For example, during the war period, a large number of airplane plants has been located in the San Fernando Valley. They have paid much higher rates han in corresponding agricultural sheds located in proximity to 1,000 acres of citrus in the valley. These packing sheds pay the same rates as do those packing sheds in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, some distance away, even though the airplane plants in the valley pay a much higher rate. The packing shed's rates are determined by the relationship to agriculture, rather than their relationship to industry.

It is a common practice in general use for labor used on the farms to be also used in the packing houses. Also, at times the common labor used in the packing house is used on the farms. This is illustrated by the Mexican nationals now being used in both the farms and the packing houses. These men are largely used for picking but at times the same men are used in the packing shed for general floor help.

In most cases the cooperative packing houses employ the labor used in picking citrus and in the vegetable packing sheds they employ the labor used in harvesting the vegetables.

The packing sheds operate in close unity with the harvest of the crop. Their operations are so closely intermingled that interference by one would damage the other. The packing house must operate at the time the crops are being harvested and must handle them promptly and properly. Therefore, any zone must include all the facilities for not only the growing and harvesting of the crop but also for putting it into proper shape for marketing.

In California and Arizona the labor costs of packing citrus are approximately 70 percent of the packing costs. Any change in this cost directly affects the return to growers.

It is the request of the California and Arizona citrus growers that the exemption provided for in 13 (a) (10) be maintained and that Congress define the area of production as follows:

"An individual shall be regarded as employed within the area of production within the meaning of section 13 (a) (10) if he is so engaged in an establishment which is located in an agricultural community and the establishment obtained during the preceding calendar year 80 percent or more of the fruits or vegetables handled by it directly from farms located in the county in which the establishment is located or in contiguous counties.

"As used in the preceding paragraph (1) ‘agricultural community' shall include any place where such services are performed except services performed in an establishment located in a terminal market to which establishment prepared fruits or vegetables are delivered for distribution for consumption; (2) 'contiguous county' shall mean a county any point of which makes contact with any point of the county in which the establishment is located." Respectfully submitted.

H. A. THOMAS, Jr.

EXHIBIT 19

STATEMENT OF JOHN R. VAN ARNUM, SECRETARY, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WHOLESALE FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE DISTRIBUTORS, ON S. 1349, A BILL TO AMEND THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938

I

The National League of Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Distributors is a voluntary, nonprofit trade association organized in January 1893 as the National League of Commission Merchants and incorporated in the State of Illinois, with over 1,000 members, individual and grower-shipper exchanges and carlot distributors, located in 35 States and most of the large markets east of the Mississippi River. At one point or another, as shippers, intermediate distributors, or receivers, its members handle approximately 65 to 70 percent of the total commercial volume of fresh fruits and vegetables of the United States, which includes all of the domestic fruits, vegetables, melons, and berries.

II

S. 1349 has for its purpose, among other things, the removal of the "area of production" exemption; increases in the minimum per-hour wage to 65, 70, and

75 cents, with time and one-half-overtime for hours worked over 40 in each workweek; establishes job classification differentials within and between unskilled and skilled employee groups; and establishes a 5-year statute of limitations for recovery of damages by employees.

To each of these new provisions petitioner offers objection and reasons therefor, and, further recommends amendment to section 7 (b) by adoption of (4) to read as follows:

"(4) If the employees' hourly rate of pay, by union contract or otherwise, is established in excess of the minimum wage provided in section 6, until the established rate of pay per hour extended by the number of hours worked in any workweek, results in less compensation than would result from the application of the minimum hourly wage for 40 hours, plus 11⁄2 times minimum wage for hours over 40, in which case the minimum wage plus 11⁄2 times for hours over 40 shall be the basis for compensation that week."

III

With the addition of the above amendment, it is recommended that the following changes be made in S. 1349:

Section 2 (b): Delete from; on lines 16, and lines 17 and 18.

Section 3 (n): Delete.

Section 3 (0): Delete.

Section 6 (entire): Delete.

Section 7 (c): Restore old language.

Section 8 (entire): Delete.

Section 13 (10): Restore old language.

Section 16 (b): Change line 11 to read, "three months" instead of "five years."

