Speech #760198382

That contractor parcels it out to a subcontractor and that subcontractor parcels it out to another subcontractor. and so on down the line. You have conditions whereby excellent embroidered handkerchiefs. for which you pay as much as $12 a dozen in department stores in the city of New York are made by poor women and children who receive only 5 cents a dozen. Now. it has been said that this relieves unemployment. that if these women and children are deprived of this type of coolie existence it will increase unemployment. I disagree with this contention and deplore it. I say that if we are going to perpetuate an economy which is based on a coolie wage system. then certainly we are neither fair to ourselves nor are we fair to the people in Puerto Rico. We cannot foster an everlasting coolie wage system in Puerto Rico and still consider ourselves an enlightened people. When we remove the protection of this law from these Puerto Rican women and children we are sacrificing them to the avarice of the worst type of labor exploiter. We are not relieving unemployment. a condition which has existed for years prior to the enactment of the wage and hour law. but we are increasing unemployment by making it impossible for Puerto Rican workers to acquire a decent purchasing power to relieve unemployment.