FEDERAL FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE ACT WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1949 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., Hon. Adam C. Powell, Jr. (chairman), presiding. Mr. POWELL. The committee will come to order. I would like to ask Representative Bryson of South Carolina to make his statement, because he has an appointment at the Judiciary Committee. STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BRYSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA Mr. BRYSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am very grateful to you for the privilege of appearing before your committee and being permitted to make a statement in opposition to the pending measure. In view of an extremely important session of the Judiciary Committee at this moment, I ask the privilege to extend my remarks by filing a statement. Mr. POWELL. Without objection, it is so ordered. (The statement referred to is as follows:) Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am grateful for this privilege to appear before you in opposition to the proposed legislation. The enactment of FEPC legislation alone would do more to create social and industrial disunity than all the vicious propaganda of communism. It is apparent to all but those who refuse to see, that the F'EPC is nothing but a major objective of the Communist Party. It is designed to destroy our republican form of government by regimenting the Nation's business and industry. What is in FEPC that makes it so dangerous? The FEPC would provide severe punishment for employers judged to be guilty of practicing racial discrimination in the hiring and promotion of workers. It proposes to set up a permanent commission to investigate and determine whether an employer is guilty of race prejudice in the conduct of his business. We had a brief but bitter taste of FEPC during the war, when it functioned on a temporary basis. FEPC has made little progress in any State. In the State of New York, where there is a considerable radical minority, there is a State FEPC. Pressure groups have managed to force similar measures through the legislatures of New Jersey and Connecticut. In no instance in which a State has adopted FEPC have the people been given an opportunity to approve or disapprove. In every case it has been adopted by the legislature acting under pressure. In 1946 the people of California had an opportunity to express their views on FEPC. In spite of the fact that there is a large radical and socialistic minority in California, the FEPC proposal was turned down by clear majorities in every county in the State. The people of the United States recognize FEPC 55 90748-49- -5 for just what it is a Communist-inspired conspiracy to undermine American unity. The FEPC is not an assault on the South alone. It is equally dangerous to all industry in all parts of the country. FEPC operation at the present time in the State of New York is working a serious hardship on industry in that State, inasmuch as it takes personnel control in a business or industry out of the hands of the owners and places that control in the hands of a bureaucratic commisIn the State of New York sion, which may dictate policies of hiring and firing. it is now illegal to carry on personnel practices which have always been regarded as fundamental to sound business. To indicate how New York's FEPC plays havoc with the hiring procedure alone, let me cite a few examples. It is unlawful: "To make inquiry into the original name of the applicant for employment, whose name has been changed by court proceedings or otherwise." It is unlawful: "To make inquiry into the birthplace of the applicant for employment, the birthplace of the parents, spouse, or other close relative." It is unlawful to require an applicant for employment to produce a birth certificate. It is unlawful to inquire "into the religious denomination of an application for employment, his religious affiliations, his church, parish pastor, or religious holidays observed." An employer cannot even ask whether an applicant for employment is an athiest. It is unlawful to inquire about the race or color of an applicant for employment. It is unlawful to require an applicant to submit a photograph with his application for employment. These are just a few of the tyrannical restrictions that the FEPC places on a business or industry. It denies a businessman the right to say what kind of people will work in his organization. If there is a greater imposition on personal liberty than this, it is difficult to imagine what it could be. It requires no great imagination to see what would be the result if this kind It would open of legislation were foisted upon the people of the United States. wide the doors of every business in the Nation to those agitators who are skillful in fomenting racial unrest. Every industry, every business in the Nation which did not employ certain minority racial groups would be subject to severe penalties. Every industry, every business in the Nation could be required to employ unqualified, incompetent persons merely to avoid any stigma of "prejudice" or "discrimination." Every member of every minority group could bring charges, justified or not, against his employer or against a prospective employer, seeking to demonstrate that employment or a coveted promotion was denied him on the basis of his race, creed, or color. With enough Communist agitators in the field, life for a southern businessman would be one continual round of lawsuits and court appearances, a perpetual inquisition conducted by bureaucratic FEPC investigators. The fact of