GOVERNMENT

Storage

MINIMUM WAGE

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• R Obi t

W 12-1 PT. I HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON RULES Iv 0

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

EIGHTY-NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

H.R. 13712

A BILL TO AMEND THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938 TO

EXTEND ITS PROTECTION TO ADDITIONAL EMPLOYEES, TO RAISE

THE MINIMUM WAGE, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

APRIL 6, 1966

Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 1966

e4p
COMMITTEE ON RULES

HOWARD W. SMITH, Virginia, Chairman

WILLIAM M. COLMER, Mississippi

RAY J. MADDEN, Indiana

JAMES J. DELANEY, New York

JAMES W. TRIMBLE, Arkansas

RICHARD BOLLING, Missouri

THOMAS P. O'NEILL, Jr., Massachusetts

B. F. SISK, California

JOHN YOUNG, Texas

CLAUDE PEPPER, Florida

II

H. ALLEN SMITH, California

JOHN B. ANDERSON, Illinois

DAVE MARTIN, Nebraska

JAMES H. QUILLEN, Tennessee

DELBERT L. LATTA, Ohio

LAURIE C. BATTLE, Counsel

MARY SPENCER FORREST, 488iStant CO/M8e/

ROBERT D. HYNES, Jr., Minority Counsel
CONTENTS

Statement of:

Hon. John H. Dent,

Page

A Congressman from the State of Pennsylvania 3

III
W4-
TO AMEND THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF

1938, TO EXTEND ITS PROTECTION TO ADDITIONAL

EMPLOYEES, TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE, AND

FOR OTHER PURPOSES

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 1966

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION,

Was D.0 .

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:45 a.m., in room II-313

the Capitol, Representative Howard W. Smith, chairman (presiding) .

Present: Representatives Madden Delaney, Trimble, Sisk, Young,

Pepper, Latta Quillen, Martin, Anderson and Smith of California.

Also present: Laurie C. Battle, counsel Mary Spencer Forrest,

assistant counsel and Robert D. Hynes, Jr., minority counsel.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order.

We will consider the bill, H.R. 13712 which is an amendment to the

minimum wage law and we have Mr. Dent here.

(H.R. 13712 follows:)

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to state before we begin that this hearing will probably be an extended one. We will have 1 day's hearing

today by arrangement with the Speaker who is anxious to get it started

and it will then go over until after the Easter holidays. We expect

to take up the matter the first week after we get back. But it will not

be on the floor until the second week after we return after the Easter

holiday, if then. I believe it will not come to the floor before the week

of the 25th.

Mr. Dent, I believe you succeeded Mr. Roosevelt in handling this

matter and we will be glad to have you start.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN H. DENT, A CONGRESSMAN FROM THE

STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members.

First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to come here today to start,

at least, to try to develop the case for the rule on H.R. 13712 and Report No. 1366. I hope all of you have been given reports as well as

copies of the blue sheets.

The history of this bill is very short. The House has before it now

the Roosevelt bill, H.R. 10518, which was passed out of the Committee

on Education and Labor before the end of the last regular session of

Congress. Between the time it was reported to the House and the

end of the session, Mr. Roosevelt resigned and I inherited the commit1

•
2 MINIMUM WAGE

tee chairmanship as well as the minimum wage bill. At that time I

was called in by the Speaker and asked whether I would invoke the

21-day rule on the following Monday. I advised the Speaker that I

had heard of so much opposition to the bill as it was then written that

I felt it would be an exercise of futility. I further said that I would

like to have an opportunity to study the bill and to do a little more

work on it, if necessary, and to come before you with a fresh start.

That is what I am here with today.

This piece of legislation proposes to add to the present coverage of

the minimum wage law. The Act now covers 29,600,000 workers.

We now face the situation where we are attempting to cover 7,253,000

new workers. We have broken this down into categories. There are

newly covered nonfarm workers, 6,093,000 agricultural workers,

485,000 and Federal employees, 665,000.

We take the presently covered employees and increase the rate of

minimum wage by 15 cents on February 1, 1967. Then we move from

that, which would be $1.40, to $1.60, February 1, 1968. The newly

covered nonfarm, totalling 6,093,000, we start at $1 on February 1,

1967. Then we move in 15 cents escalations on February 1 of each

succeeding year until February 1, 1971, at which time we will reach

$1.60.

In agricultural employment we start at $1 on February 1 of 1967,

we go to $1.15 the following year and we follow that with $1.30 in the

following year, where we stop.

The presently employed are, in the main, earning more than even

the highest increase in the statutory minimum wage law. They are

primarily in the productive industries, and not part of the service

industry, that were covered prior to 1961. Back in 1961, we changed

the formula that we had been using. However, you find, in the main,

that most of the employees covered in 1961 are in the industries that

had previously been covered. The new coverage was primarily made

possible by creating a $1 million enterprise test and eliminating some

exemptions.

Reducing the dollar-volume enterprise test brings in quite a few

newly covered in the areas that were previously covered. For instance,

in the retail trade, we will bring in 1,500,000 new coverage simply by

changing the enterprise test. However, we are covering new workers

never covered before. We are covering the restaurant industry for

the first time in the history of the legislation. We have achieved this

end after negotiating closely with both the representatives of the

industry and the representatives of the labor groups that represent

the workers in that field.

The major obstacle that always kept us from covering the restaurant

workers was the question of tips. In many areas tips become the major

part of the income of many of the workers. This problem has coexisted in the Social Security area.

We found ourselves of late years in the position where we had

thousands of workers in the United States who, because of the nature

of their jobs, depended upon tips and gratuities were not covered by

the Social Security Act, or if they were covered, they were covered

in such a minimum fashion that they reached the retirement age and

found that they had no retirement or very little retirement.
MINIMUM WAGE 3

Therefore, we worked out a solution which in the main has been

accepted by the vast majority of the industry. There are some complaints on the part of individual concerns, we can always expect that.

If you have any complaints, and you name them, I will be happy to

try to give you the reasons for their complaints. I believe I have

heard all of them.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you want to be interrupted at any time?

Mr. DENT. Any time you want to, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I was just wondering, because I have a complaint

from a restaurant association. You say the vast majority of them are

satisfied.

Mr. DENT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That complaint is that you have changed the Roosevelt bill and made it rougher on them than it was before. I wonder

how you arrived at a nose count on the vast majority of the restaurants.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, the Virginia Restaurant Association

spent about 3 hours with me in my office. In the first place, they did

not come in in favor of the Roosevelt legislation. They were utterly

opposed to it. After about 3 hours of conference they left there with

one person in the entire group who was still opposed. The rest told me

personally that they were satisfied. The only point they are fighting,

Mr. Chairman, is the escalation.

The CHAIRMAN. The Virginia Restaurant Association is not the

vast majority—I mean in the United States.

Mr. DENT. I have been advised by the Alabama, Louisiana, Florida,

Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and the Nationwide Association.

The CHAIRMAN. If I could have just the Virginia people on me I

could live easy. But they come in all the way from California to me

complaining about what the Government is doing to them.

Mr. DENT. Yes, sir, that is true. Even the Government is complaining what we are doing to them. When we started to cover

Government employees we were told by the department heads they

knew how to handle the situation and they did not need the Congress.

I told them that was the plea of private enterprise for so many years.

The CHAIRMAN. Sorry to interrupt you.

Mr. DENT. I want to say to you in behalf of the committee, I can

sustain my position on the matter of the restaurants because the

National Restaurant Association has agreed to the bill. The only part

that they are disturbed 

The CHAIRMAN. The National Restaurant Association?

