WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION
many women, bearing children, are attacked with rheumatism. Is
that true in Utah?
Doctor Peterson. There is very little—and that is why we like
Mexicans—child labor. To some extent the youth are used and in
a way it is useful in preventing worse habits, due to idleness. The
average youth of high school age would be better off spending some
time in the fields at work even with beets, than at the liquor and jazz
parties which are now a real menace to youth in some parts of the
country, fortunately not yet a serious menace except in spots in the
intermountain region. The average Mexican, I presume, does not
want his wife to do this kind of work any more than the white.
Mr. Gisson. It seems to me your university, and others in beetsugar-growing
 States, if they will get together in an effort to take
sare of your situation, you will not have to have this itinerant labor.
Doctor Peterson. It is not developed yet sufficiently.
The CrairmaN. Along that line, but in a broader way, we know
there has been great advance in labor-saving machinery. Indeed,
economy and the shortage of labor at times, have speeded that thing
up and we know that there is cooperation of every kind for the purpose
 of eliminating the employment of white-collar men and others,
by chain stores of every kind, and the proposed grouping of railroads
into 19 big systems. Efforts have heen made to develop that in cotton-picking
 machinery. I will ask you this—and you need not answer,
 unless you care to: One of the duties of government is to
extend the benefits of government to as many people as possible
and to see that as many hands are employed as possible in the population
 belonging to that government?
&gt; Doctor Peterson. I think, in the business of the country, in the
advances that take place, unconsciously, when we perfect a lahorsaving
 machine, automatically that creates a new employment.
« The CuairMan. We know that is true.
Doctor Peterson. In the case of the automobile, it led to a great
demand for concrete, and so forth.
The CrarrmaN. But we are going into the grouping and consolidation
 of enterprises in industry. What will happen to the working
population of the United States? They have to live. .
Doctor Peterson. That is a profound social question, Mr. Chair-08



man.
The CratrMan. Exactly and it has to be considered ahead of every
treaty of the United States, ahead of every foreign relation of the
United States in regard to trade, if we are to survive at all.
Doctor Pererson. President Hoover's plan for a reserve fund of
$3,000,000,000 deliberately to set aside money for employment may
be a step in that direction.
The CratrMan. It is a fine proposition, but I hope that the people
who are at the bottom of the industrial scale are guranteed the right
to the pursuit of happiness, and I know a great part of that is the
ability to hold on to a job.
Doctor PerersoN. I just want to say this final thing, that my
attention has been attracted by the German-Czechoslovakian plan
for an international arrangement to bring in labor. Whether that is
diplomatically possible under our American form of government, I
do not know. [I think that should be explored.
The Crarrman. How can we do that in a country that has severe
laws against peonage, thraldom. and so forth?