LIMITATIONS

SECTION 14. Nothing in this Act shall be construed so as to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right of employees individually or collectively to quit work, to refuse to go to work; or to go to work, or to continue at work.

SEC. 15. Wherever the application of the provisions of section 7 (a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act (U. S. C. Supp. VII, title 15, sec. 707 (a)), as amended from time to time, or of section 77B, paragraphs (1) and (m) of the Act entitled “An Act to amend an Act entitled 'An Act to establish a uniform system of bankruptcy throughout the United States,' approved July 1, 1898, and Acts amendatory thereof and supplementary thereto" (48 Stat. 922, pars. (1) and (m)), as amended from time to time, or of Public Resolution Numbered 44, approved June 19, 1934 (48 Stat. 1183), conflicts with the application of the provisions of this Act, this Act shall prevail: Provided, That in any situation where the provisions of this Act cannot be validly enforced, the provisions of such other Acts shall remain in full force and effect.

SEC. 16. If any provision of this Act, or the application of such provision to any person or circumstances, shall be held invalid, the remainder of this Act, or the application of such provision to persons or circumstances other than those as to which it is held invalid, shall not be affected thereby.

The National Labor Act approved July 5, 1935 (49 Stat. 449), is hereby repealed.

SEC. 17. This Act may be cited as the "National Labor Relations Act."
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Madden, please?

Mr. Madden, I have been called out, and I have made an appointment at 4, and the whole committee has been here off and on all day. We must stop at 4 o'clock. How is your testimony arranged? Would it be better to leave it until the morning so that we may have it presented uninterruptedly?

Mr. MADDEN. I think it would be more understandable, Senator. The CHAIRMAN. You would rather have us adjourn

Mr. MADDEN (interposing). I would prefer not to start now.

The CHAIRMAN. Then we will stand in recess until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, and Mr. Madden will be our first witness.

(Whereupon, at 3:45 p. m., a recess was taken until 10 o'clock Tuesday morning, April 18.)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT AND PROPOSED

AMENDMENTS

TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1939

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., in room 357, Senate Office Building, Senator Elbert D. Thomas (chairman) presiding.

Also present: Senators Ellender, Hill, Davis, Taft, Murray, and Minton.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order.

Chairman Madden, please, you may proceed in any way you wish. If you want any sort of descriptive material about yourself in the record, will you state what should be there?

STATEMENT OF J. WARREN MADDEN, CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

Mr. MADDEN. Well, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have been, since August 27, 1935, the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, being a member of the first group of appointments to the Board.

I think that is all I care to say.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you serve on the old Board?

Mr. MADDEN. I did not. I had no previous Government experience, either Federal or otherwise.

In response to the invitation of the chairman, the Board has submitted a report to the committee in which we have set forth with care and at considerable length our views with reference to the several proposed amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. It is our hope that every member of the committee will read our report in its entirety.

May I say, Mr. Chairman, that I hope and ask that the committee will make the report a part of the record in these hearings, at the end of the Board's testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. You just mean that the report will be inserted in the record?

Mr. MADDEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. That will be done.

Mr. MADDEN. That report, you understand, is a different document from the statement that I am giving here today.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will just make the request at the end of your testimony, we will see that it is inserted.

Mr. MADDEN. Very well.

Again, in response to the invitation of Chairman Thomas on behalf of the committee, I am glad to appear before the committee to give it whatever assistance I can in its important deliberations.

You already know, and have been here reminded by Senator Wagner, that the question of the place of the Federal Government in labor disputes has been with us for some 50 years. You know that there have been periodic studies by distinguished commissions. To each of these commissions, to every committee of Congress which ever explored the problem of our labor troubles and their unfortunate consequences death and injury to persons, destruction of property, obstruction of the channels of trade and commerce and, most disturbing of all, the deep and bitter resentment of the laboring people involved in these troubles against their employers and the courts and the Government-the most hopeful solution was collective bargaining. Months of investigation, numerous volumes of reports all pointed to the same solution. Yet we had little collective bargaining in fact except by unions which had won their power by physical combat. Although many working people were desirous of collective bargaining, none obtained it except by the grace of their employers, or by physically overpowering their employers by striking. Some unfortunate decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States made it impossible for the Congress to substitute reason for combat in labor relations.

