Mr. HINES (reading):

The term "employer" means a person engaged in commerce or in operations affecting commerce having in his employ fifty or more individuals; any agency or instrumentality of the United States, including the District of Columbia, or of any territory or possesison thereof; and any person acting in the interest of any employer, directly or indirectly; but shall not include any State or municipality or political subdivision thereof, or any religious, charitable, fraternal, Social, educational, or sectarian corporation or association, and not organized for private profit, other than a labor organization.

Mr. POWELL. I agree with you on that. I understood a couple of days ago the American Federation of Labor was concerned about that, and I have a proposition which I will present to the committee. which goes like this

Strke out line 13 on page 4

that is the line you mean? Mr. HINES. Yes.

Mr. PowELL (reading) :

and add to line 20 this sentence: "A labor organization, when it has in its employ fifty or more individuals and is engaged in commerce or in operations affecting commerce, is subject to the provisions of this Act regarding employers.” Mr. HINES. I just wondered why we were set aside from these other groups.

Mr. POWELL. Frankly, there are several things in this bill of a minor nature like that which, when the committee reads it, we will change. You must understand that this bill came to the chairman from the administration, without the chairman writing it. For instance the word "ancestry" is not in it.

Mr. HINES. It was in the Ives bill, too.

In the employment of personnel, I don't suppose anyone would want to interfere with the porters employing Negroes exclusively as organizers.

Mr. POWELL. I believe Negroes can be just as difficult as other races on the question of discrimination.

man.

Mr. HINES. In line with the policy of labor organizations, I think the logical man for an organization job is one who will come up through the ranks, and in this case he naturally would be a colored You take in a heavily predominate Jewish organization, you find people in the ranks are promoted to a job in the organization. Mr. POWELL. Take the red caps, we think of them as Negroes, but when you get to the West, St. Louis and Chicago, they are white. In the service unions they have both Negro and white workers. I think the whole practice of discrimination should be done away with. Mr. HINES. Of course I don't have much to worry about that in my union. I am a metal polisher and electroplater, and I belong to that union. We don't draw the line. We have many colored officers in the union, we have colored organizers, and we get together and all that sort of thing, but if we were to hire somebody as business agent, he would be the best qualified person, regardless, and we would not want any charge levied at us that we were discriminating against

anyone.

Mr. POWELL. Here you have in one union the only Negro member and they make him the president. Inasmuch as they are in the union, they would have the right, by majority vote, to decide that themselves.

Mr. HINES. I think this, Mr. Chairman, I think that there would have to be a lot of common sense applied in the administration of this law.

One of the things that has made us fearful at times has been the fact that we have had so much experience with, shall I say, bureaucratic agencies. I do not like to use that term. You set up a commission and the commission goes in business, and they have to have something to do, and they sometimes are looking for business. I am just a little bit afraid they may overreach themselves and drag us through a lot of court procedure. I strongly urge that you put some protective measure in here to prevent these follows from dragging everybody in before the Board. Conciliatory methods are the best.

I know for instance, from my experience in trade-union work, going back a good many years, 37, to be exact, that there are some fellows in the unions who would just welcome the opportunity to use this Board as a means of venting their spite on some of the officers of some of the unions.

Mr. POWELL. I would like to say just one thing before my colleagues ask you any questions, that is this, and this is my opinion, based on knowledge of the South, of both white and Negro, in fact I am but one generation removed from the South. More and more there is coming to this Congress a new type of Representative from the South. My opinion is that the major objection to an FEPC by Representatives from the South is this: That if FEPC became law many of them would be put out of office, because Negro and white workers, as you have pointed out, in Anniston, Ala., in Georgia, are getting together more and more. They are working together and helping each other. realizing that as long as the Negro is an economic slave the white worker in the South must be a semislave. When the FEPC is passed and gives them a chance to get together, they will unite on other matters.

Mr. HINES. I was at a convention of the Virginia Federation of Labor Monday and there was a large percentage of Negro delegates there.

Mr. POWELL. Were they segregated?

Mr. HINES. No, they were mixed up in around the audience.
Mr. POWELL. Were they voting?

