Out here in the bonus army which is camped at your doorstep, although the negro in this country is only 10 per cent of the population, he is one-fourth of the bonus army here. He is there in such numbers because he is a disproportionate sufferer in time of depression. Further than that, he is suffering in the dispensing of food supplies also. He has had many peculiar conditions enforced upon him to obtain relief; in the good city of New Orleans, they have ruled that only 33 per cent of the relief expenses may go to negroes, no matter what the unemployment among negroes is.

The city of Jacksonville, Fla., has enforced a curious condition upon the negro, that the negro must raise 50 per cent of the fund which they receive from the relief agencies.

Now, it has been said, sometimes with reason, but by romanticists and imaginative people, that the negroes are a happy-go-lucky, dancing people; that they are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and that they do not think seriously upon the issues of life, and that they need not be seriously considered. The negro has been, he has been long suffering; he has learned; but that has not been the whole picture. He has suffered, and he has continued to suffer during the unemployment and depression; he begins to wonder where the end of his suffering is going to be. He has turned to his local agencies, and they have, in various ways, taken care of part of his problem; but he looks to his Federal Government, and he has always looked to his Federal Government, and he believes that the gentlemen in Congress and the gentlemen in the executive branches of the Government are his last resort. There is no dancing, and there is no laughter, and there are no banjos.

We find, in rural districts of Mississippi-and I have the letters on my desk stacked up high which say: "We are dressed in burlap sacks and we have no credit. We are trying to raise a few cabbages, so that we can live next winter." There is no banjo playing and no dancing and laughter.

I will recite a case in Alabama, where a whole family, including a mother and 16-year-old girl, have been imprisoned for 18 years, when they tried to defend a hog for food for the coming winter.

The negro is not laughing, and he is not dancing; his patience, which he has maintained for years and years; he is being appealed to romantically by the so-called radicals of our country.

The Communist Party has nominated a negro for Vice President of the United States. You say that is just a gesture. So it is, perhaps, but it is a gesture that is bound to relate to the sympathy of people, who, if they are driven to believe that their own past times their own friends, Congress in Washington, have always been their friends, are not going to stand by them in this emergency. We appeal to Congress and to the President to hear the cry of unemployment, regardless of race. We simply add our weight to it. I thank you. [Applause.]

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will stand adjourned until 2 o'clock, when Senator Costigan will preside.

AFTER RECESS

The subcommittee reconvened at 2 o'clock p. m.

Senator CoSTIGAN. The committee will come to order. Mr. Edelman, please give your full name and address.

STATEMENT OF JOHN W. EDELMAN, OF PHILADELPHIA, OF THE PENNSYLVANIA FEDERATION OF LABOR

Mr. EDELMAN. My name is John W. Edelman, 2530 North Fourth Street, Philadelphia, representing the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor.

Mr. Chairman, as I walked into this Senate committee room this morning a member of the executive committee of the B. E. F., who happens to be chairman of a local union of textile workers in Philadelphia with whom I am very well acquainted and have been for a number of years, presented me with this little note. He said there are children in Philadelphia who are practically competing with the rats to obtain food. It happens every day just one block from the Philadelphia Municipal Hospital that children wait for trucks coming from the chain stores and the restaurants to take food. This boy knows what he is talking about, Mr. Chairman.

The situation in Philadelphia particularly is so serious that at last this most apathetic of all large American communities has been partly aroused; the so-called respectable and substantial element of our citizenry, who hitherto would not condescend to become interested in public questions because of the low standards of public life prevailing in the city, are now frankly alarmed as to what will happen after June 25. On that date, or within 24 hours of that time, over 57,000 families now on the rolls of the Lloyd Relief Committee, which is actually the city itself, will be utterly and completely abandoned to starvation for lack of funds. The legislature could not rectify the situation quickly enough even if it would in time to prevent the horrible privation that is inevitable. The city itself is bogged down financially so badly that the mayor feels constrained to declare in public that no one is starving in order to bolster the courage of the bankers who so reluctantly and slowly take municipal bonds when these are offered. The bloody beating of a few hundred communists and passers-by who attempted to march on city hall on May 1 gives us a foretaste of what may happen after June 25. Only in the future it may perhaps be citizens of social prominence and strictly political rectitude who will be among the victims.