Mr. DENT. Yes, the only part they are still in complaint on is that

they do not want to increase beyond $1.40. They would like to have

the bill terminate when it hits $1.40 in 1969.

The CHAIRMAN. Those that came to me would like to have it terminate right now.

Mr. DENT. I imagine you could get plenty of support on that.

I am only trying to give to the committee what I have learned and

what I have tried to do in 3 months of intensive negotiations.

Mr. MARTIN. Do you have anything in writing from the National

Restaurant Association?

Mr. DENT. You would never get that in writing. You have served

on my subcommittee. You would not get that from the labor people

because they do not like some features of the bill. This happens to
4 MINIMUM WAGE

be a piece of legislation not entirely approved by labor, management;

not even entirely approved by the committee. It must be a fair piece

of legislation since it does not cater to one group. Legislation must

do the greater good for the greater number. I feel the restaurant

proposal is fair and equitable. We started at $1 and we allowed them

to count against that $1, 35 percent of it as tips. When they reach

$1.30 or above they can count 40 percent of the minimum wage as tips.

When they reach $1.60 and above they can count 45 percent.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a figure of how you are going to know

how much the tips are?

Mr. DENT. We do not have to know because the employer is limited

in percentage. He is limited to a percentage of the minimum wage

itself. He is limited at $1 minimum wage, he must pay 65 cents;

35 cents can be counted as tips. One waitress in an establishment

can earn $10, $15 or $20 a day and another one, because of the character

she may have in her own deportment may not earn 15 cents. The

one who does not earn 15 cents an hour in tips has the right to appeal

and this has been agreed to by both the employer and the employee

representatives.

Now, we face the situation where on one hand you have opposition

from the unions because they do not want to count tips toward the

minimum wage and you have opposition from the industry on the

other hand who want to count all tips. I say to you that you cannot

count all tips. In some of the major cities, a situation has grown up

over the years where an employee not only does not receive any wage

at all from the employer, but must pay for the job because of the tips

being so lucrative. This is a common fact in Miami, it is common in

New York City and in other major cities. In your district and mine,

we have to pay people, and the peculiar thing about this legislation

is that the complaints are coming from the largest restaurants in the

United States. The smaller restaurants find that they have to pay

and none of them pay less than 65 to 90 cents.

You asked if I had it in writing. I do have from the Pennsylvania

Small Restaurant Association, in writing, a complimentary remark to

the effect that this was the first approach that has been made that they

find acceptable. It was made by the small restaurants and not the

large ones.

I do not think any restaurant owner can logically fight against a

piece of legislation that compels him to pay 65 cents an hour. They

do work other than wait on tables.

Mr. DELANEY. No they do not.

Mr. DENT. They fold all the napkins and do plenty of things in

the small restaurants that I have gone into. The employers have

control of the work. The worker cannot come to work when they

want to, nor leave when they want to. The worker is under their

supervision. The worker has to wear certain types of clothes when

they are told to by the employer. The worker has to abide by the

rules of the institution they work in. They are not self-employed.

They may be considered to be self-employed in that interval when

they bring your food to the table and take the dishes off after you

have been served. In that period of time, if they want to be gracious

enough to give you extra services and keep your coffee hot and water

cold and give you little personal touches of services, they might be
MINIMUM WAGE 5

considered self-employed. It is not the responsibility of the person

who goes in there to eat to take upon himself the responsibility of

paying the waitress that is i'vorking in the establishment. That is

one thing we have to recognize when we get into these discussions of

tipped employees. It is not the responsibility of the person being

served that meal to pay the wages.

Mr. PEPPER. If I may, Mr. Chairman, what about the bus boys and

people in the kitchen and all who are cooks and others who do not

get tips at all? How are they affected?

Mr. DENT. I am sorry.

Mr. PEPPER. If I may, what about the ones who do not get tips at

all like the bus boys who clean up?

Mr. DENT. They get paid the minimum wage under this law, $1 an

hour.

Mr. PEPPER. Unless they are in the category—I see.

Mr. DENT. We use the social security approach. Where they earn

$20 or more a month they are defined as a tipped employee.

Mr. LArrA. Mr. Chairman. What about the older persons who are

on social security or work part-time in these small restaurants, are they

covered?

Mr. DENT. If they work. But you see, the restaurant has to do

$500,000—a gross of over $500,000 to be covered initially.

Mr. MARTIN. That is for the next 2 years. The third year all

restaurants which gross $250,000 are covered.

Mr. DENT. That is right.

Mr. MADDEN. The restaurant has to do over $500,000 worth of business in 2 years?

Mr. DENT. One year. But 2 years from now the figure drops down

to $250,000 as an enterprise test.

Mr. MADDEN. The restaurants that do less than that are out?

Mr. DENT. The Roosevelt bill dropped to $150,000.

Mr. MADDEN. Restaurants under that are exempt from the bill?

Mr. DENT. Yes, under $500,000 initially, then, 1969, those under

$250,000 are exempt.

The CHAIRMAN. Under a half million dollars gross receipts? Is that

what you mean?

Mr. MADDEN. For 2 years and then it drops to $250,000. That excludes all these small restaurants, is that right? You would be surprised how they would mount up.

Mr. DENT. The small restaurants are not doing the complaining.

My complaints come from Marriott.

Mr. MADDEN. I should think the average small town restaurant-4

would say 90 percent of them—and a lot of restaurants in the big towns

would be excluded from this bill—$150,000 is a lot of business for a

small restaurant to do gross.

Mr. DENT. They would have to do $10,000 a week to be covered by

the bill. That is a lot. Two years from now it will be $250,000. That

is $5,000 a week. We searched and searched and could not come up

with a formula that would be more equitable in its approach than what

this is.

Mr. MADDEN. I think you will find most complaints will come from

the restaurant business.

61-624-66 2
6 MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. DELANEY. $30 a month in tips is ridiculous. I asked one girl

the other day, she had 2 hours to go. I asked her how much she had in

tips and it was $35 at that time for that day. The average in any sort

of restaurant is $200 a week or more.

Mr. DENT. That is right. But that does not excuse the employer.

Mr. DELANEY. Prices are high enough now. The price of food will

necessarily go up. You talk about inflation. I do not know whether

it will help—it will reach a point where people cannot afford to go to

restaurants.

Mr. DENT. Your price on food will go up because of this bill?

Mr. DELANEY. The price of food that is served to you.

Mr. DENT. Will go up because of this 'bill?

Mr. DELANEY. Yes.

Mr. DENT. Have you found out what they pay their help now? I

can tell you honestly, the average restaurant employee working now

earns between 45 cents and $1.25 an hour in wages. The smaller

the restaurant the more they are paid. This is a peculiar incident in

this industry. The smaller restaurants, the beaneries or lunch counters, do not have the tip incident that they have in the big restaurants.

They have to compete in the market for help. The only problem that I

have been faced with is the question of termination date. I say this

to you honestly. The large restaurant chains that own food preparation plants, where they prepare hundreds or thousands of meals for

the airline services, complain because they do not want to go to a dollar.

They have no tips. They are regular employees. When I pointed out

to them that under a strict interpretation of the act they should have

been covered in 1938, they became satisfied and went along with the bill.

Mr. PEPPER. I notice that, although you extend coverage, you

exempt the restaurants from overtime.

Mr. DENT. I was coming to that.

Mr. PEPPER. You do not apply the overtime.

Mr. DENT. We tried to use a realistic approach. We recognize we

do not have sufficient information on the operation of the normal

restaurant business. Therefore, we decided to eliminate any overtime

penalties in the restaurant and motel field. I think you will find this

was the biggest problem that they had with the Roosevelt bill. The

biggest problem they had was determining the wage for overtime.

