Others, professional reformers, without convictions of any kind, see in the bill an opportunity to reap a rich financial reward through the exercise of their professional talents as creators of unrest and the advocacy of controversial legislation.

Still others supporting the bill-and reference has been made to them-are socalled "smart" politicians, who think that the holding out before the Negro, not only of the justifiable hope of equal opportunity for employment, but the vision of an immediate Utopia, where all men will intermingle, intermarry, will secure for them the support of the Negro voter.

While the bill by its terms is all-inclusive, practically it offers additional opportunity to the members of but one race, the Negro.

The Negro, because of the circumstances under which he was brought to this country and because of conditions beyond his control which have since existed, has not, as a race, made the same advancement as have members of other races. Today, few indeed are those who would deny to the Negro equality of opportunity; but there are many who have the future welfare of the Negro at heart, who desire to assist him in every way, who are firmly convinced that, while he should be given equality of opportunity, yet moral and social inhibitions and inborn race prejudices cannot be wiped out by legislation.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a majority of our people by a constitutional amendment attempted to end the excessive use of spirituous and intoxicating liquor. That noble experiment should make us cautious in attempting to accomplish by legislation that which only education and tolerance can bring about. The fate of this bill should be decided, not upon any false premise but upon a consideration of how the Negro can best be given equality of opportunity, not only for employment but for education and the exercise of his religious freedom. Since the War Between the States the advancement of the Negro in economic and educational fields has been marvelous. Through the practice of tolerance, through education, a sure and sound progress will be made and the goal desired by Negro and by white alike will finally be reached.

The forcing of the issue, through legislation by sincere but misguided individuals, by professional reformers and soap-box orators, by cunning politicians, will, in my judgment, delay the attainment of a greatly desired end.

METHOD

Both major parties have promised, and our people desire, an end to the creation of additional bureaus, commissions, and agencies.

Experience under New Deal agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Office of Price Administration-yes, and even our recent experience with General Hershey, Director of the Selective Service System--has demonstrated that the departure from constitutional procedure, the issuing of rules, orders, and directives as the substitutes for laws and the decisions of courts, does not aid in giving our people equal justice under law.

It took the Anglo-Saxon race hundreds of years to obtain, establish, and, to a large degree, perfect the judicial system, which still, in spite of attempts to destroy it, is the most efficient method of administering justice between individuals ever created.

This bill creates another commission. It legalizes an executive agency which, in its own official family, has disregarded the principle of equality of opportunity, of representation.

If this bill is made legislation, the taxpayers will have thrust upon their already overburdened shoulders not only an additional tax burden, but an agency under which the individual's right to a trial by jury will be denied him.

THE ALTERNATIVE

If a majority of the Congress believes that legislation against discrimination should be enacted, then our time-tried and time-proven system, which guarantees to the individual due process of law, should be adopted, and the protection of the rights which this bill proposes to give should be entrusted to the judicial branch of our Government.

If so entrusted, a judge, learned in the law, free from political influence, will interpret the act; a jury will pass upon the facts; the accused will not be subject to a punishment imposed by some bureaucrat, by some partisan, by some crackpot, whose sole qualification is loyalty to a theory, ignorance of realities.

Discrimination, if such exists, can be prevented, adequate redress given, through the use of the judicial machinery already in existence. No additional cost, except perhaps for the payment of some additional clerical and stenographic assistance, would be imposed.

At present, there is a deplorable lack of confidence in the fairness, the integrity, the efficiency, of administrative agencies. The courts still retain the confidence of the people.

Entrusting the administration of any legislation which it is deemed wise to adopt to the judicial branch of our Government is imperative if we are to retain our constitutional rights and processes.

The possibilities for the exercise of tyranny under the interpretation and administration of this bill, or any other legislation of its nature, are so apparent that the creation of an executive agency to interpret and administer it would be but another transfer of a portion of the power of the judicial to the executive branch of the Government-another step toward dictatorship.

Respectfully submitted.

CLARE E. HOFFMAN.

