The mobility of the American labor force and the increasing interdependence of the multiple operations of our economy point up the need for a Federal pattern, a basic standard for employment rights. This has already been created in at least one important area of employee-employer relations.

The Wagner Act established such a Federal standard to eliminate discrimination against persons simply because they are union members. Despite these provisions of the Taft-Hartley law which return to the States-I think unwisely-the decision in some instances as will deny that labor and management have benefited greatly from the Federal standard set up in the National Labor Relations Act. Comparable benefit in terms of productivity and harmony would result from a Federal standard as set out in H. R. 4453.

ADA has actively worked for State FEPC laws wherever our chapters exist. Our endorsement of national legislation in no way implies a belief that local and State action is unnecessary or undesirable.

We heartily support the provision contained in the proposed law granting jurisdiction to the State or locality where its FEPC law meets Federal standards of equality in employment opportunity. The passage of national legislation should serve as an incentive and guide to those States which do not have appropriate legislation. There is not, nor would there be, any question of encroachment on States' rights.

The operation of the Committee on Fair Employment Practices during the war years when the fullest utilization of our manpower was a military necessity gives the Federal Government an administrative precedent in this field. Its experiences, the success of its functioning, gives too, I believe, strong argument for the creation of a permanent Employment Practices Commission to meet the needs of our peacetime economy.

As a businessman, it has been my experience that discrimination in employment is not only unethical but unprofitable and wasteful. I am committed to the idea that America, to live up to its economic potential as well as its democratic pretensions, must provide jobs at decent wages for all its citizens willing and able to work.

The continuance of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin means the perpetuation of a class of potential workers unable to enjoy the full benefits of our economy and unable to contribute their proper share to maintaining that economy at its highest level.

This is so evident as to need no stress from me. The hovels of Mexican-Americans in our Southwest, the Negro slums of New York, or of Washington for that matter, adequately demonstrates this economic equation. Discrimination breeds poverty, disease, and crime.

It is my complete conviction that were there no fourteenth amendment, the law of God, the moral law would still bind all States and all men. John Calvin said in 1536:

The law of God, which we call the moral law, must alone be the scope and rule and end of all laws.

I happen to be a Catholic. Catholics, too, suffer from discrimination, usually to a much lesser degree than others. But in the Southwest there are more than 2,000,000 Spanish-speaking Catholics who suffer from discrimination and social injustices second only in forms, types, and extent to the pattern which confront the Negro. My deep

detestation for discrimination comes from my religious instruction. I believe all men are brothers because all men have a common Father. We are today engaged in a great enterprise among nations to insure peace and democracy. We are attempting to make meaningful the concept of the brotherhood of all men.

Six years ago the administrative board of National Catholic Welfare Conference issued a statement on the "essentials of a just peace." I would like to quote a portion of that statement. It has great pertinecy to the question before your committee.

It would be consistent

the statement read

to promote a world reconstruction in which all nations, great and small, powerful and weak, would enjoy their rights in the family of nations, unless in our own national life we recognize an equality of opportunity for all our citizens and willingly extend to them the full benefits of our democratic institutions.

You will notice they do not say "grant an equality." They say "recognize an equality. "Equality is a basic right in the moral law; it is not the privilege of an individual or even of the state to grant or to decline to grant it.

I remarked earlier that goods and materials made in plants and shops where discrimination is practiced are exported by us over the seven seas-if only we could export the philosophy outlined above and without apology:

We are inconsistent, Mr. Chairman, in this country with our preachments of equality and our practices of inequality, but more than inconsistent we are unmoral and unwise. We lend comfort and aid to the very forces in the world against which we seek to build ramparts. We create confusion and distrust among our people at home.

Americans for Democratic Action asks this committee to support speedily H. R. 4453, with a recommendation for its approval by the Congress. This issue has been before several sessions of Congress without resolution. The last election demonstrated that FEPC along with the other items in the President's civil-rights program is the will of the people. It must be made the law of the land.