At that point, Mr. Chairman, the tip comes into the picture. When

you get into the overtime and an employee is in a position of earning

an enormous amount in tips, then you get into the problem of what 

portion of the overtime pay is paid by the employer and what portion

is to be considered as being already paid by tips. We very frankly

did not have an answer for it. We exempted all restaurants, hotels,

motels

'

summer resorts from the overtime feature of the act.

Mr. MARTIN. I notice in the figures that you show on the blue sheet,

total employees subject to minimum wage provisions in restaurants,

what we are talking would be 432,000. How did you arrive at that

figure?

Mr. DENT. We took all the restaurants in the United States that had

shown a $500,000 a year or more income. Among 1,753,000 total employees1 we found from the department's figures that only 432,000

were being covered by this act.
MrsTriIIIM WAGE. 7

Mr. MARTIN. This is a total for 1967 and 1968. In 1969 it goes

down to $250,000.

Mr. DENT. Coverage starts with 300,000 in 1967. The first coverage of the bill will only cover 300,000 in $500,900 enterprises. When

it drops down to a $250,000 enterprise test it picks up at 125,000. The

total figure then came to 425,000.

Mr. MARTIN. On the Roosevelt bill last year the figure in that same

category was 532,000 which is a decrease of exactly 100,000.

Mr. DENT. He went down to a 150,000 exemption. When he dropped

to a $150,000 exemption he picked up another 100,000 people. We do

not go that far.

Mr. MARTIN. I was trying to help you out.

Mr. DENT. I know you were. I appreciate friends like you.

Mr. MADDEN. Would you yield there? I want to commend you for

making such an intensive study of this restaurant situation. It is

getting so that in a certain class of restaurants you go into nowadays,

it gradually keeps going up and up, that if you bring some friends in

there for dinner in a certain class of restaurant, you cannot get a dinner

for less than $10 or $12, and I think with the knowledge that your

committee has of the restaurant business, it might be well to go before

the Ways and Means Committee and have a little change made in some

of these deductions and exemptions. The head of any business can

take a group in one of these high-priced restaurants of 5 or 10 or 15

and sign a check and they will put the tip on along with the signing of

the check and Mr. Uncle Sam pays for most of it. It is deducted. But

a Congressman can take five or six constituents down and he has to

stick his hands in his pocket and pay cash and no deduction. So I

think maybe it might be a good thing to talk to the Ways and Means

Committee and we might kind of lower some of these exemptions, you

know, and credits and so-called business expense, when probably 80

percent of it is just ordinary dinners where they take their families

out and sign up as business expenses, and I think the price of food in

a lot of these restaurants would come down, and the price of tips.

Some of these restaurants you go in, if you do not give $1 tip for each

person they shun you the next time you come in because you are not

connected with some great big outfit that can sign a check and have it,

deducted as a tax deduction, a business expense. But the Congressman cannot do that.

Mr. DENT. I might say, all of your conversation comes back to the

first premise I made. The employee in the restaurant is an employee

of the employer and not of the customer. Under the present condition we might be considered to be their employers. That is why you

have the very thing you are talking about.

Mr. MADDEN. You could reduce this high-priced tipping and highpriced food if the Ways and Means Committee would just stop some

of these loopholes and business expenses.

Mr. DENT. I think this bill will help, too.

Mr. LArrA. I have not had an opportunity to go into this bill. The

question is, How does this bill jibe with the President's idea that we

ought to raise wages only 2.9 percent or 3 percent or something like

that?

Mr. DENT. It conforms for the simple reason that the 3.2-percent

guideline is an overall guideline. It was promoted with the idea of
8 MINIMUM WAGE

having some kind of ceiling on negotiations between bargaining units

in a wage discussion. You will find that in all of the contracts that

have been written, where they stay within that guideline, that you have

differentials in the increases among individuals, depending on the type

of work they were.doing and the amount of money they were being

paid. They take a straight 3.2 percent across the board.

For instance, the Heinz people just raised their wage in a contract

2 weeks ago, Friday night. They raised an average of 22.5 cents an

hour. But the average 22.5 cents an hour was within the guideline.

It gave some of the workers in the plant 15-, 18-, and 21-percent increase and gave others 1-, 2-, and 3-percent increases. You cannot

have a static guideline Of 3.2 when you are dealing with people making

70 cents an hour and other persons who are making $4.50 and $5 an

hour. Certainly not in remedial legislative acts.

Maybe you can in negotiations, but you cannot possibly do it when

we are dealing with people who have no minimum wage. For instance,

in the restaurants, you do not have any applicable guidelines at all

when you are at 65 cents.

Mr. LATTA. Taking under consideration the fact that you are raising minimum wages. We have a guideline there. What is the percentage of increase?

Mr. DENT. Twelve percent and sixteen percent.

Mr. LATTA. Does that coincide with the President's idea?

Mr. DENT. Yes

'

in fact the wage as we now establish it in the first

escalation is still 10 cents an hour less than this Congress advocated

for the poverty program. You have $1.50 minimum in the poverty

program statutes.

•Mr. LArrA. We have 11,000 people up our way in the poverty program making more than bank presidents and school superintendents,

and they have absolutely no experience in the job, either.

Mr. DENT. Sometimes they throw it at me that I am a Member of

Congress at $30,000 and I have no experience in the job.

Mr. LATTA. Do not let that word get back home.

Mr. ANDERSON. Will the gentleman yield? Did your committee

undertake, Mr. Dent, a study of what has been referred to as the

"rippling effect"? I do not think anybody objects to paying people

$1.40 an hour—nobody can live on that with prices as high as they

are. But I hear the argument constantly, with respect to maintaining

existing differentials within a business or within an industry, that this

has the inexorable effect of pushing up all the rest of these rates and it

is there that the violation of the 3.2 guidelines cames into play.

Mr. DENT. That gave us more disturbance and worry than the 3.2

guideline did because we, too, have been hammered with that particular

argument. We asked for a very thorough study to be made by the

Department of Labor and we went to the private employers and talked

to them. It has not reacted that way. Your best proof is to go right

back home to your retail stores that came under the act in 1961. Go

talk to them and you will find that it did not have the automatic increase that they claimed it would have. In consideration of that, we

did try to establish an escalation on a longer term of years because

none of us had a positive answer. We only can go by what the studies

show. The studies do not show that there is a universal increase in

wages when a minimum is increased.
MINIMUM WAGE 9

Now, this goes back to the old days before negotiations took place

in the labor movement. They always kept the lowest paid wages at

the lowest levels. It was from there that they determined their next

pay level. But that is no longer in vogue. As I said earlier, about

the recent determination at the Heinz plant, labor went in and increased a greater percentage of the lower levels than they did in the

higher income brackets of their employees under contract in order to

bring up the lower levels. That is exactly this process here.

Mr. ANDERSON. In essence, what you are saying then, you think this

is something of a myth, this idea that circulated that there is this uniform "rippling effect"?

Mr. DENT. No, there would be isolated cases where that would take

effect and that would depend entirely on the type of employees a person had. If you had a militant group of employees, you do not need

this kind of legislation to get into disputes over the differential between

this job and that. But in the normal course of events, in productive

industry, they have not found it to be true. They have not found it

to be true in the service industries either.

If you will turn to page 29 of the report, you will find the required

conclusion:

The required conclusion from all of these studies and analyses is that the 1961

amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act have not resulted in any identifiable

retarding of economic expansion, decrease in employment, contribution to inflation, or diminution of profits.

