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Show f ?"t-m WASHINGTON U'Si.''By Walfer Shead ' , $ VVNl Correspondent - I WNV Washington Bureau 1616 Eye St.. N. W. Minimum Wage Bill Amended to Death IT IS obvious, at least to your Home Town Reporter, that the Russell amendment to the new minimum min-imum wage act was wangled into the bill in a parliamentary move spearheaded by 21 southern senators sena-tors as a deliberate intent to kill the minimum wage bill. It was another of those coalition actions in which 20 northern Republicans Repub-licans along with two northern Democrats Dem-ocrats joined with the southern Democratic bloc. Only three southern south-ern senators opposed the action. . . . Hill of Alabama, Pepper of Florida and Barkley of Kentucky. It might be pointed out, too, that the most influential senators on the Republican Republi-can side refused to join in the coalition co-alition . . . senators such as Taft of Ohio, Vandenberg and Ferguson of Michigan, Morse of Oregon, and Aiken of Vermont. There was much oratory in the debate from these southern senators sena-tors about the "poor downtrodden farmer," but that this oratory was so much political sop is evident from the fact that these same senators twice before have had the opportunity opportu-nity to pass the Pace bill, which includes the cost of farm labor in establishing a parity price, and have twice before even refused to consider con-sider it. To tack the Pace bill onto the minimum wage bill at this late date as an amendment or rider when even the four national farm organizations didn't want it there, makes it an obvious move, to our way of thinking, to defeat tlte bill. Against Higher Wages The southern senators, although they will not say so for publication, just do not want a higher wage scale in southern industry. This fact has been evident in the consideration considera-tion of other wage and labor legis- lation. And these farm organizations have been embarrassed, to say the least, throughout the senate fight on the minimum wage bill, which would raise the legal minimum wage from 40 cents to 60 cents an hour for some three million workers, work-ers, but not farm workers. They were lukewarm on the bill in the first place for the reason that a higher high-er minimum wage would indirectly mean higher farm wages. At the same time they favor the principle of the Pace bill to include farm labor cost in the price of farm products, and so they could not openly open-ly and wholeheartedly oppose the amendment although it did not contain certain safeguards which are set out in the original Pace bill, such as "area of production" and "primary processing" exemptions. The farm organizations also asked for flexible minimum wages based on cost-of-living index and the transfer trans-fer of "area of production" findings to the secretary of agriculture from the labor department. They got none of these safeguards, however. And so the National Grange, the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union and the National Co-operatives are not very happy about the result of the coalition. What would this inclusion of cost of farm labor in the parity formula do? According to the debate on the floor as stated by Sen. Scott Lucas of Illinois, it will increase the nation's food bill by something like $4,500,-000,000 $4,500,-000,000 annually to consumers. It would send the parity price of wheat from $1.56 to $2.07 per bushel, bush-el, corn from $1.14 to $1.51 and so on down the line of parity prices. But it makes no provision for passing pass-ing this price increase along to farm Workers. Senator Lucas declared that under un-der the Steagall act the government govern-ment could not finance the support program at these prices. Bill Faces Veto Although the minimum wage bill as originally introduced providing for 65 cents on a sliding scale up to 75 cents, was a part of the President's Presi-dent's program, so inflationary does he regard the bill with the Russell-Pace Russell-Pace amendment attached, he has informed the senate he will veto the measure if passed in that form. The coalition senators, in the face of the President's statement, refused to compromise on a lower wage minimum in exchange for their amendment. It went through the senate with the minimum at 60 cents, and 3l million low-paid workers work-ers were excluded. It is not believed here that sufficient suf-ficient strength can be mustered to pass the bill over the President's veto, so it appears that it's a dead ! duck insofar as this session of con- ; gress is concerned. j The coalition senators have won a victory which means nothing to the low-paid worker nor to the farmer. The only he pe of the farmer farm-er now fr parity revision lies in passage of the Pace bill in the senate sen-ate as introduced in the houe, or in an entirely new bill, the result of a general conference on farm i panty. |