STATEMENT OF EDWARD F. MCGRADY, REPRESENTING THE FEDERATION OF LABOR

Mr. MCGRADY. My name is Edward F. McGrady, representing the American Federation of Labor.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have no desire to be repetitious this morning. We have marched up this hill patiently for months pleading and begging the Congress of the United States and the leaders of the administration to do something to meet this great national crisis, and up to the present moment they have done very little or nothing. The pleadings of the people have been in vain.

The first gentleman who spoke to-day said that the Congress ought to do something to save the hungry. I want to assure you gentlemen that if the Congress of the United States and this administration does not do something to meet this situation adequately, next winter it will not be a cry to save the hungry but it will be a cry to save the Government.

Conservative leadership may be all right when the old ship of state is sailing along smooth waters, but conservative leadership was never any good in time of war and we are in a state of war against hunger and against poverty, and conservative leadership is not needed. We want bold, courageous, and intelligent leadership in this country and perhaps we will have that eventually unless this situation is going to be met.

Now, what is the situation? In the last two weeks there have been 287,000 men and women thrown out on the streets without jobs. At this very hour to-day, according to the most conservative figures, there are 10,867,000 people walking the streets.

When we first came to the various committees to plead for help and for work and for bread, when we first appeared in favor of the La Follette-Costigan bill, there were approximately 6,200,000 without jobs and conservative national leadership adopted a policy of "Do nothing now; let us wait." While they have been waiting, the figures have gone up almost to 11,000,000 without any jobs at all. Have we any hope that the conditions are going to get better? Not at all.

The President of these United States and his Cabinet and the Congress must realize that conditions are going to get worse, that they are not going to get better. Now, what is the situation in recent months industrially? In New York State, the factory pay rolls fell 10 per cent last month, down to 45 per cent of what they were three years ago.

Steel production in the Pittsburgh district is at 15 per cent of capacity.

Eighty-five per cent of the steel industry is without any work at all. The New York Times business-activity index on June 12 showed a new low of 55, meaning that it is 55 per cent normal.

Cotton has reached the lowest price in 200 years. Orders on the books of the United States Steel Co. are at the lowest point in the company's history after 14 months of consecutive declining.

Farm products are selling at 64.8 per cent of 1915 prices and the tendency is downward.

Pig-iron production in May was down 60 per cent from May, 1931, the panic year.

Even the John D. Rockefeller Consolidated Coal Co. has gone into the hands of a receiver.

Motor sales are constantly falling off, and building permits for May were down 73 per cent from May, 1931, for 215 leading cities in the country.

So that all signs indicate that we are heading into very serious trouble in this country. We are warning the leaders of the Nation that they have got to meet this situation adequately just as soon as they can, and certainly they have got to meet this situation before this Congress is allowed to adjourn, and if they do not meet it adequately and courageously and boldly and intelligently, I say to you the cry will not be to save the hungry but the cry next winter will be to save this Government of the United States.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brenckman, will you please give your name. and address to the reporter for the record?

STATEMENT OF FRED BRENCKMAN, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NATIONAL GRANGE

Mr. BRENCKMAN. My name is Fred Brenckman, and I represent the National Grange.

On the farms of this country to-day, Mr. Chairman, people are asking with deep concern when they will again receive reasonable prices for the products they produce, prices that will enable the farmers to pay their debts and their taxes and to save their homes.

In the industrial centers millions of unemployed people are asking with equal concern where they are going to get the bare necessaries of life to sustain them and their dependents until there is an industrial revival or until another job is found. All this in a country that is blessed with full and plenty and which possesses greater productive capacity than any other nation ever possessed. Surely, we are confronted with strange contradictions.

Now, let us see what is the condition of agriculture, to which Mr. McGrady has already alluded. The latest farm price index issued by the United States Department of Agriculture shows that the average level of farm prices to-day is 56 per cent of the pre-war level, because it has been going down, Mr. McGrady, since the figures were put together that you quoted.

