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we didn't take the union scale of wages. For instance, we didn't take the union scale of wages for textile workers when hardly any textile workers belonged to the union. We took a true prevailing rate of wages. So that was the way it was enforced.
However, I'm talking now too far ahead. I'm talking about the end result, instead of the passage. It was not difficult, curiously, to get it through. There was almost no trouble at all. It was introduced June 14, 1935, approved by the President June 30, 1936, and became effective September 28, 1936.
Much later, in '38, we got wages and hour legislation through, but that was very separate and distinct from the Walsh-Healey Act. At the time we were putting through the Walsh-Healey Act we thought and believed that we could not pass a general wage-hour act. We thought and believed that the court ruling were all against it. The Walsh-Healey Act was only possible because it regulated the wages and working conditions on government contracts only. We were still in the fog of believing that all regulation of working conditions by federal enactment was unconstitutional. This was a substitute for wage-hour legislation. If we had thought we had the constitutional authority to pass and enforce a general wage-hour act, we never
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