innocence would be no defense, for an employer could be held responsible for the intolerances and prejudices of his employees, if they happen to resent the employment of a member of a particular race or religious group. There are many industries in which employers have no jurisdiction over the choice of employees, inasmuch as the union dictates who shall be hired. Most unions have written or unwritten regulations limiting their membership to members of the white race. In such a case, if an employer fails to hire a Negro he viclates the FEPC laws; if he does hire the Negro he violates his union contract. No matter what happens, he is bound to lose. This is the kind of inequity that we are asked to sanctify by Federal law. To do so is to fly in the face of all history, which teaches that prejudice cannot be overcome by coercion, that the only real answer to discrimination is better racial understanding through the forces of religion and education. This is a critical period of national and world history. It is no time to allow our legislative machinery to become stalled by FEPC debate. It is no time to permit Communist agitators to disrupt our national unity by spreading distrust and misunderstanding among racial and minority groups. It is no time for virtue to make concessions to vice. Mr. POWELL. Mr. Norman Thomas. Mr. Thomas has an appointment with the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to testify at 10: 30. He was originally scheduled to testify last week, but because of the Taft-Hartley debate, we could not hold the hearings at that time. So we will give him the courtesy of the first place this morning. Mr. Thomas. Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. TESTIMONY OF NORMAN THOMAS, REPRESENTING THE Mr. THOMAS. Long advocacy of Federal fair employment practice legislation has made Congress and the public reasonably familiar with the sort of legislation desired by its supporters. Legislation should declare it an unfair practice, hurtful to American democracy, for employers to discriminate in employment on grounds of race, national origin, or religion. Such prohibition of discrimination in no way interferes with the right to judge between competence and incompetence for the specific job. Enforcement should be along the lines of the New York State law under which a commission would first try to use good offices to settle a disputed case but should have power to go into court to get necessary judicial order with penalties attached for disobedience. The law, in my judgment, should apply only to employers of 50 or more, as is the case in the bill you have introduced, Mr. Chairman. Below that number, shops are likely to have a somewhat social or even a family character in which personal relations are more or less legitimately important to a degree that they are not in big businesses or industries. It is in small shops or businesses that there might well develop the greatest difficulties in enforcing the law, difficulties which would tend to discredit the law as a whole. At this point, I want to say that I think it is a very misleading parallel that opponents of this measure make when they say that an employer has a right to employ whom he pleases. They are thinking in terms of the very simple relation of a man to a hired man that he takes on the farm, or somewhere. When you are dealing with large industries, there is no such simple relation; there is no choice on personal grounds by an employer of employees. It is a social transaction and has to be governed accordingly. In a sense, the employer is a steward of society in that connection. While all discrimination unrelated to competence should be forbidden, it is apparent that there would be no reason for Federal legislation except for notorious, large-scale discrimination not only by employers, but unfortunately also by some labor unions, against the employment of Negroes, workers of Mexican origin, and possibly Japanese-Americans. It is from this angle that I shall make my argument. At the outset, I want to make it clear that either by some provision of this law or still better of the new labor law to be enacted, racial discrimination by labor unions should be effectively forbidden. I suggest that it could be done by denying recognition to any union guilty of such discrimination as a bargaining agency in negotiating collective agreements until the discrimination shall be removed. That, Mr. Chairman, is a personal suggestion. The working out of details is important. But I do stress the idea that unions also, as well as employers, have to be prevented from racial discrimination. Many unions have made a very fine record. but some have not. It is emphatically the business of the Federal Government, which for social purposes, greatly has to extend its power over interstate commerce to act affirmatively in protection of equality of economic rights among workers, irrespective of race or color. Of all denials of civil rights in America today, economic discrimination is the most basic and far-reaching in its consequences. Let there be economic fair play and there will be a strong tendency toward a more or less automatic ending of other discriminations. I do not mean that I am not in favor of other legislation, but I believe chat of all the bills this ought to have priority because of its farreaching importance. The strength of race feeling in America is largely due to the fact chat for so many generations the ancestors of our colored citizens were slaves and their color bore the stigma of slavery's degredation. Later it served the interests of many employers and the employer groups to pay some workers by the