Mr. BUSBEY. The committee will come to order.

We have under consideration the request for appropriations for the Bureau of Labor Standards for the fiscal year 1954. We are pleased to have Mr. William L. Connolly, the Director, with us this morning

We will be very happy to hear from you at this time, Mr. Connolly.

GENERAL STATEMENT

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Congressman.

I suppose you are pretty familiar with the program of the Bureau of Labor Standards, although in this appropriation we have a new activity which is showing most of our increase, and that is the migrantlabor program that we would like to talk about a little this morning or at a later date.

As you know, we have our safety services, and included in that are the maritime services on safety under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act and the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act and the Federal Safety Council. I think at a later time Mr. Marks, who is the Chief of that Division, would be very happy to go into detail on that program.

We have our Division of the Handicapped, which, as you know, is headed up by a citizens committee, and we have Mr. McCahill here who will go into that.

Miss McConnell heads up the Division of Legislative Standards and State Services, and she will go into that and also will cover some of our child-labor program.

On the migrant-labor picture, gentlemen, it is a little different, I think, from what has been submitted in the form of legislation. The idea there in following out the program of the Bureau of Labor Standards is for the purpose of proving, I think, that this job can be done without legislation, and we think it will do this for us. It will show, however, if we have an opportunity to do this, whether legislation is needed or not. It is geared to have the States do their own job. We in the Federal Government will be a service agency giving them an opportunity to set up their own committees and the regulatory bodies, if you want to call them that. Also, we want to interest people in the community in this problem. That takes in everyone in the community. It does not in any place sponsor any laws of any

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kind. It is a completely promotional and educational program, and we have documents to show the committee where this has been done in one community and where it has worked fine. It is along those lines that we want to proceed with that program.

Now, if there is any further remark, Mr. Chairman, as to the way you want this presented, please advise us.

Mr. BUSBEY. No. You may present it any way you wish.

Mr. CONNOLLY. Fine. I would like to follow that up with Miss McConnell, in whose shop the migrant-labor program is centered, to tell a story on the problem, and I think she has a few charts to bring out the problem.

LEGISLATIVE STANDARDS AND STATE SERVICES

Miss McCONNELL. Mr. Chairman, I would like to present a brief talk on our general program, first.

Mr. BUSBEY. We will be glad to have you do that, especially for the benefit of the new members of the committee.

Miss McCONNELL. The small program which we have in this Division in the Bureau of Labor Standards is a State service program. It is technical assistance in the field of labor standards and administrative programs, assistance which is given on request to representatives of State governments, management, workers, and civic groups, with the purpose of furnishing information to State legislative committees and interim committees that have been set up by the State legislatures and to individual members of the State legislatures, who frequently turn to us for the technical information regarding the development of standards and information as to the administrative programs of other States. It is the only place in the country where these various groups can come for this particular kind of information and assistance. It covers the whole production field of regulations for employment conditions.

The two areas in which we have the greatest number of requests are in the fields of workmen's compensation and child labor. We also get many in other fields. For example, we have just within a week had two requests from State senators who are dealing with legislation in their own States where either they wanted information for their use in drafting legislation in one case, and in the other for a legislative hearing which was being called, and they wanted information as to what the standards were in other States and what their experience had been in the administration of these laws, and so forth. Because we have the basic information in our office, we are able to reply to those requests. One was a long-distance telephone call, and the other was a telegram asking that we send the information as quickly as possible.

We get a great many calls from management for information regarding the legislative standards, for example, in different States. Not long ago we had such a request from the Coal Producers Association asking for information regarding two or three different kinds of regulations with respect to mines throughout the country.

The State governments turn to us when they are working on their development of standards and for experience in what other States have done. We are never able to keep up with the requests that come to us for this work. We always have a backlog, and we now have a heavy backlog.

For instance, one State wrote recently and stated they were having difficulty in their State with workmen's compensation cases and the number of workmen's compensation cases involved in court action. They wrote asking if we could give them information as to what other States' experience had been on that and whether it was best to develop procedures that would cut down the number of court actions and therefore make the administration more economical and more usable for both the worker and the employer. They also asked for what we could make available to them regarding the employer who had failed to pay wages and had left the State and as to what wage laws applied in a case of that nature. They stated if the employer left the State, they were without remedy, and they were wondering whether it might be possible to do something in the nature of agreements between the States that would make it possible for one department to help the department of another State in that problem.

I am giving these illustrations merely to give something of the kinds of requests and the various groups that request this service.

DOMESTIC MIGRATORY LABOR PROGRAM

The migratory labor program, as Mr. Connolly has indicated, is merely an extension of the same kind of service which we are giving but for a group of people who have had very little of the security and the advantages that other workers have in this country. It is not a new problem. It is one that we have been dealing with in this country for many years. I first came in contact with it when I was in the State labor department in Pennsylvania. We had a difficult situation there, and we tried to do something about it as a State, and we were able to do something, but we could not do everything, because it was an inter-State problem. We brought together a group of people who had been dealing with the problem, and we were able to get something done, but there still is a countrywide problem existing today. There is a very substantial group of workers who are involved in this, and perhaps the easiest way I could give you an idea of the extent of it would be through these charts.

