Confronted with the alternative of going ont of business at a time when the services being rendered were sorely needed (the work was classified as “essential” in the war effort) or else of lowering the hourly rate of pay for the first 40 hours in order to pay the required overtime rate for hours worked over 40 a week, defendant, with the assistance and advice of plaintiff Marvin, called a meeting of all the guards, for July 14, 1945. Plaintiff Marvin testified that he and defendant’s other employes previously “had been subpoenaed before the Wage and Hour Department” and knew of the “difficulty over the payment of overtime.” At the meeting defendant explained his contract with the War Shipping Administration and proposed to the guards, including plaintiffs, that he thereafter pay them at the rate of 70 cents an hour for the first 40 hours of each workweek, $1.05 an hour for all additional hours worked the first six days of each workweek, and $1.40 an hour for hours worked on the seventh day. The total pay of each man for the 84-hour workweek (which was to be continued) would thus remain approximately the same as prior to the proposed change in hourly rate. In other words, the proposal was neither to increase nor to decrease the total wages actually paid, but merely to adjust the method or basis of computing such wages in order to comply with the law. Defendant specifically told the men that he was receiving only $1.05 an hour from the War Shipping Administration, that he had to meet various expenses (which he itemized, including charges for workmen’s compensation, social security and unemployment insurance) of the business, that until and unless he could get more from the War Shipping Administration he could pay them no more than the rates stated, and that “they could either accept it or reject it.” Three or four of the guards did not accept the proposal and left defendant’s employ, but the others, including plaintiffs, remained on the job and thereafter continued to be paid their wages in substantially the same amounts as before but computed on the new basis.