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as ours the frontiers of business generally have been rather rapidly restricted within the residue of buying power left after the joint taxation of employer and employee by Federal, State, and local governments. Added together, this is a large "taking," not the little 28 or 30 percent sometimes figured, but more like 50 to 90 percent, as is readily ascertained by anyone interested enough to look up the true figures. The residue left is really unworkable and for practical purposes has bankrupted the marginals.

The general assumption, however, which has been circulated in government and economic circles seems to regard purchases made with tax money as income to industry generally, whereas in reality it is double outgo. The tax money that bought the goods goes back to pay more taxes, and cannot be used for pay rolls to make the goods. The laborer has to make more goods for less pay and the employer has to maintain machinery and buildings to make goods for which there is no return market. This makes taxes a very critical factor in a modern civilization where so much capital investment is needed to equip each laborer. It doubles the investment needed to conduct an employing business.

I, therefore, feel justified in opposing the full-employment bill as now drafted. Very truly yours,

WAGER FISHER.

STATEMENT OF MOST REVEREND ROBERT E. LUCEY, S. T. D., ARCHBISHOP OF SAN

ANTONIO

By the law of Nature and of Nature's God man has a right to labor for himself or for another to the extent to which some income is necessary for him to support himself and his family in decent and frugal comfort and save something for the uncertain future. The working classes, informed and articulate, will no longer endure the economic servitude to which many were subjected in the past. If capitalism in a republic does not permit them to work they will sacrifice private ownership for state tyranny and trade liberty for bread.

Owing to the unequal distribution of income and wealth in our country private industry and agriculture cannot give employment to all who wish to work and must work to live. Under the full-employment bill the Congress will know beforehand the probable number of unemployed in a given period. The representatives of the people must then decide whether to accord to these laboring people the liberty of the sons of God to work and live or the liberty to starve.

Civil power is divine power: It comes from God. It is unthinkable that the power of God should be used to drive the children of God to futility and frustration. It is imperative that the full employment bill be passed. It is equally imperative that it be not amended to death. Strangely enough, those who most heartily fear and hate socialism are the very ones who, by the injustices of their reactionary policies, drive the people to the desperation of the all-powerful state.

MRS. HENRY A. INGRAHAM, PRESIDENT, THE NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The national board of the YWCA has been concerned since 1866 with the needs of women and girls. It has a special concern for young women workers in business and industry who make up a very large section of the YWCA constituency of 3,000,000. We are interested also in future occupational opportunities for some 250,000 high-school girls who are members of YWCA groups and 100,000 college students. Our constituency includes many urban housewives, farm women, and women of all races and of diverse nationality and religious backgrounds.

The public-affairs committee of the national board of the YWCA is supporting the full employment bill (S. 380 H. R. 2202) because we believe it will promote the economie welfare of all our citizens. We support this bill more specifically because anything less than full employment holds danger for thousands of women and members of minority groups. We think one of the results of a congressional failure to promote full employment would be to engender bitter rivalries for whatever jebs are available-men against women, veterans against nonveterans, whites against Negroes.

On this basis we, as a woman's organization, are particularly wary of attempts to solve unemployment by pushing women out of jobs. Those who argue against measures like this bill, like to say that its proponents are alarmists, that things

will work out without congressional meddling. They often argue that we overestimate the need for jobs, saying that most women, for example, will drop out of the employment market.

Many local YWCA's have become acutely aware that the majority of postwar civic planning groups have not given full consideration to the postwar problems of women workers. Some businessmen and manufacturers quite frankly state that they don't know what they will do about employing women. The general assumption on the part of men (unfortunately shared by many economically secure women) is that married women will automatically return to their homes and that most unmarried women will soon marry. It is undoubtedly true that most young women hope to marry, and that they hope their husbands will be able to support them. However, simple arithmetic shows that they cannot all have their wish. If every single male in the Nation marries, there will be 3,000,000 women left without any prospect of marriage. There are over 12,000,000 single women over the age of 14 and only 9,000,000 single men.

