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[NOTE: This record can be found on govinfo.gov at https://www.govinfo.gov/ - "Congressional Record (Bound), 1873 to 2016" ]
| Date | Bill | Summary | Page | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 24, 1937 | S. 2475 | Mr. Black; Committee on Education and Labor | 4954 | (81 Cong. Rec. 4954, 1937) |
| May 24, 1937 | S. 2475 | Message from the President and introduction of S. 2475 | 4960 to 4961 | (81 Cong. Rec. 4960, 1937) |
| May 24, 1937 | S. 2475 | Maximum Hours, Minimum Wages, and Child Labor — Amendments | 5409 | (81 Cong. Rec. 5409, 1937) |
| June 1, 1937 | S. 2475 | Petitions and Memorials | 5409 | (81 Cong. Rec. 5409, 1937) |
| June 15, 1937 | S. 2475 | Petitions and Memorials | 5698 | (81 Cong. Rec. 5698, 1937) |
| June 15, 1937 | S. 2475 | Statements regarding the Fair Labor Standards bill | 5700 | (81 Cong. Rec. 5700, 1937) |
| June 17, 1937 | S. 2475 | Delegation of Power Under the Proposed Fair Labor Standards Act | 5857 | (81 Cong. Rec. 5857, 1937) |
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Page
4954 CONGRESSIONAL
RECORD - SENATE
May
24,
1937 (83
Cong. Rec. 4954, 1938)
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(Mr. Black introduced Senate bill 2475, which was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor and appears under a separate heading,)
[PAGE 4954]
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Page
4960 CONGRESSIONAL
RECORD - SENATE
May
24,
1937 (83
Cong. Rec. 4960, 1938)
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MAXIMUM HOURS, MINIMUM WAGES, AND CHILD LABOR (H. DOC. NO. 255)
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair lays before the Senate a message from the President of the United States, which will be read.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
To the Congress of the United States:
The time has arrived for us to take further action to extend the frontiers of social progress. Such further action initiated by the legislative branch of the Government, administered by the Executive, and sustained by the judicial, is within the common-sense framework and purpose of our Constitution and receives beyond doubt the approval of our electorate.
The overwhelming majority of our population earns its daily bread either in agriculture or in industry. One-third of our population, the overwhelming majority of which is in agriculture or industry, is ill-nourished, ill-clad, and ill-housed.
The overwhelming majority of this Nation has little patience with that small minority which vociferates today that prosperity has returned, that wages are good, that crop prices are high and that Government should take a holiday.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that the exponents of the theory of private initiative as the cure for deepseated national ills want in most cases to improve the lot of mankind. But, well intentioned as they may be, they fail for four evident reasons-first, they see the problem from the point of view of their own business; second, they see the problem from the point of view of their own locality or region; third, they cannot act unanimously because they have no machinery for agreeing among themselves; and, finally, they have no power to bind the inevitable minority of chiselers within their own ranks.
Though we may go far in admitting the innate decency of this small minority, the whole story of our Nation proves that social progress has too often been fought by them. In actual practice it has been effectively advanced only by the passage of laws by State legislatures or the National Congress.
Today, you and I are pledged to take further steps to reduce the lag in the purchasing power of industrial workers and to strengthen and stabilize the markets for the farmers' products. The two go hand in hand. Each depends for its effectiveness upon the other. Both working simultaneously will open new outlets for productive capital. Our Nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population should be able to devise ways ahd means of insuring to all our ablebodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.
Enlightened business is learning that competition ought not to cause bad social consequences which inevitably react upon the profits of business itself. All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of manpower, Government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor, and the exploitation of unorganized labor.
Nearly 20 years ago, in his dissenting opinion in Hammer v. Dagenhart, Mr. Justice Holmes expressed his views as to the power of the Congress to prohibit the shipment in interstate or foreign commerce of the product of the labor of children in factories below what Congress then deemed to be civilized social standards. Surely the experience of the last 20 years has only served to reinforce the Wisdom and the rightness of his views. And surely, if he was right about the power of the Congress over the work of children in factories, it is equally right that the Congress has the power over decent wages and hours in those same factories. He said:
I had thought that the propriety of the exercise of a power admitted to exist 1n some cases was for the consideration of Congress alone, and that this Court always had disavowed the right to intrude its judgment upon questions of policy or morals. It is not for this Court to pronounce when prohibition is necessary to regulation, if it ever may be necessary - to say that it is perm1ssible as against strong drink but not as against the product of ruined lives.