IV

Section 2. (b), section 3 (n) (0), and section 8, all deal with a proposed "job classification" for both skilled and unskilled labor. Reduced to its practical application, the Administrator may appoint an industry committee, under section 5 of the present act, composed of representatives of the public, the employees involved, and the employers, a like number representing each group, with the chairman also to be appointed from the public group by the Adminis trator. Obviously the employers will always be a minority of one-third under any practical administrative practice based on the experience of the past decade, so that they might as well be left out, except to allow them to go through the motion of protesting. Even so, if the Administrator does not like the recommendations of the committee he can appoint another committee to bring in recom mendations he does like.

To invest in the Administrator the authority to classify and fix private wages under any such conditions is beyond the realm of reason, as measured by what used to be proudly called American standards of independence.

In the first instance under the proposed bill, the Administrator may obtain from a committee a job classification for unskilled labor for the 75-cent minimum wage and then another committee recommend a wage differential for so-called skilled help above the 75-cent minimum. The bill does not say so, neither does it prohibit such action, but it would certainly give the Administrator a logical argument to say that the bill permitted a 75-cent minimum for unskilled labor, and also authorized a differential for skilled labor, which, of necessity would be higher than 75 cents, without any limit, on the recommendation of a committee of his appointing, on which the employer who pays the wages is represented by a minority.

This classifying of workers by administrative action is the more remarkable in American experience, when it is noted that it was a practice, by ukase of the Tsar, in Russia over a hundred years ago, according to Thomas Sears' Description of Russia, published in New York in 1855. There it describes the classification of serfs, peasants, bourgeois (including a classification of "respectable persons"), clergy and noblemen, who could neither be upgraded nor downgraded, without permission of the crown. Work or job classifications in the free cities and the "communes" were provided for the protection of the serfs and peasantry. According to history the main body of modern Russians changed over from dle herdsmen, described by Herodotus as Scythians, early in the Christian To pure agricultural communists, with the people in each commune having eluids all property, real, live, and personal, and with only a commune to dert introversial questions.

This led to a hereditary system of ascension to commune or village leadership and by consolidation of communes to the medieval overlordship of the Tsar, who acquired all of the rights to dispose of both people and land. The people peasants and serfs) remained on about the same level, with certain rights, contrary to popular belief, guaranteed by the Crown but it became quite a low evel. This original social and economic system has been restored by the Comnunist Dictatorship of present-day Russia, with the cycle starting all over with the elimination of the old "nobility" as they were called, that is, those who in the early days usurped, or were given, control and leadership by the Tsars at a later date.

How this middle-eastern Europe-Asiatic philosophy came to be transplanted to the halls of Congress in America is still a mystery to most Americans, who regard the idea that people are herds of stupid peasants that have to be fathered by the government, as an alien doctrine, which if operative during the whole course of our national history, would have left us a colony of England, or, earlier left the country to the Indians.

While many millions of Americans have fixed the responsibility for bringing these alien, middle-east European-Asiatic herd philosophy doctrines to this country, with all of the perverted lies of fascism, nazism, communism, and some other domestic isms, they don't understand the mental processes of scores of Senators and Representatives who might otherwise be expected to react as normal Americans, and this wonder is not confined to so-called 100 percent American-born citizens who trace their relatively new American ancestry back to the Mayflower or the Cavaliers.

It applies to our citizens of British, Irish, Italian, German, Scandinavian, and other European origins, many of whom, in our industry, came to this country as immigrants and, by using both their brain and brawn, worked their way up to the ownership of their own business. After 20 to 50 years in this country, they now see, under various sugar-coated theories of social progress, moves, supported or initiated by those in positions of leadership, which would impose on this country the doctrines of mass serfdom or peasantry, which they escaped in Europe.

It is easy to see that those Americans and aliens who sponsor or support this move, expect to continue as the leaders, eventually to emerge as the favored ruling class, but why so many people who have no such hope support them is the mystery.

Naturally, most unthinking and a lot of thinking people cannot resist the offer of "something for nothing." It is as much an infirmity of weak human nature as the urge to tell others what is good for them or what to do and make them take it if you have the power.

High wages paid by private business, jobs at the employee's will, relief when the applicant doesn't like the job, all kinds of special privileges for the downtrodden (but voting) minorities, social, economic, political equality, all guaranteed by the Government now, but paid for by the Government when the private well runs dry, sounds fine, now.