The error of assuming that jcbs for women are an extra and not a necessity is revealed by many studies, which show that most women work because they have to. They either support themselves or are responsible for dependents. Those who live with their families contribute to family expenses, and it should be kept in mind that thousands of families in the lower-income brackets keep going only because all the adults work. To quote from one of the recent studies, the Women's Bureau found that 75 percent of the women working in five areas which it studied within the last year were members of households. In approximately 90 percent of these households they contributed regularly to family upkeep. At least half of the women. who so contributed regularly gave 50 percent or more of their take-home pay. About 1 in every 10 women was the sole wage earner. We can give an example also from one of our own complete surveys, which will soon be published by the local YWCA in a city in which heavy industries predominate. In this study, 1,547 women in the 42 factories employing women were reached. Of this number, 74 percent expressed their desire to continue working after the war and 83 percent stated their need to work at the time they were interviewed (May 1945). Sixty-two percent of the women are entirely selfsupporting; 51 percent of them contribute to family income. The average number of dependents was 1.5. Twenty-one percent of the dependents were under the age of 5, and 43 percent were between the ages of 6 and 18. Approximately half of the married women expected to quit work. What will become of the other married women and of the 58 percent who have no husbands?

These studies are valuable because they explode the argument that women work for pin money. Most women work because they must support themselves and support others. Will these women need jobs in the future? Yes; if we can judge from the following typical comments from workers in our membership which were written last May:

A drill-press operator from Syracuse who was laid off the next month, wrote: "This plant is going to reconvert, but there hasn't been too much done. However, I will certainly need a job after the war as I have to support myself. With the high cost of food and clothing it's been difficult to save much. I'm not much of a spendthrift, so my money has not been wasted. I've always worked and feel that many women will have to continue working after the war, much more than before."

From Lawrence, Mass., a textile worker wrote: "I was laid off the day after VE-day for lack of work. I was transferred to a woman's job. I knew that I was taking a man's place but didn't expect to be laid off so soon. I live with my family and help support my sister and dad. The cost of living being such as it is, I just about make ends meet with my pay. I believe that the woman's place is in the home, but if a person has no other means of support what can she do but work?

And a Negro girl from Detroit said: "I want to work after the war. My husband was working at Ford's, but he's ill and I don't know how long it will last. So I'm the breadwinner of our family."

Last April, 2,000 industrial workers answered a national poll conducted by the YWCA. Of these, 72 percent said it was necessary for them to have a job after the war. The great majority of these 2,000 women were under 30 years old and unmarried. Fifty-four percent were on war jobs. The answers of many of these young women showed that they were looking anxiously to the days abead. "People are subconsciously worried, but they don't talk about it," one older worker asserted. "The minute we hear rumors of lay-offs, we begin to look for something we're trained to do. The worry eats into our sleep."

These girls have to work to eat. What will happen to them if failure to plan results in depression? They have in the past been considered "marginal workers." If they are allowed to form a pool of unemployed, they will be a threat to the employed workers. Past experience has shown us that services of marginal workers can be secured at substandard wages and under poor working conditions, that they tend to depress wages in general and to lower the purchasing power of the Nation. This country cannot afford to allow a condition to arise in which there are so many more workers than jobs that women and members of minority groups must continue to be regarded as marginal. All of these people are equally entitled to a job, and none of them should be barred because of sex, marital status, race, color, or creed. Women from scientists to electrical assemblers worked hard and well during the war at a variety of jobs which showed their skill and adaptability. This skill is a contribution needed in postwar America. Yet, as cut-backs were occurring on the west coast and elsewhere even before the end of the war, YWCA staff members reported that Negroes and women were the first to form lines in front of the United States Employment Office. They must have opportunities for steady work that will enable them to get seniority or greater job security. It is for reasons like these that we support this bill.

We know that many women will reenter household employment and the service trades. Standards in these fields—including hours, wages, quality of work done, conditions of employment-can be raised and maintained at a high level under a national policy of full employment. But under conditions of mass unemployment, these women will be forced to accept starvation wages. Many girls have known the war as the first period when they earned a decent pay check. Are they to go back to the $2 a week as a household worker, the $12 a week as a waitress, the $10 as a dime-store clerk that many experienced in the depression? Only full employment can prevent this.