With reference to the Communist bogy, I would like to get this into the record. Even Cardinal Spellman, on down, opposes it, and I should say that should be considerable evidence that there is no such thing involved here.

Mr. POWELL. Thank you, Mr. Spaeth.

Miss Pasternack, you are speaking for the Students for Democratic Action?

TESTIMONY OF MISS ANN PASTERNACK, REPRESENTING 180 CHAPTERS OF STUDENTS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION

Miss PASTERNACK. My name is Ann Pasternack. I am a student at the George Washington University in Washington, D. C., and am a resident of Alexandria, Va.

I am representing the 180 chapters of Students for Democratic Action, an organization of high-school and college non-Communist liberals, dedicated to the achievement of freedom and economic security for all people everywhere through educational and political ac One of our gravest concerns, as students, is the question of job opportunities we will face upon graduation.

I worked my way through 4 years of college. This June I will join thousands of other college students and hundreds of thousands of high-school and vocational-school students who will receive their degrees and then turn to business and industry to look for jobs. Many of us have worked very hard in order to be able to receive this chance to put our ability to work for commerce, for industry, and for our country. We don't think the world owes us a living; but we do think our country owes us the chance to make a living in relation to our abilities to prove our worth. Many of us, I fear, will never have that opportunity.

Many of us will be stopped by job applications that demand to know our religion; others of us stopped by applications that demand a satisfactory birthplace of our grandparents; still others stopped by applications that are judged by the answer on the dotted line next to the word "race." The passage of an act to insure us that our job applications will not go into the wastebasket on these grounds is earnestly requested of this Congress by the Students for Democratic Action.

During the war our country was willing and eager to take advantage of the manpower and brainpower that was being produced in schools. Thanks to the temporary FEPC much of this training was absorbed without bias against color, race, or religion.

But what did students who graduated in 1946, 1947, and 1948 find facing them? The Census Bureau warned them that the opportunities for Negroes had dropped off much more rapidly than for whites. Furthermore Negro graduates had to face the fact that a like decrease has appeared in the chance to get or to keep jobs above the level of common labor. These statistics were a severe blow to many who had sacrificed physically and financially in order to get an education-in order to be of some worth to themselves and their country. The statistics that reflect the loss of labor opportunities, the downgrading of jobs for minorities, the barriers to skilled or professional jobs are just a part of the picture. It is impossible to measure in percentages or statistics the tremendous psychological blow that this treatment inflicts on these students who know they will be judged not on their ability but on their religion, their color, or national origin.

The future of these students is inextricably tied up with the economic future of this country. If our contributions are to be blocked by job discrimination, if many of us are held, on racial and religious grounds, to jobs below the level of our ability, the capacity of our country, economically and morally, must suffer. We are the source of the next generation of employees of Government and private industry.

If Government or industry deny us the right to use our ability, they are weakening the very structure of this country and of democracy. We believe we have a most wonderful system in this country; but we also believe that job discrimination is not a worthy part of that system. Unless and until these shackles are done away with, the loss in personal and national economic potential is a loss not only for our country but internationally, for our way of life.

You can insure all of us of the right to work where we are so qualified, or you can look for the same percentage of minorities on relief rolls that we found during the last 20 years.

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In 1940 in Minneapolis, for example, 68 percent of the Negroes of that city were on relief. We would much rather you make the first choice, and allow us to return to this Nation, in the form of harnessed energy and ability, some of the strength which she has given us in education.

The contributions we are able to make to our American economy are impossible without legal prohibition of discrimination in employment. Training without the opportunity to apply it is useless. Such a situation makes freedom of education lose much of its meaning.

I know that this committee has been deluged by sets of figures and statistics, but I wish you would, for just a moment, forget all those statistics and think about the thing that makes up this country-the individual-in this case, the individual student.

The young lady I would like to tell you about is a Japanese-American who attended public and high school in St. Paul and graduated with honor grades. During her 4 years at Macalester College, near St. Paul, Minn., she was a brilliant student and received top grades. Her major was sociology; her minor, Spanish.

