The CHAIRMAN. That privilege will be accorded. I wish you would read that section of your bill which perhaps gives authority to regulate these agreements.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir. But I want to state that the bill as prepared gives to this commission very broad and very general authority in all of these matters, and specific authority to do everything that is necessary to carry these provisions into execution. The section referred to is as follows:

SEC. 6. The commission is hereby authorized and directed to sanction trade agreements between competitors engaged in interstate trade or commerce, providing for a joint selling or purchasing agency, or to supply each other with any of the means or methods of carrying on their business, or for the purchase or sale of their plants, or parts thereof, or property used in conducting their business, whenever in the judgment of such commission such trade agreements will not unreasonably restrict or limit competition, nor raise prices beyond what may be justified by the supply and demand, nor authorize competitors making such trade agreements to engage in unfair methods of competition against other competitors not parties thereto. A joint application shall be presented to the commission filing therewith a copy of the proposed agreement signed by all the parties thereto. The form and requirements of such application shall be prescribed by the commission. Upon such application the commission shall make such investigation and hear such evidence as they may deem pertinent and shall approve said agreement unless it shall appear to them from the facts submitted that said agreement will result in an unreasonable restraint of interstate trade and commerce or otherwise violate the provisions of this act.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Cummins, you may interrogate.

Senator CUMMINS. Do you think it is necessary to have a commission to deal with the coal business alone?

Mr. VINSON. I do.

Senator CUMMINS. Would you then suggest a similar commission for each kind of business?

Mr. VINSON. I think that must necessarily follow. I would suggest this, Senator, that the experiment of a commission of this kind to deal with the coal business would in all probability be a precedent for commissions of other kinds to deal with other businesses. One commission can not possibly deal intelligently with all the different branches of the business.

Senator CUMMINS. You recognize, I assume-it is claimed at leasta necessity for this trade agreement is quite as imperative in other kinds of business as in the coal business?

Mr. VINSON. I understand that that is true.

Senator CUMMINS. Then your suggestion is that we should have a series of commissions, each one dealing with a particular kind of business?

Mr. VINSON. That is my suggestion along the line of the Interstate Commerce Commission in dealing with transportation questions.

Senator CUMMINS. Taking up your paper-and a very valuable one it is in the order in which you have referred to the subjects, have you any doubt with regard to the power of the General Government to require an owner of land to take all the coal from under it in the course of his mining operations?

Mr. VINSON. If that property is devoted to interstate commerce I have no doubt about it at all.

Senator CUMMINS. I am assuming now that a coal company owns a thousand acres of land.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. Underlaid with coal.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. Have you any doubt about the rights of the General Government to say that the coal company must take out all the coal under that land, or take it out in such way that all the coal can become available for the use of the world?

Mr. VINSON. I think, Senator, my idea is that the dividing line would be that if the coal that was taken out of the mine was all devoted exclusively to intrastate business, and no part of the coal mined was interstate business, then I do not think the Government would have the power to do it, but if the coal was so intermingledpart went into interstate and part into intrastate business-then the power of Congress, I think, over it, under the interstate-commerce clause, would be supreme.

Senator CUMMINS. But could a provision that looks simply to the conservation of our natural resources be called a regulation of commerce?

Mr. VINSON. I understand, and I think the court has interpreted that the power to regulate commerce, as expressed in the Constitution, means the power to absolutely prohibit; that it is supreme. Senator CUMMINS. Prohibit what?

Mr. VINSON. Prohibit all interstate-commerce business.
Senator CUMMINS. Precisely.

Mr. VINSON. They so decided in the Lottery case, I remember. Senator CUMMINS. Do you think that Congress could say to the coal companies, "You can not engage in interstate commerce unless you take out your coal in a particular manner"?

Mr. VINSON. I think so, according to the decision.

Senator CUMMINS. I assume that was on the basis of your suggestion. And I assume also that you find a foundation for your plan with respect to compensation for injuries in the same clause of the Constitution.

