Jacqueline Bouvier Daughter

Chapter 5

November 12, 1952

The Baby looks healthy. Everything is good Ms. Bouiver, Dr.Urie said.

I'm glad, I said.

Next month. We should be able to see what you're having Ms. Bouiver, Dr.Urie said.

Ok, Thank u, I said.

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I'm really hoping this one is another girl, I said.

I want a baby brother mommy, Charlie said.

Really. I thought that you would want a baby sister, I said.

Nope, She said.

Where is daddy at, Charlie said.

He is at work honey, I said.

Look Daddy is on tv, I said as I show her that Jack was about to give a speech

Let's watch it, I said.

Gentlemen: I have come to Washington to appear before you in order to urge you most strongly to raise to a realistic level the present entirely inadequate minimum wage in the textile industry . . . and also that you shall continue to set the minimum wage on a national, rather than a regional, basis.

During the past year, the mills and workers of our textile centers in Massachusetts have suffered grievously.

Between March 1951 and April 1952, the number of jobs in broad woven fabric mills in all New England declined by over 37 percent. In Fall River and New Bedford, two of our great mill cities, the decline was over 26 percent.

This is four times the rate of decline in textile employment in any other state of the union. While the figure for New England as a whole is more than 8 times the drop in the rest of the textile manufacturing states.

In most New England mills the effective minimum as set by a union contract is somewhere between $1.09½ and $1.10 cents an hour. So the present 87 cent minimum set under the Walsh-Healey Act is meaningless.

Among our southern competitors, however, we have a different picture. According to recent figures of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 14.4 percent of southern production workers in textiles are in the $1.00 to $1.05 wage bracket – 3.6 percent were receiving only 89 cents – and 3.5 percent only 87 cents.

I do not have to point out to you that an 87 cent hourly rate which means a weekly paycheck of $34.80 cents a week, presuming a 40-hour week, is not a living wage today in our inflated economy.

The Walsh-Healey Act was designed with one all-important purpose – to prevent unscrupulous employers from taking Government business through the exploitation of labor.

I maintain that a minimum wage which allows a weekly wage of $34.80 for a 40-hour week – or $29.50 for the 34-hour week which has prevailed in the short weeks of many textile mills this spring and summer – is exploitation!

No man can bring up a family today on $29.50 a week, which is little more than $15 a week measured in 1939 prices. And I submit to you that it is just as inequitable to continue a minimum wage which is effective in parts of the South, and entirely ineffective in the North, due to our union contracts, as it was thirty years ago to allow the sweatshops of a less enlightened era to take the bread from responsible firms' mouths by unprincipled exploitation of workers.