone, I am not going to belabor the subcommittee with any other statistics except the following.

In 1920, the city of Fall River was the home of 108 plants employing approximately 30,000 textile workers. Today in 1958, approximately one generation later, it has a total of 13 textile mills employing about 6,000 people.

From my point of view, this situation says more about what has happened to the textile industry in New England than all of the many charts and tables your subcommittee has already received, and I am not minimizing their value. I repeat that there once was 108 mills employing 30,000 workers in my city of Fall River. There were the Kerr Mills, American Thread Co., Borden Mills, Howard Manufacturing Co., Luther Manufacturing Co., and they are all gone now, and so are the Narragansett, Shawmut, River Mills, Velveray, Navaho, and all the rest.

There are 13 mills with only 6,000 workers left. These facts underline the impact which a one-sided tariff policy has had upon the textile industry.

It points up the damaging effect which a two-price cotton system has had upon our cotton manufacturers. It puts the spotlight upon the tax loopholes which have allowed looting of going textile mills for no other purpose than to make a quick dollar. It illustrates the failure of textile management in many areas, the neglect of research and of the

development of new products and new uses for traditional textile products and its inability to expand or even hold its own markets, or old markets. And it points a long-accusing finger at the present administration. Not only have its policies dealt a series of damaging blows to the textile industry, its workers, and the communities involved.

The administration has stifled the area redevelopment bill, which was the first constructive move made in the direction of remedying some of the damage the White House policies have inflicted upon us. An entire region of our Nation has been plagued by the chronic sickness of the industry. This condition can't be tolerated if the administration is not to risk the possibility that the sickness will spread to the rest of our economy. The textile industry has demonstrated that it can't pull itself up by its bootstraps. The present administration has demonstrated it has no concern for the textile industry, or the people and communities who depend upon it for their livelihood. To the White House, the textile industry is merely a pawn to be used in foreign policy. They are too preoccupied with corporate interests, to show consideration for the hundreds of thousands of human beings whose welfare is jeopardized by the recession. The only place for us to turn is to Congress. You gentlemen and your colleagues in the Senate and House of Representatives have a responsibility to bear in this matter. Management can't act effectively in this situation.

Many of its problems are the direct result of administration policy and are beyond its control to remedy. The administration in turn is indifferent to our plight. When such a vacuum exists, Congress must move to protect the general welfare and must provide leadership which the administration has failed to exercise in this area.

I implore you not to shirk this responsibility for the future of the entire region and the people who live in it depend upon your help. The Textile Workers Union of America has offered a formula for action. We don't say it is foolproof or perfect. We believe in any other proposals aimed at the common target of reviving and rebuilding the textile industry.

Senator PASTORE. Thank you very much. Are there any questions? Thank you very much.

Now, according to our list we have six other witnesses. We have John S. Slaby, Upton Hillelson, Mr. Pomeroy, Stanton Smith, Mr. John Eliot, and Mr. Kelsey. If anyone has any reason to testify a little sooner, I will be glad to hear it. If you are all going to stay, anyway, we will keep going the way we are.

All right, Mr. Slaby, you are next.

Mr. CANZANO. You have been asking union witnesses to explain to you what the imports meant to us as an industry, but we haven't answered directly. Since our fellows are through, let me give you that.

The answer has been given by the employers. When, within an industry, a foreign competitor can make your finest yarn and sell it to you at a very cheap price, as soon as that yarn is turned into cloth or selling articles and it is priced so low, you can't then make coarse goods and sell them higher, so that while 3 percent, and I am sorry none of the employers developed this, if 3 percent of textiles may be our only imports and it is the finest goods we make for the industry, and they sell for $3, let's use that for a figure, you can't sell goods in America that should bring a price of $3.25 a yard because your finest goods have reached a maximum of $3.

Senator PASTORE. In other words, if you can sell a Cadillac for $3,000, how can you sell a Ford for $5,000.

The only reason I asked that question, Mr. Canzano, was this, because we have had a very graphic recitation here on the part of the labor representatives reciting mill after mill that have closed downmills well known to me and to this community. I have assumed maybe not as emphatically or with the same degree of acceleration as has happened in the South, but if this persists it is apt to happen there later as time evolves.

I merely wanted to tie it up with the things over which we have jurisdiction, you see. There is nothing that I can do. I don't see anything that the Congress could do. We could ask a lot of questions, but if Wamsutta is making money or not making money, and they decide to close the mill, while I don't applaud it, while I feel there should be community interest, a sense of possession, a sense of belonging, we in Congress can't make people stay where they don't want to stay, and we can't keep businesses active where they want to close down. I repeat I don't applaud it, I don't agree with it, but the fact of the matter is that as a branch of the Government, I question what we would do about that, you see.

If it is a question of a tax gain, that could be explored. Again, it isn't part of our function here, jurisdictionally. It is part of our responsibility, possibly, to get into it and take the proper recommendations to the appropriate committee, but I merely wanted to tie these closing downs with some of the things over which we might have some jurisdiction, and if these mills are closing because of foreign competition, we want to know it. If they are being shut down because it is more attractive to absorb a tax loss than to keep a business going, we want to know it, you see, but if a mill is making a profit, and it decides to close down or constrict its action, I don't know what we can do, if they are doing it legally.

That is the only thing I wanted to tie up with his graphic dramatic recitation we have had of mill after mill, by the score, closing down in a community in a period of the last 10 years, and this is common to New Bedford and Fall River, as well.

Mr. SMITH. You asked if anyone would like to testify. I have to leave and I have very short testimony.

Senator PASTORE. All right, why don't you sit down there, Mr. Smith, and we will hear you now.