Mr. HOFFMAN. Then I wish to call attention to the fact that when we had similar legislation before the labor committee, of which at that time I was honored to be a member, I inquired of the Census Bureau as to the number of Negroes who were employed in Government jobs. According to the 1940 census, the Negroes constituted 9.77 percent of the total population, and they held 9.91 percent of the jobs. Then the Fair Employment Practice Commission which was in existence at that time, which was supposed to end discrimination or at least to lessen it, gave 59 percent of its jobs to Negroes, paid Negroes 55.88 percent of the total funds which it used for employment. So that Commission itself, in its own practices, apparently made no effort to end discrimination. It discriminated in favor of the Negroes.

At that time only 41 percent of its jobs were available to all others who might apply-all others other than Negroes; and only 44.12 percent of its funds were paid to all others. That is, whites and yellows and browns and whatever they might be, received but 44.12 percent of the funds and only 41 percent of the jobs.

The record shows this. I have before me a copy of a report given. at that time by the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, Division of Review and Analysis, dated January 1946. You will find the figures with reference to all Negroes in Government employment on page 29. There, as to the Fair Employment Practice Commission, the total employed was 114, of whom 61 were Negroes. The percentage there was 53.5. Then it divides it into departmental personnel, and there the total was 54, and the number of Negroes employed was 34, and the percentage was 63.

When you get over to the field employees, 60 was the total, and there were 27 Negroes. They numbered 45 percent. If the committee cares for that report, they may borrow it.

I might pause here for a moment to say that in Michigan we have practically no discrimination. The passenger cars of the trains are occupied without regard to race, color, or anything else. The dining cars are open to people of all races. And in my own district, the Fourth District and the Fourth District, I might say, includes Cass County, which prior to and during the Civil War was one end of the underground railway over which came many, many Negroes from the South-slaves at that time; in Cass County there are several townships-three, I think-where the Negroes for a long time constituted a large proportion of the population. Today they own farms; they

own stores. There is absolutely no conflict. In some of the cities, where they come in from Chicago and some other areas, there has been some little trouble, but no more than you will find in any community where there are mixed groups.

As to the legislation proposed, from my observation during the 14 years that I have been here, I have not too much faith in Government commissions. I still adhere to the opinion that our judicial system is the best form yet devised for administering justice. I still prefer-and I practiced law for something like 40 years-a trial before a jury rather than before a judge, believing as I do that the judgment of 12 men—or 6 men, as we have in the lower courts-is far superior to the decision of 1 man, if the objective is the obtaining of justice. And if we are to have legislation along the lines suggested-that is, to prevent discrimination in employment-it has been my observation while sitting as a member of the Labor Committee and subcommittees thereof, that sometimes the objective is not preventing discrimination in employment, but rather other objectives, such as intermingling of the races.

But, to go back, if we are to have legislation of this kind—that is, legislation having that objective in view-then I think we should write legislation which will submit the controversy to the courts. With that in view, as long ago as January 31, 1945, I introduced a bill. It was H. R. 1908. It was a very simple bill. I have it here before me. It takes just two sides of one sheet. It merely provides that if there is discrimination, then the person discriminated against, if he has been injured, shall have a right of action. That first bill provided that the action should be in a Federal court.

Then later on, realizing that not all of the people can get to the Federal courts very easily, I had a bill, H. R. 6738, introduced in June of 1946, which was much the same—and that only covered two pages— but in section 4 it stated that

Any person injured by the violation of the preceding section shall have the right to recover of any person violating said section all actual damages which are the proximate result of such discrimination in any United States district court of the district or in any court of record of the State wherein either the person discriminating or the individual against or in favor of whom such discrimination is practiced may be a resident, and such damages shall include the actual, reasonable, and necessary costs of such action, including an attorney fee of not less than $25 nor more than $200, the amount thereof to be determined by a jury selected in the usual manner.

You notice that gave the person who claimed he was injured the right to legal services at the expense of whoever was guilty of discrimination. There might be added to legislation of that kind a provision which would give the person who filed the complaint the right to an attorney of his own selection, to be paid by either the State or the Federal Government, the idea being to insure anyone who claimed there was discrimination adequate legal service in presenting his case, to meet the argument so often made that people who were discriminated against had no adequate remedy and were unable financially to employ an attorney.

