Mr. CORBETT. No, sir. We have our convention a year from this month.

Mr. POWELL. When was your last convention?

Mr. CORBETT. In March of 1947, the end of February or the 1st of March.

Mr. POWELL. In view of the fact that there are about 11 States, and today the State of Illinois has voted on the subject of State FEPC, and in view of the fact that there is before Congress a national FEPC, if they were advised of that at the convention, would your organization consider amending the constitution, as have the other brotherhoods to comply with any State or Federal regulation that might become a law? Mr. CORBETT. It would be my understanding that the officers would probably recommend to the delegates that some action be taken. Mr. BREHM. Your organization would not have any intention of breaking the law?

Mr. CORBETT. No, sir.

Mr. POWELL. If the bill became law, would you abide by it?

Mr. CORBETT. Our organization will follow all laws. We are the oldest of them and the best of them, and we want to continue to be the best.

Mr. POWELL. You are the best?

Mr. CORBETT. By far.

Mr. POWELL. The other three brotherhoods are not here. I don't think that is fair. What do you mean by the best?

Mr. CORBETT. Probably I am a little bit prejudiced—and I don't say this with a smile. I figure that the American locomotive engineer is the most expert workman in the world, that he takes the most responsibilities of any workman ever known in the history of the world, and that he delivers the product of that work more perfectly than any other individual in the history of the world has ever delivered it. He is the outstanding carrier. He makes riding on a train more safe than being at home. I am proud to represent them.

There is no restriction, because my organization does not approve anyone except the white man, there is no restriction made by the locomotive engineers that I know of on any railroad at the present time. Mr. POWELL. Now where is that agreement? The first clause of it negates what you said.

Mr. HOUSTON. That is not an agreement. That is just a notice. The engineers at present have nothing to do with it.

Mr. CORBETT. Now, if I may add something. I want the record to show that all of these colored firemen who have been referred to, they were actually going to school, if you please, to be locomotive engineers. Those men came in knowing nothing about railroading. The principle on which railroads are operated is safety first, and no man coming off the farm, or from the cities or towns, or anything like that, realizes what safety on a railroad means.

Mr. POWELL. Whether he is Negro or white?

Mr. CORBETT. It doesn't matter whether they are white or black. The locomotive engineers in the Southeast have worked with those men and have educated them and, I know that Negro firemen please many of them. Some of them in Washington.

Mr. POWELL. But those firemen don't have a chance to become engineers.

Mr. CORBETT. I don't know whether they refuse to take enough interest in it to study for it or not. It is a decidedly stiff bunch of examinations that, when I took them, took practically all of a week, both written and verbal.

Mr. POWELL. The reason why I ask you that question-and I want to always apologize for leading questions-is that yesterday some of those firemen were here, men with 30 years' experience, and they said through Mr. Houston, that they were willing to take examinations to be engineers even though they might fail so that by so doing they would be able to pave the way for their sons and nephews who would come along with a better technical educational atmosphere to take those examinations and to pass them.

Mr. BREHM. As Mr. Houston pointed out, they wanted to get into line.

Mr. POWELL. Yes. There are men willing to take the examinations, even though they feel they are not ready to take the examinations. Mr. HOUSTON. They are not permitted to take them.

Mr. POWELL. They are not permitted to do so.

Mr. CORBETT. That is not my organization, sir.

Mr. POWELL. If the FEPC were enacted in the law and they did allow them to take examinations and they did pass, what would be the position of your organization then?

Mr. CORBETT. In what way do you mean?

Mr. POWELL. Suppose qualified, educated Negroes took the rigid tests and passed them and were engineers, what would be the position of your organization then? Would your organization accept them? Mr. CORBETT. I could not speak for the organization. You understand that our organizations represent about 1 delegate to 300 members. A large number of them are from the Southeast. The southeastern men are on all of the general committees, and we have a State legislative board in each of the States. Now I am not in a position to say as to what the delegate from the United States and Canada would vote. I believe I would be sustained in the belief that if the bill is passed and becomes a law my organization is not going to violate that law.

