(6) Frank Melton in August, 1920, had a contract with the George A. Fuller Company for wrecking work in connection with the extension to the Hotel Plaza. Brindell insisted that Melton take into partnership with him on this job one Klompus, and for the privilege of this partnership arrangement, after supplying men from his council, Brindell exacted and received the sum of $3,000.

(5) Strike Insurance.

As still further illustrating the magnitude and high-handed character of Brindell's operations and his power in the building trade and that it had grown to such proportions that it could not be combatted even by the most prominent builders in the city, attention is here directed to the testimony of Hugh F. Robertson. It demonstrates not only the viciousness of Brindell's activities, but from an economic standpoint it reveals that every item of graft that went into Brindell's pocket entered directly into the cost of construction in the same manner as the cost of mortar and brick.

In the spring of 1920 Mr. Robertson, a prominent builder, was engaged in the construction of the Cunard building in the city of New York. A strike was called on the usual pretext that Post & McCord, who had the steel contract, were using nonunion steel erectors. Mr. Robertson "saw" Brindell and the strike was called off within fifteen minutes by a telephone message from Brindell in Robertson's presence. Robertson's firm was at the same time doing the preliminary work on the construction of the Cunard docks, a job involving $35,000,000 to $40,000,000. He mentioned the fact to Brindell, told him he wanted to avoid. labor troubles on the job, and invited him to look at the plans.

"He (Brindell) said, 'if you could get "strike insurance" it would be a good thing to have."" By "strike insurance" it was explained that Brindell meant and Robertson understood Brindell's assurance that there would be no strike on the job.

Brindell and Robertson thereafter met at the Commodore hotel and talked over the advisability of Robertson buying insurance from Brindell against strikes on that job. Robertson acquiesced in Brindell's suggestion, and the latter then stated that the socalled "strike insurance" could be had if Robertson would pay him $50,000. That amount was finally agreed upon to be paid in installments. At intervals Robertson would meet Brindell,

would drive him around the block in an automobile and would there deliver to him in bills installments of this sum aggregating $32,000 up to the time of the interruption of the payments by the exposures of the Committee. The building operations were successfully conducted without a strike.

Robertson admitted that he charged the payments he made to Brindell as part of the cost of construction and that the owners would "foot the bill."

In the many piratical undertakings of Brindell, of which the above are illustrations, all accomplished within less than one year, Brindell acted apparently without protest or hindrance of the men around him connected with the council, and as though the 115,000 men connected with the council were mere pawns in his game. His despotic power was complete and unchallenged. It is estimated that within this short period of from 10 to 11 months he extorted in the ways above indicated over $1,000,000, all of which was added to the cost of building construction. And yet his reign had just about begun. But for the exposures that resulted in his downfall and punishment and that of his lieutenants the building industry of New York City would doubtless have been completely paralyzed.

Although his operations were conducted in a crude, open and desperate fashion readily open to detection, and he could easily have been trapped, no owner, builder or contractor seemed to have had the courage or the public spirit to have made the slightest attempt to check him in his career of crime and none of the officials in the Building Trades Council were sufficiently solicitous of the good name of organized labor to enter a word of protest. Truly, the spectacle is an humiliating one from every point of view.

CHAPTER 5.

LABOR UNIONS.

(1) Unfair Practices and Requirements by Labor Unions. When the Committee in December, 1921, resumed its investigation after a recess of some months, counsel announced that having now shown the obstacles to building created by Brindell, the Committee would thereafter address itself chiefly to another phase of the labor situation due to the increasing despotism and inefficiency of labor, brought about by various provisions in the constitutions, by-laws, rules and regulations and to the practices thereunder of the labor unions in the building trades.

In this connection your Committee examined many witnesses including officers of the Building Trades Council, of the Building Trades Employers Association and officers, business agents and members of labor unions. It also directed its attention to the financial administration and bookkeeping methods of labor unions, as illustrated in the operations of Inside Electrical Workers Union, Local No. 3, which controlled the electrical workers in the city of New York.