There can be no such thing as social, economic, or political equality, except at the lowest level. All history has proved this. Is there social, economic or political equality in Russia, which for centuries has had as many natural resources as any country in history and where the Dictator Stalin lives in castles and palaces, seen or heard by the masses of Moscow two or three times a year, guarded by the elite of the Russian Army, with a reported 7 or 8 million members of the Communist Party exercising exclusive political power (by the privilege of voting for one man) over 180,000,000 people, and with an estimated 8 to 9 millions of those people working as slaves in the salt and coal mines and the forests of Siberia for political offenses, as in the days of the Empire?

Many will say that the masses of Russia are still better off for food and shelter. Possibly and probably they are, as the imperial government was not only corrupt and arrogant but hopelessly incompetent, as are all dictatorship types of government, in time, and not too much time.

It will, no doubt, be said by many, that this is the same old scarehead cry of the conservatives, afraid of social reform; that the Government is only trying to uplift the downtrodden masses. All living things start from a seed. The present Russian regime appeared to burst forth full bloom in 1917, but that was because the masses of Russians had known nothing but communism at the bottom and autocracy at the top for centuries. They still have it. Transplanted to this country by seed, it will grow like a weed, if cultivated and

protected by political liberals and radicals, until the great numbers of freedomloving Americans revolt or we succumb.

The autocracy of the demogog, the labor leader, the radical professional reformer, is no less domineering, given the power to enforce the dictates of his will, than that of a tsar, or a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mussolini.

The opportunity to make the most of his talents, the freedom to exercise them, without trampling other peoples' rights, whether he succeeds or fails. eats or goes hungry, the right to be a fool or make mistakes even, is the only guarantee of economic or any freedom, and government cannot exercise that function for any man, except by giving him a job at the taxpayers' expense. It cannot do it by giving nearly autocratic power, camouflaged by a committee report, to a bureaucratic administrator, to place whole groups of workers, without regard to their individual ability or personality, in preferred job classes, at arbitrary wage differentials.

Sooner or later the protected masses will level down to the plane that the productive work of the society can support, and that level will be ultimately decided by the enterprise, energy, ability, thought and willingness to accept economic risks on the part of the ambitious people of any community, not by politicians, labor leaders or reformers, all of whom have their rightful place in society, however.

V

Section 6 changes the minimum wage from the present 40 cents per hour, to 65 cents for the first year after the amendment would become effective; 70 cents for the second and 75 cents for the third and succeeding years. So far as these amounts are concerned, they don't mean much yet, even to those groups who are still exempt. They may in time mean everything to agricultural production. When the original wage-hour bill, or the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, S. 2475, was first under discussion, proponents hailed it as the emancipation of the low-paid, long-working lower classes, and then Congress proceeded to exempt the lowest paid, longest working groups from its so-called benefits. Domestic and service workers, who were being paid 15 to 25 cents an hour in the central and southern cities (and generally were not worth that) were exempt. Agricul tural labor and "seasonal" and "area of production" employees were exempt, these latter three often being interchangeable.

The principal beneficiaries of the Act were organized labor in the CentralNorthern States, who were immediately and subsequently subject to 11⁄2 times labor contract rates of pay, often running up to $1.50 per hour, never under 75 cents that we know of, for hours over 44-then 42, then 40 per week, although contracts called for 48 to 54 hours per week at regular pay. So far as its avowed purpose of raising the living standards of the lowest paid and spreading employment were concerned, the bill was a gigantic political farce, benefitting principally the highest paid organized labor groups in exact proportion to their hourly rate of pay.

Agricultural labor was exempt, however, on the sound premise that most agricultural products, as contrasted with industrial products, are sold on a strictly supply and demand basis, in accordance with prevailing consumer buying power. It didn't help the agricultural worker then but it assured the production of food, feed and fibre. In the cities of the south it eventually caused an increase in the hourly wages of the lowest strata of unskilled manual laborers, stevedores. etc., that is when the 40-cent level was reached, but by that time supply and demand for labor had outdistanced the 40 cents. In the Western-Central-Northern cities 40 cents an hour has been obsolete for many years, under higher living cost conditions, and, of course, during the war, a closer average for all labor would be 75 cents in the south and $1.25 to $1.50 in the north, with the southwest and Pacific coast in between.

