soon as the opportunity comes. However, the Chamber of Commerce has not shown that it is ready and willing to employ them. We stated in this letter [reading]:

Contrary to the impression which your organization has tried to create, the unemployed do not wish to remain on Government relief 1 day longer than is necessary. We are compelled to ask for Government work and relief only because of the unwillingness of organized business, as represented by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, to reemploy the millions of available willing workers. The Chamber of Commerce representatives replied that they had not the jobs to reemploy our people.

WAGE LEVEL INCREASE SOUGHT

Second, with regard to our reasons why the wage level of W. P. A. should be increased, we want to make the following points. I will not burden you gentlemen with reading all this statement, but I make the request that it be placed in the record, so I can get through with my exposition of it a little faster. Is that agreeable?

The CHAIRMAN. How much is it?

Mr. LASSER. It is a statement of about 20 pages.

The CHAIRMAN. That is too much. We just refused to receive a 6-page statement from a Member of Congress. We would like for you to conclude your statement by 12 o'clock, because the House meets at that hour. That will give you 20 minutes, and you had better state the material facts in that time.

Mr. LASSER. The second point I want to make is with regard to increasing the level of wages on W. P. A. projects. I would like to state the following reasons for making that request: First, that the wages paid to W. P. A. workers are totally insufficient for them to maintain life in even a minimum of health and decency, not to say provide the workers with sufficient energy and nourishment to perform useful work.

In that connection, I have here a statement from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the Department of Labor, which indicates the minimum diet of food necessary to maintain a family, and it is very interesting to point out a few facts in regard to that. Their statement shows that the average family of W. P. A. workers consists approximately of four people, and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it will require, as a minimum food diet for a family of four, in December, 1936, the sum of $38.58 per month. With an average W. P. A. wage at that time of about $50 per month, there would have been left out of the W. P. A. wages less than $12, or, approximately, $11.50 per month for all the other necessities of life, including rent, clothing, household necessities, medical and dental care, carfare and transportation of the worker to and from the job, and so forth. It is obvious, therefore, that if the W. P. A. workers on the whole provide their families with this minimum diet, their existence becomes impossible. We are forced to conclude that this minimum diet, which is a diet prescribed by the Government itself, the Government being supposed to be a model employer, is not and cannot be maintained on W. P. A. wages. There is a progressive impairment of the health and wellbeing of about 10,000,000 people in the W. P. A. families, due to the low W. P. A. wage scale. The Federal Government ought to be a model employer, and should not set a standard of that sort for

10,000,000 residents of the United States. As I have said, the Government itself has prescribed what is necessary for the minimum necessities of life.

If our 20-percent wage increase were to be put into effect, the average wage would be $60 instead of $50, and then with this minimum diet of $38.58 per month, for a family of four, there would be left the sum of $24 per month for other supplies and necessities. We say that that certainly is not a wage which would permit them to live luxuriously. It would just permit them to purchase the minimum supplies and necessities. I think you gentlemen will appreciate very readily what that means, and I will not elaborate upon that any further.

There are five charitable agencies in New York City that have published figures of what they use as the rock bottom minimum required for a family of five. Those organizations consisted of the Association for Improving Conditions of the Poor, the Charity Organizations Society, The Catholic Charities, the Jewish Social Service Association, and the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. Their rockbottom minimum budget for a family of five amounted to $20.80 per week, or $90.18 per month, and this budget did not include any provision for normal working expenses, nor for additional food for people employed.

Now, the average earnings of W. P. A. workers in New York City for December 1936 was about $76 per month. Assuming that the cost of living remained unchanged from March 1935 to December 1936, we find that the average wages of the W. P. A. workers in New York City, including, as they did, practically 10 percent of all W. P. A. workers in the country, fell short by more than $14 a month of covering the budget of private charitable agencies for families in which no person is employed. In practical terms, this meant that the overwhelming majority of the two-hundred-thousand-odd W. P. A. workers in New York City were forced to exist on a wage so low that their health and well-being has been progressively impaired.

WAGE LEVEL

The next point I would like to make with regard to the wage level is that under the present regulations even this minimum wage which is paid is not paid in full to a very large percentage of W. P. A. workers. As a matter of fact, those workers in the lower wage classifications lose about 10 percent of their wages because of inability to put in the full number of hours, according to the regulations.

