away the opportunities for labor; that owing to our advanced machinery it does not take six days a week to manufacture the goods necessary in this country. There are, as I have stated, 11,000,000 men out of employment and the prospect is that more will be out of employment in 6 or 12 months, and the States can not or will not regulate employment. It is necessary that it be done, everybody will admit that. Something must be done. We can not have ten or fifteen millions unemployed in this country and continue to exist. There is no legal remedy in the States. Is there any legal remedy, anything that could be done from a legal, constitutional standpoint that will remedy that situation and so regulate the manufacture of commodities that there must be a distribution of this work among all labor so far as possible. Mr. EMERY. Your question rests upon several assumptions, one of which is that we must have the compulsion of law as the only means of meeting this condition. The second question is that the mechanization of industry has reached a point where it has demonstrated that the opportunity of employment has ben lessened for the future. The facts are against that. We can show you by facts and not by assertions that during the greatest period of progress that hours of labor have been steadily shortened by natural causes and that the increase in the number of employees per thousand of population has gone up remarkably. What I want to point out is the broad economic effect that follows. I am trying to get some broad economic foundation on which to proceed. The machinery-somebody makes the machine. Somebody has to extract the raw material. Somebody has got to transport the commodities, and as you increase the demand, you increase the demand for labor in many other directions. The mechanical progress of the United States has been accompanied by constant capacity to support a larger population and to expand the limits of employment. You can not illustrate it better than by taking a picture of Great Britain before the development of what you call the industrial revolution about 1750, when the first large applications of power and machinery were made to production. The population of England, from the Battle of Hastings to about 1750 increased from 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 in about five and a half centuries. It did not have the means of supporting life. Its means of production were very simple and primitive. Its capacity for trade was in comparison with those of modern days very limited. Between 1750 and 1830 the population of England increased in 80 years from 8,000,000 to 14,000,000, and then doubled again to 28,000,00, and increased right after. It means on a given area you were able to support a larger population than you ever had been before, because you increase the capacity to produce consumable wealth. Mr. LOVETTE. I know and you know that there are 11,000,000 men and more out of employment and they are going out all the time. Of course, we all know that the machine is making progress as science advances. Every day some improved machine is putting people out of employment. Mr. EMERY. And they are putting a great many persons to work, too. Mr. LOVETTE. Not many more; if that were true there would not be eleven millions and more men out of work. Let us assume that there are 11,000,000 men out of employment and that they have no prospect or hope of going back to work. And they have not that prospect or hope. And, let us take the other assumption that the State can not or will not by law remedy that situation. Is there any legal remedy? You have suggested that these people distribute the available work, and they are doing it. Is there any legal remedy that you can suggest that the Congress could effect? Mr. EMERY. We have been suggesting to other committees plans that we believe will help in creating consuming power. We can not, obviously, put people back to work unless people are ready to buy the products of labor. Mr. LOVETTE. We can not create a consuming power unless the workers are employed. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Emery, will you please extend your answer to Mr. Lovette's question. STATEMENT OF H. D. SAYRE, COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL METAL TRADES ASSOCIATION The CHAIRMAN. Mr. H. D. Sayre, commissioner of the National Metal Trades Association, desires to make a statement before we adjourn. Mr. SAYRE. The National Metal Trades Association is composed of approximately 1,000 members, operating exclusively in the metal manufacturing industries. Under normal conditions its members employ upwards of a million and a half workmen. The activities of our association are entirely in the field of industrial relations. For that reason we are vitally interested in the proposed legislation introduced by Mr. Connery which would prohibit the shipment, transportation, or delivery, in interstate commerce or the offering of commodities and articles for that purpose produced and manufactured in the extractive or manufacturing industries by persons working more than five days a week or more than six hours in any day. As is obvious from this bill it is not meant to affect the hours of labor of agriculture, merchandising, or transportation. It is aimed to regulate employment conditions in the manufacturing industries, including the group who make up our association. The National Metal Trades Association recognized the importance of the unemployment problem long before business started to decline in 1929. Its committee on industrial relations spent a number of years studying this subject, and early in 1931 printed a report on Stabilizing Employment in the Metal Trades. This report makes it clear that our association is in favor of any possible constructive sound method which may be adopted to alleviate distress which is occasioned by a widespread displacement of workers from employment. On the question of the 5-day week and 6-hour day, point number three of the conclusions of this report is very pertinent. It states: Operate shops on a flexible week basis. By flexible week is meant the practice of so varying the hours of work that variations in productive requirements can be made without resorting to variations in the number of employees. Thus, when business levels decrease and a reduction in productive effort is necessary, reduce the number of hours worked per week rather than to lay off employees. This policy of the flexible week has been put into operation by members of our association wherever it has been at all feasible. Industry has voluntarily during the past three years done everything in its power to share available work among its employees by shortening