I know every man ought to be proud of his participation in the writing of that legislation, and for my part I simply want an opportunity of presenting the historical sequence, because through that it seems to me we can arrive at a better understanding of these matters, and since I also hold the view that the court itself wants to know something about that, wants to understand that, the Congress has investigated it carefully, and the statement of facts depends upon the investigation, and it seems to me that ought to be done, and I shall be very glad if I am permitted to make that statement. If I may do that I will yield the floor. This is a bill in which I have been vastly interested.

Mr. CROSSER. The chair is very well aware of Congressman Keller's interest in this character of legislation, because he has been active in regard to it for a long while. I simply suggested what I did in the interest of saving time.

Mr. KELLER. That is entirely acceptable to me, Mr. Chairman, and if it is agreed that I may insert this statement, I will be glad to surrender my time to these other gentlemen, and thank you.

Mr. CROSSER. I am sure that we will be very glad to have you prepare such a statement.

Mr. KELLER. If that is perfectly all right for me to do so, if it is all right with the committee.

Mr. CROSSER. Yes.

Mr. KELLER. If that is agreeable, I will simply prepare a statement and hand it to the clerk.

Mr. CROSSER. I am sure that the committee will be glad to have it. Mr. KELLER. If the statement can actually go in, that is acceptable to me.

Thank you.

Mr. CROSSER. You may proceed, Mr. Ekern.

Mr. EKERN. I think perhaps Mr. Royster wants to make a statement of about 5 minutes.

Mr. CROSSER. We shall be delighted to have you make a statement, Mr. Royster.

STATEMENT OF W. W. ROYSTER, PRESIDENT OF THE RAILROAD EMPLOYEES NATIONAL PENSION ASSOCIATION

Mr. ROYSTER. My name is W. W. Royster. I am president of the Railroad Employees' National Pension Association.

I am here today in support of the pending bill.

We have another bill, introduced in the House by Representative Keller, that has provisions for retirement and pensions that suit us better than the provisions contained in this bill now before us for consideration, but in the interest of harmony and of eliminating any possible split in the ranks of railroad labor, we are going along with our labor executives for this retirement pension.

It is not all that we would like it to be, and if it were our bill we would change it very materially, but we support this in the interest of securing a retirement pension for the many thousands that I have heard from, I believe that no man in the United States in railroad labor has heard from as many individual railroad employees as to their wishes for retirement pensions as I have. I do not bar any of them.

I feel that this bill is not wholly adequate. I am in hopes that Judge Krauthoff and our labor chiefs through Judge Krauthoff, will accept amendments to their bill and, just to cite one instance:

I hope that they will accept an amendment to their bill that will provide for the survivorship annuity.

It provides just this much, if a person had an annuity that was worth $50 a month, let us say, and he had 10 years of life expectancy, at $50 a month, that would be for 12 months, it would be for $600 a year, and for 10 years it would be $6,000.

Now, a survivorship annuity in favor of himself and his wife would be adjusted to a reduced amount in a proper ratio with respect to the ages of himself and his wife, for the rest of the period of their lives.

We think that is very desirable and we have urged it on our labor chiefs.

Mr. MARTIN. How many men does your association represent? Mr. ROYSTER. I should say it represents 75 percent of the railroad employees, morally, but of those that pay dues

Mr. MARTIN. Yes.

Mr. ROYSTER. Just a very few, sir.

Since the act has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the rank and file have lost heart in the movement.

Mr. MARTIN. How many did you have before the decision, actual membership?

Mr. ROYSTER. I could not tell you just how many we had. We had over 600 chapters scattered all out through the United States.

Mr. Chairman, my purpose here today is to assure any friends that we may have-and I believe we have legions of them here in the Congress-that we wish to go along with our labor executives for the best possible kind of a bill to be had.

Our attorney, Mr. Ekern, will make some recommendations to you, and I trust you will give them serious consideration.

Mr. CROSSER. Mr. Ekern.