Those who assert that people's savings form a huge backlog of spending power that will carry private industry into a boom peried would not find proof in the poll mentioned above. Although 85 percent of the 2.000 girls who answered our poll had savings, half of these had saved less than $300. Another 20 percent saved between $300 and $500 and 22 percent saved over $500.

It is understandable that a girl who never had a savings account should feel elated by a two- or three-hundred-dollar balance; but even the most professional of optimists should be able to see how fast these small hoards will dwindle when these girls are laid off. Those bank accounts will be used to pay the landlord and the grocer while the girl hunts a job; they will not be used to stimulate the production of refrigerators and electric irons. That is, they will not be used in this way unless congressional planning averts a long and costly period of job hunting for the girl in question.

As we have said, many girls now working hope to get married and quit work. But they cannot do this unless their husband has a job that can support two. One all-apparent fact about these women workers in our membership is their concern for the veterans. Elsa Graves, a steelworker, who is the chairman of our national industrial council, said in a speech last year:

"I hope I haven't given the impression that women will fight to hold their jobs, not matter what. I think practically every woman in the United States would quit her job rather than have a veteran without a job; but—and this is the most important point-I don't see any reason why women should have to choose between a job for themselves and a job for someone else. Most workingwomen of America are conscious that their future as workers is dependent on planning for full employment.”

Miss Graves might have added that these young women are the wives and sweethearts of veterans. Many of them would like nothing better than to go back to the home as they are advised by those who argue that women should release jobs. However, until their returning veteran can get a good and secure job, they can't quit work. Full employment is the one assurance that women can stay home if they prefer to.

The case for those whose husbands are not returning is vividly stated by one girl worker, who says "I stayed home with my baby for 6 months, living off my savings and allotment. Then I received a telegram that my husband was killed in action. I almost went to pieces, and decided the best thing for me to do was to go back to work. Some day I hope to have a home of my own and more children. Until then I will continue to work. When the war is over it will be swell to know that many wives and sweethearts will again know the sound of footsteps, as the day ends, of their men coming home from work and not from

war." We hope the footsteps she mentions will not be the dragging ones of discouraged job-hunters.

There is another group about which we are greatly concerned--the Negro. The war has given Negroes-men and women-their first real opportunity to secure white-collar employment and factory jobs. As an organization deeply committed to a democracy with opportunity for all regardless of race, color, or creed, we abhor the prospect of a depression which would pit Negroes and whites against each other for jobs. Only through full employment can Negroes and other minority groups realize democratic opportunity. This is a point of crucial danger, a point that Congress cannot afford to ignore. "I am doubtful," says a Negro timekeeper in a tobacco factory, "that this position will be open for me in the postwar world. I believe that my being a member of a minority group may have some effect on management's decision." There is no doubt that her fears are justified and that no measure short of full employment can fully answer her problem.

It is for the sake of women like these that we support this bill-for the girl who supports herself and helps her family, the girl who wants to stay home if her returning serviceman can get a job, the Negro girl who dreads a situation where her only choice will be menial and low-paid jobs.

This bill will certainly require supporting legislation of many kinds. It is not a panacea, but--and this is where its importance rests-it will establish conditions under which the people of America can have confidence in their future. It is designed to give all possible encouragement to private business and industry to employ as many people as possible, and as quickly as reconversion to civilian production will allow. Many forward-looking businessmen understand this and support the bill. At the same time, while encouraging private enterprise, it rightly and justly establishes as a policy of the Federal Government, under law, that "All Americans able to work and seeking work have the right to useful remunerative, regular and full-time employment." A positive declaration such as this, of the intention of the Government to protect the basic right of its people to engage in useful, remunerative work, is an assurance that the workers of this country expect and have the right to expect. It is an assurance that private enterprise should also welcome, because it supports continuous purchasing power and lessens the threat of sudden fluctuations and of depressions that have hovered over business and worker alike. How much better for Government, business, and labor to plan in partnership now than for Government to set up hastily improvised, makeshift relief projects in a depression period.

