each line of railroad a rule that no more nonpromotable men will be employed; and that the practice of using train porters to perform the duties of baggageman, flagman, or brakeman be discontinued. That is from the proceedings on pages 229 to 230.

Again in 1919 the second triennial convention adopted a resolution demanding that the director general of railroads restore the right of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen "to make percentage agreements guaranteeing the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen the majority of men to employ, to the end that contracts made by this organization may be protected by it." You are acquainted with that, Mr. See?

Mr. SEE. Yes. I think that was not directed to a Negro at all, that was directed at rival organizations.

Mr. POWELL. Will you explain that? Will you expand on that? Mr. SEE. That was directed at rival_organizations. For many years, up until the time of the Railroad Labor Act, we had in yards what we called a percentage agreement, that a certain percentage of men in the yard must be members of the brotherhood.

Mr. POWELL. Do you think that is a good rule when automatically you ruled out persons of other than the Caucasian race?

Mr. SEE. I don't know, Congressman. I was never very much in favor of that rule.

Mr. POWELL. Now, we get a little more up to date. In 1920 the General Grievance Committee, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, for Norfolk & Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad, on April 2 and April 3, 1920, negotiated an agreement reducing the employment of Negro trainmen from 33 percent to 30 percent, which protected the positions then held by white trainmen. That is from the report of President Lee for 1920, page 106.

In 1928 the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen did not give the Negro firemen or trainmen on the St. Louise-San Francisco Railway or its predecessor corporations property any notice or opportunity to be heard at any stage of the negotiations which resulted in the contract of March 14, 1928. That is trade-union philosophy in power again in the convention. They did not give the Negro firemen or trainmen any notice or opportunity to be heard in the negotiations which resulted in the contract prohibiting future hiring of Negroes in train, engine, or yard service. That is in 1928. I have before me that agreement of March 14, 1928. It was signed by-let us see, who would be representing you then? Is that Gannon, the vice president of the ORC?

Mr. SEE. No; he was not the vice president of the brotherhood.

Mr. POWELL. Now this is interesting. In 1931, the Sixth Triennial Convention, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, at Houston, Tex., adopted a resolution empowering the president of the grand lodge to assign a grand lodge officer to assist the general committees in an effort to have the Negro train porters removed. Evidently you were out to remove Negro train porters also.

Mr. SEE. I was at that convention. As I remember, the charge was made that the railroad companies were requiring the train porters to do the work of brakemen, not porter's work but that work that properly belonged to the brakeman, and this resolution only had to do with taking such action as is necessary to keep the railroad companies from hiring porters to do work which was not their own work.

Mr. POWELL. The white porters were required to do the same? Mr. SEE. Absolutely; just the same as if they had required the train baggagemen to do the work.

Mr. POWELL. From 1940 to date the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen has been conducting a drive on the southwestern railroads, that is the Missouri-Pacific, M. K. T.; Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; St. Louis-San Francisco Bay, to take away from Negroes classified as train porters all the head-end braking work on passenger trains which they have been doing with the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen's knowledge for more than 40 years and have this head-end braking work taken over by white brakemen, most of whom are Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen members.

Mr. SEE. That is right. On those railroads the train porter who does not pass a book of rules examination, who is not a brakeman in any sense of the word, maybe he does not even carry a switch key, had been required to do the brakeman's work. In other words, the porter had been required not only to do his own work but to do the work that properly should be done by someone else.

Mr. POWELL. These men have been doing this work for 40 years. Mr. SEE. That is what the statement says. I don't think that is true. Mr. POWELL. If they had not been doing it, who was doing it? Mr. SEE. They had brakemen doing it at one time. I talked to some of the men and they said they did it.

Mr. POWELL. According to the information I have, these men have been doing it on some of the railroads for 40 years.

Mr. SEE. Even if they had been doing it they should not be doing it.

Mr. POWELL. If they can have an opportunity to get into the brotherhood I would agree with you on that proposition, but you are threatening the livelihood of these people, as you have been doing from the record I read, displacing persons from their bread and butter ever since the beginning of your organization in 1884 when you adopted your constitution.

Mr. SEE. I cannot agree with you.

