Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir; and you will not have any peace in the United States until that is brought about. We had at one time. several men in the hospital with broken jaws or something else wrong with them because they had been injured by men who forced them to belong to the union and pay dues when they did not want to.

I have been very close to my men. We have had 250 men working for us for a long time. Most of them I trained myself. I have had these men cry and tell me pitiful stories about what the union forced them to do on the Pacific coast. It was frightful.

There are many methods of forcing a man to belong to the union. They do not have to tell him to. All they have to do is to knock him down and say, "We are going to run this thing now; you are not." Not one of those men dares to get up in the union meeting and say a word.

The CHAIRMAN. Do they knock men down and force them in the way that you have said?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that a common thing?

Mr. HILLER. Very.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you no laws in California? I suppose you might say, "Well, what about New York?"

Mr. HILLER. It happens in New York, too. It happens everywhere that the unions are in effect. It happens everywhere in the United States where the captain of a ship is not really in control of the ship any more. He is a bookkeeper. You cannot have a man on a cargo ship as bookkeeper unless he is a union bookkeeper-and then he only does certain kinds of bookkeeping. So therefore it is up to the captain to do the kind of bookkeeping that he thinks ought to be done. The CHAIRMAN. Have you on the coast a special problem to deal with?

Mr. HILLER. It so happens that I represent a very individual business, that is, with comparatively few ships, and the unions have singled us out as a mark to cause us a great deal of trouble. They have just about put us out of business by reason of wages of our crew, so that they can go back to the other shipowners and say, "This crowd pays us so much money, and if they can pay it you can pay it." So they have been upping it back and forth by using one group against another.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you under the National Labor Relations Act had any election by your men?

Mr. HILLER. Well, we stayed away from it as much as we could, because our dealings with them so far have been very unsuccessful. We have not a chance as an employer, so far as we see it. Our men have been in the meetings with them; yes.

The CHAIRMAN. You have had conferences with your men?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you reached an agreement with them?

Mr. HILLER. With the men themselves, as a group? We have had an agreement with the representatives of the different unions. The CHAIRMAN. You have had an agreement as to wages?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Just how did you get along after that?

Mr. HILLER. We were just about beat after that.

Senator OVERTON. You mean, the wages were too high?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

Senator OVERTON. How much did you originally pay, before your troubles began, to the members of your crew?

Mr. HILLER. We paid the sailors $65 a month.

Senator OVERTON. How much now do you have to pay them in order to employ them?

Mr. HILLER. A hundred and ten dollars, if I am not mistaken, with overtime for about half the work they do.

Senator OVERTON. Are the members of your crew idle now?
Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

Senator OVERTON. What has become of them?

Mr. HILLER. I don't know.
Senator OVERTON. Are they

ships?

They would like to go back to work. absorbed by being employed on other

Mr. HILLER. Very few, because there are very few ships operating on the Pacific coast. They are tied up steadily. When we tied up our ships I could not find any place to tie them up, in the normal places. We had to go up and tie them up the coast; there were so many ships idle at the time.

Senator OVERTON. In other words, they are beginning to kill the goose that lays the golden egg?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

Senator OVERTON. Mr. Chairman, I did not want to interrupt you. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hiller, I do not think I blame you much for being a little "hot under the collar." You really are, are you not? Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I know. I have been, too, off and on, and have had reason to be, I think. But now let us both be a little bit calm, if we can. What do you think is the remedy for all this evil that you complain of?

Mr. HILLER. That we be free to do what we wish.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you mean that you want to go back to those dark days when the employer was the boss and did just as he pleased with his men?

Mr. HILLER. I can only speak for some 30-odd years back; and I would rather go back to 30 years ago than to conditions as they are today.

The CHAIRMAN. I belong to the horse-and-buggy age myself, but that does not help. This is a new age that we are now in. How are we going to meet the issues? Do you get any more for your product than you used to get? Do you have any more chance of making a greater amount of money than you did in the old days?