When the employer said that if you increased the minimum he

would automatically have to escalate in each grade above and, therefore, his profits would have to be wiped out because this is a 12 percent

increase. But it has not worked that way. I doubt if it will work

that way. We must keep in mind that this is not increasing the pay

of 7,253,000 workers. It is just putting them under the umbrella of

a Federal statute. In the main, in America today, outside of area

situations, no person is working for 65 cents an hour. You cannot

get a boy to come out and mow your lawn for 65 cents an hour or

wash your window.

Mr. LATTA. You cannot get a boy to mow your lawn.

Mr. DELANEY. You say that the wages are increased substantially

at a lower level and very little at the top. There is nothing to prevent

the executives from getting a raise of maybe $5,000 or $10,000.

Mr. DENT. No. We do not have a minimum executive wage.

Mr. DELANEY. Then you have no guideline.

Mr. DENT. No. We broke the guidelines ourselves a little last year.

Mr. DELANEY. We get a little confused here. I was reminded of

that fellow, Al Kelley, who does the double talk, you know. They

wind up nowhere. He says absolutely nothing. He says absolutely

nothing but a lot of words. So we are not getting anywhere here—

you say we have a guideline on wages and they can increase 12 percent

or 15 percent at a lower level and do not increase at the top level.

But then they can give a $5,000 or $10,000 increase to anyone on the

executive line, can they not?

Mr. DENT. Yes, I appreciate your concern, but do not rake ,p4e*e

sponsor of that act. 9k"- Mr. DELANEY. That throws the whole thing out of line.

Mr. DENT. It does, yes, it does.
10 MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. MARTIN. Mr. Chairman, at this point I would like to read a

few lines here from the Weekly Labor Forecast and Review that is

published in Columbus, Ohio, by the people who also publish the 

States Labor News. This is in regard to this proposed amendment

to the Fair Labor Standards Act. "The fact of the matter is labor

union leaders are looking at this situation from a strictly selfish point

of view. They know that there cannot be increases in maximum pay

wages unless there is also an increase in minimum pay wages. With

present Federal pay minimum rates of $1.25 an hour with maximum

rates average $5. When minimum rates go up to $1.40 and $1.60 an

hour, increases in maximum rates in 2 or 3 years will reach $5.60 to

$6.40 an hour. Wage rates for semiskilled workers will advance from

an average of $2.60 an hour to $3.20 to $4 an hour."

Now, this is from a labor publication out in Columbus, Ohio. This

statement is dated Saturday, March 19, 1966.

Mr. DENT. What is the name of that report?

Mr. MARTIN. The Weekly Labor Forecast and Review.

Mr. DENT. Published by labor people?

Mr. MARTIN. Published by the State Publishing Co., publishers of

the State Labor News, Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. DENT. The State Labor News is not exactly considered the

voice of the American labor movement.

Mr. MARTIN. I did not say it was the voice.

Mr. DENT. They can call themselves Labor News, but anybody—

even the Wall Street Journal has a column every day that is labor

news. You would not call that a labor paper.

Mr. MARTIN. If certain people in your organization get an increase

in pay through this legislation, you are going to have to escalate the

pay of other employees to keep them in line or you will have a great

deal of dissatisfaction.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Martin, is it not a fact that wages Increase at the

top first and then dwindle down to an increase at the bottom?

Mr. MARTIN. I would not say that.

Mr. DENT. They do not start at the bottom and work up or you

would not have $5 labor today and 65 cent labor. They do not start

at the bottom. The wage rate is put at the top because those are the

essential employees in the establishment. The toolmaker gets more

than the machinist, the machinist gets more than the helper and on

down the line. The increase for these fellows is first because they

are in demand in the labor market. That is the history of the wage

movement.

Mr. MARTIN. I would not say that was an actual fact. All I can

speak of is from an actual standpoint of my own business and when.

I make raises in my own business I start in with my lowest paid employees and raise them first and then I go on up.

Mr. DENT. That is what we are trying to do.

Mr. MARTIN. I start in at the lowest level with my employees. I

do not know about other businesses.

Mr. DENT. You mean you pay 65 cents an hour?

Mr. MARTIN. No, sir. I am above the minimum wage. I always

have been.

Mr. DENT. I think you will find a great number of employers in

the United States who take the same pride you do. They are above

the minimum wage also.
MINIMUM WAGE 11

Mr. PEPPER. If I may ask the gentleman 

Mr. MARTIN. Just a moment. Just to continue on this point. This

increase, as I pointed out to you here, from the $1.25 to $1.40 is 12

percent increase and from $1.40 to $1.60 is 14 percent increase which

violates completely the President's guidelines on wage increases and

also price increases as far as management is concerned. And this

thing is going to have just as devastating effect on the small businessman and retailer who are going to be covered with these amendments

as it would have if General Motors or Ford or A .T. & T. and some

of the largest corporations in the country. It is going to have just

as devastating effect on the small businessman and you are going to

fold up, Johnny, a lot of businesses in this country and you are going

to lose a lot of jobs and we did not have anyone who testified who

proved the point that this was going to create more jobs. But we had

a lot of testimony that it was going to create fewer jobs because of

this escalation in wage rate forced upon them by the Congress of the

United States.

Mr. DENT. Well, Of course---

Mr. MARTIN. The only one who made a contrary statement was Secretary Wirtz and he never proved his point.

Mr. SISK. Will my colleague yield ? I have not gotten into this

argument and I should have stayed out of it. But I do not know,

I think history is a pretty good pattern for the future and of course,

I have been hearing this same argument ever since 1938 about how

we are going to kill business. Now, looking at the most recent one,

I might say to my friend from Nebraska, in 1961, and I heard a lot

of rumbles about that because I had people who were opposing it who

wrote to me. The facts are as has been developed, they were making

the same predictions. I can produce letters right now that were

written to me predicting what was going to happen..

The fact is it did not happen and I am not here to criticize speculation in the future, but the speculation that has occurred throughout

the last 25 years simply does not justify this criticism. It seems to

me we have to look at history a little bit.

Mr. MARTIN. There is one thing that has not been mentioned here.

When we talked about this $500,000 exemption on total sales and later

dropping it to $250,000—let us take three categories that this does

not apply to—laundries, drycleaners, and firms in the construction.

industry. They have no exemption at all. You can have a little drycleaner over here on Pennsylvania Avenue, and there are a lot of them

over in here or in your hometown that has one employee; and it is

going to be covered under the bill and every laundry in the United

States is going to be covered. They can do $10, $15, or $25,000 in

total volume of business a year. But the way this bill is drawn, they

do not get the benefit of an exemption of $500,000 in sales for the next

2 years and then $250,000. They are completely covered by the law

and this is going to work a severe hardship on these people as well as

the construction industry and in small towns. I am thoroughly familiar with this because I am in the business. In smaller towns we

have these fellows who go out, smaller contractors, carpenters, with

one employee. In the summer months when the weather is good and

it is proper for construction, they got in and work 10, 12, 14 hours a

day and they work on Saturdays. They do not pay any attention to
12 MINIMUM WAGE

overtime. This is traditional. Yet they are not going to have any

exemptions. They are fully covered and are subject to the severe

penalties of time and a half and you are going to find in construction

work that it is going to raise the cost of housing and remodeling,

and so on, in many of your localities throughout the entire country.

It is not a fair shake for these people not to give them the same exemptions that you give others.