The more recent history of how the National Labor Relations Act became the product of all the study and all the experience of the Government with respect for some problems of labor relations need not be recounted to this committee. It is enough to say that the act was carefully deliberated through two sessions of Congress and was the well-considered answer of the Government to a most preplexing problem. Upon another occasion I have commented upon the significance of the fact that the Government chose the answer it did, rather than some other. I should like to repeat those comments, which refer to the year 1935, when the bill which became the National Labor Relations Act was under consideration.

The world trend away from freedom was strongly under way. Effective labor unions had been suppressed in the countries under dictatorship.

Our Government might have taken the view that if workers were underpaid, or were worked too hard or too long or under improper conditions, the Government would, by statute, or administrative regulation raise wages, reduce hours, and prescribe proper conditions. In this way the material situation of the worker would have been brought up to Government standards. The possible perils of some self-determination on the part of the workers as to what these standards should be would have been avoided. The danger that workers, if they were given the freedom to organize, would fall under the spell of irrational or designing leaders who would lead them and the country which was dependent upon them over an economic precipice would have been avoided. And after all, could not a government, sympathetic with labor, but responsible to the whole people, judge better and with a longer and broader view what was good for labor than labor could judge for itself.

Then there was the danger that labor, even if made free to organize, would not have the power to obtain as much for itself as it could obtain from a friendly government. It is after all, easier to lobby for the bounties of government than to perform the endless, delicate, and difficult tasks of labor leadership. This was the choice to be made in a world and time in which the trend was,

almost without exception, toward surrendering liberties to government in return for bounties, or yielding them unwillingly to the superior force of government. The proposal of Senator Wagner and his associates was directly counter to this trend. They proposed that the millions of American workers who would come within the protection of the act should be trusted to determine for themselves and through their own chosen leaders what they wanted in the way of terms of employment, and to bargain rationally with their employers about those terms. They saw nothing in the history of American workmen and their leaders to indicate that they could not be so trusted. They saw in that history courage, patience, self-reliance, and self-restraint in the face of impossible and irrational legal impediments. They also saw some racketeering and other criminality, but probably in a proportion as small as in any other element of our population. They proposed to create a new liberty in a world where the old liberties were being taken away. They proposed to have instead of more government, more liberty.

The Congress and the President concurred with these proposals and the National Labor Relations Act was passed. The leaders of organized labor concurred, and in spite of the bitter disappointments which they had often experienced from the administration of laws intended to be beneficial to labor, they hailed the act as their Magna Charta. Recorded history will show that at that critical time America and its Government and the leaders of American labor moved definitely against the trend of the world, and dared to confer upon millions of Americans more freedom and more democracy than they had ever before enjoyed. (From an address before the American Political Science Association, Columbus, Ohio, December 29, 1938.)

The question before this committee today with reference to most of the proposed amendments seems to me to be the same question which faced the Government in 1935, except that the question is now much easier to answer. The path of freedom, then indicated by past experience and study, was nevertheless made doubtful at that time by the trend of the world and by some domestic conditions. Now the path of freedom has been blazed and traveled, and the question is no longer, shall we break a new pathway to freedom, but shall we abandon one that is now open and in use. Shall we do in 1939 what we so pointedly refused to do in 1935, imitate these foreign governments which began their evolution to their present condition by depriving their working people of their former liberties? In brief, shall we take away in 1939 liberties which we conferred upon our people in 1935 ?

If American workmen are obliged to say, after the adjournment of this Congress, "We have less liberty than we had last year, less freedom to belong to unions of our own choosing, less freedom to take a position of leadership in a union without economic retaliation by our employers," that will be important. It will be the most important domestic event of 1939. It will mean that we have celebrated the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of our Bill of Rights by repealing civil liberties, easily comparable in importance with these which are found in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. It will be the first time in American history that the National Government has, except under the exigencies of war, taken away a civil liberty deliberately granted and for a time enjoyed by millions of Americans. I do not say that other liberties will necessarily be lost, if these are lost. I do say that I can think of no reason why other liberties should not be lost, if the forces which seek to repeal these liberties prove sufficient. They or other forces equally powerful can work their will if we begin to tear away at the structure of the temple. The problem for the committee will be, as I see it, why should this reactionary step be taken? Was the Congress wrong in 1935? Or