One can only estimate very roughly the number of babies and young children included in the 57,000 families now totally dependent on relief in Philadelphia. Perhaps the fathers and mothers who have been receiving hand-outs for the past two years are so shattered in spirit as to submit silently to the spectacle of seeing their little ones. starve; but I know that there are some of us whose children are not yet in this plight who will not accept this condition without attempting some protest. I for one will demand that Mayor Moore shall humanely consign these infants to the crematorium rather than have a whole section of our population permanently crippled by the ravages of starvation; it is bad enough to have blighted slum areas in Philadelphia; blighted babies are too terrible to contemplate.

The possibility of raising further funds for relief in Pennsylvania itself seem remote at the present moment in view of the fact that both the governor and General Martin, chairman of the State Republican committee, announce that no further taxation can be levied by the legislature to aid the million and a quarter jobless which the

Commonwealth can boast. Bond issues are proposed by the governor; these are vetoed by the Republican organization on the grounds that they are taxes in disguise. Furthermore there is a question in the minds of experts whether bonds would be taken up even if put on the market; it is felt that the financial powers that be in the State would effectively sabotage any such move if for no other reason than mere political partisan feeling directed against the governor.

The Pennsylvania Federation of Labor and cooperating groups have insisted that the sum of at least $50,000,000 will be needed to keep relief going at the present grossly inadequate rate for the next six months; our estimates must be revised, however, in view of the fact that unemployment seems to be increasing at the rate of at least 5 per cent per month, and in view of the fact that of the average thousand unemployed citizens a greater proportion each month are forced to appeal for aid from public funds. Any amount hitherto mentioned as likely to come to Pennsylvania from the relief bill now before Congress, even if it should be twenty millions, would be hopelessly insufficient to feed the starving in our State.

And even supposing that public works would check the increase in the number of unemployed and even reduce the number slightly, we would still have a terrific problem before us. And in our State, in addition to facing starvation, we face the prospect of having many State supported institutions, hospitals, insane asylums, and the like, closing down because appropriations for direct relief were taken from the funds that had been kept for these institutions.

The Pennsylvania Federation of Labor protests in the most emphatic terms against what it believes to be the stubborn obtuseness and cowardly cruelty displayed by the present administration in Washington toward the whole economic and social condition which confronts this Nation. For Congress to adjourn now would be virtually an abdication to communist or fascist methods of solving the problem and a demonstration of futility of the democratic method itself.

We are running our local governments in Pennsylvania on the principle that it is more important to reelect Mr. Hoover than it is to face the facts about unemployment and starvation. The tremendous grip which reaction has on Pennsylvania to-day, the sheer effrontry of its proceedings, will however make the change seem more astounding when our citizens do at last inevitably break away from traditional social and political habits under the blind but pressing impulses brought on by the pangs of hunger and exposure.

I thank you.

Senator CoSTIGAN. Mr. Most, please give your name and address to the reporter for the record.

STATEMENT OF AMICUS MOST, REPRESENTING NORMAN THOMAS OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY, CHARLESTON, W. VA.

Senator CoSTIGAN. What is your occupation?

Mr. Most. I am an engineer by profession, unemployed at present for the last one year.

The conditions in West Virginia are probably worse than conditions in any other section of this country, due primarily to the fact that West Virginia is a coal-mining State.

I do not exaggerate when I say that there are thousands of men, women, and children living in tents in a condition far worse than that of the bonus marchers here in Anacostia. I do not exaggerate when I say that there are thousands of families, cases where children eat every other day.

I do not exaggerate when I say that there are thousands of children dying of dysentery to-day.

There are hundreds of young girls of the ages of 13, 14, and 15 walking the highways and byways and selling their bodies for loaves of bread from sheer hunger.

It is useless to attempt to describe these conditions, as they have been described by previous speakers.