Mr. POWELL. I read the record, my friend, and you haven't disproven it. The record comes from your own proceedings, that you have displaced brakemen, displaced men who had been working because they were Negroes and put in white men all through the years.

Mr. SEE. That might have happened a great many years ago, but it is not happening now. There are many Negro brakemen, Negro yardmen working under brotherhood contracts. They receive exactly the same rate of pay, they work under exactly the same conditions. If they have got grievances about their working conditions, or the manner of payment, or the amount of money they are paid, our local committee takes care of it for them, and it does not cost them a dime.

Mr. POWELL. When a Negro has a grievance and takes it before the National Mediation Board he finds on the Mediation Board the very men who will not accept him as a brotherhood union, is that right?

Mr. SEE. That is true.

Mr. POWELL. Then how can he bring a grievance which arises out of the fact that he is a Negro to a man who will not let him into their organization because he is a Negro?

Mr. SEE. Mr. Congressman, if you will just let me proceed to explain why we are very anxious to do this, I think you will understand. Mr. POWELL. Go right ahead.

Mr. SEE. If a Negro brakeman or a yardman has a grievance that affects the working conditions not only of himself but of the other men on the property, don't you think, for our own protection, we are going to prosecute the grievance as soon as we can and make every effort to settle it? If it isn't settled then a precedent is established and we lose. If they refuse to grant a Negro seniority in Bluefields, W. Va., and they get by with it then they may refuse to grant one of our own men seniority, then it establishes a precedent.

Mr. POWELL. What about if a Negro worker is displaced, is out just because he is a Negro and then takes his grievance up, what is he going to meet with then?

Mr. SEE. I don't know of any cases now that would cover a case like that. That might have happened in the past. I was told yesterday about one of our men, I think on the Southern Railroad, that not long ago a Negro brakeman was discharged because he refused to work on Sunday. He was a minister, he insisted on his right to preach his sermon on Sunday, and he was discharged for refusing to work on Sunday. We carried his case along with the cases of other men into a strike docket of that railroad, and got him reinstated, and paid them for all the time they took out of the service.

Mr. POWELL. That is fine. The fact remains that the brotherhood (1) will not allow a Negro to belong to it, (2) has negotiated contract with the railroads of America guaranteeing certain percentages of whites to colored, (3) through the years it has displaced Negro workers and put in white workers despite their seniority or efficiency, and (4), it still remains a trade-union which believes that its principles of discrimination are a better form of democracy than the principles believed in and set by the President of the United States, on down through the Cabinet.

Mr. SEE. That is not quite correct in its entirety. They do not have any percentage agreements any more.

Mr. POWELL. You had them in the beginning, when you were able to discharge Negroes wholesale, despite their seniority and efficiency, and you cannot deny that.

Mr. SEE. Those conditions do not exist any more.

Mr. POWELL. Of course, because we do not have the jobs now.

got them by kicking out the Negro people.

Mr. SEE. That has been 15 or more years ago.

You

Mr. POWELL. I don't care. For the benefit of my colleagues I pass this record of trade-union philosophy and achievement through the years to you.

I have no more questions of you. If you desire to say anything else, you may.

Mr. SEE. I just want to make this statement with reference to the letter you read addressed to Colonel Goethals. The language which you read in the letter, which was objectionable to you, was a quotation. from a letter apparently that had been written to these four brotherhood officers. It was not their language, they quoted someone else, you may agree.

Mr. POWELL. Yes; I will agree to that.

Mr. SEE. The statement is made that American citizens were discharged to make room for Jamaicans, and if they were Jamaicans, they were aliens and they should not have been working on the Panama Canal. Another statement is made that the locomotive engineers are Jamaicans, while American citizens are being fired daily. There were some more British subjects on the Panama Canal. A yardmaster was also a Jamaican, a British subject. I submit the man who wrote the letter, while I do not like his language, and maybe I do not like his attitude about a lot of things, maybe he had an idea that Americans should be employed on the Panama Canal. Now on the Panama Canal today about the only white people who are employed are engineers and conductors, all the rest are natives, and they are working with considerably less money than the white men are in this country.

