If there are some of them getting relief and they shouldn't get it, it is simply because they are much more successful liars than we are investigators.

"When the State relief commission had this problem presented to them, naturally, as a basis for coming to a conclusion, some members of our staff interviewed about 25 families in Ingham and Eaton Counties, counties which are close to Lansing. They were families which had refused jobs in the sugar-beet fields, and whom we had tentatively cut off relief until they proved their claim for assistance. "I regret to say that I have not with me an actual transcript of those interviews and that data, but as my memory serves me the information which we had was that the income of those people in the sugar-beet fields was not very much more, if more, than they would be getting on welfare, if they turned down the sugar-beet jobs, and the average compensation that a family of five on welfare in Eaton County gets is $18.67 a month, and in Ingham County, outside the city of Lansing, about $22 a month. Those two factors, Mr. Chairman, I wish to present simply from the point of view of the State relief administration.

16* * * And during the sugar-beet season last spring and early summer, the complaints from the sugar-beet counties were definitely discernible, and while not entirely analyzed the sugar-beet workers feel that there are some serious complaints about being denied relief when they had a job, and presented in their own testimony not only evidence as to working conditions which we accepted at its face value, but the job required hard physical labor, but evidence in regard to the kind of income which they had and therefore needed to be supplemented. Our interest in this problem is obviously the interest of not using relief funds in what is supposed to be a going industry. It hasn't been followed consistently because the human requirements of actually feeding people, even though they have a job, is greater than the rigid principle of supplementing an industry which is supposed to pay a living wage.'

The Committee on Labor Conditions in the Growing of Sugar Beets 7 believed that the beet-sugar industry should bear the brunt of the full support of its working force. The committee, in its report prepared by W. Lewis Abbott, reasoned as follows:

"In attempting to determine what would constitute adequate wages for contract workers, in contrast to those which they are now receiving, it has been assumed that their wage should render them at least self-supporting. This immediately raises the question as to whether they should be expected to secure their entire living from 6 or 7 months' employment in the beet fields, or whether they should be expected to secure other employment during the remainder of the year. It has been pointed out that in the period of the several studies, 44 percent of the families had additional earnings during the summer, 50 percent had winter earnings, and that this other income amounted to $300 to $500 for the midgroup of families. Replies to the questionnaire sent to the county administrators of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration indicate that about one-third of the families are now able to secure other work, and that this income averages $60 per year. Under these conditions, it would not seem unjust to require that the full burden of supporting its workers must fall upon the beet-sugar industry." 8

9

The Children's Bureau study of conditions among sugar-beet workers in 1935 found that the "income from the arduous physical toil of the whole family in this seasonal industry is seldom sufficient to provide a decent standard of living, and for many it is not enough to provide even the bare necessities of life. As a result they must either accept public relief or face absolute destitution during a part of the year." Forty-two percent of the beet workers' families in central Michigan and 38 percent in southern Michigan had received relief during the year ending October 31, 1935.10 These figures do not reveal the full extent to which Michigan beet laborers had been relief recipients, since the survey did not include those families leaving the State upon the completion of the harvest work, i. e., the out-of-State migrants."

A comparison of the earnings of beet workers' families in 1920 and in 1935 throws considerable light on the question of the ability of the industry to support

U. S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, hearing with reference to proposed labor procisions to be included in beet-sugar benefit contracts under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, East Lansing, Mich., September 21, 1934. Testimony of Dr. William Haber, State relief administrator, pp. 68-72.

See below for composition and character of Committee.

Abbott, op. cit., p. 6.

Johnsen, op. cit. p. 82.

10 Ibid. p. 71.

11 Ibid., p. 8.

its labor force. The earnings of Michigan sugar-beet workers' families surveyed by the Children's Bureau in 1920 were distributed as follows:

"Between two-fifths and one-half of the 250 laborers' families that reported the amount their work would bring them expected to earn less than $800 for their 6 or 7 months in the beet fields, providing they performed all the processes on the same acreage on which they had worked up to the time of the interview. Most of them would earn from $500 to $800, including 66 families with but 2 workersusually 2 adults, but in some cases 1 adult and 1 child. In the group expecting to earn $800 to $900 were 52 families approximately one-half of them having 4 or more workers. Thirty-two larger families expected to earn from $1,000 to $1,199. Forty-seven families, averaging a little over 5 workers a family, expected to earn between $1,200 and $2,000, and the earnings of 7 families with an average of between 6 and 7 workers per family would amount to between $2,000 and $2,600."12

Fourteen of the 22 families who expected to earn less than $400 for the season's work had 2 working members. It was also found that the cash income of the beet-field laborers surveyed in 1920 was frequently supplemented by garden produce, and by the maintenance of a cow or chickens; 88 percent of the laborers reported a garden, 60 percent kept some chickens, and 41 percent had 1 or more COWS. 13

The median family earnings from beet work of Michigan workers were $854 in 1920. In 1935 they were $400 in central Michigan and $600 in southern Michigan, representing declines of 53 percent and 30 percent, respectively. No adequate data are available on the extent to which family incomes of Michigan beet workers were supplemented by gardens, poultry, or livestock in 1935. It was found that 63 percent of all contract families in the survey had planted gardens," but that "beet workers do not supplement their wages to any large extent through raising their own vegetables or keeping livestock." 15 In central Michigan, median earnings of beet-working families from beet work were approximately the same in 1934 and 1935. In southern Michigan, where the wage rates and average acreage tended by each family had increased as a result of a collective agreement, yearly earnings "were significantly higher in 1935 than in 1934." 16 Beet earnings increased noticeably after the passage of the Sugar Act. Thus, 70 familes who had worked at all beet operations in Michigan during the 1939 season, showed average earnings of $760.17

TABLE 5.-Amount payable for work in beet fields, by number of persons working; families working in beet fields1 Michigan group, 1920

1 Excludes tenant and farm-owning families.

Percent distribution not shown where base is less than 50.

3 Excludes 39 families that did not report amount payable.

Source: Child Labor and the Work of Mothers in the Beet Fields of Colorado and Michigan, op. cit.,

p. 113.

12 Child Labor and the Work of Mothers in the Beet Fields of Colorado and Michigan, op. cit., pp. 112113.

13 Ibid., see note, p. 113.

14 Johnson, op. cit., p. 74.

15 Elizabeth S. Johnson, Wages, Employment Conditions, and Welfare, of Sugar-Beet Laborers, Monthly Labor Review, February 1938, p. 339.

Entrance to the migratory labor camp in Blissfield Township, Mich., where workers from Texas live. was reported, with seven persons ill, one dying. House at right is occupied by several families. On August 12, 1941, diphtheria Nine days later the same disease broke out among farm workers in Saginaw County, resulting in the death of an infant.

Another of the houses at the Blissfield camp for migratory farm laborers. At the time of the diphtheria outbreak, 246 persons were living in the camp. All were placed under
A total of 12 clinical cases and 17 carriers had been reported to September 12.
quarantine, and those exposed were treated and isolated. Seven days later the quarantine was lifted, but 2 new cases broke out thereafter, and 6 new carriers were found.