$16.1 $20.91

$59.4

$56.3

$47.7

$41.1

$33.7

$36.6

Average yearly wages.

TABLE II.-Typical hourly rates of men engaged in designing tools, dies, and special machines, 1934 (exclusive of foremen)

TABLE III.—Typical weekly wage of room of 50 body or chassis designers, 1934 (exclusive of foremen)

Number in room:

6, average weekly wage-

4, average weekly wage__

10, average weekly wage_-_. 30, average weekly wage__

$55

50

35

25

Mr. DENNISON. I might say that this table represents a substantial reduction in wages over 1928 and 1929.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Let me ask you this question? You all do not work the whole year, do you, but you are paid when you work?

Mr. DENNISON. That is right. That is the significant part of the thing. That is what I meant when I said this table represents what we get when we are working. Of course, when we are not employed we get nothing, and at this time the average designer is not employed over 5 months of the year. That accounts for our low annual pay. The CHAIRMAN. This association of yours is not a union?

Mr. DENNISON. Well, yes; I might say that describes our organization; that although we are not members of the American Federation of Labor, it happened that our organization was organized then just apparently as an incidental, and it just happened that no A. F. of L. organizer came along at the time, but the men felt the need of an organization badly. It was organized before the N. R. A., in December 1932, and in Detroit we work very closely in with any bona fide labor organization.

The CHAIRMAN. How much membership have you?

Mr. DENNISON. We have around 2,000. I just recently organized a new local. We just organized it in Toledo, Ohio, about 3 weeks ago. The CHAIRMAN. It includes your regular engineer; is it just designing engineers, or are there any other engineers or anything else? Mr. DENNISON. No; our men are the highest paid engineers in the industry. We will take, for instance, a typical group; and I think I will have to refer to this table again. We will take a typical group of 100 men engaged in designing tools, dies, and special machines, for instance, and for about 3 hours that room would be right in the process of checking-right in the process, gentlemen, to check the blueprint of the individual part that is to be produced, and to decide upon the machines that are going to be used to produce that part; to decide upon what tools are going to be used to hold that part while it is being cut or machined; to decide upon whether this tool or that tool would be the most economical tool to use. In other words, those men are production engineers.

The CHAIRMAN. How many engineers in the country are outside of your organization?

Mr. DENNISON. Well, quite a few. I understand the American Federation of Labor, which has an organization similar to ours, called the International Federation of Technical Engineers, Architects, and Draftsmen-their membership lies chiefly in the shipyards, some airplane factories, and mostly where Government workers are found. We seem to be the only organization that has gotten into the particular field in which we are; and, as I say, our organization centers around the Detroit territory, because that is where the parent chapter got started, and as new locals or chapters are organized they seem to have been organized in that territory.

The CHAIRMAN. I gather from your remarks so far that you would be in favor of the Wagner-Connery bill?

Mr. DENNISON. Yes. There may be some little phrases or clauses which I would like to speak upon. I am sorry our time is limited and

Mr. RAMSPECK. I want to ask you this: You put emphasis on the annual income rather than on the hourly and weekly wages; you have to live 12 months out of the year

Mr. DENNISON. Unfortunately, that is true.

Mr. RAMSPECK. And you would be better off at the end of the year if you got half as much per hour and worked 40 hours per week?

Mr. DENNISON. That is a very significant proposition, because of the fact that one-half of us loaf more than one-half of the year and work about one-half, and our purchasing power will not sustain a very prolonged period of prosperity. As long as we are getting practically one-third of what we got in 1928 and 1929, we can buy about one-third less; and to those who manufacture clothing and shoes and other commodities the mechanical engineer right now is a very poor prospect.

Now, I will give you an idea of a typical room of these men: About 15 men out of 100 in that line of business would be engaged in first-class lay-out work or checking. Lay-out means to make a large drawing of a special machine, a large assembled drawing, a complete drawing; checking it means looking over the drawing for errors or mistakes. Those are most highly trained men, and there would be about 15 out of 100 on that kind of work in the typical drawing room. About 50 out of the 100 would be engaged in little less important lay-out work and detailing a large job. Now, detailing means this: It means to take from a flexible drawing the separate patterns and draw a little separate picture or drawing of those things, those parts, so that when they get fitted together, when these separate parts are made, they will fit together into the completed machine.

Then about 32 men out of 100 in that particular group would be engaged in minor lay-out work and detaining. That means, of course, the minor lay-out work and means that a less well-trained man would be making some little, small, unimportant machine, something which the principles of mechanical engineering involved in that machine would be very simple. They get about 90 cents an hour, and the highest paid get about $1.25. This table is very, very significant.

Mr. WOOD. You mean to say the lowest rate of pay of those people you mentioned is $1.25?

Mr. DENNISON. The highest rate of wage of those people is about $1.25 an hour at this time. In 1928 or 1929, even in an open-shop industry, it was $1.35 to $1.65 an hour.