the hours and days of labor; by working alternate shifts and staggering periods of employment. Under this arrangement not only the employees benefited, but the companies themselves have been at liberty to adopt their schedule in the best interest of providing work for their employees and of satisfying the demands of their customers. Tens of thousands of industries are being operated to-day which would otherwise be closed down, and hundreds of thousands of their employees would be on the street if it were not for the earnest desire of employers to keep their plants going. Under the bill which it is now proposed to make law these beneficial voluntary and elastic practices adopted by industry will be fixed unalterably by law regardless of their effect upon any of the industrial organizations and their employees so controlled. The very inelasticity of such a rigid regulation of the hours of employment in industry would prove a disastrous handicap and a paralyzing influence upon business by limiting its competitive opportunities and by increasing the cost of operation of business through increased overhead charges. It would also result in the throwing of thousands of people out of work who are now employed on a part-time basis. Consequently, the National Metal Trades Association wishes to go on record as being absolutely opposed to legislation of this character for the following briefly stated reasons. 1. It would prove ultimately harmful to business by adopting as a permanent policy a rigid fixed schedule of hours determined necessary to meet a temporary situation caused by abnormally low industrial activity. The technocrats are telling us that because of the machine unemployment has increased steadily during the past 10 years and must continue to increase. Such arguments not only create fear, but tend to confuse judgment and perspective in the solving of our current problems. The facts show that there is no justification for allowing ourselves to be stampeded into an untenable position which will prove difficult to correct in the future. Since 1900 our total population has increased 60 per cent. On the other hand, the gainfully employed has increased 68 per cent. According to a statement from the Business Week of January 25, 1933, between 1920 and 1930, at a time when the most rapid technological changes were taking place, employment opportunities increased faster than the total population. That the claims made by technocracy are not soundly conceived may be realized from the fact that Columbia University, where the study was being carried on, has closed its doors to the organization behind this survey. Prof. Walter Rautenstrauch, of Columbia, who was previously one of the leaders of the technocracy group, made a statement on January 23, signed also by some of his fellow members, which said: Technocracy ceases to exist as far as we are concerned. The misunderstanding and confusion concerning the aims and objects of technocracy have caused us much concern, and we state herewith our position in this matter: (1) We are not in accord with some of the statements and attitudes expressed by Mr. Howard Scott. We are interested in (a) a study of our natural resources, such as coal, oil, water power, iron ore, copper, arable lands, forests, etc., and the rates at which these things have been consumed during the last 100 years. (b) A study of the quantitative changes in time during the last century, in the processes by which we, as a people, provide ourselves with food, clothing, shelter, and services; and particularly as these changes affect the labors of men and the use of energy. (c) A study of the principles of organization and management by which the processes of production, distribution, and consumption may be controlled and maintained in balanced quantitative relationship. As soon as business returns to normal the opportunity for workmen to find employment should not be confined to narrow limits by such restrictive legislation as the Connery bill, which seems to be based upon the thought that our lawmakers can plan now just how much work will be required under all future conditions to satisfy the economic wants of our population. No one can plan soundly for our economic future because no one can tell at this moment what inventions, new industries, or changes are to be brought forth in the years that are before us. All we know is that past history has demonstrated that recovery from periods of depression has always occurred, and under freedom of employment the standard of living has increased. Our present position should be such as to make recovery easier by permitting business and individuals to have as much freedom as possible for solving their immediate problems. 2. It would be harmful to employees, business, and all society by reducing the earning power of the working population. The wages paid to the working people during a 5-day 30-hour week would either have to be reduced from the scale paid for a normal full working week period, or else the price of all products would have to be increased. In either event, the purchasing power of the people would be permanently curtailed, and the opportunities for business to operate profitably, and thereby provide employment would be lessened proportionately. 3. It will cause the greatest burden to fall on employees because it will tend to prevent a return to normal employment, and will thereby subject our working people to a possibility of a continuous state of underemployment. 4. It would probably in some instances provide for additional employment, but this would not be true in the aggregate in view of the great progress which has been made in the share-the-work movement. In other words, it would be an attempt to compel the adoption by law of a national work-sharing policy, the very enforcement of which would destroy the entire development of the share-thework policy now so widely in operation under voluntary arrangement în industry. It should be noted that to-day the least amount of actual work sharing occurs outside of the field of manufacturing. 5. It is discriminatory against all industry because it eliminates. from regulation the hours of employment in agriculture, merchandising, and transportation. Such a short work week would also prove discriminatory to certain groups in industry itself where the short EASURER OF THE 127 al trades departno desire to dis I take it that the with the law and but, as I listened ality of the bill, sible for me to lawyer would, lawyers and that law itself. here yesterday dog bill that was tutional, and his from the three He drew from Court the lawunconstitutional to consider a bill the three cases That not only is but it is also the injunction bill, |