WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 241

Mr. Free. They need more tourists down there than anything
else, do they not? [Laughter.]
Mr. Moore. In your last political campaign both parties of this
country had planks for farm relief. Mr. Hoover immediately called
a special session of Congress after you opened your new administration,
 asking that you take care of farm relief and certain tariff matters.
That was done. You appointed your farm board to go out to help
these industries that have been distressed for the past eight or nine
years, raising staple products—wheat, cotton, corn and all that sort
of thing. Now in the face of that you have two bills before you here,
or three, probably, in this committee to-day that have for their
purpose the effect of placing us, who are producing a billion dollars’
worth of produce, feeding this Nation, in the same category with
these distressed people. That is the situation.
Mr. EsrerLy. Mr. Chairman, I point out that if we could know
the gross profits of this industry, perhaps it might be shown that if
they would pay a little higher wage they could draw back there some
of the Mexican population which you say is getting up around Chicago.
Mr. Moore. I will point that out if you will just bear with me a
second. Federated labor has for the past four or five years advocated
 a restriction on Mexico. I think you know that and I know it.
In the face of that, they failed to look at this situation as it really is
in our western country. I have in the past six months made payroll
 computations of these big vegetable growers throughout the
country, and I find that the average of one day of Mexican labor is to
skilled white labor a full day’s labor for five white men. Those are
the packers, the shippers, and the men working in the sheds. And
that did not take into consideration the enormous railroad crews, the
enormous icing crews, and the vast network of distribution in these
terminals throughout the East, giving employment to hundreds and
thousands more. That is the situation. That is what Mr. Hart
touched on very fluently here when he was talking.
The CuarrMaN. Well, that is the old story—the man at the bottom
is creating the conditions for all the rest above him, is it not?
Mr. Moore. Yes; one man for an average of five or our own
people that will be thrown out of employment when you take away
from us the field labor that we can not get in any other way. }
Our labor is not cheap. The Congressman here has asked me this
question whether it is cheap. In the vegetable industry the lowest
price that we pay for our work is 35 cents, from that up to 55 and 75
cents on straight hour work. And in the cantaloupe fields in the
Imperial Valley last year I had Mexican pickers who were picking
cantaloupes on a crate basis, making $22.50 a day, and white labor
lving out under the palm trees in the parks, refusing to work.
Mr. EsterLy. Where do they come from. those white people?
Mr. Moore. Drifters, probably.
The CrairMAN. When was that?
Mr. Moor. Last summer in the Imperial Valley. The temperature
 was 145° in the sun, as I found from test with a thermometer.
White people can not work in that heat. It is physically impossible
for them to do it. The enormous stretches of these valleys—here is
Salinas Valley up here, and San Joaquin Valley, Imperial Valley,
Yuma Valley, Salt River Valley, the Lower Rio Grande district, all
in the same category. These people can not work in that country