Upon graduation, she found that there were many openings with Minnesota firms which needed people to aid them in their expansion into South American markets. These openings closed as soon as this young lady's name was revealed or her picture attached to an application blank.

Recognizing her ability, a number of citizens attempted to get her a position but frankly admitted they were stymied because of her race. After many months of job hunting she realized that her 17 years of training and final specialization would be of no help and that the best she could hope for would be a clerical job, for which she is now training in a business school.

If this were multiplied many times, you would have some idea of the discrimination against other minority groups and of the terrible resulting waste.

We do not feel that those who are not qualified should be hired. But our concern is for the many thousands who are and will be qualified but will be denied the right to be employed in the tasks for which we have received training, because of our race, religion, or national origin. We can only hope that you will come to our aid.

Mr. POWELL. That was a very, very fine statement.

I would like to ask a couple of questions of you.

There has been some talk in the past 24 hours of Congress adjourning in the next 60 days and shelving all civil-rights legislation. In fact, there has been almost official announcement.

I noticed your group promptly came back and vigorously protested such action. Would you like to say a word about that now?

Mr. SPAETH. From the standpoint of the national office, I am aware that they are fighting to prevent that very thing, but as to the actual steps taken, I do not know. I flew in from New York to appear here, and I have had no contact with the main office about that. But it certainly will be opposed.

Mr. POWELL. Another question. What is your opinion of this type of legislation, not only as far as it affects employers but as it affects unions?

Mr. SPAETH. Certainly, I think unions, in many cases, have been just as much the transgressors as the employers.

I was on the War Manpower Commission in Dayton, Ohio, during the entire war, and we ran up against a stone wall in giving anything else except token compliance to the fundamental law. On the War Manpower Commission I represented the employer, and at times we had some difficulty with the union representatives on the War Manpower Commission.

Mr. POWELL. We have the same situation in New York City and on the water front. We have murders, fights, and everything.

Mr. SPAETH. Would you like one more case where this thing has worked, a very big field?

Mr. POWELL. Surely.

Mr. SPAETH. In St. Louis University several years ago. Do you know of it?

Mr. POWELL. Yes.

Mr. SPAETH. St. Louis University had an effective color line about 5 years ago and they had a religious retreat lasting 2 days and they were told a great deal about good will and charity and a group of the students walked into the president's office and asked him if under that law, which for instance compelled Catholic Negro parents to send their children to Catholic schools, how they could possibly do that when St. Louis University refused entrance.

The president immediately, and I think belatedly, took a poll of all of the students and they voted overwhelmingly for absolute admission. I operated the Dayton Tool & Engineering Co. during the war and we had about 25 colored employees and the balance were white. There are no Negro toolmakers. It is a highly skilled craft, and they were not given an opportunity to become toolmakers.

Mr. POWELL. No apprenticeship?

Mr. SPAETH. No apprenticeship. We got a large contract and had to make changes in the plant. It involved closing the toilets in the plant which we had for women. They were all colored. They were not white and colored, but were the toilets for the colored. I didn't know what to do about it, until someone suggested taking a poll, with the result that all of the girls there voted 100 percent to throw them open, and there wasn't the slightest indication of difficulty.

Once this thing happens it will be forgotten in 10 years.

Mr. POWELL. I was talking to the young lady representing the students this morning. About 5 years ago, in 1944, I spoke at the University of Texas. Mr. Homer Rainey was president at that time. He said, if the adults would leave you all alone for one generation, you could solve this. We are the ones that pioneered this.

Miss PASTERNACK. I think one of the most interesting things we have found has been the intercollege debates with nonsegregated and Negro schools equally participating in debate tournaments, and there has been no question anywhere and the same facilities were offered both.

Mr. POWELL. One final thing. In answer to my friends in the South, this bill does not say one single word about the abolition of segregation. There is nothing in this bill about abolishing segregation. This is a bill to end discrimination.

I think if my friends in the South would know that and understand that they would feel better about the whole problem. They feel it is to break down segregation. It is not. It is to end discrimination. Thank you ever so much.