That union consisted of about 3,800 members. Its income was derived from weekly cards issued to non-members permitting them to work on union jobs, and without which men could not secure work, initiation fees and monthly dues from members and helpers, death benefit dues and from fines and penalties. It amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These sums were paid in cash from day to day. It required the constant services of three cashiers to receive this money. No cash book was kept; death benefits and other bills were paid in cash; the cash as it poured in was under the complete control of the president and treasurer. Some of it was deposited in banks, subject to check (nobody knows what part of it). The treasurer testified that the cash was handed to the president who placed it in the safe, and gave him from time to time cash for deposit or to pay bills, salaries, etc. He also testified that he always had on hand five or six checks signed in blank so that by simply filling in the name of a payee the entire bank account, which sometimes amounted to $100,000 might have been drawn out and appropriated by an officer who kept no accounts and who gave no bond for his fidelity.

So-called "privilege cards" were issued on payment of $2.50 per week by journeymen and $1 per week by helpers. At first these cards were numbered consecutively so that the money could be traced, but subsequently and mainly without any system of numbering so that no check on the number of cards issued was possible. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were thus collected. Your committee discovered accidentally permit-books indicating the issuance of privilege cards to the amount of over $26,000 of which there was no record whatever and for which no accounting had been made. This represents doubtless a mere fraction of the money unaccounted for. The president of the union by "wills" drawn in his favor by the attorney of the union, became the recipient of a number of $1,000 death benefits, where no claimant appeared.

This particular source of "income" seems to have been considerable. A periodical pretended audit of the finances was made by an accountant who took everything for granted, assumed his data where it did not exist, and overlooked it where it did, with the result that there was no reliable audit whatever. This man confessed that he had done wrong but could suggest no way of tracing the Union's money.

These practices indicate that by rule or by-law or by statute, if necessary, for the protection of the members themselves, some system of properly checking the receipts and disbursements of labor unions and guaranteeing the fidelity of their fiscal officers should be adopted. The unions have now promised to inaugurate proper systems of bookkeeping and audit, and some of those that failed to do so in the past have now begun. It should, however, be said in justice to the financial officers of labor unions generally that the conditions found to exist in the Electrical Workers Union are not characteristic of any considerable number of the unions connected with the building trades. Some of them have accurate systems of accounting, but in others the methods are lax and offer free opportunity for dishonesty that is incapable of detection.

The practice of the Electrical Workers Union of closing its books to membership and issuing "privilege cards" to non members, by means of which they are heavily taxed for the privilege of working on "union" jobs, prevailed in many other unions. The union thus maintained for itself a monopoly of the work in dull times and in active times a vast source of revenue to the prejudice of other workers in the same line of industry. In the Electrical Workers Union there were 3,800 members, while the

number of electrical workers in New York City numbered over 12,000. Exclusion from the union was not based on even a pretense of required efficiency, but was simply an arbitrary rule.

The union is a member of the Building Trades Council and as such entered into agreements with employers monopolizing, for the benefit of its members, all the electrical work in the city to the exclusion of the many thousands of capable workers willing to join the union who were apparently sufficiently skillful to be permitted to work, at a penalty when building was active, but not sufficiently capable to be allowed to compete so long as members of the union were unemployed.

Another practice of many unions is the limitation of the number of apprentices in a given trade. This is a common provision in the Constitutions of national as well as of local unions. Still another is the exclusion from the privilege of apprenticeship of boys over a certain age, eighteen, nineteen or less. The effect of these autocratic regulations is to create an injurious and intolerable monopoly in the industry against the present and future generations.

Many other rules and practices of the Unions tending to destroy efficiency, delay operations and increase expenses were revealed by an investigation of their Constitutions, By-Laws, Rules and Regulations and by the testimony of witnesses, such as the limiting of the amount of a day's work; classifying the character of work, whereby high-priced mechanics were required to perform the work of laborers; destroying molds, requiring the destruction of models and other devices after they had been once used, although they might be utilized many times for the same purposes; prohibiting the use of labor-saving devices; prohibiting the installation of machinery approved by the public authorities that would economize labor; requiring work to be done on the job instead of in the shop at greater expense; penalizing employers for accepting "inferior work" from the Union's own members instead of disciplining the members for doing such work; requiring the removal of ornamental construction because not up to the artistic standard of delegates, although entirely acceptable to the architect and owner; prohibitions against an owner or contractor sub-contracting for labor unless the sub-contractor is awarded at the same time the contract for furnishing all the materials used in connection with such labor; all these practices and many others too numerous to mention here, coupled with iron-clad agreements between labor unions and employer associa