STATEMENT OF HERMAN L. EKERN, OF MADISON, WIS., COUNSEL FOR THE RAILWAY EMPLOYEES' NATIONAL PENSION ASSOCIATION-Resumed

Mr. EKERN. My name is Herman L. Ekern, of Madison, Wis. I am the counsel and have been since 1931 for the Railway Employees' National Pension Association.

I have had to do with pension matters for some 20 or more years, and Chairman Crosser and Representative Monaghan will remember that I appeared before this committee a year ago and at different hearings in the Senate in regard to this proposed legislation.

I want to add one thing to the statement made by Mr. Royster, in regard to survivorship annuities. The combined annuity mentioned will cost the Government or the Treasury the same as the annuity otherwise to be to the employee.

All that we ask is that the employee shall have the right to give to his wife, if she survives him, an annuity during her surviving years bought by the fact that he takes a lower annuity. The survivorship annuity is a very common thing. It is a very simple thing.

Mr. MARTIN. You just divide the annuity, do you not, Mr. Ekern? Mr. EKERN. That is it exactly, Mr. Martin. It does not increase the cost. It is a very simple provision, and I do not think that there is any real objection to it.

Now, I might add right there that I have no interest in any controversy between employees. As a matter of fact, I can assure this committee that there is not any controversy between the employees over getting this legislation. They are all for it now, just the same as they were a year ago, when you enacted it before.

While naturally they are somewhat disappointed at the results so far, they want to get a new law at this session and to have the right to feel that when it is put through it will meet the approval of the Supreme Court of the United States.

I would like, with your permission, to take up each one of these proposed amendments discussed by Judge Krauthoff. In that way, I think I can assist the committee right at the outset as to just what we are talking about.

The first change that is made here is adding the proviso excepting electric carriers not connected with steam railroads, and on that I agree with Judge Krauthoff. I agree with him on all of these amendments except as I shall indicate.

Mr. MARTIN. You are going to check the typewritten bill against the printed bill and indicate the desired changes or amendments? Mr. EKERN. Yes. I can give this in written form tomorrow morning.

Mr. MARTIN. All right, if you will do that.

Mr. CROSSER. Yes; if you will do that it will be all right.

Mr. EKERN. I will be very glad to. I will just indicate it here now so you will not have to go through this work again.

Mr. MARTIN. I will indicate it on my printed bill, and on the typewritten copy also.

Mr. CROSSER. You propose to insert the words "or shall have been?"

Mr. EKERN. In the typewriten form, it inserts the words "shall have been at any time after the enactment hereof." In effect, it is merely this, that an employee who has terminated his service after the enactment but before he wants to enter upon the annuity, will be granted the right to begin his annuity at a later time.

Mr. KRAUTHOFF. I did not understand that you wanted to change the language of the bill in the mimeographed form.

Mr. EKERN. No. I am reading the language in the mimeographed bill.

Now, the same change is made down in the proviso with regard to an organization representative, an employees' organization representative.

Mr. CROSSER. Mr. Krauthoff, Mr. Ekern is the last witness on your side?

Mr. KRAUTHOFF. Why, yes; unless he has someone else. No; Mr. Corbett has testified before. He may want to testify.

Mr. CROSSER. Mr. Merritt wanted to know, as he must leave and he wished to know what more might develop this afternoon in the way of proponents' testimony.

Mr. MERRITT. I can read it in the hearings.

Mr. CROSSER. I am sorry you must leave.

Mr. MARTIN. Mr. Ekern, do those words go in after the word "date" in the printed bill, after "effective date ", line 14, you insert the word "service"?

Mr. EKERN. Well, that is a matter of choice.

Mr. MARTIN. So it would read then "who before or after the effective date hereof has performed service for a carrier."

Mr. EKERN. Well, that is a matter of choice.

Mr. MARTIN. No; it would read then "who before or after the effective date or after the enactment hereof has performed service for a carrier."

Mr. EKERN. After the word "carrier", it is proposed to make it read, "who at the enactment hereof, or at any time after the enactment hereof."

Mr. MARTIN. The purpose of this is to clearly exclude from the operation of this act any person who may have been a representative in the past and who is not now or hereafter such a representative, but not to exclude him from getting his pension, because at sometime in the future he ceases service and does not begin taking his pension until sometime later.