Mr. DENT. I would like to answer that because I think it is pertinent

to the situation. This is the first time in the history of any of this

legislation that a complete agreement has been obtained from all the

laundry people represented by any kind of an organization and either

laundry workers represented by any kind of organization. After

you made this criticism, I went back to my district. I went to the three

little laundries in my own town that have one or two helpers. I asked

them what wages they were paying. I gave them the details of the

legislation. They said, "well, you are not writing any legislation

affecting us. We pay more than that now and expect to pay a lot

more as soon as the rubber plant starts to increase production.' You

failed to take into consideration that we are not covering establishments here. We are not passing legislation for establishments as

such. We are passing legislation for people. In the laundry industry,

for the first time we got the commercial laundries, the home laundries

and the linen laundries, which are the three major entities in the laundry field, to agree. No one has received a letter from a responsible

laundry association against this legislation. If a person can work

work out a negotiation—that takes months to do—and you get both

labor and industry satisfied on the terms of the piece of legislation,

I do not know of any better way to legislate. I share your concern

that some fellow is going to complain. In the construction field, where

I am having construction done right now, I cannot get a big contractor to do a remodeling job. I am paying $4.60 an hour for carpenters

and $2.10 for labor. They are not even union; they are not organized.

And my town is as small as yours, I daresay. You are talking of the

past when you refer to wages below $1 an hour. You are not talking

about the present day. How do we expect to pay off this national

debt if we have to continue with 65-cent wages?

In other words, 40 percent of the country eat taxes. Let us get

those 40 percent to pay, taxes.

Mr. MARTIN. You are talking about an agreement from the laundry

industry. We have 17 laundries in the State of Nebraska and 15 of the

17 are grossing less than the $250,000 allowed to others in the retail

field and every one of the 17 laundries in the State of Nebraska oppose

this legislation and I dare say that the same thing is true in many

other States of the Union. So we do not have any unanimous agreement in the laundry industry.

Mr. SISK. Could I make a suggestion, Mr. Chairman? I would like

very much, if it is in order, and it is up to the chairman, to let the

gentleman complete his statement and we question him to the extent

we want to. It seems to me we would be a little more orderly.

The CHAIRMAN. I asked him if it was agreeable to him and he said

it seemed to be. This matter is a matter of such magnitude and affects

so many people both in industry and labor, I think we want to get
MINIMUM WAGE 13

information and that is the way to get it. If Mr.. Dent would prefer

to complete his statement then it is up to him.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of giving as much information as I have available for the members, I will try to answer

their questions. I would rather, a point, once covered, would not be

belabored, but I certainly will answer any pertinent questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sisk is right in his theory because we usually

let a man complete his statement and then every member can ask any

questions he wants to.

Mr. DENT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I would rather do it the way you prefer to do it.

Mr. DENT. It gets to a point here where everybody is excited about

a feature. I will answer your questions.

Let me go into this thing a little further. I want to give you what

some people consider to be the bad points of the bill.

In the hospitals and related institutions there will be 1,471,000

covered. One problem was brought to my mind just yesterday, by

hospital people who have agreed that this legislation is proper. Now,

when I say that, I have not talked to all of the thousands of hospital

boards in the United States but I mean I have talked to the people

who we normally talk to in the legislative field.

They have agreed. However, there is a point that has to be cleared

up and I expect to offer an amendment on the floor which will clear

up the situation. Because of the passage of medicare, hospitals are

a little disturbed that contracts with medicare might put them under

the provision of the law dealing with contract services to the Government. They would find themselves starting at $1.40, which I agree,

in an initial approach to the coverage of institutions of this kind,

would be prohibitive. And therefore I intend to remedy that.

The CHAIRMAN. Does that mean you are going to let them get by

and in another year they will come back as they usually do and put

them under?

Mr. DENT. The problem, sir, is not based on a position of the committee. It was never intended. We never thought of medicare, we

never thought of the idea that it might be considered a contract and

come under the O'Hara bill which Congress passed or under section

305 of our bill.

The O'Hara bill establishes a base for all contract service employees

to the U.S. Government, the statutory minimum wage or the prevailing wage, whichever is the greater. We did not intend to cover them

because they have a small medicare contract with the Government.

We will amend this bill to show that it is not the intent of this law

that they be covered at the higher minimum wage because of a medicare contract.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know when you instituted the first 8-hour

day at minimum wage you raised the cost of hospitalization right

away about double and now it has gone up from that, so that hospital

expenses now are getting so prohibitive that a fellow will say, "I will

go on and die."

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, hospitals, insofar as Federal legislation,

have never been covered before. This is the initial coverage of hospitals. They have never been covered before.
14 MINIMUM WAGE

The CHAIRMAN. Some are covered 

Mr. DENT. By State legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. They were not covered in the 8-hour day law.

Mr. DENT. No, sir; they have never been covered.

Mr. MARTIN. They are covered by overtime.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to question, if I may, at this point on

this particular subject.

You have exempted hotels and motels from overtime provisions

under the Federal fair labor standards.

Mr. DENT. At your suggestion.

Mr. MARTIN. But hospitals you have not exempted from overtime

and yet you have exempted hotels and motels. What is your reason

why hospitals should not have an exemption?

Mr. DENT. You were one of the proponents of no overtime for

restaurants. The reasons you gave were very convincing, at least they

sold me, and I supported you.

Now, the situation is that in a hospital your work can be regulated.

It is on an hourly shift, it is on hourly operations. They are on a

24-hour-a-day operation. The same thing applies to all the restaurants. You call and say you have a reservation for 10 people, he sets

aside a table for 6:30. You may stop at the bar and do not sit down

until 8:30 or 9 o'clock. There is no way that he can change the price

of that meal to take care of overtime penalties on the help that had to

be kept around. How many times have you been to a banquet where

hundreds of people eat an hour and a half or 2 hours late? Rain

has something to do with it. Snow has something to do with it. As

far as hospitals there has not been a complaint from hospitals.

Mr. MARTIN. I asked the question about hotels and motels that are

exempt from overtime and hospitals which are not exempt from

overtime. Why did you put them in different categories

Mr. DENT. They have exactly the same condition. They get a

reservation and the person does not get there until 9 o'clock when he

was supposed to be there at 6.

Mr. MARTIN. Hospitals certainly cannot tell when their patients are

going to come.

Mr. DENT. They are staffed fully at all times. It is one of their

requirements. They do not get a license to go ahead and operate a

hospital in my State unless they have a full staffing provision. The

point that I am trying to make is, there are no complaints from

hospitals except for the one that I hope to rectify on the floor. I am

sorry. Maybe I should have negotiated individually with Members

of Congress. But it is a difficult enough thing to negotiate with the

industry and try to come here with something that has some measure

of support, both from labor and management. I cannot do better than

that. I could not write anything that would have been closer to being

universally approved than this piece of legislation that is before you

today.

The next area that is covered is agriculture. It has always been

controversial. But there has been a transition in agriculture. Agriculture is no longer the same type, except in those that are exempted

from this bill, of farming operation as it was when I was a boy or when

you were boys. Agriculture is now big business. This is proven by

the fact that we cover only 1.6 percent of the farms in the United
MINIMUM WAGE 15

• States yet we are covering 39 percent of the hired hands in the United

States. We only cover a farm that has 500 man-days of employment in

any quarter. We do not count the labor that comes in and gathers

perishable crops that are historically and customarily gathered by

local people who come out in the fields and gather strawberries, blackberries, and harvest beans and cherries and this type of harvesting.

They are not counted toward the 500 man-days. They are ignored in

the man-day count provisions of the act because we recognize that in

many of these instances that they will take children with them. We

know that up in Maine, for instance, they close the schools when the

potatoes come in, because of the fact that they have a very short

harvesting time. We know that out in the west coast and in the Northwest they close schools for the purpose of gathering strawberries and

blackberries. We know a fog comes in sometimes and retards the

blossom and the very people who are able to pick $4 and $5 and $10

worth of berries can only pick $2 because the blossoms will be affected

by the fog that comes in over the region.

