Evening star., 1938-07-24
ANDREWS FAVORS
GL0VED IRON FIST
Wage Hour Administrator
Expects No Difficulty
49, ,. -,
~ss- With New Law.
Bv IRA WOLFERT.

=, BY IRA WOLFERT.
orecial Dispatch to The Star.
NEW YORK, July % (N.A.N.Ao.-
Beginning October "a, American busi-
ness men engaged in interstate COM
merce will start making the acquaint-
ance of a shy and soft-woiced man
who will have the power to smack
them out from between their ears
with a burr-studded steel fist but
whose policy it will be to begin by
chucking them under the chin with
velvet glove.
This is Elmer F. Andrews, who
engineer and now, at 48, is New York
State industrial commissioner. an
office which corresponds to secretary
of labor in the cabinets of most Gov
ernors. He has been appointed by
President Roosevelt to administer the
new Labor Standards Act, better
known as the wage-hour law. To
those who have tendency to see
ear under every bed, Mr.. Andrews
says:
Il don't think of myself as a czar.
It doesn't help anybody to be a czar.
Look at what happened to the last
esar,' meaning the Gar of all the
Russias
Expects No Difficulties.
T. 1t will be about three weeks before
Mr.. Andrews clears his desk here and
starts for Washington to build his
new organization. But, since he has
had nine years of applying standards
10 industry in this State, he has a
comprehensive idea of the problems
he will have to face and what to do
about them.
Il don't think there will be ter
rible amount TO resistance to the law"
he said For instance, the eight
hour-day fight can be called won.
Now there is growing acceptance OF
the 40-hour week Manufacturers are
coming to realize that Saturday morn
ing downtown is pretty we'll a waste
of time Most women employees spend
the whole morning dolling up for their
dates in the afternoon.
But perhaps the most important
Dhing is the increasing realization OF
the value to an industry of minimum
wages and maximum hours as an
assault upon unfair competition. Like
the labor union which blankets an
industry, this law will fix standard
labor. cost for all and make the sweat
shops and cut-throat experts toe the
line. Industrialists with common
sense know this is a service of great
benefit to their bank balances"
To Follow New York System.
He expects to be able to evolve
FOR the Nation a system of admins
tration similar to that developed in
New York The first step in the
adoption of standard for an industry
is the appointment of a nine-man
board, three representatives each of
management, labor and the public.
The board makes a report, in a great
majority of cases unanimously, and,
after investigation, the report gen.
orally becomes an order. When the
board fails to agree on report Mr..
Andrews has the power to frame his
own standards. Arbitrarily, of course"
he says, but, as a matter of practice,
the order is in accord with the wishes
of the majority in the industry. Other
wise. enforcement, would be impos-
sible."
Mr. Andrews intends now to rely on
State labor departments, wherever
possible. for enforcement of the Fed
eral standards. In New York." he ex-
planned, Il have 1900 employees under
foo i,,e =, ~
the whole of France. We could simply
turn the whole problem of Federal
enforcement in New York over to
them.
In practice, the men visit each of
the States 10000 factories once year
and make a repeat visit to those fac
tories where they discover violations.
Then, of course, they make an inves-
tigation wherever complaint, whether
anonymous or not, is filed. know
there is a policy in other Government
departments of refusing to act on
anonymous complaints, but I have
found too many of these entirely JUS
tiflable to discard them"
Own Research Staff.
Mr. Andrews will develop his own
research staff to investigate industries
which he believes can afford higher
wage minima than the Is cents an
hour fixed by law. In this connec-
ton he said. the wages already
arrived at by a process Of collective
bargaining will be considered" The
ticklish part Of this problem, however
will be the power the law gives him
to grant exemptions from any such
general order to parts of an industry,
such as plants in the South where a
widespread contention is that lower
living costs justify lower wages than
IN the North. Il expect" he said.
ITO rely heavily on the Bureau of Labor
Statistics for information"
President Roosevelt did not pick Mr..
Andrews out Of hat. When he was
Governor he knew him as assistant to
Industrial Commissioner Frances Per-
kins, present Secretary of Labor. But
he did pick him out of a row Of modest
eight-room. so by 100 homes in subur-
ban Flushing, Long Island
There Mr.. Andrews lives with his
Nebr., and three children. His eldest
child, William, H. was just graduated
cum laude from the Storm King
School and will start in the fall at
the Wharton School of Finance, Uni
vefsity of Pennsylvania. The boy
heures he gets enough of the labor
side of the picture at home" explained
his father. so he's going there to get
the other side" His daughters, Jeanne,
lSs and Daphne, 13, are spending the
summer at Y. w. C. A. camp.
He has been going steadily up the
ladder since his graduation from
Rensselaer, Polytechnic Institute in
1915. After siege Of building roads in
Cuba and factories in New York, he
began working for various compensa-
tion-rating groups. From there to the
State Labor Department was natural
step.
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