Mr. VINSON. In the same clause.

Senator CUMMINS. Under your plan the employer bears no part of the burden, I take it.

Mr. VINSON. He bears about three-fourths of it.

Senator CUMMINS. No; because you very justly said that

Mr. VINSON. I mean in the first instance.

Senator CUMMINS. That so far as his contribution is concerned, he passed it on to the consumer.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir; that is true.

Senator CUMMINS. But the employee bears a part of the burden. Mr. VINSON. Temporarily only; just the same as the employer. The two are put exactly on the same basis.

Senator CUMMINS. Unless the burden put upon the employer resulted in an increase of his wages.

Mr. VINSON. Yes.

Senator CUMMINS. He would be the final ultimate bearer of that burden.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir; that would necessarily follow.

Senator CUMMINS. Do you think it would follow as certainly as that the price of coal would be increased by the contribution of 1 cent a ton for the fund which is to be created?

Mr. VINSON. I think it would.

Senator CUMMINS. Would it not be fairer, Mr. Vincent, to make the business bear the burden?

Mr. VINSON. That was the idea.

Senator CUMMINS. Therefore, if your plan were adopted to create the fund entirely by a contribution from the business itself, then it would certainly bear the entire burden?

Mr. VINSON. Well, I naturally assume, Senator Cummins, that it would do it anyway, but the real reason why I suggested in the bill for the employee to pay 40 or 50 cents a month was that it would be to the advantage of the employee. I have talked with a great many of them and they would prefer to do it.

Senator CUMMINS. What is their reason?

Mr. VINSON. They say it would make them more independent; they would feel less like pensioners and less like objects of charity to do it, because the sum provided for is so small it is unappreciable.

Senator CUMMINS. Under your plan it takes something by way of charity, it seems to me, and they ought not to be very sensitive about the amount.

Mr. VINSON. Well, they take what, in my judgment, represents only a small part of the loss which the miners as a whole suffer, as well as the loss which the operators as a whole suffer in these accidents.

Senator CUMMINS. But if there is to be any fund created, partially by contribution from the business, I see no good reason why it should not all be taken from the business and be considered a part of the charges of the business itself.

Mr. VINSON. So far as I am advised, I should think the coal companies-I know those I am familiar with and in touch with would be very glad indeed to pay this fund, and not put any part of it on the miner.

Senator CUMMINS. Does your brief cover the legal aspects of that phase of the case?

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. That is, the power of Congress to pass a bill for compensation for injuries in all the vocations of businesses of the country?

Mr. VINSON. Interstate; yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. That is to say, it is your view that any man or corporation that is engaged in business, part of which may, or does, pass into interstate channels of trade, may be regulated in the manner suggested by Congress?

Mr. VINSON. I think so.

Senator CUMMINS. That is, you mean compensated for all the injuries that may occur in that business?

Mr. VINSON. In that business; Congress has assumed to exercise that power, and it has been sustained.

Senator CUMMINS. I assume you have examined the decisions, or rather the decision, of the Supreme Court of the United States upon the old employers' liability act?

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir; I discussed it in the brief I have filed. In that case, if you will recall, it was a divided court of five to four.

Senator CUMMINS. I remember.

Mr. VINSON. On the constitutionality of it, and five held that it was unconstitutional, not so much because of its substance as its form. The form of the bill covered all employers, whether engaged in interstate business or not; simply employees of a carrier that was engaged in interstate business. The man might not have had any connection, as a matter of fact, with interstate, and that is the ground upon which the five held the bill unconstitutional. Of course, the form of the bill was changed, but the substance remains in the new act.

Senator CUMMINS. Take the instance which comes to my mind of a brickyard situated in West Virginia. Substantially all its product is sold in West Virginia, but in the course of a year two or three carloads, or a dozen carloads, or a hundred carloads, are sent beyond the State into some other State. Do you believe that the business of that company, to its full extent, can be regulated by Congress under this power that we have cited?

