Senator ELLENDER. Now, when you say $110 per month, do you mean only for the 8 months that you work?

Mr. FESSER. Yes.

Senator ELLENDER. Which would make $880 per year that you receive as a worker?

Mr. FESSER. Yes.

Senator ELLENDER. Plus your board.

Mr. FESSER. In some ports you went in you got the same pay, you didn't get no bonus, but just in certain places that you got in. Senator ELLENDER. That is all.

Senator TUNNELL. All right. Thank you.

Mr. ERVIN. The next witness, members of the committee, is a textile worker from Virginia, Miss Shirley Hall. She will tell you about conditions in the textile industry there and why they want this measure passed.

I call the attention of the Senators to the fact that nobody has asked any questions about the income tax. All the witnesses pay income taxes that come from their wages.

TESTIMONY OF SHIRLEY HALL, TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA, LYNCHBURG, VA.

Senator TUNNELL. Will you give your name to the reporter? Miss HALL. My name is Shirley Hall. I live at 2363 Carroll Avenue, Lynchburg, Va., and I work in the Consolidated Textile Co.

I am a drill weaver, and that is the hardest job in the weaving room, I should say in the whole mill practically. For the time I have been running the drill I have made more than I made before, which isn't enough. I might, sometimes average 63 cents an hour, but if I were my daddy and had several children to support, to take care of, I could not get by. I can't get by, anyway. While it would not be enough to live on, it is high for the mill and high for the area in which I live.

Our wages have been pushed up since the union came in. It has been a constant fight trying to get them up. But I believe minimum wages should be set by law for all people, so that people could have a chance to have a decent wage and a decent life.

I am a pieceworker. All the weavers are pieceworkers. When you are young, when you are just 22, you can get around and make a rate, but every year you work you get a little more stooped, a little more tired, and you can't run around as fast, although your service record gets longer.

Senator TUNNELL. How do you know you are going to earn less all the time?

Miss HALL. By watching others. My daddy has worked in the mill 30 years, and I make more than he does because I get around faster. Senator TUNNELL. That is what I am getting at. You know that from watching others?

Miss HALL. I know that from the experience of my family and people who work in the mill with me. I am not a better worker than he is; he is far more skilled, it is just that I can move around better, I can see better. It is a constant strain on your eyes to weave. It is hard work. It is not only the mental strain; it is physical labor. You are straining all day long trying to keep the looms running.

Since the union came in, since we got the raise last year in August we talked my mother into quitting work. After all, we have three small children at home. My daddy and I felt it would be better if she stayed home and took care of the children.

Now, I understand our mill is to go back on a 40-hour week next Monday, so that means my mother will, in all probability, have to go back to work, and my little brother and my little sister will have to run around on the streets. I don't like to think about that.

When the war started, when it broke out, my two brothers and I made a bargain. One of my brothers was 20 and the other was not quite 17, but we made a bargain that they would go into the Army and I would stay home and take care of the family. I felt that I should, that if they wanted to fight, well, it was their responsibility, they were young, healthy, strong boys. So I have stayed home and tried to take care of the family, tried to help, and they have been in the Army. My brother is now getting a medical discharge, his nerves are all shot, and my little brother is in the Navy, I don't know where he is, although I have an idea that he is around Tokyo some place. They took out their allotments when they got in. They don't claim a dependency allotment, but one of the brothers sent $25 home and the other brother, when he was on the ship, sent $50. My daddy and I talked it over, and we decided when the war would be over they would probably come home and would want to get married, and we saved the money for them, and so we have been able to bank it every month, but it has been hard to do, and now we are facing the choice of spending my brothers' money that they have sent home all the time that they were in danger or putting my mother back in the mill, because you can't take care of four children, yourself and wife on $26 or $39 a week-it just can't be done.

In Virginia we have to pay for all the schoolbooks from grade school up. You hear talk of the Sunny South, but when it is cold it is just as cold there as any place else, and the rain is just as wet.