The CHAIRMAN. They work by the hour.

Mr. LASSER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And they are paid by the hour. They are paid for the actual number of hours they work, and if they are not able to put in the full number of hours, they lose it.

Mr. LASSER. Yes, sir; that is right. That is especially true of those in the lower wage classifications. For them it ranges about 10 percent, while in the higher wage classification, it only goes down to about 1 or 2 percent. Therefore, the very people who are suffering now from low wages are the ones who are losing the largest percentage. Under the present regulations they will lose, through no fault of their own, because of bad weather, or the stoppage of the project, or any other condition that they cannot control. Under those conditions they are

not paid. They are given the right to make up the time, if they could do it within a certain period. But we maintain that when people are living on starvation wages, it does not do much good to say that next month the worker may be able to make it up, and that he may then get it in his pay check. They may not be able to make it up within that time, because the bad weather may continue over a long stretch of time. We believe that W. P. A. workers are ready and willing to make up time lost, but they cannot be expected to labor under conditions that deprive them of a day's or a week's pay following every rain or snow storm or stoppage of work. Because that section of Administration order 44 is unjust, because it is impractical, and because it negates an implied promise of the Administration, we urge that it be rescinded and the section of the Executive Order 7034 be kept in effect.

WAGE CLASSIFICATIONS BY DISTRICTS

A further point I would like to make is this: As you gentlemen know, the country is divided into nine districts, and I will now call attention to a district in which the wages range from $40 to $94 per month. There is another one on the table in which the wages range from $72 to $79 per month, and there is one where they run as low as $20 per month.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the maximum?

Mr. LASSER. The maximum in the lowest paid district is $75 per month. I want to present the latest figures available from W. P. A. in a table which breaks it down according to wage groups. This table presents the various wage classifications for March 1936, showing that in that month more than 1,000,000 W. P. A. workers received less than $40 per month. The statement shows that 338,196 W. P. A. workers received less than $20 per month; that 216,049 received from $20 to $24.99 per month; that 142,900 received wages ranging from $25 to $29.99 per month; that 181,615 received from $30 to $34.99 per month; that 294,648 received from $40 to $44.99 per month; that 257,037 received from $45 to $49.99 per month; that 518,255 received from $50 to $59.99 per month; that 576,752 received from $60 to $69.99 per month; that 132,874 received from $70 to $79.99 per month; that 77,655 received from $80 to $89.99 per month; that 55,034 received from $90 to $99.99 per month; and that 34,155 received $100 or over per month. The statement shows that over 1,000,000 W. P. A. workers had a wage scale of less than $40 per month. They are particularly in the South. We maintain that it is unfair to the people of the South to give them a wage which ranges as low as $20 per month in actual wages received.

In some cases it runs under $20 per month. Now, we are not maintaining that merely as a theoretical claim, because we have some figures from the W. P. A. on the cost of living in the various States. I have a table here which I would like to have in the record, if possible, which indicates the relationship between the cost of living indices and the W. P. A. wages. We find that in a city like Washington, D. C., we have the highest living costs in the country. In Jacksonville, Fla., we find that there is actually a difference of 15 percent in the cost of living, as compared with Washington, while there is a difference of some 40 percent in the actual wages paid as between those two cities. As between New York City and Louisville, Ky.,

there is a difference of about 14 percent in the living costs, while there is a difference of 45 percent in the wages that are paid in those two places. In other words, the W. P. A. is maintaining a wage level in the South which is utterly ridiculous from the standpoint of American living standards. The figures of W. P. A. indicate, at the same time, a difference in living costs that is very small in comparison with that difference in the wages paid.

Now, we are asking that the Federal Government shall establish a minimum wage of at least $40 per month.

I want to applaud the efforts of Congress to increase the wages of Government employees. I understand that there is a move on foot to increase salaries to $1,500 a year as the minimum. What we are asking is that the W. P. A. workers, who are Government employees, who are now receiving $250 a year, as income, shall receive a minimum income of $500 a year. We maintain that that is a reasonable request, and in keeping with the best American traditions.

Now, we maintain, and will try to prove here, that the wages paid W. P. A. workers are considerably lower than those paid in comparable industries or in the trades and professions from which the W. P. A. workers have been drawn.

