what would be the ultimate result of that legislation in 100 years or 500

Mr. DIES. I mean within five years.

Mr. SCOTT. Is not the Hamill bill clearly an essential part of a whole ?

Mr. DIES. Yes; The Hamill bill to be perfect under the operations of the system elsewhere would carry Government insurance provision, so that if the employee died his family would get on the pension roll, and it would provide a drawback so that if a man served the Government 30 years, expecting a pension, and died a year before, that his family would get some drawback, and that it was a direct payment out of his salary.

Mr. SCOTT. What logic is there in assuming that a benefit or protection which the Government is to give him should cease whenever the male member dics?

Mr. DIES. That is when they really need it, when the breadwinner dies.

Mr. SCOTT. He has become superannuated, he can not perform his special duties, and is retired. He can do some things; he can aid a little, perhaps, but if he is taken off, the whole assistance is stopped. What is the logic in that? The Hamill bill in that sense is incomplete in its conception. Can we say that it merely tends to something? Must we not say that this whole question is an entirety-the family, and not merely the male member of the family?

Mr. DIES. We want to got the idea of what happens under the Hamill bill. The employee works faithfully 35 years and he has a wife and three or four children. Of course, he could not get much increase in salary. This committee would say, "What do you want? You are going to get a pension?" Just about the time he gets the pension he lies down and dies and leaves his family helpless. Congress would say, "You would have gotten this pension if your father or your husband had lived. We had his services at a salary which was not commensurate with the work he did, and we intend the pension should make up for the smallness of it."

Mrs. MUNROE. I want to put in a word right there. It is because I am a woman and because the Hamill bill makes no provision for the wife and children that I am opposed to it, or that is one of the reasons I am opposed to it.

Mr. DIES. That is one of the defects of it.

Mr. BROWN. Can you tell the committee just what the percentage of benefit would be which he would receive under the Hamill bill, if it went into effect?

Mr. ALIFAS. That no doubt has been worked out, but I have not those figures with me. I merely was endeavoring to get an opportunity to make a statement as to what the difference was between these pension plans, and why we favor the Hamill bill. However, I have been interrupted so many times that I have not been able to make a really clear consecutive statement, so you would know what was in my mind.

I want to at this time also point out that giving the civil-service employees pensions is not by any means a new departure in the Government. You are giving the officers of the Army and Navy pensions, and I do not believe there is any provision for giving them an insurance after they have died, either. Your plucking board in

the Navy is retiring men every year at great expense, and is supposed to retire about 40 men each year. All these men receive pensions.

Mr. DIES. There are 148 rear admirals on the retired list and only 25 in the active service. We push them through the higher grades so they may get the higher rate of pensions.

Mr. ALIFAS. But that is not being stopped, and the fact that there are abuses in that ought not to be a reason for depriving the poorly paid employee of an annuity when he becomes old. It always has seemed that the policy has been followed of "giving to him that has and taking away from him who has not even that which he has." The naval officers are getting a good salary while in the active service, and they could much better get along on what they were supposed to have saved than the civil-service employee. The civil-service employees, as has been explained already by Mr. Russell and the other gentleman who followed him, are living so near to the margin of their income that there is absolutely nothing left with which to provide for them in old age.

I think this country is getting away from the policy that was followed by the Indians, that as soon as a man got old to take him out and lose him in the woods and have the wild animals eat him up. We have become too humane to turn a man out of the service when he becomes old and let him drift and perhaps starve to death; and due to that humanitarianism, which it is very necessary to keep up, it is up to the United States Government to provide for an annuity for these old men who are in the service. They are not as efficient as they used to be or as efficient as the men who would supplant them; and in that way the Government would be saving money by displacing them with men who are younger and more efficient, and while you would be paying them an annuity it really would not cost the Government any more than it is costing it now.

Mr. DIES. Only one person in seven could ever get any benefits under the Hamill bill.