Mr. WOOD. That is to say, their wages in general, in 1928 and 1929, ranged from $1.35 to $1.65?

Mr. DENNISON. Yes; it was around about that, and that would have taken in this group.

Mr. WOOD. In other words, you have gotten a very substantial decrease in the hourly wage since that time?

Mr. DENNISON. Yes; and shorter hours.

Mr. WOOD. And a decrease in the hourly rate?

Mr. DENNISON. That is true; and it is not true of our group alone in the industry and in Detroit and in the automobile industry. Of course, I have not gotten statistics relating to what the other groups are paid, because I am here more or less to represent a specific group; but it must be borne in mind, when I say those things, our men are involved in processing, cost accounting, and in deciding how much can be saved, for instance, on a cylinder-block line by installing a certain type of machinery, and in equipping them with certain types of tools.

Now, I have listed here what I consider some of the facts-
Mr. WOOD. Let me ask you one question.

Mr. DENNISON. Certainly.

Mr. WOOD. In other words, your business is to improve production? Mr. DENNISON. That is it.

Mr. WOOD. And wherever it is improved, as you improve methods, your wages go down?

Mr. DENNISON. It has seemed so. That reminds me of the book called "Progress and Poverty ", in which it is pointed out that the more progress we made, the more poverty we created for a certain group. I account for that by referring you back to what I just read from Labor.

Mr. Wood. That is a remarkable statement, Mr. Chairman, as to the corporate interests of the industry. I have always harped on the stock argument that a man should be paid what he is worth. I assume that these highly technical engineers, who reduce the cost of production, naturally would be worth more to the company; but instead of that, they get less. Therefore, that stock argument does not hold when it comes to their own business.

Mr. DENNISON. This is the article to which I had reference in Labor. We are in this position, that the improvement of machines and tools seems to be displacing the men in industry, yet that should not be if industries were properly regulated and controlled. It is obvious that, if we improve the tools and machinery to produce wealth, the more wealth we could create, but if the problem of distributing that wealth from machinery is not properly handled, something may go astray.

It seems to me that it comes down to this: That our group has largely solved the problem of production. We have a country here which has enough minerals, enough machinery, and enough raw materials to produce an abundance of wealth, and we have technically-trained men, but also it is important to bear in mind, to operate this industrial machinery, the problem of production has

been largely solved, but the problem of distribution still remains, the problem of who will get their share of this national production of wealth.

Now, those who are, I might say, employer-minded, who feel that the employers should run things, and have sole control of industry, and should regulate it, make an awful lot of surprisingly queer statements in the papers, and here is a man that says: "The best business system the world has ever known "-a fellow by the name of Robert L. Lund-this is in the Detroit Times of Sunday, March 10, 1935, and he says, "Remove its shackles and the business system will restore itself. The Government-operated recovery has cost enormous sums." And he says, "For the first time in our history, the Government's efforts have been made to bring about recovery," and so on.

The CHAIRMAN. He does not say that if President Roosevelt had not had the E. R. A. and C. W. A., that the Detroit people would be bringing out the National Guard to protect them from people trying to get a loaf of bread. They forget those things.

Mr. DENNISON. In my opinion, in March 1933, Detroit was just on the verge of food riots.

Mr. LESINSKI. Mr. Dennison, was not Detroit on a keg of powder at that time?

Mr. DENNISON. It certainly was. I remember some things that were never published: There were several raids on chain groceries by people, and during the bank holiday, it just happened, at that time, I had an interest in a radio service with a young man as a partner, and it happened that I was out with this particular line at the time for a few months, and this young fellow wanted something to do, and I was doing it as a side line, so to speak, and I got into the homes of these people around Detroit, and when the banks failed, even the small business places up and down the street from this little radio shop got to be very angry because they felt that their life savings were being swept away, and there was something radically wrong somewhere. All they knew was that they had saved for a lifetime and the banks had wiped out their earnings, and among the working class, they had a feeling that some very stringent things must be done, and if Roosevelt had not given them something to hope for at the time, there probably would have been serious trouble.

The CHAIRMAN. Right there, do you feel that, if some measures are not taken to provide for some of this accumulation of wealth going to the people, some of the profits of the workers going to the people-if we do not provide for that, you will have a repetition of that situation again?

Mr. DENNISON. Yes; and I feel not only that, but I feel this: That industry must be stimulated by some means, so that our national production of wealth of only $50,000,000,000 a year must be increased right now, because that is not enough for capital and labor.

I have noticed a number of people continue to work on the theory that we are going to have a continuous army of unemployed; that business is continuing to just operate along, and pick up slowly and make some gains. In other words, it seems to me the idea that the present condition may become a stable condition; and if it does, in my opinion, the present system of producing and distributing wealth is going to wreck itself, because we have certain capital investment in