STATEMENT OF H. STANTON SMITH, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, MOORE FABRICS, INC., PAWTUCKET, R. I.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

My testimony is informal. We have a wealth of data before you. My name is H. Stanton Smith, and I am the vice president and general manager of a small textile mill that makes elastic narrow fabrics. You have such a wealth of material, and, as you know, I have had considerable correspondence with you about the matter and I know what you gentlemen think. I would like to say to the Senator from South Carolina that I think his great State and North Carolina likewise are on the threshold of a deluge of troubles if something is not done immediately in the way of checking imports.

I want to dramatize, with apologies to our stenographer here, because this relates to my business. I am going to talk just about my business. I have a little garment here brought out in Pawtucket, the shoppers world-some of you will recognize it. will recognize it. It is marked "Made in Japan"; it has a price tag on it, 43 cents. I am interested in it because it has pieces of elastic in it-that is my business. Berkshire are interested in this part, Coates and Clark are interested in the thread, but I am interested in the elastic.

I picked that up about 8 months ago, and I said to myself, "I think I will watch this thing, because it is in my business," and I noticed among my customers a decline in certain parts of their business and a change in the industry taking place which resulted in lower and

lower business for us.

I asked a short time ago what the lowest price brassiere would be in the United States, and I was told by the secretary of the association in New York that American manufacturers couldn't put one out for less than 60 cents retail, and averaged about $1.25 to $1.50 each, that I knew, but I wanted to find the lowest price. Here we have one at 43 cents retail against the best possible effort of the lowest cost American manufacturer in the neighborhood of 60 cents, in the American market averaging $1.25.

Now, I have the following information. This brassiere came from Japan. This current year Japan is going to send into this country— this movement started very gently with just a few brassieres at a time. This year there will be 600,000 dozen coming in, which is 7,200,000. From Hong Kong there will be 500,000 dozen, and that will constitute 40 percent of the American market. That is the point I want to drive up now-it isn't peanuts any longer. Forty percent of the American market is a very large share of any market. This isn't the end. Next year it is very apt to be 60 or 70 percent of the market, because the flood has started, and I don't know what in the world is around to stop it.

I have an article here from the Women's Wear Daily, September 4, 1958, headline, "Hong Kong Bra Calls For Extra Work Shifts." It is a very interesting article to me because it points to the times. It says this factory, among other things, has no direct trade with the United States through exporters who supply their own trademark labels— incidentally they are copies of American goods. The articles manufactured for the United States market are in the main made according to importers' specifications. Some exporters, however, alter standard styles, and so forth. Factories just received 2 fairly large contracts that call for the production of 30,000 dozen a month, assuming extensions to the plant, etc.

Mr. Ching intimated the average price of the firm's brassieres is $2 per dozen in the United States valuation.

The association in the United States says the average value of this is $15 a dozen, as against $2 a dozen for those made over there.

This will make a profound change in a segment of the industry which will affect us.

Senator THURMOND. If I may interrupt, it is $2 compared with $15.
Mr. SMITH. That is right, a dozen.

Senator THURMOND. And where are those made?
Mr. SMITH. Hong Kong, British Crown Colony.

It is simply impossible competition.

Now, they move up. They start with the lowest price garment. As was illustrated here by the man in the worsted trade telling you where they pick one thing, and having dominated that, they move into another field. There are various grades of garments. They are now moving into the higher priced garments from the lower price, and they will kill the industry right off.

Incidentally, there are a substantial number of operations in the Southern States assembling brassieres and women's foundation garments, so they will feel it there as well as the manufacturers of materials like myself.

I think I feel sorry for the women in Hong Kong who come in to run these sewing machines. Maybe they need direct help from the United States Government, but I don't think that they need to be given a few pennies an hour to put out hundreds and possibly thousands of people from jobs in the United States, when I realize, and I think you do, too, that the benefits of the transaction are not going to them, except mere crumbs off the table, but are going to some exporters whose profits will probably be 300 or 400 or maybe 1,000 percent on the investment, whereas the manufacturer in the United States has a hard time to make 4 or 5 percent on his investment. These quick change artists will go over there and take advantage of that cheap labor and dump it into the United States to the detriment of American jobs and for their personal enrichment. I do not consider that in buying these we are really helping the people of Hong Kong, or of Japan, for that matter, if that is our mission in life.

Senator PASTORE. Then, just as you pointed out, Mr. Smith, of course, you finally get to a point of no return. It is a question of how much you can absorb in the American economy.

Now, I suppose that a half of 1 percent or 1 percent might have a psychological effect in depressing the price market, and yet it might not be too damaging, but then it grows and it grows and it grows. It then gets to the point Mr. Canzano has mentioned, that because of the cheaper labor cost, they can send over a better product that sells more cheaply than our inferior product here, which is naturally because you have to pay more money to put it out. Finally, you can't absorb it any more, and you will find out you actually have made your own industry extinct.

Why this isn't being watched more closely, and why we have acrossthe-board agreements when we ought to be more selective of what we are doing is a puzzle to me that I tell you very frankly it is hard to understand.

I do hope this, and I want to say this with all the emphasis that I can. I realize that the reciprocal trade act was continued for 4 years. I realize, too, that there are some people who are not wholly happy about that, but some thought maybe the best way to teach some people a lesson was to not extend it at all. In my humble opinion, I suppose that might have been against the future interest of the country, but I won't get into that debate. I hope it served to alert those who carry the responsibility as to what the problem is, and from now on in will be a little more careful. I think it is a sad situation that if we do have a quota it has to be instituted by a foreign