The products that the farmer must buy, or the commodities that the farmer must buy, stand at 112 per cent of the pre-war level. The purchasing power of the farmer's dollar is 50 cents as compared with the pre-war level and that is not taking into consideration the fact that to-day farm taxes, for which I know the Federal Government is not responsible, are 266 per cent of the pre-war level.

Now, what is the reason for this situation? Let us just briefly now survey what the condition is that exists in the industrial centers.

I have here a copy of the Philadelphia Public Ledger of this morning which says that the committee headed by Horatio Gates Lloyd, Philadelphia banker, which has been administering relief funds in that city during the past two years, has disbanded. The committee makes this announcement, that the funds remaining at its disposal will last for only one more week, and that at the end of that time 250,000 people in that one city alone are going to face actual starvation.

The plea of this committee is that the Governor of Pennsylvania call the legislature to enact speedy relief measures. Unfortunately, the situation in Pennsylvania is much as it is in many of our other great States. The constitution of Pennsylvania provides that there shall be no State debt except to repel invasion and in other desperate emergencies. When that constitution was framed, they had no thought of any such emergency as this arising.

Ohio has much the same kind of a constitution and nearly all of our great cities, as is well known, have bonded themselves to the legal limit of their capacity to provide all sorts of improvements so that they are not in a position to further mortgage their credit for relief purposes.

I am told that in Toledo, Ohio, a city with less than 300,000 population, there are 60,000 people in the bread line who are being fed at an average cost of 9 cents a day.

Indeed, there is one charity in New York City that I have been informed is furnishing meals at 1 cent each.

Remembering that these are only a few indications of a situation that is nation-wide, is it any wonder that food products are selling at the lowest level in 35 years?

What is the solution to this question? I can see only one solution, a permanent solution to this question, and that is to put the unemployed back to work. In the meantime we are confronted with a desperate emergency and we must face that emergency. I know very well that it is said that it is the duty of the citizens to support the Government, rather than the duty of the Government to support the citizens, but within certain reasonable limits that obligation is mutual, and I feel that under present conditions it is the duty of the Federal Government to save these people from actual starvation.

I am proud of the fact that Congress is now taking steps to make available for these destitute and unemployed people another 40,000,000 bushels of Farm Board wheat. That is all right as far as it goes and it is a fine thing to do. I believe we ought to go further than that and we ought to finish putting through this legislation that will make money available for relief purposes, direct relief. Probably, it would be wise to incorporate in that legislation the provision that the money should be spent where it is most needed rather than in proportion to the population of the States, and, in addition to that, we must have some kind of a program for the construction of public works that will put these unemployed people back to work. If we can find projects that are self-liquidating, that can be financed through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, well and good, but if such projects can not be found in sufficient number I say it would be a whole lot better to find other projects to put these people to work than to allow them to starve to death.

I feel further, Mr. Chairman, that the true solution of this question does not lie in colonizing or settling in wholesale numbers upon the land in the rural districts the unemployed people in our cities and towns as is being advocated by many people now. I do not want to be misunderstood on that question. If anybody individually feels that he can go back into the rural districts and can get along better there on little or nothing than he is to-day in the big cities without a job, he has a right to go, but it is not a solution of this question to

take millions and millions of people and send them in the rural districts where they will have no chance to make a living. They will actually starve to death there, because the farmers who are out there now, who are familiar with every phase of their calling, and who have been doing their level best, are gradually sinking into insolvency and bankruptcy.

Remember this, and this is an important fact, that the army of unemployed with their dependents in our cities to-day numbers from two-thirds to three-fourths as much as the total farm population of the United States. Does it not stand to reason that that is not the solution of that question? We have got to put those people back to work in the industries where they belong and if there is not enough work to keep them all at it on the basis of the 8-hour day, then the only solution that I see is to be decent and human about it and to divide up the available amount of work, which means perhaps the 5-day week and the 6-hour day, which would give every man who wanted a job an opportunity to earn the necessaries of life for himself and his dependents.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bergman, will you please give your full name and address to the reporter for the record?