Mr. VINSON. Under the recent decision I think they can, for this reason: The courts have taken the position very firmly-now this comes from a number of cases and no one particular case-they have taken the position very firmly that in all matters, all the instrumentalities that go into or enter into interstate commerce must necessarily be exclusively regulated by Congress whenever Congress assumes to speak on that subject, but whatever inference there may be— that they have considered an inference of any attempt on the part of the State to regulate any part of that interstate commerce must fail because the State must surrender that power to Congress when each one of them went into the Union.

Senator CUMMINS. Are you familiar with the work that is being done now by the legislative commission on that subject-the joint commission of the House and Senate and two men upon the outside? Mr. VINSON. I can not say that I am familiar with the details of it. Senator CUMMINS. The commission of which Senator Sutherland, I think, is the chairman. You have never appeared before that commission?

Mr. VINSON. No, sir; I have never appeared before them.

Senator CUMMINS. Well, it has in course of preparation, I think, a bill upon this very subject, as I understand it, however, limited only probably to the common carriers.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir. You mean a compensation bill?

Senator CUMMINS. A compensation bill.

Mr. VINSON. I have seen a statement of that. I did not understand you before.

Senator CUMMINS. Would it not be better, if your view is correct, to have the legislation upon the subject all in one bill, if there is to be any distinction between carriers and the ordinary producing business?

Mr. VINSON. I think, Senator, that in order to get the best results and to give the men who are injured immediate relief, and give them full compensation for the injury, there should be some central body with power vested in them, with the right or authority and the duty to take hold of that injured man immediately, and I do not believe that any one commission or any one tribunal could possibly

do that, as it affects all of the carriers and every other character of business that enters into interstate.

Senator CUMMINS. I take it that any plan will involve the creation in each State of some tribunal to ascertain the facts of the injury at least.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. That fact must be ascertained.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. In any system I have ever seen the question of injury must be ascertained also.

Mr. VINSON. That would have to be done before you would get a full compensation.

Senator CUMMINS. And therefore it would seem to me that if it is wise for Congress to legislate at all upon the subject, it ought to be in a single measure, and I for one hope that you will put your views before the commission of which I have spoken, for I believe that the whole tendency of the time is toward compensation rather than toward liability-rather than toward the liability which is worked out through legal proceedings.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. Passing that, therefore, I come to the proposition to legalize in some form or other agreements which in a measure suppress or restrain competition. I understand you are in favor of legalizing such agreements, provided their character is approved before operations begin under them.

Mr. VINSON. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. That is your view?

Mr. VINSON. That is my view.

Senator CUMMINS. Do you think that this agreement should extend to the protection of a small producer and enable him to make a profit if his cost is greater than that of his competitor?

Mr. VINSON. Not necessarily. I think that the agreement ought to be such as to enable the small producer to get the best economic results he can out of his property. Now, of course, no two operators have the same cost sheet. Take a group as a whole-eight or ten small mines. One of those mines will cost 5 or 6 cents a ton more to produce its coal than the others, but they would have to be averaged in a general way if they have a joint selling agency, and they would all save 5 or 6 cents a ton on the quantity produced by even that method alone.

Senator CUMMINS. Not considering the details now, I want your view on the general principle involved. Suppose in the case you put a large company can produce and put upon the market its coal for 10 cents a bushel less-was it 10 cents a bushel or 10 cents a ton! Mr. VINSON. A ton.

Senator CUMMINS. Ten cents a ton less than its adjoining or neighboring producer employing a capital of $100,000. Now do you believe that the Government ought to legalize any agreement that would enable the big company to sell at 10 cents a ton more than a fair profit in order to allow the little producer to live?

Mr. VINSON. No, sir; that was not my proposition, Senator. Senator CUMMINS. Do you think that the little producer can live at all unless something of that kind is done, assuming now that his cost is greater than that of his large competitor?