Farm Labor Program

I believe, be less possibility for partisan State influence to exercise a stultifying effect upon housing inspection procedures.

My third point is minimum wage determination, which we touched on earlier. As I said, the minimum wage, or the prevailing wage, is determined not by negotiation but by the amount that the farmer feels is the lowest price he can pay and still get workers.

The reason they do not want southern workers is that southern Negroes are often unwilling to come up and work for 55 cents an hour, and the local help not only has the opportunity for industrial jobs, but they also resent having workers coming in and working for 55 cents an hour because they feel-and I think quite rightly-that this whipsaws down the wage structure in the local communities.

So that the establishment of the National Farm Labor Board as provided for in S. 949, which would hold hearings, at which all groups would be represented and not only the farmers, would provide a more just means for determining the prevailing wage rates than is now in existence in New Jersey or anywhere else I know.

Senator THYE. Would you mind a question at that point?

Mr. ROBB. Go ahead.

Senator THYE. Do you think there are ample employees or workers available that would do all the various types of jobs that are necessary to be done in the growing of the crop, the care of the crop, and then the final harvest?

Mr. ROBB. Yes, I do.

Senator THYE. Do you think they could recruit without importation the type of a man that would be willing to weed, thin out the crops, and then to stoop to pick the crop up, if it happens to be sugar beets, and your regular garden variety type of trucking crop, as well as your potato crop?

Mr. ROBB. There are hundreds and thousands of Negroes in the Southern States and Mexicans in the Southwest who prefer this to starvation. In the summer there is absolutely nothing for these Negroes to do in many of these areas because the cotton season is over, the vegetables, which in wintertime are grown for the northern metropolitan areas, are not growing because these areas provide their own vegetables, and the unemployment costs by mechanization. The mechanical cotton-picking machine, for example, has ended subsistence farms to a large degree.

Senator THYE. Have you sat down with the producer group so you have all of their problems in mind?

Mr. ROBB. Yes.

Senator THYE. And you know exactly what the producer group is faced with?

Mr. ROBB. Yes.

Senator THYE. You have sat down with various public officials in the deep South so that you have a complete knowledge of how these men could be recruited and the numbers that are standing there waiting to be recruited?

Mr. ROBB. I talked to a great many farmers in New Jersey, almost every top official in the farm organizations, and I feel that I have a fair insight into the degree of their problem.

I have also talked to the representative of the National Farm Labor Union and have gone into detail in the investigation of how the organized migration plan of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, in coopera

tion with Leon Schachter's union in Camden, N. J., worked during the war in which they brought these workers up. It was successful at that time. And there is no reason to think it would not be at the present time if we are to believe the Farm Placement Service supervisor.

Senator THYE. Are you just thinking or have you ascertained what the situation is down South?

Mr. ROBB. I have been thinking, I believe.

Senator THYE. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. I was going to ask how much time did you spend in the South?

Mr. ROBB. I did not say I went down to the South.

The CHAIRMAN. You just got the information through the grapevine?

Mr. ROBB. Through the grapevine of the Farm Placement Service, which has telegraphic communication and extensive reporting service of the conditions.

The CHAIRMAN. You made the statement a while ago that the cotton-picking machine has displaced a lot of labor. Do vou know what percent of the cotton is so picked?

Mr. ROBB. Do you know?

The CHAIRMAN. I am asking you.

Mr. ROBB. I am not familiar with the exact percentage.

The CHAIRMAN. You ought to be, you are presenting it. You say that the cotton-picking machine has displaced quite a few persons. Where did you get your information?

Mr. ROBB. My information comes from a pamphlet written by Louis J. Ducoff of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, who wrote on migratory farm workers in the past several years.

Senator AIKEN. The producer who has his cotton-picking machine has to take 4 or 5 cents a pound less for it because the machine does does not pick out the leaves and the sticks. I have, of course, never lived in the South, but I have been down there at cotton-picking time. My impression is they would prefer to have the cotton picked by hand if they could get the help to pick it by hand because of the additional price they get, but there has not been at that particular time enough help available to pick it by hand, and they have resorted to the machine for that reason. One machine does displace about 50 pickers. The CHAIRMAN. Not only that, Senator, but the weather conditions are such down South that you cannot advantageously use the picking machines.

Senator AIKEN. What disturbs me somewhat is what you said about the 55-cent wage rate. That just applies to these imported workers, does it not?

Mr. ROBB. To the Puerto Ricans.

Senator AIKEN. The average farm hand in New Jersey, it does not seem to me, is going to work for 55 cents an hour, or anywhere near it. Mr. ROBB. The average farm hand gets approximately $102 a month for his work.

Senator AIKEN. With house, probably.

Mr. ROBB. With housing, that is right.

Senator AIKEN. And milk and other things. That would bring him up more to the prevailing farm wage of the Northeast. The average hourly farm wage in my area runs, I suppose some 75 cents, but more 85 cents to a dollar an hour.