We have prepared a table showing the average W. P. A. wages for the month for which figures are available, and the wages paid in the following industries: For maintenance-of-way employees on class 1 steam railroads, for construction finance by regular appropriations of the Federal Government, for the iron and steel industry, machine trades, railroad repair shops, textiles, and private building construction. The two construction industries and maintenance-of-way are used because people employed in them do approximately the same work as is done on W. P. A. The other industries are used as samples of the industries from which the W. P. A. workers have been drawn. We also have gathered some quite extensive material or studies of wage levels in different parts of the country within the industries, and they indicate clearly that the W. P. A. wages are 30, 40, and sometimes 50 percent lower than those paid to people doing approximately the same type of work in those other industries. I cannot go through all of those figures, but I want to mention a few of them. For example, W. P. A. wages in June 1936 averaged $52.80 per month, and, taking what is called the very low-paid employees in the textile industry, you will find that their average wage was $69.11. That includes not only the higher wage level in the North but the notoriously low wage level in the South. Yet, the average of those low-paid employees is 30 percent higher than the average W. P. A. wage. The W. P. A. wage is 35 percent lower than wages paid to maintenanceof-way employees on railroads, which uses a high percentage of unskilled labor. The disparity between W. P. A. wages and those paid in private construction work is even greater. Now, the Government, through W. P. A., has spent a greater part of its money on roads, and, therefore, you have people with almost no skill engaged on that type of work.

In October 1936 the average wages in private building construction were more than twice those of W. P. A. workers. Admittedly, private building construction uses a higher percentage of skilled labor than does the W. P. A., but this cannot account for such a large discrepancy. W. P. A. wages were about 45 percent less in October 1936 than those

paid for construction financed by regular appropriations of the Federal Government and about 60 percent less than was paid in the iron and steel and machinery trades. The disparity between W. P. A. and railroad repair shops is about 70 percent. This table shows that the average for W. P. A. workers in June was $52.71 for construction work, while on projects financed by regular Government appropriations the average was $84.31, an increase of 60 percent over the wage paid by W. P. A. for approximately the same type of work. The figures for October 1936 show the average wage of W. P. A. workers on construction work to be $50.38, as compared with $96.83 on projects financed by regular Government appropriations.

Now, these men were arbitrarily taken from the relief rolls, and told, "You must now work for W. P. A." They were ready and available for work, and were ready to do as much work as the Federal Government required of them. Then, you also put the same kind of people on regular construction projects, and this statement shows that the average W. P. A. wage in October, for this construction work, was $50.38, while on construction projects, financed as regular projects, the average wage was $96.83. I mean by that the average total wages paid W. P. A. workers. We maintain that that is an injustice to those people, who, through no fault of their own, became unemployed and had to go on relief. They were taken from relief rolls by the W. P. A., because of their serious misfortune, and they have to receive that penalty of 50 percent lower wages than are paid for almost the same type of work provided for in regular Government appropriations. In October, the low-paid textile industry paid an average wage of $73.40, while the average W. P. A. wage was $50.38. The average wage paid in the private building industry in October was $113.11, while the average wage of W. P. A. workers, doing the same work, was $50.38.

In the iron and steel industry, the average wage in private employment in October 1936 was $115.91, as compared with an average wage of $50.38 for W. P. A. workers. We maintain that the W. P. A. wages are breaking down the whole wage level of the communities. The Federal Government, if it wishes private industry to pay higher wages, should take the lead itself. The Federal Government should begin to pay higher wages, and in that way stimulate private industry to pay higher wages.

The CHAIRMAN. If the Federal Government took the lead, through W. P. A., they would not quit W. P. A. We want to offer them an inducement to seek private employment.

Mr. LASSER. No inducement is necessary for our people.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know about that.

Mr. LASSER. That is our statement, and we are willing to stand by it.

WAGES PAID BY PRIVATE INDUSTRY IN THE SOUTH

Now, I would like to say a word in regard to the conditions in the South. We have been told about the low wage rates paid by private industry in the South. A recent study was made by the United Press of some wage levels in the so-called sweated industry, particularly the textile industry. They found that in Mississippi the average wage was $9.84 per week. Of course, Mississippi is a somewhat backward State in that respect. Now, we find in Mississippi that the average