We have gone into this, into every possible angle to try to come out

with fair legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. Would not the farm industry rather that you did

not put the farmer under the wage and hour law?

Mr. DENT. Yes, but back in 1938 the steel companies felt that way

about it, also.

The CHAIRMAN. We have had a lot of experience with the minimum

wage law.

Mr. DENT. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. And we know you go just as far as you can with

the minimum wage law, just as far each time as you can get away with.

Now, your predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, went further than you thought

you could get away with. You did not think you could get that bill.

Mr. DENT. That was my opinion only.

The CHAIRMAN. Two years from now you get your nose under the

tent on the farming and then you will come in and put the rest of them

under it. That has been the experience of 30 years. I started with

this thing back in 1938 and I know how it gets. I know who it has hit

and how hard it has hit a lot of people, not only the farmer himself

but the farm help, because when it gets so high that they are losing

more money than now, he has to quit farming and the farmhands are

out of a job and he has to go to the city. Most of them have already.

And that is one subject I want to go into with you pretty thoroughly

when the time comes.

Mr. DENT. I would be happy to discuss it with you at any time.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to ask you, at the same time, to have somebody on your staff advise me why you made this change from the

Roosevelt bill on the restaurants. I had a representative from the

American Restaurant Association in my office late yesterday afternoon complaining very bitterly that this bill was tougher on the

restaurants than the last bill, and had put them in a situation that

was worse than the one that Roosevelt put them in and I know you

were not trying to do that because you were trying to conciliate everybody that you could to get this thing down to what you figured you

could hammer out of Congress. You may have done a good job. on it.
16 MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, in fairness to yourself, I would say the

gentleman who talked to you from the American Restaurant Association could not have been speaking for many restaurants, because

of the Roosevelt restaurant provisions were not accepted by anyone

except labor.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know. That is what I am trying to find

out, what is the difference?

Mr. DENT. I will go further, sir

'

and if you will have the gentleman

contact me I will be happy to sit down with him and report to you.

I do not know what he has in mind. There is no comparison of the

impact on the restaurant owner in this bill, and in the other bill.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know. I just know what he said.

Mr. DENT. I will be happy to talk to the gentleman if you will have

him come up.

The CHAIRMAN. He cited the Roosevelt clause with respect to restaurants and your clause—it is entirely different.

Mr. DENT. That is right. This was worked out.

The 'CHAIRMAN. That is why I wanted you to get a staff member

to tell me why.

Mr. DENT. I will be glad to.

Mr. PEPPER. I can certainly corroborate the 'able Chairman here.

The restaurants and hotel industry in my area were militantly against

the Roosevelt bill. They came in in large numbers and were very

strong in opposition. I sent them copies of this bill. I have not heard

fully from them, but I do know they were very much against the

Roosevelt bill.

Mr. DENT. I think I know what he is talking about.

Mr. PEPPER. They seem more palatable to this one. They were

strenuously 'against the Roosevelt bill.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know.

Mr. DENT. I will give you the reason now, I believe. In that bill

some of the restaurants were led to believe that they would have a

better case for their position because it did not establish a set percentage of tip allowance, but allowed up to 50 percent of the minimum rate.

I pointed out to them, to the best of my ability, that those who were

hoping that they would get 50 percent tip allowance failed to realize

that the bill called for an area tip allowance. The tip allowance might

be down at a low tip level, rather than at a high tip level. When they

realized this, they agreed to the suggestion that a fixed amount would

be more equitable to all of the restaurants, rather than a few who

thought they were going to get a 50 percent tip allowance.

The 'CHAIRMAN. I have to listen to so many people about this bill,

there is so much objection to it, that I cannot carry it all in my head.

I do not think it was the tip. I think it was the wage question.

Mr. DENT. If they want the Roosevelt bill at $1.75 I will be glad to

vote for your amendment.

The CHAIRMAN. I have not got an amendment.

Mr. DENT. That is what they told me. We go to $1.60 1 year later

than they go to $1.75.

The CHAIRMAN. Just get a staff member to give me that and have

them analyze it.

Mr. LATTA. If I may, I would like to go back and discuss what Mr.

Dent said about agriculture. You mentioned strawberry pickers and
MINIMUM WAGE 17

so forth. I am interested in the tomato pickers and beets and so forth.

You indicated with the strawberry pickers, when they bring their kids

they are not covered. How about the case of the people we get in our

district from Texas and of Mexican descent, now that the bracero

program is out of the way, who stay for several weeks at a time? They

stay and harvest the beets. Would those individuals be covered by

this minimum law?

Mr. DENT. Yes.

Mr. PEPPER. You mean for that employer?

Mr. DENT. You must have some coverage for migrant workers. It

is one of the blights that has been on our conscience for many years.

Mr. MARTIN. I do not think that is quite the right answer. Could

I interrupt?

Mr. DENT. I gave the right answer.

Mr. MARTIN. Your exemption has three tests.

Mr. DENT. That is right.

Mr. MARTIN. First of all, they have to traditionally be paid on a

piece-rate basis. Secondly, they have to be in commuting distance

with their home, their permanent home and third, work less than 13

weeks in agriculture.

Now, the question, as I understood what Mr. Latta asked you, was

in regard to workers from Texas or other States that came up here.

They would not meet those three tests. And therefore, they would not

be exempted from this. But that is an exemption only from the 500

man-days per quarter—per calendar quarter. If the farm hits the

500 man-days test, they are going to be covered. But if it does not hit

it, as I interpret the bill the way it is drawn, they do not come under

the wage—under the minimum wage.

Mr. DENT. That is right.

Mr. MARTIN. Even though they are in Texas or wherever they are

from.

Mr. DENT. You offered an amendment that would establish a base of

13 weeks for all farm help. That was offered by you and I supported

you in the committee and we were voted down, to be very frank about

it. I do not happen to have the sway over a committee some people

have.

Mr. MARTIN. That was in Roosevelt's bill. Now, they were not to be

counted.

Mr. LATTA. To get back to clarify my thinking here, say the migrant

workers or—I think that is a misnomer. I do not think they are migrant workers. These people are housed adequately in our area. Say

they work for 12 weeks for farmer X and they go on to say, Michigan

and work up there picking pickles and so forth, which is what they

usually do. The mere fact that they work 12 weeks in Ohio and they

move up there, for say 2 weeks, they would be covered, is that what

you are saying?

Mr. DENT. Yes; they are migrant workers. The way they live

has nothing to do with the term migrants." Migrant means he is a

worker who follows the crop and he makes his living in agriculture.

Again

'

we must come back to the premise that we are protecting people.

Mr. LATTA. What are you going to do about the kids that come up

there with their parents? Are you going to pay them the minimum

wage, too, since the parents are covered?
18 MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. DENT. Very frankly, since we started passing migratory labor

legislation, and this is true, if you come to Pennsylvania where we

passed migratory legislation, and we did this way back, the children

go out into the field. When they go out into the field, if they are

picking berries or anything; else, it is not paid for by the farmer directly

to the children. It is put into the money paid to the parents. And it

is a social problem. That is why they are not affected by legislation.

If the parents have nowhere to put those children, it is the best thing

for them to be out on the farm. I hoed corn for 5 cents an hour when

I was 8 years old. The point is they do not pay migratory farmers.

They usually pool the earnings under the head of the family. They

are not paid individually. That is why we separate the two. The

local help are paid individually. We do not cover them for, the reason

that you have in mind. A kid can go out and pick strawberries and

sit under a tree and eat half of them. How can you compel them to

pay? Sometimes the kids are more of a hindrance than a help. You

have to provide for them 'because, historically, that is the way we have

done it.