I don't want to speak as much for myself and my family as I do for the other families I know of. Our conditions are bad; I know they are, but they are not as bad as in some other families. We live in a cotton-mill village, company-owned and controlled. There is a family that lives on a hill, and I think the father makes 60 cents an hour. He has seven children, the oldest 15, and he is trying his best to keep her in school, and they have a baby about 13 months old. The second girl has rheumatic fever and heart trouble, and they think she will be an invalid the rest of her life. They can't get the proper care for her. They have to go around and take her to charity doctors, they would not take her in a hospital. When the mill gets back on 40 hours, what is going to happen to these people? I am worried about what is going to happen to me and my family, but what about the other families in Lynchburg that will be even worse off than we are?

We live in a company house. It is not a very good house. We don't have a bathtub. I have a 12-year-old brother, and until last April he had never seen a bathtub. We get just as dirty as other people; we need to wash.

Senator TUNNELL. Have you bought any Liberty bonds?

Miss HALL. My daddy has $1 a week deducted from his salary and I have $3 deducted from my salary for bonds.

Senator TUNNELL. Are you able to keep them?

Miss HALL. I have one that is not old enough to cash in. If anybody had to cash his bond in, I feel I don't have as many family responsibilities as my daddy and I would cash mine and let him keep his, feeling he would need it more later on than I would.

My grandpa and grandma don't have a place to live; they are very old, so we have to try to send them money to buy them medicine. They need clothes, too.

I think the time ought to come when the cotton mill people will have a chance to say what their children are going to be. If the kids want to work in the cotton mill, let them--that is their choice. But I have known children who wanted to do other things, they wanted to go to school, to college, maybe to be a doctor or lawyer, but they never had a chance. I had to go to work in the mill before I finished my last year of high school, right before my baby sister was born-I did not have a choice, but I would not want my sister to do that, I want her to have a chance to be what she wants to be.

They take income tax out of us, from $3.60 a week up, according to how we make.

I don't see how they expect us to live in any decency, expect us to grow up to be good American citizens, or to do anything, on account of the salaries we are making. I don't think my brothers, when they come back, will want to go to work for 50 cents an hour. I think they are entitled to more than that. I don't believe that my little sister would ever want to go to work for 50 cents an hour, and that is really what I am shooting at. What is going to happen to the other people who are coming on?

Senator SMITH. You are speaking of Lynchburg?

Miss HALL. Yes.

Senator SMITH. How many mills are there?

Miss HALL. Just one, in Lynchburg.

Senator SMITH. Do you know whether the rate of pay is about the same there as in other mills in the same kind of business?

Miss HALL. I should say in cotton mills the rate of pay would be the same where they have a union, and it would be much lower if they do not have a union. The minimum rate would be 40 cents if they

did not have a union.

Senator SMITH. Where you are working you get better pay than they get in other mills?

Miss HALL. I think I am getting about the average. I would not say it is any less.

Senator SMITH. How is the business of the mill now?

Would you say they are going to shut down because they haven't got business enough?

Miss HALL. No, sir; they are going to put on a third shift and cut our hours from 48 to 40 hours a week and we will have a cut in pay for everybody.

Senator SMITH. They want to put on three shifts?

Miss HALL. Yes; if they get the help.

Senator SMITH. You think they are doing as much business as before?

Miss HALL. Yes; they are. They are expanding. They have new equipment ordered, and as soon as they can get it they will expand. Senator JOHNSTON. I believe you stated you are a weaver?

Miss HALL. Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON. I know something about that, because I was a weaver for 8 years. What kind of weaving do you do?

Miss HALL. I make drill, three-harness stuff.

Senator JOHNSTON. A Draper loom?

Miss HALL. It is a Draper, model E.

Senator JOHNSTON. How many looms do you run?

Miss HALL. I run 36.

Senator JOHNSTON. How many is the most in the mill?

Miss HALL. The number of looms would vary according to the construction of the cloth and whether or not you had a feeder. The most is 66.

Senator JOHNSTON. The most is 66?

Miss HALL. Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON. Even on the same grade of loom, you will find a difference in the number they are running.

Miss HALL. What do you mean by grade?