Mr. HILLER. No, sir. We make more money-that is, we take in more money, but we pay more money out, so that there is less in our pocket today than there was in 1914, without a question.

The CHAIRMAN. Just tell us, in a word, what you did with your ships.

Mr. HILLER. We process fish in the open ocean.

The CHAIRMAN. You go out and catch fish and process them? Mr. HILLER. We have fishing boats that bring the fish to us, and then we process the fish.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a lot of competition from the Japanese, do you not?

Mr. HILLER. Personally, I have never worried about them. If they just let us alone we will take care of the Japanese very easily,

because, in the first place, they do not make our quality of product; they cannot make it as well or as cheaply.

The CHAIRMAN. How far do you go in your processing? Do you can the fish on the boat?

Mr. HILLER. We do not can them.

The CHAIRMAN. Is your product ready for the market when you bring it to shore?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You catch the fish and clean them and process them and can them?

Mr. HILLER. It is not so much canning, because that type of fish does not lend itself so much for canning as it does for the byproducts of fish oil and fish meal.

The CHAIRMAN. For your products that is, fish oil and fish meal how do your prices compare now with the prices that were in effect during the Hoover administration?

Mr. HILLER. From 1922 to 1930 the average price of fish meal was $65 a ton; the average price of fish oil was 65 cents a gallon. From 1930 to 1937 the average price of fish meal was about $30 a ton. The CHAIRMAN. As against $65?

Mr. HILLER. Yes. Let us say $35, to be real fair; and the average price of fish oil was about 30 cents a gallon.

The CHAIRMAN. So that for all your products the prices are under those of the Hoover period?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Why is that? Have you more competition, or is there less demand for your materials; or are there substitutes for them, or is there a more highly competitive market?

Mr. HILLER. No; fish meal and fish oil are sold according to the Chicago packing-house prices of byproducts, and they depend upon the world market. It flows where the world market goes. It is the same as taking copper and melting it down to an ingot. When you have the ingot of copper or the ton of fish meal, it sells for so much in any part of the world, whatever the price is at that time and place. The trouble with fish meal and fish oil has nothing to do with our Government, except for the fact that they put tariffs on commodities so that you cannot trade American goods with other parts of the world. When you did that you changed the price of fish meal and fish oil, because it is something that America needs. America was a great buyer of this material, and will always be so, because there will never be enough in the United States to supply the United States demand.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you mean that the tariff law that we passed putting a higher price on all oils that might be in competition, ruined your business?

Mr. HILLER. No. I am speaking now of tariff's earlier than that; that is, the interchange of materials back and forth. Germany, France, and England are all purchasers of fish meal and fish oil. When the German market and the French market and the English market came close to us, that meant that we had not got an interchange of materials. You can sell them in different parts of the world as well as in the United States, and that has lowered the price of the materials.

The CHAIRMAN. Were you not badly affected by the fact that there was a high tariff placed upon whale oil which resulted in the use by

Germany of that oil because they could buy it cheaply and no longer bought it from this country?

Mr. HILLER. Let me give you an example. I am giving you the price between 1921 and 1930. There was a 3 or 5 cents a gallon tax. I think it was 3 cents on fish oils of the kind coming into the United States at that time. Today there is a tax of 27 cents on that oil; and we were getting more money for the oil when the tax was 3 cents a gallon than when it was 27 cents a gallon.

Personally, I am not for high tariffs, because you can raise a tariff to a certain level, and when you raise it further than that you have more damage than you have otherwise. Your tariff on copra, coconut oil, and oil seeds is a dastardly crime against the United States, and those who had anything to do with it should certainly hide their heads in shame.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not need to condemn me, because I voted against those tariffs.