Your farm economy has changed in the last decade. It has changed

to where the movement from the farm to the city is because there is an

attraction to high wages and away from the drudgery of farmwork.

If you have lived on a farm you know it is a drudgery. That is the

reason they moved to the city, not because they were not earning

enough. My district is about one-third farming families. I would

not put anything in the bill that was going to throw me out of Congress.

I talked to the farmers and I know what they can and cannot stand.

Mr. LArrA. Are they for this coverage?

Mr. DENT. They are not opposed.

Mr. Sum. If the gentleman will yield. To give you an example of

change, 1962—my district grows a lot of tomatoes—in 1962 less than

1 percent were harvested by machines. In other words, 99 percent

plus were harvested by hand. This year with almost a thousand

tomato machines which will be operating in our harvest this time, over

85 percent will be harvested by machine. We will probably have less

than 15 percent by hand. This gives you the idea of the revolution that

is occurring in that one crop alone. We have the same thing in melons.

There is a tremendous revolution in volume production. I agree this

is not little farms.

Mr. DENT. We are not covering those little farms. Minimum wage

has nothing to do with it because they are not covered by minimum

wage. Advancement, technical advancement in the production of

goods, never depends on the wages being paid. The loom was invented

when they were paying 4 cents a clay. It is not a question of the wage

being paid.

Mr. LArrA. Let me come back to this farmer. I am really confused from what has been said about these guidelines. Really, the

only test we have for a full-time hired hand is that he work at least

13 weeks.

Mr. DENT. That is right. In agriculture.

Mr: LArrA. Let me ask you this. I read sometime back—maybe this

was in the Roosevelt bill, about having a minimum number of farmhands to be covered—is that in this bill?

A
MINIMUM WAGE 19

Mr. DENT. No, it is done by the number of man-days. It is the

same as saying a farmer can employ four 7-day-a-week employees and

then anywhere from six to eight-5- and 6-day employees and still not

be covered by this act. If you have ever lived on a farm or had anything to do with farming you know when you get up to four or five fulltime employees you have a tremendous farming operation.

Mr. LATTA. Not at harvesttime ?

Mr. DENT. Harvesttime is covered in most of these things. You are

talking about a business that is so mechanized today—if you were out

cradling and working with hand implements as you did in the old days,

then you would have a different proposition. Even a farm with 20

acres of wheat today has a combine cooperative deal whereby they buy

mechanical equipment and use it from farm to farm, same as we used

the thresher.

Mr. LATTA. Why did you change from the approach of a minimum

number of workers to this idea?

Mr. DENT. The reason we changed is because in discussions with

the Farm Bureau and the Farm Association and other farm people,

they said they can't buy any minimum wage bill, and you can understand that. That is historical. Mr. Martin wouldn't vote for any

bill and I don't accept his good recommendations. I asked them,

what if they were covered, how could the farmer best survive under

this bill if it was a question of survival? They gave me four or five

alternatives, and, incidentally, one of their alternatives was the coverage of migrant workers. They insisted if any farm help has to be

covered, they ought to be covered. The second thing was, they did not

want the enterprise test because of the vicissitudes of weather, the cash

crops vary in price and volume because of weather and market. A

farmer would be in and out of coverage. But 500 man-days qualifies

it better. The first bill was 300 man-days. We considered the number of employees a farmer could have. Under this bill if he wants

seven full-time

'

alltime employees which is very unusual on any farm,

he would still be able to hire seven full-time employees under this

provision.

Aside from that, you must consider all of the fine points that are

in the act. Any amount that that farmer expends for lodging, for

meals, or any of the farm substances that the man takes with him,

products, can be deducted from the wage—the same as we give hotels—

especially these resort hotels, the right to count against the minimum

wage provisions for room and board and other increments given, or

rather fringe benefits, in plain words. The biggest protestants I had

were Mr. Martin's cattle people. They came in, and I say to you that,

whether they reported to Mr. Martin or not, when they left me they

were satisfied with the bill.

Mr. MARTIN. They didn't tell me that. Could I ask one question,

Mr. Chairman? I know we are going to be concluding this hearing

very shortly. I have here Johnny, UPI dispatch of last October 1,

in regard to minimum wage and it quotes the chairman, Representative Adam Clayton Powell told a news conference that other modifications of the minimum wage bill approved by his House Education and

Labor Committee last month, would increase wages to $1.75 an hour.

Powell indicated that managers of the bill would fall back to two

step increases to $1.60 by mid-1967. His statement today cut another
20 MINIMUM WAGE

10 cents off the goal. In other words, he said $1.50. Now, last week

Mr. Powell was quoted by the press as making a statement that he

was going to offer an amendment to the legislation on the floor to

increase the minimum wage above the $1.60 that is currently in your

bill to $1.75 or $2.00. So here it is, the $1.50 last October, and now

he says last week he is going on up to $2, and I think he wants to cut

the workweek to 32 hours from 40 hours. Have you any comment

on that statement?

Mr. DENT. As you know, it is hard to keep up with Mr. Powell's

thinking sometimes but he does say what he feels. If he felt $1.50 is

enough and he now thinks $2 is sufficient he would say that.

Mr. MARTIN. Do you support the chairman?

Mr. DENT. I am asking consideration of this bill today. I have

not seen any amendments from the chairman. He may introduce them

on the floor. I am committed by my instructions from my subcommittee, who have worked valiantly and hard in trying to get a bill

that is reasonable and logical at this time. I am committed to fight

for this legislation as it is now written, except for certain amendments

which are needed as I stated to you before.

Mr. MARTIN. I trust you are going to support some of the amendments that I will introduce.

Mr. DENT. In the same vein that you will support the bill.

Mr. PEPPER. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend in the warmest way

Mr. Dent for the fine work he has done on this bill. He has done a

hard job. He has brought about a lot of better- understanding and I

believe a lot of agreement that did not previously exist, and I think

he deserves the compliments of his colleagues for the fine job he has

done.

The CHAIRMAN. I agree he has done a good job from his standpoint.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, you won't mind my saying, I hope you

don't do as good a job from your standpoint.

Mr. PEPPER. I had a bill in 1949 and I know the problem. I handled

the bill in the Senate in 1949 when we raised to 75 cents an hour. I

was on the conference committee that wrote the bill in 1938 and I know

the problems of the people who are trying to handle this legislation.

Mr. MARTIN. I haven't concluded, Mr. Chairman, with my questions.

Will Mr. Dent be back when we take this up again after the Easter

recess?

The CHAIRMAN. We will have to stop pretty soon.

Mr. DENT. I will be happy to answer any questions.

The CHAIRMAN. This is an automatic rollcall. So we will have to

stop pretty soon.

Mr. DENT. You say you will have another meeting after the Easter

recess. I know that the 18th will be right after the Easter recess. I

would appreciate very much if the hearing could be on the 19th rather

than on the 18th. Some people are going to give me a dinner back

home, a farmer group.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think you will be a little tardy after all that

holiday?

Mr. DENT. I recover pretty fast. A week is enough for me to get

over Easter.
MINIMUM WAGE 21

The CHAIRMAN. Your suggestion is a very practical one. We will

have the agenda on that day.

Mr. Dent, my chief interest in this matter is my farmers and particularly my dairy farmers. With the bill recently passed fixing daylight saving time that handicaps them pretty much because there are

certain hours of the morning they can't do this farmwork. In my

area, my dairy farmers, the price that they get for their milk is controlled by the Government.

Mr. DENT. SO is ours.