STATEMENT OF DR. W. G. BERGMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE MAYOR'S UNEMPLOYMENT COMMITTEE OF DETROIT

Doctor BERGMAN. My name is W. G. Bergman, of Detroit, Mich., vice chairman of the mayor's unemployment committee.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, Detroit in the last year has cared for an average of 20,000 families at a cost of $8,400,000. Over 90 per cent of this amount has come from tax funds. This amount has been obtained only by the practice of most costly economies and by piling up hidden deficits for a future generation to pay, not in coin but in flesh and blood, in health and happiness. Many essential public services have been reduced beyond the minimum point absolutely essential to the health and safety of the city, such as public health nurses for school children and other medical and hospital services for adults. Other indispensable provisions for the health of the city, such as dental clinics in the schools, have been eliminated entirely.

Recreation and library facilities, never more urgently needed, have been drastically curtailed. The salaries of city employees have been twice reduced amounting to a one-fifth cut, and hundreds of faithful employees of long years of service to the city have been furloughed. Thus has the city borrowed from its own future welfare to keep its unemployed on the barest subsistence levels. During the past year, the food costs for unemployment relief have been successively reduced out of proportion to falling food prices, until to-day thousands are fed in Detroit's city cafeterias at less than 10 cents a day.

A wage work plan which had supported 11,000 families collapsed last month because the city was unable to find funds to pay these unemployed-men who wished to earn their own support.

For the coming year, Detroit can see no possibility of preventing widespread hunger and slow starvation through its own unaided resources. The increased amount of fixed charges necessary to meet the municipal obligations incurred in other years has limited the

amount of money available for welfare aid to less than one-half of last year's expenditures. The anticipated tax delinquencies have already reduced this amount to one-third of the 1931-32 expenditures in face of the certainty that the imperative needs of next year will be greater than those of the fiscal year just ending-now that the long awaited seasonal upturn in Detroit's basic industry has been postponed for another year.

A very well organized and manned drive for private funds to supplement city welfare resources failed to raise more than a quarter of its original goal, despite the very generous initial gift of the senior Senator from Michigan. The large amount of personal charity, that is, that given by poor neighbor to poor neighbor, which has until now cushioned the burdens of the public welfare agencies by caring for at least one-half of the unemployment burden, is being rapidly made smaller and smaller by wage reductions and short time among those who are still employed.

We can see but two possibilities of preventing the collapse of the morale of this great city next year, and both of them lie in the hands of the Congress of the United States. One is the amending of the act creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation so that it may purchase refunding bonds of cities. The other is the utilization of the greater and more equitably distributed taxing power of the Federal Government for supplementing the direct unemployment relief whose crushing burden is now borne solely by the cities, through relief, and construction funds.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sanford, please give your full name and address to the reporter for the record.

STATEMENT OF RAYMOND SANFORD, OF THE CHICAGO WORKERS' COMMITTEE ON UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. SANFORD. My name is Raymond Sanford, chairman of the central delegation of the Chicago workers' committee on unemployment, representing over 14,000 men from 14 locals in Chicago, not a communistic organization.

I also happen to be chairman of the labor committee on the Chicago City Club, although I am not representing them, and we are all of us in favor of Federal aid because unemployment is not consistent with the distribution of wealth in this country.

I have four men with me and I will allow each one of them 55 seconds. I will call on Mr. Mason first.

The CHAIRMAN. Give your full name please?

STATEMENT OF HOMEWOOD MASON, OF CHICAGO

Mr. MASON. My name is Homewood Mason.

The CHAIRMAN. You live in Chicago?

Mr. MASON. Yes; at 646 Bryan Place, Chicago, Ill.

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed.

Mr. MASON. In the city of Chicago, there are 1,000 men eating in the bread lines food that costs 41⁄2 cents a day, and these men are from the so-called gold coast of Chicago. These resources are about to end, and they are confronted with one meal a day within, say, 30 days after the city funds will become exhausted.

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