Mr. ALIFAS. That might be. The object at the present time, it seems to me, ought to be to get a retirement bill passed, and we can not expect to get a first-class, all-round retirement bill right now. We have to start small. I know in Congress here the men who are opposed to certain legislation have many times endeavored to make that legislation so expensive that it could not possibly go through. We are asking for a very moderate measure at this time. If Congress sees fit to improve it later on, why, that is not our particular concern at the present time. We are just asking for this measure, which is going to benefit the few people, comparatively speaking; those who are most needy. In any emergency, you always endeavor to attend to the people who are in the worst straits at the start; and afterwards if you can attend to those who are less hard pressed, you do that. I think that the Hamill bill would involve an expenditure of less money than some of these other bills, because it does not involve the insurance feature. The other bill requires that a man's family shall get a portion of this fund that is set aside for old-age pensions when he dies, or before he reaches the age of superannuation, and when you are eliminating that feature you are reducing the cost to the Government.

The CHAIRMAN. You favor a pension because a man gets old and becomes inefficient?

Mr. ALIFAS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Why not have a fixed period or a fixed tenure and put in new blood at the end of those periods? What objection have you to that?

Mr. ALIFAS. I have the objection that we have to changes that are likely to throw things out of gear. The American people want stability. When a man gets established in a certain place, he does not want to pack up and move out. A man gets his circle of friends in a certain city; he buys a home, perhaps, or he does something else that is likely to establish him if he has permanent employment. If he has a fixed tenure of office, say, for 10 years, he is not going to buy a home; it is going to make people a band of wanderers on the face of the earth; tramps, you might say.

Mr. LOBECK. You mean they have got to start life over again? Mr. ALIFAS. I mean they have to start life over again, and I do not think that is beneficial to either the Government or the employee. Of course, it might be very nice for the man who is out of a job, for a limited length of time, to get a job somebody else has; but it is detrimental to efficiency and home building.

The CHAIRMAN. We have but just a little more time.

Mr. DIES. You will never get the Hamill bill passed, no matter how much Congress is in favor of pensions for employees, if it leaves out the wife who helps look out for the home.

Mr. ALIFAS. I would be very glad if the Congressman would report and secure the passage of that kind of a bill.

Mr. DIES. That is one of the defects that will prevent its becoming a law. There sits the woman at home who helps to take care of the house and helps to keep the thing going, and the pension is lost if the husband dies.

Mr. ALIFAS. It is possible to find difficulties with any bill that could come up. I would be very glad if the Congressmen would endeavor to perfect a bill and endeavor to have it reported out; just so it is an old-age pension. I am not going to urge a contributory or partial contributory pension plan, because there is a compensating principal at work everywhere. For example, it seems the Government gives an employee certain advantages, such as leave of absence with pay, and it fails to give him pay in accordance with what he would get in private employ. We have had a question before the Navy Department, in particular, here recently. A request for increase in wages, and we are usually reminded that Government employees get 15 days' leave of absence with pay and pay for holidays, and while that is not supposed to have any bearing on the establishing of wages, nevertheless, at times it seems to count.

The CHAIRMAN. You are taking up the time of the other side. They asked to be heard later, and you will have that privilege; and I suppose Mr. Russell has others whom he wants to present.

Mr. ALIFAS. I shall be very glad to give way to the others, although it leaves the latter part of my statement very incomplete. The CHAIRMAN. I just wanted to call your attention to the fact that our time is limited.

Mr. ALIFAS. If I had not been interrupted, I could have concluded in much less time. My time is up, and I therefore conclude my remarks, with thanks to the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand, but this can be extended to almost any length unless we draw the line.

Mr. RUSSELL. We have one or two more, and we will ask them to just make a brief statement for the benefit of the committee.

Let me make a correction in the record. In a statement I made in submitting the figures on this man who worked so many hours, I should have said this was in 1911. It happened to be compiled in a brief presented to the Attorney General at that time. I did not want to convey the impression that it was only last September. The present collector of customs and the Secretary of the Treasury are working out a plan to eliminate the excessive hours of labor.

I will now introduce Mr. Thomas F. Flaherty, secretary-treasurer of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks, who will address you for just a moment.

STATEMENT OF MR. THOMAS F. FLAHERTY, SECRETARYTREASURER NATIONAL FEDERATION OF POST-OFFICE CLERKS, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. FLAHERTY. I represent the National Federation of Post Office Clerks, which is made up largely of the younger element of the service, the men who are just coming in or who have been in but a comparatively short time, and I must confess that we are

The CHAIRMAN. The post-office clerks in Washington?