The act does not meddle With anything belonging to the States. They may regulate their internal affairs and their domest1c
[PAGE 4960]
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PAGE 4961 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE 1937
commerce as they like. But when they seek to send their products across the State line they are no longer within their rights. If there were no Constitution and no Congress, their power to cross the line would depend upon their neighbors. Under the Constitution such commerce belongs not to the States but to Congress to regulate. It may carry out its views of public pollcy, whatever indirect effect they may have upon the activities of the States. Instead of being encountered by a prohibitive taritr at her boundaries, the State encounters the pUblic policy of the United States, which it 1s for Congress to express. The public policy of the United States is shaped with a view to the benefit of the Nation as a whole • • •. The national welfare, as understood by Congress, may require a difierent attitude within its sphere from that of some self-seeking State. It seems to me entirely constitutional for Congress to enforce its understanding by all the means at its command.
Mr. Justice Brandeis, Mr. Justice Clark, and Mr. Justice McKenna agreed. A majority of the Supreme Court, however, decided 5 to 4 against Mr. Justice Holmes and laid down a rule of constitutional law which has ever since driven into impractical distinctions and subterfuges all attempts to assert the fundamental power of the National Government over interstate commerce.
But although Mr. Justice Holmes spoke for a minority of the Supreme Court, he spoke for a majority of the American people.
One of the primary purposes of the formation of our Federal Union was to do away with the trade barriers between the States. To the Congress, and not to the states, was given the power to regulate commerce among the several States. Congress cannot interfere in local affairs, but when goods pass through the channels of commerce from one State to another they become subject to the power of the Congress, and the Congress may exercise that power to recognize and protect the fundamental interests of free labor.
And so to protect the fundamental interests of free labor and a free people we propose that only goods which have been produced under conditions which meet the minimum standards of free labor shall be admitted to interstate commerce. Goods produced under conditions which do not meet rudimentary standards of decency should be regarded as contraband and ought not to. be allowed to pollute the channels of interstate trade.
These rudimentary standards will of necessity at the start fall far short of the ideal. Even in the treatment of national problems there are geographical and industrial diversities which practical statesmanship cannot wholly ignore. Backward labor conditions and relatively progressive labor conditions cannot be completely assimilated and made uniform at one fell swoop without creating economic dislocations.
Practical exigencies suggest the wisdom of distinguishing labor conditions which are clearly oppressive from those which are not as fair or as reasonable as they should be under circumstances prevailing in particular industries. Most fair labor standards as a practical matter require some differentiation between different industries and localities. But there are a few rudimentary standards of which we may properly ask general and widespread observance. Failure to observe them must be regarded as socially and economically oppressive and unwarranted under almost any circumstance.
Allowing for a few exceptional trades and permitting longer hours on the payment of time and a half for overtime, it should not be difficult to define a general maximum working week. Allowing for appropriate qualifications and general classifications by administrative action, it should also be possible to put some floor below which the wage ought not to fall. There should be no difficulty in ruling out the products of the labor of children from any fair market. And there should also be little dispute when it comes to ruling out of the interstate markets products of employers who deny to their workers the right of self-organization and collective bargaining, whether through the fear of labor spies, the bait of company unions, or the use of strikebreakers. The abuses disclosed by the investigations of the Senate must be promptly curbed.
With the establishment of these rudimentary standards as a base we must seek to build up, through appropriate administrative machinery, minimum wage standards of fairness and reasonableness, industry by industry, having due regard to local and geographical diversities and to the effect of unfair labor conditions upon competition in interstate trade and upon the maintenance of industrial peace.