satisfaction of preferential social treatment because they were white and thus to keep the wage scales down. One of the most ridiculous and humiliating things I can imagine is what I have actually seen in certain manufacturing centers in the South where there is a special gate through which colored workers have to enter, although inside they have to participate with the others. It is a monument to stupidity as well as prejudice. Many of the social conditions among Negroes, generally attributed to their race or color, spring directly and indirectly from the fact that so largely they are underprivileged in respect to economic status and opportunity. So direct and serious are the consequences of this that, most emphatically, it is the business of the Federal Government to act along the lines of this proposed FEPC legislation. It is absurd to say that the elementary rights of American citizens are affairs merely of the States. Too often in America, State rights have been a pretext for workers' wrongs. Mr. POWELL. That is very true. Mr. THOMAS. We white Americans who have preached the doctrine of collective guilt to Germans cannot escape it in regard to our colored fellow citizens. The most shameful chapter in human history by reason of its long continued horror is the story of the African slave trade. Slaves were first brought to our shores 1 year before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. The slave trade was legal until 1808 and flourished illegally almost to the Civil War. Meanwhile in America slaves were bred on stud farms and were bought and sold like cattle until their political emancipation which, in our country alone of western nations, was brought about by a terrible war. When that war ended, the Federal Government made even less adequate arrangement to give its new free citizens economic opportunity than did the czar of Russia when, at about the same time, he freed the Russian serfs. In view of this fact, the progress of Negroes is genuinely remarkable. FEPC legislation would, among other things, be a measure of atonement for the long continued wrong we have done our fellow men. It would also become an integral part of our effective foreign policy in the eyes of the peoples of the world. It would do much to vindicate our American leadership for true democracy and individual right. In the long run it would, I think, do more for our effective security than he North Atlantic Pact. I am, of course, not suggesting its consideration as an alternative to the pact. The objection that FEPC legislation would run so counter to public feeling in many areas that it would become a dead letter, or by its enforcement a source of social unrest, is so grossly exaggerated as to be invalid. No government can legislate virtue or good will but governments can, and continually do, act constructively to prevent or punish crime and social injustice. Wisely administered, FEPC legislation can have genuine educative value on public opinion. That was proved by the very considerable success of fair employment action under Presidential order during the war and by the high degree of success achieved in New York State under the New York law. this point I speak as an interested citizen without detailed knowledge of the New York law, which I think can be had from those concerned with its administration. At One reason for Government action now is that the idea of fair employment practices should be established before a possible deepening of recession should aggravate competition for an inadequate supply of jobs. New York State was fortunate in starting its fair employment practices during a period of relatively full employment. The employment situation is still good enough to make this new legislation easier of enforcement than in times of deep depression and bitter job competition. I urge, therefore, prompt action by the House. If then a good bill is killed by filibuster in the Senate, we shall know exactly where to fix the responsibility for arrogant minority government. Thank you. Mr. POWELL. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. I know you have to get over to the Senate. Mr. THOMAS. I have time to answer any questions, of course. Mr. POWELL. I just want to emphasize through you, if possible, what is rapidly creeping into a discussion of fair employment legislation, and that is the international aspect. Yesterday Representa-tive Burnside, from West Virginia, pointed out how during the war when he was active in propaganda work, people of the Far East were continually questioning our Government on the vast difference between our principles and our practices, so much so that Dean Acheson has indicated that he will either come in person or will write to this committee and suggest strongly the passage of this legislation, from an international point of view. Mr. THOMAS. I hope very much he will come personally. It is very serious. I have not been abroad, but I frequently see a good many people who come to the UN, and otherwise, and from them all it is the same story. Naturally, what we do wrong is very bad and is easily exaggerated. So we even hear it in worse form than it is from abroad. I had this experience. I was speaking in a small meeting, and I said in this small meeting that in my judgment it is probable that more was known perhaps in a distorted form in remote hamlets of Asia and Africa concerning the famous report of the NAACP on discrimination in America made to the United Nations-more was known abroad than here. Mr. POWELL. That is right. Mr. THOMAS. One of the people present at that small meeting was our friend, Dr. John Haynes Holmes, who had just returned from a |