According to these figures, which are from the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, our hired agricultural labor force is approximately 4/4 million and of these about 1 million are regular farm workers for the year around. Then we have the seasonal nonmigrant workers, the people who are able to be recruited in the community or from nearby areas. However, out of this whole group of hired agricultural labor, 1 million are migrants who regularly move across State boundaries for employment to meet the seasonal needs of agricultural production which is necessary both for defense and civilian food, food processing, and production.

TRAVEL PATTERNS OF MIGRATORY WORKERS

This chart will give you the travel patterns. There are four basic travel patterns of migratory agricultural workers. Here we have the east coast, this group that comes up through the Central and Middle West, this one that extends out into this section of the mountain area, and the ones which travel over this way and on up into the Northwest. Those are well-established travel patterns. Most of these people are citizens of the United States. These are the domestic agricultural workers. We have a substantial number of Negroes following this line of travel up from the South [indicating). These [indicating) are many of Spanish or Mexican origin who are living in these areas here.

Mr. BUSBEY. May I suggest when you point to where these various groups are on the chart that you give the locality so it will appear in the record?

Miss McCONNELL. The east coast migration starts in Florida and follows a line clear up through the Eastern Seacoast States and into New York, which is about as far as they go, and the State of Connecticut is as far as that line of travel comes. There is a little migratory labor in Maine, but that is for the most part coming over from Canada or from within this area itself (indicating).

The Spanish migration starts largely from Texas and to some extent from New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. The basic travel of that group begins in Texas and follows the line up through the States that require this migratory labor during the season.

There are many crops which require the use of migrant workers. We do not have them all listed here, but we were able to get the information that would show what the problem is, essentially. For example, from the Department of Agriculture we have figures which show in the harvesting of cotton each year you can count on at least 200,000 migrant workers, that are required to harvest the crops, that potatoes will require at least 90,000 and perhaps 100,000 to harvest, and so on down through the hand-picked types of things.

Now, on cotton there is some mechanization coming in and some mechanization coming in on potato picking, but there is always a certain amount of hand-picking labor that is required, and by and large it is the migrant worker who furnishes this hand labor.

Mr. BUSBEY. Are those migrant workers all domestic, or does that include those who come in from outside the United States?

Miss McCONNELL. There are estimates of domestic workers.

Mr. CONNOLLY. There are no Mexicans-no wetbacks-in there at all. These are American citizens.

Miss McCONNELL. These are what we call the domestic migrant workers, and they are citizens who are being drawn from one point to another to harvest the crops.

ECONOMIC CONDITION OF MIGRANT WORKERS

These charts are only to give you a general idea of the economic situation in which these people find themselves. They are, without doubt, on the very bottom of the economic scale. Factory workers in 1949, which is the last year for which we were able to get comparable figures for the two groups, averaged $1.40 an hour for their labor. These hired farm workers averaged 55 cents an hour for their labor. This one chart will give you the proportions. For example, some years ago the hired farm worker was in a less unfavorable position with respect to the factory worker than at the present time. From 1910 to 1914 they earned 14 cents an hour, while the earnings for the factory worker was 21 cents an hour. The hired farm worker was earning 67 percent of the average yearly earning of the manufacturing

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worker. In 1949 the ratio had lessened, and it was 55 cents for the hired farm worker to $1.40 for the factory worker. He was getting only 39 percent of the amount which the factory worker was earning.

Mr. BUSBEY. Is it not a fact that many of these farm workers have board and room included in addition to their hourly wage?

Miss McCONNELL. Not the migratory workers, Mr. Busbey. They do not ordinarily receive those benefits. They quite frequently do get housing of some kind, but they buy their own food and prepare it. It is only where there are definite contracts where that is done, such as are carried on outside this group of domestic workers for the Mexican national worker. There are no provisions for food service for these migratory workers.

The hired farm worker who works the year around, as a part of the farm family so to speak, of course, that would be true of, but these figures include chiefly the migrant worker.

Now, this is the last chart which I have to show you, and it is presented only to show the difference in the number of days' work that the migrant farm worker gets. This again is material which we have obtained from the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor.

In 1949 the factory worker averaged 215 days of work a year while the migratory farm worker averaged 101 days. That included all kinds of work. If they were able to get some kind of work during the winter, for example, which was other than agriculture, it is included here. The average annual earnings, therefore, for that year

. were $2,482 for the factory worker, and for the migratory farm worker it was $550. That again includes all the earnings they received both from their regular farm work and work incidental to the farm work.

This merely gives the background of the situation that these migratory workers are facing. I think, as I said before, it is a problem

a with which the Federal Government is very much concerned. We have been concerned with it since the 1920's. Not too much has been done about it, but there has been a resurgence of interest on the part of both the Federal Government and the States of feeling that the time has come when something must be done to improve the condition of these workers. I would like to say that is true not only from the point of view of doing something about it to relieve the condition of these workers but from the standpoint of making them more effective workers, because one of the problems the growers face, where conditions are not good, is that it is difficult to get them back the next year. They will have a different group of workers, which means they have to retrain each season, each one of them. If conditions can be worked out so that they are able to call on the same group of workers year after year, the grower is much better off; the worker is much better off, and the community benefits as well.

DEVELOPMENTS IN MIGRATORY LABOR FIELD

There have been some very interesting experiments in this field. New York State, for example, for about 7 or 8 years has had a State committee on migratory labor, and they have worked on many of these problems of the workers in order to get a more stable employment, increasing the earnings and providing better housing in the labor camps—not full time housing, of course, because many of these