Mr. POWELL. If you left New York City and you were to go on right through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, you would be passing through States that have FEPC laws on that run.

Mr. CORBETT. I am not informed on the laws to any great extent. Mr. POWELL. The New York States law is about the same as this, and the Massachusetts State law, I found out this morning from the Commissioner of Massachusetts is not much different, so these laws are operating now in these States. It seems to me a very wise thing would be for your union to change its constitution, as the Order of Railway Conductors, to abide by the laws that are now in existence in 11 States, and maybe now in Illinois, in 12 States.

Do you have any questions, Dr. Brehm?

Mr. BREHM. No.

Mr. POWELL. Thank you ever so much for coming.

Mr. HOUSTON. Mr. Chairman, could I have a word to say concerning the Railroad Adjustment Board, because it is very important that the thing be cleared up.

Mr. POWELL. Yes; you may go ahead.

Mr. HOUSTON. The statement was made that the Negro railroad worker gets everything out of the present set-up of the Adjustment Board. That is absolutely not true. The very requirement that a Negro must come through the general chairman of the organization, of the union which is putting in the discriminatory provisions before the Board which has on it representatives of members from the same organization poses a situation in which it would be impossible to get justice. Now what happens is it is true that wherever there is a conflict between the management and the worker the union will represent the Negro against the management, so that the contract is protected, that is true, but where it is a question of a job in the interest of the two workers, the union member and the Negro, they refuse to represent the Negro.

In the Steele case which went up to the Supreme Court of the United States, Steele requested the Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen to take this case to the Adjustment Board. They refused; they said they did not want to represent him.

The engineers, about 1937, took over the representation of the Negro firemen on the Gulf & Ship Island Railroad, where the Negro firemen were getting substandard wages. The engineers got the Negro firemen standard wages, and then immediately put in a clause that 10 engineers should have higher rights regardless of the seniority of the Negro firemen. They have been fighting that ever since. The company refused to abide by it and the engineers went to the Adjustment Board to get a decision. The Negroes tried to intervene before the Adjustment Board and they would not let them intervene. We are not permitted to intervene. The Colored Trainmen of America on the Gulf Coast Lines, St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico, tried to intervene in a dispute brought by the railroad trainmen, and they were refused permission to intervene.

Mr. BREHM. Were you talking about benefits?

Mr. HOUSTON. It does not benefit us, sir, when we cannot intervene and be heard and present our case. It certainly does not give us any benefit when we cannot be heard when our interests are in conflict with the interest of the white union men. We are only given the benefit when the conflict is essentially a conflict between management and workers and the decision in the Negro's case will affect and be of benefit to all of the workers in a craft or class, for establishing a uniform interpretation of the contract.

I

agree with you that there we get the same benefit. I also agree, of course, with what has been said before. It is unfortunate that we had to be used as strikebreakers. That is what we are trying to eliminate by fair employment practices.

Mr. CORBETT. May I make a remark?

Mr. POWELL. Yes, you may.

Mr. CORBETT. I have the fourteenth annual report of the National Mediation Board, including the report of the National Railroad Adjustment Board, and I wish to direct attention to the fact that on the Florida East Coast Railroad Co. the firemen are represented by the International Association of Railway Employees, Locomotive Firemen, Hostlers and Hostler Helpers, who I believe are Negroes.

Mr. HOUSTON. That is right, sir. That is only one road.
Mr. POWELL. The only road in the country.

Mr. HOUSTON. That is only one road out of all the other first-class railroads in the country. That simply proves the point. It is the exception which proves the rule.

Mr. POWELL. That is on one railroad.

Mr. HOUSTON. That is right.

Mr. BREHM. The point I think that Mr. Johnson was making-I am sort of confused now-was that here we have a board composed of experts in their field.

Mr. HOUSTON. Yes.

Mr. BREHM. Men who are in there battling to interpret the law as they see it, and when they render a decision certainly anyone affected would get the benefit of the decision, regardless of whether they could appear or whether they could not appear. That is the point that I got from Mr. Johnson.