This organization has no brief for low wages as such. We are as fully aware as any social reformer in the world that the millenium of high wages for everyone would mean a uniformly high consumer buying power with the consequent tremendous expansion of volume outlets for agricultural products at high price levels, in theory at least. In practice it would also be true, providing that the high level of wages resulted in high compensating production of goods. High wages without high production is merely inflation, however it comes about.

High wage rates mean nothing so far as the national economy is concerned, until converted into earnings by work and production of a substantial total of all productive workers.

High wages for a few million and low wages, unemployment and strikes for the majority mean one of three things for high-acreage, high-productive agriculture; either the government underwrites or buys the product to feed the people at the paying taxpayers' expense, or agriculture goes bankrupt, or government underwrites the cost of production, the first and third being alternatives.

The key to the whole problem is a free and expanding industry, as this country is now an industrial nation, to provide the jobs, wages, and buying power. A simple solution, this premise has been adopted by lip service on the part of nearly everyone who has had anything to say about it, except the radicals, socialists and communists and their supporters, who are, as usual, the loudest talkers, but always with a string,' that is if industry agrees to every conceivable concession to organized labor including high wages, short hours at regular time, restricted working conditions and low prices. High wages are justified by high production. Low prices, in the absence of corporate or patent monopoly, are the result of superior competition of goods or services or both.

Industrial prosperity, universal, with the high wages and buying power that follow through the requirement of industry for labor, results in expanded demand and higher prices for agricultural products, and in turn, the need of the farmer and packer of food products to compete with industry for labor, or to compete with other agriculturists for the available supply of labor, when wage rates will rise and stay up to a level commensurate with the value of the service.

Wage-hour laws, except to control the exploitation of children or women in manual labor, would have no place in such a development. The presently proposed wage-hour law may or may not come into play, in those functions which would be removed from the exemption of the present bill. If the amendment becomes law, with the "area of production" exemption removed, and the level of wages unfortunately goes down to less than the 65-, 70-, or 75-cent minimum, then the result will be that those who pack and prepare food products for market will reach a point where they cannot afford to risk packing and shipping as much, so there will be less food shipped to market. There being less food, people in the higher buying power brackets will pay more, or price control and black markets will be maintained and those with lower buying power, unemployed, on strike and on relief will do without or with less.

With a poor crop of summer oranges in California, the small undesirable sizes sold on auction markets, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, where all of the forces of supply and demand meet and are reconciled, for as low as 35 cents and often 50 and 75 cents for a 1% bushel box. Packing costs are usually estimated at 60 to 75 cents a box, aside from production, transportation and marketing costs. This is an extreme case but is not unusual under normal economic conditions. Perishable agricultural producers grow and pack an entire crop. The cost per unit up to point of sale is the same for each unit produced on each acre of a farm, grove or orchard. Only when it reaches market, whether at shipping point or destination, does the variation begin to appear in the price which the commodity brings. Difference in volume of supply available on a particular day; United States grade; actual quality: maturity; size; even the time of day, affect the wholesale price, which is reflection of what the retailer can sell for. commodity of like character which will sell at $4 per package at 4 a. m., will not bring $2 at 10 a. m. on a Saturday morning, after the buyers have obtained their week-end supplies and only the bargain hunters are left, providing there has been an adequate supply to start with.

A

Unless Congress is convinced by a factual investigation that all of the elements of our economy, and this would apply to commercial services and industry, as well as agriculture, are economically able to support a minimum wage of 65, 70, or 75 cents per hour, at all times under foreseeable or predictable conditions, it should leave the present minimum of 40 cents in effect. This is not a brief for 40 cents an hour. We agree that this country could not support the present government or economy or even pay the service charges on, much less retire, the public debt on a 40 cents wage level.

VI

Section 7 (c) and 13 (10) relate to the "area of production" exemption in the present act, which is proposed to be omitted in the amendment. The "area of production" is as important to the production and preparation for market of perishable agricultural commodities, as the farm, grove, or orchard on which the commodity is grown, from a cost of production basis.

Commodities grown in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, California, Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Maine, or any other commercial producing State, unless