Mr. HINES. All voting, all participating, and in fact the address of welcome to the delegates was given by a colored man representing the building trades. I thought that was an outstanding example of how they get together and work together there.

Mr. POWELL. When a Negro, Oliver Hill, was elected to the Council of Richmond, Va., last year, he received over 10,000 votes from whites. He was the first Negro elected to a legislative body of any municipal council in Virginia.

Mr. HINES. Mr. Chairman, I have always belonged to that school which believes in the fundamental principles of trade unionism, and we realize that you cannot discriminate against anybody in employment matters or in membership in unions matters, and we have always had this point of view, that the fellow whom you refuse to bring in will be the fellow who will work against you on the outside. You have got to bring them in whether you like it or not.

I have in mind the fact that as a director of the organization I worked out a program with the bishops of two of these religious

groups in Pennsylvania, the Mennonites and Dunkards. It is against the tenets of their religion to take office, or to owe any obligation to a labor organization. We had to overcome some objections on the part of our people, too, but we finally worked that out. We brought them into our own local unions in Pennsylvania where they have come and applied for membership, and we brought them in despite the fact that a number of the members thought they ought to be full-fledged members or they ought to be prohibited.

Mr. POWELL. Mr. Burke.

Mr. BURKE. I, too, want to compliment the witness on a very fine statement, and congratulate the A. F. of L. on its really terse and hard-hitting resolution. It is right to the point, it leaves no one guessing as to what the position of the organization is.

On this subject of employees of the labor unions themselves, many unions have as their sole employees elected officials. In other words, it is by the process of election, so it is hard to determine.

For instance, in my own local union we have an executive board of, I think it is 16 or 18 people. One of those was a Negro, but he was elected, and he was elected by the membership. It just happens that way. I don't think that any law can control the election of individuals to an office.

Mr. POWELL. That is right.

Mr. HINES. I think you must follow a certain procedure. You must get the best men or the best women for the job. I don't think it is the question of selecting somebody on the basis of color or anything else, it is a question of getting the right person for the right job. Mr. POWELL. That is all. Thank you ever so much. We will next hear from Mr. Irving Kane.

TESTIMONY OF IRVING KANE, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL
COMMUNITY RELATIONS ADVISORY COUNCIL

Mr. KANE. The National Community Relations Advisory Council is a coordinating body of national and local Jewish community relations agencies. Its national member organizations are: The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Also affiliated with it are 27 regional, State, and local community councils throughout the country. These are the Akron Jewish Community Council, Baltimore Jewish Council, Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Boston; Jewish Community Council, Bridgeport, Conn.; Brooklyn Jewish Community Council; Cincinnati Jewish Community Council; Jewish Community Council, Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit Jewish Community Council; Community Relations Committee of the Hartford (Conn.) Jewish Federation; Indiana Jewish Community Relations Council; Public Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Indianapolis; Jewish Community Council of Greater Kansas City; Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee; Milwaukee Jewish Council; Minnesota Jewish Council; Jewish Community Council of Essex County, N. J.; New Haven Jewish Community Council; Norfolk Jewish Community Council; Jewish Public Relations Council for Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, Calif.; Philadelphia Jewish

Community Relations Council; Jewish Community Relations Council, Pittsburgh; Jewish Community Relations Council, Rochester; Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis; Southwestern Jewish Community Relations Council; Jewish Survey and B'nai B'rith Community Committee of San Francisco; Jewish Community Council of Springfield, Mass.; and Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Youngstown, Ohio.

I have the honor to be chairman of the National Community Relations Advisory Council, the constituent communities of which comprise upward of 90 percent of the Jewish population of the United States. Although I have not personally appeared before congressional committees at earlier hearings on this legislation, other spokesmen for the council have done so on several occasions, most recently on June 19, 1947, when we submitted testimony before the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare of the Senate.

At that time, we pointed out that discrimination in employment harms not only its victims but those who practice it; that it is not only immoral and unjust, but un-American and undemocratic, a denial of those self-evident truths proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.