Mr. FLAHERTY. All over the country; and I must confess that we are more concerned with our present-day needs than any future contingencies, but as civil-service employees we know our promotion or our advancement depends to a great extent upon the advancement and promotion of those who have preceded us in the service. And if there is any stoppage or any stagnation anywhere along the line it affects us all-we who are just starting as well as those at the other end of the line. For that reason we have always considered this subject of superannuation and retirement, and it has been discussed in our official monthly journal and also at the annual conventions, and we have gone on record repeatedly in the last six years as being in favor of a contributory plan of pension rather than a straight plan of pension. I have not the time to go into any exhaustive explanation for these reasons, but briefly I can say that we favor a contributory plan of pension because we think it will accomplish what the straight pension plan will not, and what is in my opinion the only justification for any system, and that is it will improve the efficiency of the service, because under a straight pension plan it will be almost impossible for any departmental head to rid the service of an inefficient man. Naturally he would not want to deprive this employee of his pension rights, and the same humanitarian mode would prevail as prevails to-day and clog up the service with inefficient men, in a modified form of course.

We are also opposed to a straight pension plan because only one employee in eight would live or stay in the service long enough to derive the benefits; and speaking from the viewpoint of the postal employee, under the present-day conditions and the excessive amount of work with the excessive scheme study and with the conditions as we face them, there is, I am sure, but little chance of any more than one in eight remaining in the service, and it is not much

of a prospect for a man in a large post office, compelled to work as they are compelled to work, under the most unsatisfactory, insanitary conditions, sometimes in basements where the sunlight never penetrates, handling mail equipment that is filth-begrimed and germbegrimed with the accumulated dirt of years-I assure you, gentlemen, there is not much of a prospect for those men to look forward to 25 years of such work even with the lure of the pension.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you men work more than 8 hours a day? Mr. FLAHERTY. Since the 4th of last March if we worked more than 8 hours we are paid overtime.

The CHAIRMAN. Does that apply to all second and third class offices?

Mr. FLAHERTY. That applies to all second-class offices; yes. A man working on Sunday, of course, is compensated by one day off within the following six days. But for holidays there is no compensation. If a man works on the Fourth of July he loses the day, if he works Thanksgiving he loses the day, and if he works Christmas and New Years he loses the day, and so on. That applies to clerks in the distributing part of the office, because what we call the finance division, general delivery and stamp divisions are closed, but other portions are never closed, and those men, particularly, of course, would be opposed to any pension plan that all these years in which they had to remain in the service tend to lessen their chances for more needful legislation. Just at the present time we particularly want to see the six hours of duty for night work introduced. There are men working nights year after year. I know of one concrete example of a clerk in Chicago who told me this when I was on my way here last fall, that he had been 32 years in the service, and he goes to work at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and he works until 1 in the morning. He has been on that shift for more than 30 years. In the meantime, his two little daughters have grown up to womanhood and married, and that man scarcely knows them. Of course, last March we got a weekly rest day. Prior to that we did not. You would work Sunday and you would get neither time nor compensation nor anything else.

Take the ordinary post-office clerk. Say he enters the service after one year or two years as a "sub," and during the time which he "subs" he is fortunate if he averages a dollar a day. He is appointed at an entrance salary of $600, and he gradually, at the end of six years, can reach the maximum salary of $1,200, providing he has no demerits, providing he has no dereliction of duties, and providing he has not violated any of the thousands of rules that hedge him in.. All this time, of course, the cost of living has been soaring, and that man, from the time he enters as a "sub" for the dollar a day, has probably accumulated nothing except a lot of debts. There is one thing that can be said about a Government job: It is a fine medium for borrowing money, because the presumption of everybody you come in contact with is your job is as good as a bond. The result is that it is easy enough to get into debt, and we all know how mighty difficult it is to get out of it, I heard the eloquent Mr. Dies describe the civilservice employee, when he told of him eating red apples and going to the moving-picture shows, and if the post-office clerks should enjoy such pleasant times as he described they would be perfectly happy and would not want anything. The most of them, however, can not go to picture shows, because they are working at night.