Mr. GORMAN. I am.

The CHAIRMAN. And you are chairman of the Resources Committee of the Navaho Tribal Council?

Mr. GORMAN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Gorman.

STATEMENT OF HOWARD W. GORMAN, CHAIRMAN, RESOURCES COMMITTEE, NAVAHO TRIBAL COUNCIL, GANADO, ARIZ.; SAM AHKEAH, CHAIRMAN, NAVAHO TRIBAL COUNCIL, WINDOW ROCK, ARIZ.; SAMUEL W. GORMAN, CHAIRMAN, TRADERS COMMITTEE, NAVAHO TRIBAL COUNCIL, CHINLE, ARIZ.

Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. My name is Howard W. Gorman. I live at Ganado, Ariz., and I am a member of the Navaho Tribal Council and serve in the capacity as chairman of the Resources Committee of the Navaho Tribal Council.

We did not prepare a statement, Mr. Chairman. This kind of caught us suddenly. We are in Washington on another business, but we are very happy to be here this morning to make a contribution to this problem of labor.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee is glad to have you, sir.

Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. I wish to give you some data on the labor, off-reservation labor, as we call it.

The Navaho Tribe of Indians go from time to time off the reservation for migratory labor, working for railroads, agriculture, ordnance depots, mines, mining, construction, and in surrounding towns, border towns of the Navaho Reservation.

The CHAIRMAN. How many are there in total on the Navaho Reservation-60,000?

Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. No. I think the recent census shows in the neighborhood of about 70,000 Navahos.

The CHAIRMAN. Seventy thousand. How many of those work off the reservation, do you know?

Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. Well, I only have the data on the 2 months, January and February of 1950. There were 5,000 Navahos then. The CHAIRMAN. Could there be more employed? Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. Yes; there could be more. this I was going to give you the breakdown on it here.

In addition to

We have listed under railroads-the Santa Fe Railroad Co. employed 1,500 Navahos in 1950. The Union Pacific up in the North employed 1,000. Those in the year 1950. And the total there is 2,500.

Agricultural workers-this is only southern Arizona-500 Navahos employed. These Navahos worked in the carrot fields, also in the beet fields, cotton picking, and so forth.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand that Arizona obtains a lot of its farm labor from Mexico.

Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. Yes; they do.

The CHAIRMAN. Why do they not get them from the reservation? Mr. HOWARD GORMAN. They would, if they would overcome the hazards that are in the way of giving the Navaho people incentive to go off the reservation. They have very poor housing and low wage rates, undesirable situations that exist.

month, whereas the workers from Puerto Rico were given the opportunity, and the farmer was made to comply with the contract provisions, that the worker be given at least 160 hours of work in every 4-week period.

My fifth point is that the workers in New Jersey and the farm workers, as elsewhere, are not covered at the present time by the National Labor Relations Act, and this is the greatest deterent to farm labor unions in organizing them and negotiating on their behalf with the large industrial-type farmer employer.

This puts the workers in an extremely weak bargaining position. My sixth point is that the health and medical care in New Jersey, which does have provisions for it, are inadequate. $7,500 a year is appropriated for the 12,000 workers, and this means that venereal disease tests are all that can be gotten and given to these workers.

My seventh point was that transportation is at the present time unsafe and unregulated by the Federal Government, and that the transportation under the supervision of the Government as provided for in S. 949 would be beneficial to the welfare and safety of these workers on the way up.

I talked last night to Franklin Nixon, who is master of the New Jersey State Grange, and in commenting upon this bill, he said that in his opinion the workers were deserving of the benefits in S. 949, except for the payment of transportation on the part of the Federal Government. He said he felt it was the consensus of opinion among the farmers that the other benefits included in S. 949 were the lawful right of the workers who come up.

I would like to ask, Senator Ellender, why in your bill you do not include the domestic workers in the benefits which are given to the foreign workers?

The CHAIRMAN. That is for the committee to decide, but I will tell you. My bill deals with foreign labor only, and as far as I am personally concerned, I hope to have it deal with foreign labor only and not be mixed in with domestic labor.

Mr. ROBB. I see.

The CHAIRMAN. If that problem is to be studied, and it will need a lot more work than we are able to give it, the probabilities are that if such should be considered by the Congress it would not be within the province of this committee to go into the details of it.

Mr. RоPB. I see.

In conclusion then, the National Consumers' League supports this bill because of the lack of responsibility and the unwillingness of the States to assume responsibility to take care of the social welfare needs of the migratory farm workers, and most especially the domestic workers who come up from the South.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?
Senator THYE. No.

The CHAIRMAN. That completes the witnesses that asked to be heard today, except that a while ago the assistant secretary to this committee suggested that Mr. Howard W. Gorman desired to make a statement in behalf of himself and of Sam Ahkeah and Samuel W. Gorman. Are those persons present? If so, step forward and sit to my right.

Which is Mr. Howard W. Gorman?

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