Carefully worked out, socially useful projects can and should be planned in advance. The cost of such projects will be little compared with the cost of war, or the cost of public-relief programs. If only a fraction of our population is employed, these few will have to bear the burden of taxes for paying off our national debt, and for carrying the load of public relief. If more people are working and fewer are relief recipients, the tax burden can be more widely and evenly shared by the employed people of the Nation. The entire social-security system can be more adequately and efficiently administered if there are fewer people on the direct relief rolls. There are many types of public-works projects which are within the proper function of the Federal Government that are income producing, and will pay their own way.

Some excellent surveys of local conditions have been made by citizens postwar planning committees in many cities. To a large extent many of the present and future employment problems may be settled in local communities, but the task is too large and the dislocations caused by the war are too great to be handled entirely by local and State governments or by private planning committees. The problem of displaced and migratory workers is one illustration of the necessity for Federal responsibility.

Americans like to tackle their problems at the grass roots, and their confidence in private enterprise and initiative is great. But confidence in the greatness of American business, industry, and agriculture is not incompatible with confidence in a democratic government which is a government of people, and which should be ready to work in partnership with private enterprise to protect the welfare of all of its citizens. Under a bill of this kind, planning will not be removed from the people and placed in the hand of a totalitarian superstate. Planning is to be done by a joint committee of the Congress, the peoples' representatives of both parties, after consultation with various economic groups (also representatives of the people), business, industry, labor, agriculture, and consumers. Never before has this country had a greater opportunity to achieve national unity in time of peace to compare with wartime unity. We know from

the experience during the war that we can work together, plan together in a truly democratic way if we can forget special interests in the interests of the common welfare. This bill says, and the people who support it say, that private enterprise should go ahead, develop to its utmost, and employ as many people as it can. The Government's role is that of intelligent partnership in planning. The present bill does not guarantee a fixed number of jobs for a fixed number of people, but recognizes that the actual number of people in the labor force may vary from year to year. It provides a solid framework within which the President and the Congress can, after consultation with various economic groups, plan in advance measures designed to promote employment opportunities and to maintain a high national income.

To fulfill her responsibilities as a member of the family of nations, the United States must not allow mass unemployment to grip the country. A depression here can only mean world-wide depression, and economic disturbances which usually lead to war or revolution. We are not looking for economic panaceas but we believe in planning as far as is humanly possible for our economic security.

We would like to make one more point: This bill is championed by numerous organizations, covering the social work field, religious leaders, small businessmen, and labor. But the demand, however inarticulate, for full employment is far wider and far stronger than any organization can indicate. It is the one thing that American workers, be they white collar or industrial, have most on their minds. They may not know much about legislative proposals, but they know they want jobs for all. Everyone remembers and dreads another depression. Everyone has seen that America can produce when it has to. Workers will not forget these lessons. They expect their Government to take a hand, and they expect planning. If their expectations are met by ineffectual piecemeal measures, this Congress will be repudiated as no Congress has ever been. The American people will not tolerate more depressions. We in the YWCA believe this because we see white-collar girls and industrial girls in discussion groups, in clubs, in dances, in swimming pools, in conferences. Wherever they are, they are discussing postwar jobs. Everyone of our seven annual conferences of business and industrial girls this summer adopted full employment as an emphasis for this year. At one of these conferences, a girl said simply, “If factories close and there aren't jobs, there is no peace." Our National Business and Professional Council, representing 60,000 girls, has full employment as one of its national emphases, and pledges itself to "work for full employment by exercising our power as citizens to elect the kind of Government that will be responsive to our needs as workers." Our National Industrial Council has a similar emphasis.

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We know, therefore, that the interest in this issue is Nation-wide, that it is intense, that it pervades every group of workers, and that the questions they are asking are: Why did Congress wait so long? When will it act?

Hon. CARTER MANASCO,

UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA,
Washington 5, D. C., September 28, 1945.

Chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the
Executive Departments,

House Office Building, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR CONGRESSMAN: I have your telegram of September 22 and your subsequent letter of September 27, and I note the hearings on the full-employment bill have been deferred.

It is my thought that it will not be necessary for me to testify before your committee on this question. I testified on the subject matter before the Senate committee and could not add to the statement made at that time.

I will arrange for Mr. Robert Howe, our legislative representative, to file with you a copy of my Senate testimony.

With every apreciation of your personal and official courtesy, I am,

Sincerely yours,

JOHN L. LEWIS.

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