116 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

The CrairMaN. The railroads have been complaining, in these
hearings, for the last 27 years of the lack of permanent labor, and
they have had all that time to begin to employ these people permanently
 by the year, and to see that they were housed suitably to the
climate; and yet the railroads, apparently, employ their labor, a
large portion of it temporarily, at a very small wage, and then turn
it loose to shift for itself; and then when there is any proposal to
try to bring the standards of living up throughout the country, the
first thing we have is the railroads complaining, again.
Mr. MclInnts. Let us think straight about this.
The CuatrmMan. Let us think straight.
Mr. McInnis. I would say that the wage paid by the railroads is
better than is paid out on the farms. I would say that the average
that we pay for section labor is better. I would say that it will
compare favorably with the average paid for farm labor, countrywide.
 I do not think we pay as high rates as are paid on the farms
in California to-day; although I say that not through knowledge of
the California rate, but from the fact that the California farms can
take our men whenever they see fit, to work there.
In this matter of hiring men, we have no inexhaustible sum of
money by which to hire men to lie idle six months in the year. We
have no inexhaustible fund out of which to take a man and haul him
a thousand miles and put him to work there, and when that work is
finished to haul him back a thousand miles and put him back in the
place we got him from in a fixed abode. You can not change the
condition which exists in so far as it relates to the uses to which
these men are to be put, and the places where they are to be put to
that use.
You take a Mexican living down at El Paso on our line, in nice
quarters. It gives us no comfort to know that that man is living
there, or that we have 10 or 100 or 1,000 of them living there, as
you suggest, in nice quarters, in a permanent place, with permanent
Jobs. If our track is washed out 750 miles from there, we have to
get a Mexican to fix that piece of track. In order to fix that piece
of track, we have to have a Mexican on wheels, and we have to keep
him on wheels as long as we need him, and we have to turn him loose
when we have no work for him. We can not keep these men idle any
more than we can keep any other man idle.
The Cuairman. I have the record here from the time that matter
of the Chinese first cam up, when these interests said that they must
have the Chinese; that unless they had the Chinese the railroads
could not run. I have here the records from that time on down.
They made the statement that unless they had a constant inflow of
Greeks and Poles the railroads could not run; and other interests,
the steel industry, for instance, had men come here and testify, man
after man, that they could not go unless they had a continual influx
of heavy, broad-backed laborers. They are now all running better
than they ever did. Here is the record; I have it here.
Mr. McInnis. I want to answer what you said about our giving
employment to this temporary labor and keeping those men at one
spot. Now, it must be realized that we have a railroad which is
not in one spot. It is at spots which extend—I am speaking now
of my own company, with whom I am employed, because I know
a little more about their mileage than about the others, but what I