Although a goodly portion of the goods of American industry move in interstate commerce and will be covered by the legislation which we recommend, there are many purely local pursuits and services which no Federal legislation can effectively cover. No State is justified in sitting idly by and expecting the Federal Government to meet State responsibility for those labor conditions with which the State may effectively deal without fear of unneighborly competition from sister States. The proposed Federal legislation should be a stimulus and not a hindrance to State action.
As we move resolutely to extend the frontiers of social progress, we must be guided by practical reason and not by barren formulae. We must ever bear in mind that our objective is to improve and not to impair the standard of living of those who are now undernourished, poorly clad, and ill housed.
We know that overwork and underpay do not increase the national income when a large portion of our workers remain unemployed. Reasonable and flexible use of the long-established right of Government to set and to change working hours can, I hope, decrease unemployment in those groups in which unemployment today principally exists.
Our problem is to work out in practice those labor standards which will permit the maximum but prudent employment of our human resources to bring within the reach of the average man and woman a. maximum of goods and of services conducive to the fulfillment of the promise of American life.
Legislation can, I hope, be passed at this session of the Congress further to help those who toil in factory and on farm. We have promised it. We cannot stand still.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.
THE WHITE HOUSE, May 24, 1937
Mr. BYRNES. I ask that the message of the President of the United States be referred to the Committee on Education and Labor and that it also be printed as a document.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BLACK. Mr. President, I ask consent to introduce a bill and request that it be referred to the Committee on Education and Labor.
Mr. McNARY. Mr. President, may I ask the Senator is that bill intended to carry out the suggestions made by the President in his message to the Congress?
Mr. BLACK. It is.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, the bill introduced by the Senator from Alabama will be received and referred as requested.
The bill (S. 2475) to provide for the establishment of fair labor standards in employments in and affecting interstate commerce, and for other purposes, was read twice by its title and referred to the Committee on Education and Labor.
[PAGE 4961]
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Page
5409 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -
SENATE June 8,
1937 (81 Cong. Rec. 5409,
1937)
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MAXIMUM HOURS, MINIMUM WAGES. AND CHILD LABOR — AMENDMENTS
Mr. BRIDGES submitted amendments intended to be proposed by him to the bill (S. 2475) to provide for the establishment of fair labor standards in employments in and affecting interstate commerce, and for other purposes, which were referred to the Committee on Education and Labor and ordered to be printed.
[Page 5409]
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5698 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -
SENATE June 15,
1937 (81 Cong. Rec. 5698,
193?)
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PETITIONS AND MEMORIALS
The PRESIDENT pro tempore also laid before the Senate the statement of Wilhelm Kuehne, secretary-treasurer of the Federation of Building Trades Workmen of America, Jamaica, N.Y., relative to the so-called Black-Connery bill, to provide for the establishment of fair labor standards in employments in and affecting interstate commerce, and for other purposes, which was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor.
[PAGE 5696]
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5700 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -
SENATE June 15,
1937 (81 Cong. Rec. 5700,
1937)
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ADDRESS BY SENATOR BLACK ON FAIR LABOR STANDARDS BILL
[Mr. MINTON asked and obtained leave to have printed in the RECORD a radio address delivered by Senator BLACK on the 7th instant, relative to the so-called fair labor standards bill, which appears in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT BY SECRETARY PERKINS ON FAIR LABOR STANDARDS BILL
[Mr. WAGNER asked and obtained leave to have printed in the RECORD a statement made by Secretary Perkins before the joint hearing of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor and the House Committee on Labor on the 4th instant, relative to the so-called fair labor standards bill of 1937, which appears in the Appendix.]
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Page
5857 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -
SENATE June 17,
1937 (81 Cong. Rec. ????,
1937)
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DELEGATION OF POWER UNDER PROPOSED FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT - STATEMENT BY ROBERT H. JACKSON
[Mr. GUFFEY asked and obtained leave to have printed in the RECORD a statement by Robert H. Jackson, Assistant Attorney General, on the subject of Delegation of Power Under the Proposed Fair Labor Standards Act, which appears in the Appendix.]
DIGEST OF FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1937
Mr. McGILL asked and obtained leave to have printed in the RECORD a prepared digest of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937, which appears in the Appendix.]
[PAGE 5857
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