Senator KING. It seems to me in many commodities the prices now are as low or nearly as low as they were years ago.

Dr. LUBIN. There has been a considerable decline. The decline has been from 173 to 144. That is quite a decline, but if you wanted to get back to 1914, before the price rise in the war period occurred prices would have to drop by an additional 44 percent.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Dr. Lubin, to summarize what you have shown thus far, if I understand these charts correctly, you demonstrated that the average weekly earnings is up, that the average hourly rate of pay is up, but that the average number of hours per week is slightly down. You have also shown that real wages and cash wages are also-well, real wages are up, cash wages are below what they were in 1929. And while you have been showing this you have also indicated that production is greatly off in all of the durable, or practically all of the durable industries, so that makes employment down while these rates have been going up.

Dr. LUBIN. Yes. And, to qualify that further, Mr. Senator, this $16.46 is the weekly earnings of the fellow who has the job, in real wages. Twenty-four dollars are the weekly cash earnings of the man who has the job. The average does not include the unemployed.

Representative SUMNERS. Dr. Lubin, will you have any figures to indicate, for instance, the relative price of agricultural commodities in this break-down?

Dr. LUBIN. Oh, yes; we can do that.

Mr. HENDERSON. I hope we will have a whole hearing devoted to the subject of prices, Mr. Chairman and Judge Sumners.

Dr. LUBIN. We can do that. The fact is, we do break them down into foods, clothing, etc., and in our wholesale prices we break foods down into processed and nonprocessed foods.

Representative SUMNERS. In the agricultural break-down, of course, there will be not only the question of price but a restriction on the amount of production which is now being allowed the farmers of the country.

Dr. LUBIN. The significant thing is that despite that restriction, if you take all agricultural products together, the sum total produced all together, hasn't come down much. The fact is, this year will probably show the biggest output we ever have had in terms of physical units. Of course, in value our output is down.

Representative REECE. In arriving at your real weight, do you give a commodity the same relative weight in the considerations which make up the real weight as it bears to the cost of living, that is, say 50 percent of one's wages goes for rent and food. Is rent and food given a 50 percent relative importance in your real weights?

Dr. LUBIN. Yes. Rent gets a weight, food gets a weight, recreation gets a weight, church activities and educational activities get a weight. We rate everything in the terms of its importance.

Mr. HENDERSON. Was it your opinion this morning as expressed that we have never produced too much cotton to satisfy our real needs?

Dr. LUBIN. The question was raised as to whether there was too much agricultural production or too little industrial production. I said that so far as I was concerned I couldn't conceive of too much of anything being produced so long as there was a portion of the population that wasn't getting enough of those things.

Representative REECE. This is beside the particular phase of the question which you are now discussing, but is it your intention to include in your discussion any figures to indicate the percentage of employment that is so occasioned by the large corporations compared to the smaller corporations? Take, for instance, the number of people employed by corporations who have a net income of less than a hundred thousand dollars, is that question going to be covered? Dr. LUBIN. Yes; it is not going to be covered in the introductory hearings, but that is coming into the picture definitely.

Now, if you add these factors together and ask what they mean in terms of loss of national income, in terms of loss of employment, and so forth, you naturally come to the question as to what effect they have upon the people of this country, particularly in terms of the number of unemployed people.

(The chart referred to was marked "Exhibit No. 48" and appears on p. 64. The statistical data on which this chart is based are included in the appendix on p. 224.)

Dr. LUBIN. In this chart I have attempted to show the number of unemployed as revealed by the census of unemployment last November. It not only shows the number of unemployed, but of ages that have been most hit by the falling off in production. I think it is rather significant that in this group of 15-19

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). That is the age group 15-19?

Dr. LUBIN. Yes; and males. There are in this group approximately 1,100,000 people who are unemployed.

In the 20-24 age group among the males, the number is slightly larger, 1,250,000. Then you have a little over 800,000 males between 25-29, and you will notice the number in each 5-year age group remains just about the same between 30 and 54, and then the number becomes smaller as the age group goes up. You can expect it to be smaller because of the fact that there are fewer people in the older age groups in the population.

Senator BORAH. What about age 60?

Dr. LUBIN. Between 55 and 64, 835,000 males and 194,000 females. Senator KING. In that lower line, 15 and above, do you include the children who are working on the farm, or do you exclude those?

Dr. LUBIN. Those are people who actually came and registered as unemployed when the census was taken. They include people in agricultural areas as well as industrial if they registered as unemployed. Senator KING. Were there many registered as unemployed between 15 and 16, say?

Dr. LUBIN. A relatively small number in this total of 1,100,000 of males.

Senator KING. Is there any indication as to their habitat, whether they were in urban or suburban districts?

Dr. LUBIN. We have data by States as well as counties.

The CHAIRMAN. This chart is prepared from the statistics of the unemployment census?

Dr. LUBIN. Yes. Now, that raises a question as to what this all has meant in terms of the part that Government plays in helping our people to maintain themselves.

The CHAIRMAN. Before you go to that other chart, may I ask, Dr. Lubin, if it isn't a fact that there is a larger percentage of our people over 60 years of age now than at any time in our history?