Mr. HOUSTON. Let me put this situation to you, Mr. Congressman: The Negro train porter you heard about—and the question was raised by the other Congressman-as being a misclassification has been doing all of the braking work. He is not given the classification, nor is he given the pay, because he is a Negro. Now, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen has been trying to get those functions away from him. Management has not agreed to it. One reason, obviously, is that management is getting two men's work done for one man's pay because it is getting the porter's and the brakeman's work done for less than they would pay one white brakeman. Therefore, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen went to the first division of the National Adjustment Board. The Negro train porters tried to intervene, but the Negro train porters were not permitted to intervene, and the Adjustment Board went ahead and ruled that the work belonged to the brakemen and did not belong to the train porters. That is certainly not giving us justice. I don't want the record to show that the Adjustment Board does give us justice under those circumstances. Mr. JOHNSON. All these cases are not subject to the jurisdiction of the National Adjustment Board.

Mr. HOUSTON. Why did they bring it?

Mr. JOHNSON. They did it for the trainmen. You had men doing a brakeman's work for less than a brakeman's pay. It is only contractual matters that are subject to submission to the Adjustment Board, not jurisdictional disputes.

Mr. HOUSTON. No; not in that sense, but in the sense that here is a question as to whether under their contract they are entitled to that work, and there the proposition is they were not even permitted to intervene and submit their contract before the Board, to show they were doing the work under the contract.

Mr. POWELL. They were not permitted to intervene?

Mr. HOUSTON. They were not permitted to intervene.

Mr. JOHNSON. No; because the porter had no right to intervene. It was a trainman's case.

Mr. HOUSTON. Let me also say that the court of appeals decided, in Hunter v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Company, that the same Adjustment Board exceeded its jurisdiction and acted without due process of law in rendering that decision. That is in 173 Fed. 2d. In theory the Board is set up as a board of experts with equal representation between the carriers and labor, both of them experts in their

field handling very complicated contracts which cannot be interpreted normally by a court. By having one expert body you get uniformity of decisions in the interest of the uninterrupted flow of commerce. As I said, I subscribe to the organization of American industry; the only thing I do not subscribe to is the fact we are not taken in like every other citizen. The only point it breaks down into is where you have a Negro coming up and presenting a claim that is a threat to a white union worker. At that point the whole thing breaks down. Outside of that I think the Adjustment Board is a fine thing.

Mr. JOHNSON. What was the decision of the court in the Sante Fe case involving the porters?

Mr. HOUSTON. The decision was that the award of the Adjustment Board could not be enforced against the porters on the grounds it violated due process of law in that the porters were not given the opportunity of notice of hearing.

Mr. JOHNSON. What is the porter doing now?

Mr. HOUSTON. The same thing.

Mr. JOHNSON. He is getting a porter's rate of pay for the services he performs, isn't he?

Mr. HOUSTON. He is, and he should get the brakeman's rate of pay. Mr. JOHNSON. If he is going to do that work, then it is brakeman's work.

Mr. HOUSTON. Then why do not the brakemen go in there and say, "Give this man the brakeman's pay," instead of taking the job away and giving it to a white brakeman?

Mr. JOHNSON. Because he has seniority as a porter. He was not employed as a brakeman in the beginning, he was employed as a porter, and then he tried to get certain seniority as a porter to apply to a brakeman.

Mr. POWELL. Once a porter, always a porter, especially if he is a Negro?

Mr. HOUSTON. The theory is when a white man does conductor's work, he is a conductor; when a white man does a brakeman's work, he is a brakeman; when he does a fireman's work, he is a fireman; or when he does engineer's work, he is an engineer; but because we are black, as you say, we cannot be brakemen.

Mr. JOHNSON. I think you have got the wrong view on that. Mr. POWELL. The committee will adjourn now. Tomorrow morning we will hear the American Federation of Labor, the National Association for Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and representatives of the National CIO will also be present as regards the statement brought before us by representatives from Bessemer, Ala.

(Whereupon, at 5 p. m., the committee adjourned until 10 a. m. of the following day, Thursday, May 19, 1949.)