We make this change to avoid the question involved in the decision holding invalid the one-year clause. We are all agreed upon it. The next amendment that is offered to the printed bill in the definition of "service period."

The mimeograph bill retains the definitions of the term "service period" as in the printed bill.

We think that is objectionable and we are asking you to put back into this bill the definition of the term "service period" exactly as it was in the act of 1934. I know that Mr. Martin will be interested, because he asked a question about it. The reason for this is that under the definitions in the printed bill and retained in the mimeographed bill, the persons who are not in service getting compensation at the time of the enactment, or who are not in the employment relationship, namely on furlough or leave of absence, are excluded from getting any prior service benefits on reemployment and subsequent retirement.

I have had some 20-odd years' experience with relation to various retirement acts throughout the United States and believe the general practice is to recognize such prior service for those who are reemployed.

I recognize that it is suggested that this should be done so that the railroad managers will not be deterred from rehiring a man because it would create an added burden in pension payments. That is the only argument that I have heard for depriving the employee of the benefit of his prior service in fixing the amount of his pension. I submit that argument is not sound and this proposal is very undesirable from the standpoint of the railroad managers themselves as well as from the standpoint of the employees.

Yesterday in the other committee room we had a group of employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad, some of whom had been pensioned, and many who had been employed for 30 or 40 years and were still working. These men told us in the presence of Mr. Eddy that under the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. rules the men who, because of the depression, had failed to receive any compensation for

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9 months, were thereby dropped from the furlough list and any other list, and under this proposal would not get any prior-service recognition in their pensions on being rehired. That would be a hardship and would be unjust to those men.

Mr. MARTIN. What did they say about that?

Mr. EKERN. They said that every man who had been out of compensated service for 9 months and who reentered the service afterward would, under this provision, not get any credit for prior service, because under their rules on that railroad he is stricken off the list after 9 months. That is the unfortunate part about it.

Mr. MARTIN. Let me ask right there, is what you are talking about paragraph (b) on page 2, of the printed bill, relating to service and to employment relationship?

Mr. EKERN. No; I am talking about paragraph (f) down in lines 9 to 13 on page 3.

Mr. MARTIN. You say you are agreed on (c) and (d)?

Mr. EKERN. Yes; and the question is solely with regard to paragraph (e), paragraph (f) and paragraph (g) defining "service period" and the only thing we object to is the limitation in (f), in lines 13 and 14, which reads: "Whether or not continuously performed after the effective date" as being applicable to the men who at the enactment date were not getting compensation or were not in the employment relationship as defined in the bill.

Mr. MARTIN. Just right on that one sentence.

Mr. EKERN. Just on that sentence; yes, but if you correct that difference, then there is no need for three definitions of the term "service period." The definition should be retained as in one Retirement Act of 1934.

Mr. MARTIN. How ought that sentence read then?

Mr. KRAUTHOFF. You mean that (e) and (f) are consolidated? Mr. EKERN. Paragraphs (e), (f), and (g) should be consolidated to read substantially as in the Retirement Act of 1934, thus: "(e) The term 'service period' means the total service of a person for one or more carriers whether or not continuously performed either before or after the effective date, and includes as 1 month every calendar month during which such person has rendered service to a carrier for compensation and includes as 1 year every 12 such months. An ultimate fraction of 6 months or more shall be computed as 1 year."

There is another very serious objection to this proposal. It may be 10, 20, or 30, or even 40 years before a man applies for an annuity. If a distinction is made as proposed, there will always be a controversy as to whether a man is or is not entitled to prior service recognition in the amount of his pension, and the burden will be thrown on the man to prove that he received compensation on the date that this act took effect or that under the rules and regulations of the particular railroad he was then properly furloughed or on a leave of absence, and not only that, but that he held himself subject to call for service and in fact responded to any call for service. That invites too much controversy. It all looks to me as though it might be enacting another Federal Employees' Liability Act with the enormous amount of controversy that has involved.