The CHAIRMAN. We have a milk problem. That's all, they can get.

And you put up their wages—in fact many of them are going out of

business now.

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman I know you are very well acquainted

with the dairy industry and its magnitude and how it is operated.

I will compare notes with you on the basis of my own farms at home.

How much help would a hundred-cow farm have to have?

The CHAIRMAN. Milking a hundred cows? That means a much

larger quantity because of your young stock and so forth. That means

a much larger operation in your farm to raise the feed to keep them

alive.

Mr. DENT. A hundred milk cows.

The CHAIRMAN. I would say probably it would take eight men to

operate that dairy, to milk a hundred cows a day.

Mr. DENT. Our average up home is 5 men for 100 milk cows. Maybe

we buy more feed than you do down there. We do buy some feed.

The CHAIRMAN. I will have to come up and see you and how you

do it.

Mr. DENT. We do it like you do, too, with a lot of milking machines,

a product that the hand doesn't touch.

The CHAIRMAN. I can learn something from you.

Mr. DENT. That's our average. This exempts your man anyway

500 man-days—they wouldn't get it in a quarter unless they hired all

8 employees. I doubt if there are too many farms in Virginia when

there are only 1.6 percent of all of the farms in the United States

being covered by the act.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you, how many men—when do you

come under the act in the number of men you employ?

Mr. DENT. In a quarter, 500 man-days in a quarter. That allows

you seven-7-day-a-week men and very few farms have that.

The CHAIRMAN. I will discuss that with you.

Mr. DENT. I don't want to do anything that will injure the family

farm. I want you to understand that.

Mr. MADDEN. You and Mr. Dent may be talking about two different

things. I am confused here. You have not explained, Mr. Chairman,

whether you have milked the cows yourself or whether you had

milking machines there.

The CHAIRMAN. My friend, I have done it both ways.

Mr. PEPPER. And with both hands?'

Mr. MADDEN. I used to milk with the stool and pail 

The CHAIRMAN. That is the way that I did it.

Mr. DENT. But you did not milk 100 cows. You did not have many

hundred-cow farms.
•

22 MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. MADDEN. I did this for years from 6 until 8. This has been

many years ago.

The CHAIRMAN. The way it is now, you could not have operated.

You probably would have starved to death.

Mr. MADDEN. I will never forget up there in that cold Minnesota

morning coming out in the barn and one cow shivering away and

I put down the pail and stool and grabbed the two milk ejaculators—

that is a good word—and the cow turned around and said "Thanks

for the warm hand."

Mr. SISK. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us see how they do it in California.

Mr. DENT. We only know two ways, maybe you have a third.

Mr. SISK. I would like to get back to a little more serious aspect,

Mr. Chairman. Maybe you have a third. I have a very important

dairy industry, I might say. I could do a little bragging about my

dairy industry. But I would like to direct a question. If we are

going to continue until the bell sounds.

I am considering why and for what reason primarily did you limit

coverage in agriculture to the $1.30 instead of tying it to a comparable minimum wage?

Mr. DENT. Very frankly, with all of the money that we spent in

Government, our figures and statistics are so inconclusive that to use

them as a base for this type of legislation would not be reasonable.

Because the point is, we only took the two jumps or three jumps starting at $1 to give this committee, and whoever happens to be here next

year, a period of study before we tie agriculture into the same wage

base as industry. All of us have to come to a conclusion that started

off on the wrong base. It has made it very difficult since then to make

it right. If minimum wage would have started at the minimum levels

in 1938, and there is no criticism with that Congress, there is just the

fact you would have had an easier method of approach to the question

of coverage.

As it is now, you are talking about minimum at $1.60 for the industrial sector of the country and you just do not talk about $1.60 in the

same period in the agricultural sector. Because you must have sooner

or later done some thinking along the line of different titles, different

categories of coverage at basic minimums. You have the industrial

area, you have the retail service area, you have the personal service

area, you have the agricultural service area, you have the miscellaneous

area which defies definition. We are courting now, and someday we

will be bold enough to ask for marriage. The chairman said that we

are courting, putting our foot in the door.

Unless we know how we are doing in these things we cannot just

arbitrarily come out and say we are just going to place $1.60 minimum

wage law on everybody in the country who works for anybody else

without studying whether or not that particular wage level is proper.

We are based upon a minimum wage today at the level of industrial

employment. Much more study has to go into the agricultural sector

because it is brand new in its concept.

Mr. SISK. Let me discuss its philosophical aspect on this a little bit.

Maybe my philosophy as a reason for minimum wage is somewhat

different.
MINIMUM WAGE 23

I had always assumed that we got into minimum wage in the very

beginning in the hopes of trying to assure the working person at least

some decent standard of living, right? So if that is the philosophy

back of minimum wage, then I just do not buy the theory in this bill.

It is a practical matter. That is why I asked the question. Do you

feel like talking about it?

I believe that the minimum wage in agriculture should be based on

the philosophy that in essence we are trying to guarantee a certain

standard of living. It is just as equitable in agriculture as it is in

industry or anywhere else.

Mr. DENT. That is right. But the act was conceived with the idea

that we were going to set up the minimum wage which would give a

person who worked a certain minimum standard of living, but you

did not do that. You took the highest paid workers in America and

you put a minimum wage in that area. You did not do anything for

40 million other people. If you were going to live out the philosophy

of legislation that you have expressed, then the minimum wage at that

time would have said the minimum wage shall be 25 cents an hour in

the United States of America. But you did not. You picked only

those who were already earning 25 cents an hour and you covered them

with the minimum wage. It was more political than it was practical

or economic. Now, we bring the rest in, and we have to start somewhere.

Mr. PEPPER. If the gentleman will allow me to disagree with him.

I know down south in my own State whenever we applied the minimum wage of 1938—it was a principal issue in my 1938 campaign—

sawmills and institutions like that, box factories and the like were very

bitter, and they were in opposition because they were covered by the

bill. I remember very well that over in west Florida, a little place

called Baghdad, the workers told me that they were making 9 cents

an hour. When we put that minimum wage bill in, which was 25 cents

an hour, and the bitterest opposition which we have had to a minimum

wage bill when the minimum wage was 25 cents an hour—it did not get

up to 40 cents an hour until 1943. When we put it up to 75 cents an

hour in 1949 we had less opposition. I know in many instances—I

remember a wage and hour fellow passed around—came down to

Florida and he was telling about what his experience had been in the

South, in the States of Georgia and Alabama and the like. He said

before that minimum wage law went in he would go out in one of

these rural areas, or even in a sawmill area or naval stores area, and in

the commissary, where the women boxed their groceries, you would

never find a refrigerated meat box. They did not have the money.

They bought white meat. After the law had been in effect he said

as he went through that same country in one of these commissaries you

would find a meat market with refrigerated meat and good quality

meat because these people for the first time began to get a minimum

wage and this would enable them to buy a better quality of food.

So it did make a difference.

Mr. DENT. But you only applied it to a small number at that time.

You applied it only to the industries that were paying 25 cents, then

you set up review boards which went into every phase of American

industry and brought them up to 40 cents as they could stand it. Some
24 MINIMUM WAGE

of them took 7 years to be covered. You did not automatically cover

them.

Mr. PEPPER. Twenty-five cents—and then to get above that you had

the review board.

Mr. DENT. 43 cents, 44 cents. The whole thing that I am driving

at is you did not cover agriculture; you did not cover hospitals or these

people. So we are now entering into new coverage which I hope will

reach the stage you are talking about.

( Whereupon at 12:25 p.m., the committee adjourned to reconvene

on Tuesday, April 19, 1966.)

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