EXHIBIT No. 48

ESTIMATED NUMBER AND AGE OF THE UNEMPLOYED

NUMBER OF PERSONS IN UNEMPLOYMENT CLASSES, BY SEX AND AGE, FOR THE UNITED STATES
UNEMPLOYED (INCLUDING EMERGENCY WORKERS)

Dr. LUBIN. Yes, and the number is going to keep increasing steadily for the next 20 years, so that by 1960 it is estimated they will constitute about one-seventh of the population. The estimate made by the Social Security Board shows that number is increasing definitely because of greater longevity.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the fact with respect to the lower age group below 20?

Dr. LUBIN. That number is getting gradually smaller because of the fact that the birth rate has been falling steadily and the number of people becoming 15 each year is smaller.

The CHAIRMAN. So that the problem of finding employment for those, say, above 40 is constantly growing greater.

Dr. LUBIN. In a sense, yes. On the other hand, with fewer and fewer people coming into the labor market to take their jobs away, you ease the pressure. In my personal opinion, the significant problem lies among the young folks, between 15 and 25, who are going to be our future citizens. They are the folks whose morale we have to maintain.

The CHAIRMAN. An effort is being made, of course, to provide education for those in the group under 20, and irrespective of any effort upon the part of Government, isn't it true that a much larger proportion of young people go to school today than did 10 years ago?

Dr. LUBIN. Definitely so. If you had maintained the same rate that you had 20 years ago, there would be more unemployed today. The CHAIRMAN. So that the real question of unemployment begins with the 20-year group rather than with the 15-year group.

Dr. LUBIN. No. I would say it began at 16, because even though more of them are going to school than in the past, there are still plenty of them who need work. I might state it this way: The problem is not as bad as it would have been had the Government not made it possible for more young folks to stay in school.

Senator KING. Has your Department made any inquiry or any survey as to the number of women, if any, who have taken the place of males, and to that extent have placed on the list of unemployed a larger number of males than otherwise would have been in that category?

Dr. LUBIN. Such data as are available from the census show that the rate of increase of women in industry during the past decade, up to 1930, was not much greater than in earlier decades.

In other words, although more women were working, there were more women in the country to go to work. In proportion to the number of men in industry the increase wasn't any greater in recent decades.

The fact is that the percentage of females at work in 1930, as shown by the census, was actually smaller than in 1910. In 1910 it was 23.4 percent, in 1920 it was 21.1 percent, and in 1930 it was 22 percent. We won't know what has happened in the last 6 or 7 years until we get our census for 1940.

Senator KING. There are new fields of employment-I will call it industry-open now to women which did not exist 10, 15, or 20 years ago. You mentioned this morning the beauty parlors, cosmetology, stenography and typing, and so on.

Dr. LUBIN. On the other hand, we ought to bear in mind that during the war we had a host of opportunities for women which later

disappeared. They were doing all kinds of work that women never did before. Some stayed on but others disappeared. We used to have women as streetcar conductors, and things of that sort.

Senator KING. Many women were actively employed in conducting railroad stations.

Representative SUMNERS. Dr. Lubin, does the disposition or policy of employers of large groups of people to discharge employees after they get along about 45 or 50 years old have anything to do with those figures? I am afraid I am asking my question wrong. What I mean to ask is, Is there any increase in the disposition of employers to discharge their employees when they get along about 45 or 50?

Dr. LUBIN. We are right now in the midst of a study of that very problem. We have surveyed a group of industrial centers in New England and we have had the cooperation of employers in getting their employment records to see who is first fired during periods of lay-off, and who is hired first during periods of increasing employment. Some time between now and the end of these hearings we will have that study shaped up and we will know the facts on the basis of authoritative information. There is very little authoritative information available now. Incidentally, Senator King, you raised a question about these 15-year-old youngsters. There were about eight times as many at 19 years of age as there were at 15 in that group.

Senator KING. May I interrupt again, in view of the question of Judge Sumners. When the social security bill was under consideration, a number of employers of labor, as well as some of the employees. brought the attention of the Committee on Finance to the fact that they did not approve of, or rather they preferred to permit the manufacturing companies, the employers, to continue their policies under which they had large reserves, which were held by the leading insurance companies and other trustees, so that when persons got old, there was a pension or retirement privilege for them. Some of those who came before us represented that provisions were made so that they would get $156 a month under the pension plans that were set up by a large number of employers, and that they opposed the social security because they would only get for the same kind of work, $69 to $75 a month. I was wondering if your organization had any data showing the number of employers who did have provision for retirement of their employees.

Dr. LUBIN. Yes, there has been a study made by the man who is now head of the Railroad Retirement Board for the Industrial Relations Councilors who are industrial advisers. The only answer one can give to an employer when he says, "I am giving more than anyone else," is, "Keep on giving it. If you say it is going to cost too much, curtail your plan by an amount equal to what you are giving to the Government. But don't cut the total."

Senator KING. But when he refuses to do that, we stated if they continued their plan, they would have to continue to make their payment to the Government.

Dr. LUBIN. True, but with a difference in their payment, they could still continue. If they were paying $2 a week and they now are paying the Government a dollar a week, they could still continue paying that extra dollar. There is nothing to stop them from continuing it.