I feel that additional legislation…is only helpful to large industry and has a tendency to throttle small industry...
[The Fair Labor Standards Act] will destroy small industry….[these ideas are] the product of those whose thinking is rooted in an alien philosophy and who are bent upon the destruction of our whole constitutional system and the setting up of a red-labor communistic despotism upon the ruins of our Christian civilization.
We would consider it a grave injustice to ourselves as well as to the bakers and the public at large if the bakers in our city were unfairly discriminated against in their struggle for existence either by conditions such as they could not reasonably hope to contend against, or by making it possible for bakers of other localities to determine their business here in their home market by more favorable terms. This, we believe, will be the effect of section 116 of the proposed law, which prohibits the establishment of future cellar bakeries.
I don’t think the public is going to gain anything by forcing the small baker out of business.
If you pass this bill, it will not be ten years certainly; I believe it will not be five years until practically every cellar bakery in New York city will be out of business.
Such [sanitary] certificates will give a possible opportunity for an unfair person to make demands for graft on the small baker, who is always reluctant to go into the courts to force recognition of his rights. We believe either or both of these sections would have the effect of gradually reducing rather than increasing the number of small bakeries.
This bill will make it difficult for the poor baker to continue to exist, thereby making it easier for the large baker to combine with his larger brother and increase the price of bread or lower the size of the loaf, why, that is a very strong point in opposition to this bill, because the very people you are going to aid—the poor have got to be taken into consideration.
The costs of this action would be enormous and obviously could have a disastrous impact upon many small businesses struggling to survive.