We showed that employment discrimination breeds poverty and its concomitants, disease, slums, and crime; that it is associated with low per capita income, thus limiting purchasing power and business volume; that it depresses wages and creates divisions within labor.

We pointed out also that the existence of such discrimination here at home is a severe handicap to those who speak for us in our relations with other countries.

I shall not dwell again at this time upon the many and conclusive arguments for effective Federal legislation to prohibit discriminatory employment practices.

During the current hearings, several of the organizations affiliated with the National Community Relations Advisory Council will appear before you through their respective representatives and I am confident that they, and other witnesses, will demonstrate the need for prompt enactment of H. R. 4453. Rather, I should like to place before you some new evidence, which has been gathered since our last testimony, and which emphasizes the urgency of the need for effective legislation. At the 1947 hearings, we offered evidence of the existence of serious discrimination in employment against Negroes, Jews, and other minority groups, and predicted that this discrimination, flourishing even then, during a period of peak employment, would grow if the employment situation deteriorated. Unhappily, developments since then have only too abundantly justified our prediction.

In October 1947 the President's Committee on Civil Rights published its now famous report, To Secure These Rights. The President's committee found that Negroes, Jews, Mexican-Americans, and Japanese-Americans are almost completely barred from executive and clerical employment opportunities, as well as from many categories of skilled work; and that even the lowest paid jobs, members of these groups have difficulty in securing employment. Also that they are discriminated against in respect to pay for work at similar levels of skill and capacity.

Studies by official governmental agencies in a number of States and cities have produced shameful corroborative evidence.

A survey of the Illinois labor market by the Illinois Interracial Commission revealed that private fee-charging employment agencies did not even list nonwhite applicants. Ninety-five percent of private employment agencies reported that Jewish applicants faced serious discriminatory barriers in atempting to qualify for jobs, substantial percentages reported similar discrimination against Catholic workers. The survey also revealed that over 100,000 discriminatory "help wanted" ads were published annually in newspapers in the State of Ilinois; that of 1,600 Illinois business firms polled, over half reported no nonwhite employment; that 70 percent of all financial and 75 percent of all accounting, advertising and other service firms in the State had no nonwhite employees; that only 3.6 percent of the employees of the public utilities of the State of Illinois are nonwhite. Of all job orders received from employers in Illinois State Employment Service offices in East St. Louis during April 1947, 69 percent carried discriminatory specifications; in Chicago, 58 percent carried such specifications.

These are but a few of the findings presented in a 114-page printed report on employment opportunities in Illinois, printed by authority of the State of Illinois, and presented this year to the Governnor and the legislature of the State. With your permission, I should like to submit a copy herewith, for your study and for the record of these hearings.

(The document referred to was filed with the committee.)

Mr. KANE. When I left Chicago this morning I noticed a headline in the Chicago Tribune to the effect that the House of Representatives of Illinois passed the FEPC bill.

Mr. POWELL. What was the vote?

Mr. KANE. The subtitle indicated it passed by a majority of 4 votes, but I did not read the article itself.

In Missouri, a special committee of the house reported on March 2, 1949, to the general assembly on its investigation of violations of equal rights under the Missouri Constitution. Among those violations, the committee enumerated discrimination against colored workers in job placement in the metropolitan areas of St. Louis and Kansas City, exclusive of Negroes from membership by certain building trades and other craft unions, and other evidence.

A Minneapolis self-survey conducted by the mayor's commission on human relations found that Jews, Negroes, Japanese-Americans and other minority group members are widely discriminated against by employers.

Like the Illinois report, this Minneapolis survey contains a great volume of statistical and other factual evidence of the extent of employment discrimination.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I should like to submit for incorporation in the record a copy of that report. (The report referred to is as follows:)

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE INDUSTRY AND LABOR COMMITTEE OF THE MINNEAPOLIS COMMUNITY SELF-SURVEY OF HUMAN RELATIONS

This is a summary of the findings of the Industry-Labor Committee of the Community Self-Survey and a statement of certain recommendations which the committee feels are essential to improving the employment opportunities for members of certain minority groups in Minneapolis.

90748-49- -21