Mr. HILLER. Thank you. I will just tell you what they did to the United States. You put a duty on the oil and a duty on the seed, so that the men who process the seed in Japan can send it over and only pay a duty on the oil, but the man that has a factory in the United States pays duty on the oil and the seed, and so he is out of business. The CHAIRMAN. We did that for the protection of cottonseed. Mr. HILLER. The farmer sells his cottonseed just as well. I do not think he is hurt any. Most of the people of the United States ought to know that copra goes back to the Philippines, and they are having a hard time to find how to spend the money. They do not know what to use it for except for roads.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you been to see Secretary Hull since you have been here?

Mr. HILLER. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. He would be delighted to see you, I am sure.

Mr. HILLER. I believe in his policy very, very much, and I think that if the United States would go ahead and if we would just interchange a few of these things, instead of listening to people who say, "I want a duty on my product"-certain people in the United States want to put a duty on fish meal-I think the United States would get along better. I know as much about fish meal as anybody in the United States does. I am the largest manufacturer of it, or my own company is, and we are competing with Japan very successfully. We are selling all our fish meal in the United States at a fair profit. Last year Japan carried into the United States besides that fiftythousand-odd tons of fish meal, but we got a higher price for our product and sent it from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast to compete with them, where they had landed it in New York, and we were satisfied with the price. It was a fair profit and a fair price.

A few people who cannot compete in holding up their end in keeping pace with better methods of manufacture come to Washington and say, "We have to have a duty on fish meal so that we can make a profit." They come here day after day and you people listen to them. You cannot help it. That is natural. But we do not want any tariff on fish meal. If you put a tariff on fish meal, all that it would do would be to raise the price to the farmer for the product, because he buys all the fish meal that is made to use on the farm.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you read a book written by a man named Vallon, a Frenchman? If you have not, you should read it, because

it would make you very happy. You are preaching the doctrine that he preaches. I have been reading it myself. I made a speech on the fallacy of the doctrine of scarcity, and I stole some from Vallon. However, we must not spend the time of the committee on hypothetical tariff discussions.

Senator OVERTON. Or we shall be here for several months.

The CHAIRMAN. I like what you say so much that it is a temptation to let you go on. But let me ask you this question. Do you know a man named Harry Bridges?

Mr. HILLER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Is he one of your choice citizens on the Pacific coast?

Mr. HILLER. Well, he does not come directly in contact with committees that we talk with, but he sees that these committees are composed of certain men whom we negotiate with. So far as I am concerned, if I ever have to negotiate any labor agreements or anything that Harry Bridges or his people have anything to do with, our ships will never operate again, because we cannot operate them successfully. We would lose control of the ships; and when you lose control of your ship you cannot operate. That is the way we feel about it.

I want you to understand, too, that in competition with Japan and with other people in the fish meal and fish oil product business we not only use American labor, but we pay the highest wages of any maritime institution, and we are not against paying the wages; we are against paying for the special working conditions that they force on us. The CHAIRMAN. I am very much interested in what you said about having no particular disturbance in your mind over the Japanese. We have been led to believe that the Japanese, in the same line in which you are engaged on the coast, and also up in the Alaska region, are very detrimental in their activities to American competitors.

Mr. HILLER. They could get rid of them in a very short time if they would just use their heads. It would take about 30 days, and there would be no Japanese there.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean, to put guns on the shore?

Mr. HILLER. No. Just competing with them, doing the same thing. What is happening now is that the Japanese ships go over into the Bering Sea and into southeastern Alaska and stay 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 miles out; and they even bring their water across from Japan or Siberia over to the Alaska side. The American fishermen and the American seamen can sail circles around any Japanese boat that ever came over there. But we have no chance because there are certain laws that hold us back, and we cannot do the same things that the Japanese can.

The CHAIRMAN. The thing that you have in mind is that the Japanese can hire their labor at such very low prices and live under conditions under which Americans will not live, and you want to lower wages and living conditions so as to compete with them?

Mr. HILLER. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the answer, then?

Mr. HILLER. The American today can go there and checkmate the Japanese and pay American labor American wages, if they will work. But Alaska has a sad story, because they are suffering the same as we suffer. If it continues this coming season as it was in the past you will have no canneries operating there at all, because labor will close them.