Senator JOHNSTON. I mean the same type of cloth, making the same type of thing, running the same yarn, the same warp, you find some weavers running a great deal more than others.

Miss HALL. I am afraid I can't answer that.

Senator JOHNSTON. Say you are running 64-68 or 64-72, you find one weaver will probably run 32 and some other weaver will be running 50 or 60 looms.

Miss HALL. Not if it is the same construction.

Senator JOHNSTON. You find that in my State.

Miss HALL. All I know is the one in Virginia.

Senator JOHNSTON. I worked for 50 cents a day. It is a disgrace, I know, because I worked for that, and for 65 and 75. I know your trouble. I worked in the spinning room and weave shop. You have different types of work in the mill, isn't that true?

Miss HALL. Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON. Did you ever work as a spinner?

Miss HALL. No, sir.

Senator JOHNSTON. I worked on that for some three years. In a spinning room a spinner will run four sides, isn't that true, maybe for the first 6 months or year?

Miss HALL. When she is learning, and then she will gradually take more.

Senator JOHNSTON. Up until they run maybe 12 sides.

Miss HALL. Some of our spinners run 16 sides.

Senator JOHNSTON. Some run 16 sides?

Miss HALL. Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON. That is true in the cotton mill industry. What do you draw per week?

Miss HALL. I am a piece-rate worker. There is a difference in my salary each week. If I feel good and can run around pretty fast, I might get $32.

Senator JOHNSTON. What is the price for the battery?

Miss HALL. The battery is 55 cents an hour. I think that is about $24 a week.

Senator JOHNSTON. What type of work does your father do?

Miss HALL. My father is a weaver.

Senator JOHNSTON. How many looms does he run?

Miss HALL. 66, but he doesn't make as much as I do, because it i different construction.

Senator JOHNSTON. A different type loom?

Miss HALL. Yes. He can't get around as fast as I do.

Senator JOHNSTON. I see. Do you know what they pay in the card ing room?

Miss HALL. I know that the minimum pay is 55 cents. I know th fixers make 58 cents, and I think the drawing tenders would make abou 58 cents, I am not sure.

Senator JOHNSTON. When you are speaking of children working in the mill, what is the age in Virginia?

Miss HALL. 16.

Senator JOHNSTON. I would like people to know I worked when was 11 years old in the cotton mill.

Miss HALL. My daddy did, too, but it is telling on him now.

Senator JOHNSTON. I want to tell you I made them raise the limit there when I was Governor, and when I was a member of the House. Miss HALL. I did not know you had been Governor.

Senator JOHNSTON. Yes; I was Governor two different times in South Carolina.

Miss HALL. I did not know who you were.

Senator JOHNSTON. I am trying to get some facts out here.
Miss HALL. I would like to give them to you.

Senator JOHNSTON. That is what we want. Do you know what the average is in spinning now?

Miss HALL. I should say it would be about 61 cents. I should say more than half the people in the mill make the minimum rate, the rate for common labor, and they are running skilled jobs.

When the minimum pay was shoved up they had to pay more. They went from 3712 to 40 then 45 and 472; they had to pay the people that much. They did not raise the skilled-labor rate.

Senator JOHNSTON. That is right, they did not raise your skilled labor at all when the minimum came up.

Miss HALL. That is right.

Senator JOHNSTON. I think you will find it practically true through out the United States to a large extent. What air-conditioning do you have in the mill?

Miss HALL. We do not have any air-conditioning; it is just plain hot, that is all. You go in to work 6 minutes to 7.

We have worked 9 hours and 36 minutes without a lunch period all during the war.

Senator JOHNSTON. No air conditioning?

Miss HALL. We haven't any there. In half an hour, all of our clothes are wet.

Senator JOHNSTON. It is necessary to keep the right humidity.
MISS HALL. The most times they put hot water on you.
Senator JOHNSTON. What house rent do you have to pay?

Miss HALL. We live in a company house. We pay $1.15 a week. They deduct that from your salary.

Senator JOHNSTON. Do you know whether or not some mills have rent as high as yours?