Mr. POWELL. I am sorry to interrupt you but it so happens that I have invited to testify before this committee on Thursday workers from the Panama Canal who are going to present the shocking, undemocratic labor practices of our Government in Panama, and we will ask them to go into the whole question at that time.

Mr. SEE. We do not have anybody down there.

Mr. POWELL. I know. I would like to ask you one last question. Suppose the FEPC, this bill of the President, becomes the law of the land; what will the brotherhood do?

Mr. SEE. I don't know.

Mr. POWELL. Will it go out of business?

Mr. SEE. No.

Mr. POWELL. Then it will accept Negroes, won't it?

Mr. SEE. I suppose it would be a matter for the brotherhood convention to determine. I don't know. You understand we do not have any closed-shop agreements. Nothing compels a man to belong to the brotherhood in order to work on the railroad.

Mr. POWELL. Except that the agreement with companies on a percentage basis.

Mr. SEE. No; we have not.

Mr. POWELL. You have got to the place now where you are so strong that the workers have to come through you?

Mr. SEE. Of course, they have a right to vote for the organizations that will represent them.

Mr. POWELL. Only whites can vote for it?

Mr. SEE. No.

Mr. POWELL. Excuse me for interrupting you. What railroad was it that used to be 41 percent Negro and today it is 5 percent? Mr. Houston, can you answer that, or Mr. Brown?

Mr. BROWN. I think the percentage you are referring to is for the Firemen.

Mr. POWELL. What railroad was that on?

Mr. BROWN. That is the entire industry.

Mr. POWELL. The entire industry used to be 41 percent and now it is 5 percent. There is no way to win an election when you only have 5 percent.

Mr. SEE. I have been on the railroads 35 years and I have my doubts about the 41 percent.

Mr. POWELL. When they come on the witness stand we will have the facts.

Mr. SEE. They can probably testify better than I can on that. May I correct one thing?

Mr. POWELL. Yes.

Mr. SEE. I am sure you did not mean to say what you did, because when we vote for representation in an election on any railroad, the United States Board of Mediation compiles a list of those employees who are eligible to vote, and just this morning I inquired of them if they made any distinction and they said they did not, that they had a list of brakemen or yardmen, they took everybody on the seniority list regardless of whether he was colored or white.

Mr. POWELL. What happened yesterday that made you change the practice that through the years you displaced Negroes with whites? Mr. SEE. I have been informed where we had a representation election with rival organizations, in many instances, the colored yardmen and colored brakemen voted with the brotherhood.

Mr. POWELL. That is true in many instances. The yard and trainmen are, a vast majority, white and there is no way for the Negro to join the brotherhood.

Are there any questions, Mr. Perkins?

Mr. PERKINS. No.

Mr. PowELL. Mr. Burke.

Mr. BURKE. Has your organization taken any stand either for or against the bill now before the subcommittee?

Mr. SEE. No position either way.

Mr. POWELL. All right, thank you.

I would like Mr. McBride, the vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen, to come forward.

TESTIMONY OF JONAS A. MCBRIDE, VICE PRESIDENT OF BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEMEN AND FIREMEN

Mr. POWELL. Mr. McBride, kindly give the clerk your full name. Mr. MCBRIDE. Jonas A. McBride, vice president and national legislative representative of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 10 Independence Avenue, Washington, D. C.

Mr. POWELL. Mr. McBride, have you any statement to make?

Mr. MCBRIDE. Congressman, my organization is not for or against this bill; therefore, I have no prepared statement. I might say to you, though, in line with your opening remarks, since I have been in Washington the railroad organizations have endorsed you and endorsed Congressman Powell because of your splendid labor record.

Mr. POWELL. Thank you. I was going to bring that to the committee, because I have letters here before me from the four presidents of the brotherhoods endorsing me for reelection each year because of my splendid labor record. I have letters when I ran for the Eightieth Congress, and again when I ran this time for the Eighty-first Congress. That shows that this chairman sits here with a 100-percent trade-union mind.

But I want to tell you, Mr. McBride, what is being developed here today is causing the chairman very grave misgivings concerning the brotherhoods in connection with our trade-union movement.

I would like to go through the history which we had compiled of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. How many years have you been with the brotherhood?