I want to point out that although the Socialist Party has always advocated and continues to advocate peaceful and orderly method of governmental change, that these 25,000 bonus marchers now here in Washington have indicated that the American people will not continue to starve in silence in order that the Budget may be balanced. Although the Socialist Party believes that the present bills up before Congress are better than no bills at all, they are far from adequate to meet the present situation.

There are conservatively 10,000,000 unemployed, representing a consuming public of at least 50,000,000 people. Until Congress gives these 50,000,000 people their consuming power, this depression will not be ended.

On that basis, and on the cardinal principles of first, the redistribution of the available work among all the unemployed and employed workers:

Second, on the principle of recreating the consuming power of the

masses;

Third, on the principle of providing additional work, must Congress alleviate the conditions to-day.

In that connection, we offer the following program to Congress. In the method of redistribution of work, we believe that first they must enact laws to enforce the 6-hour day and the 5-day week in order to give more workers work.

Second, we must have a comprehensive and efficient system of old-age pensions to take care of industry and remove from industry those workers that are no longer able to work, or capable of working.

Third, we must have laws that adequately prevent child labor from continuing, in order to relieve the children from industry or remove them from industry.

On the second principle of recreating the consuming power of the masses, we believe the following provisions must be made at once.

First, that a $5,000,000,000 appropriation for immediate relief to supplement state and local appropriations must be done at once if we are in any way to bring back the consuming power of the masses at

once;

Second, there must be compulsory system of unemployment insurance based upon contributions by the employers of the state to provide for those workers who are thrown out of work through no fault of their own; and

Third, in connection with this unemployment insurance, there must be a complete, efficient system of free public employment agencies. In connection with the last principle of providing additional work, I might say that no bill is complete unless it provides work, no public works bill is complete unless it provides work that will bring back to

the Government a revenue, and in that connection the Federal Government should appropriate at once $5,000,000,000 for public works and roads and for such income-producing work as reforestation, slum clearance, and decent homes for workers at low rentals, to be built by a Federal housing corporation.

I might say that in Europe, in Germany and Austria, where this scheme has been tried out, it has been demonstrated that approximately 85 per cent of the money so expended is returned to the Government in the course of time.

In this entire period of boom there has been no adequate provision made for housing the workers. Our slums are a disgrace to our communities, and the houses in the rural sections and in our coal mining country are uninhabitable, and if Congress would use that money, provide money not to private corporations but directly through a Federal housing corporation to build these homes, it would cost the Government almost nothing and at the same time clear up a section that is a blot on this community.

I thank you.

Senator COSTIGAN. Mr. Stone, kindly give your name and address to the reporter for the record.

STATEMENT OF A. M. STONE, CHARLESTON, W. VA.

Mr. STONE. My name is A. M. Stone, of Charleston, W. Va.
Senator CoSTIGAN. What is your occupation?

Mr. STONE. I have been a coal miner for over 25 years under the ground.

Senator CoSTIGAN. Please proceed.

Mr. STONE. I wish to verify the statements that the gentlemen just made in regard to West Virginia. It is unbelievable the conditions that have been existing there for nearly three years. I want to say to you that there are people in West Virginia in different places living in tents and some under cliffs for shelter.

There are men who have become 45 years of age and are no longer allowed to work in the mines on account of age, and they have to get out, but the conditions that really brought us here is that in Logan County, for instance, they have what is known as the clean-up system in those places, better known to the miners as the slave system. They work anywhere from 12 to 18 hours a day with no additional pay. Fifteen thousand miners do the work of 45,000.

We ask as miners that if you will give us a 5-day week and a 6-hour day West Virginia will take care of her own, or if you consider the Davis-Kelly bill, we will take care of our own then, and I want to say to you that the vets that are here and the vets that are home, are just as good soldiers to-day as they ever were and we will not stand idle and let our children cry for bread.

I thank you.

Senator CoSTIGAN. Are you a veteran?

Mr. STONE. No, sir.

Senator COSTIGAN. Doctor Goldstein, have you a telegram which you desire to read to the record?

Doctor GOLDSTEIN. I have, Mr. Chairman, a telegram that we have received from Mrs. Lea D. Taylor, of Chicago, which reads as follows-

Senator CoSTIGAN. Who is Mrs. Taylor?