I think that is all I care to say. I realize you gentlemen have other work and are extremely busy, and I want to thank you again, and reiterate my position, that I believe we should not have discrimination, but I think the remedy is through education, and then if you must have

legislation, it should be legislation which would make available to the poorest individual in the land the processes of our courts, which I again repeat, in my judgment, at least, are the most efficient and best designed to secure justice for all.

Mr. POWELL. I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Hoffman, for his remarks. I take it, then, that you are in favor of fair employment practices?

Mr. HOFFMAN. Yes, but not necessarily of legislation.

Mr. POWELL. You are in favor of the principle of fair employment practices?

Mr. HOFFMAN. I do not think there is any doubt. Everyone should be treated fairly and equally and have equal opportunity. But I do not believe in agitators or self-appointed apostles of righteousness, or whatever they may want to designate themselves as being, taking over the proposition. I have seen so little discrimination in my community that it is difficult for me to realize that some of the statements made by advocates of this sort of legislation are factual.

Mr. PoWELL. I think it is very important now to note that you are in favor of the principle of fair employment practices, but do not agree with this approach.

Mr. HOFFMAN. I do not know of anyone who does not should have equal justice under law.

agree that we

Mr. POWELL. I served with you in the Seventy-ninth Congress on the same committee, and I remember your views then toward fair employment practices were the same. The only thing you disagreed with was the commission idea. You believed that the courts and jury system would be sufficient.

Mr. HOFFMAN. You do not go quite far enough. I do not believe legislation is necessary.

Mr. POWELL. You do not believe legislation is necessary?

Mr. HOFFMAN. No; I do not. We are gradually getting where there is no discrimination.

Mr. POWELL. But you have introduced these bills, however, of your

own.

Mr. HOFFMAN. I introduced those bills. The Republican Party, as I recall I could not say with the idea of getting the Negro vote, because that would just be my personal guess, maybe-endorsed it. And when the leadership seemed to insist that we must have legislation of this kind, I fell back upon trying to make it as workable and as inoffensive to everybody as possible, and best designed, I thought, to attain the announced objective.

I have never been able, Mr. Powell, as I said to you in private conversation, and perhaps in public statements, to find just where the line of preference, which we all exercise in every walk of life and all of our activities, ends and discrimination begins. That has been my difficulty. And it is still with me.

Mr. POWELL. I want to point out just one thing. In your remarks you mentioned the wartime FEPC and the percentage of personnel which was Negro. If we read this bill very carefully, there is no percentage set up at all under fair employment practices; there is no standard or percentage.

Mr. HOFFMAN. I understand that.

Mr. POWELL. So if a Government agency, or an employer, or a union has more Mexicans than it has whites, or more Catholics than Protestants, or more Negroes than whites, that does not in any way show that they are discriminating against or in favor of it, because we are not interested in percentages.

Mr. HOFFMAN. My only point in calling attention to that was to show that when you set up a fair employment commission to prevent discrimination, the result was not an equality of opportunity, or an equality in the giving of jobs, but that very commission set up to end discrimination practiced it, as shown by the results. Now, why they did it, I do not know; but they did it.

Mr. POWELL. I differ with you on that, because I do not think that the preponderant percentage of a minority indicates discrimination. I can point to several businesses operating now in the South that employ more Negroes than whites. I do not think they are guilty of discrimination. What I want to get before us is that percentages do not prove pro or con the question of discrimination, and the bill does not mention that in any way. The bill merely says that no person who is qualified shall be denied the right of opportunity.

Now, if there happen to be more Jews, or more Catholics, or more Mexicans, or more Chinese, or more Negroes qualified for any particular kind of work, or the employer feels that he wants more of them, that is his business.

Mr. HOFFMAN. No; not under this legislation.

Mr. POWELL. Under this legislation, it is his business.

Mr. HOFFMAN. Oh, no. Under this legislation, if the commission decides that a Mexican should be employed instead of a Negro, the Mexican gets the job, if they are of equal ability.

Mr. POWELL. No; there is nothing in this law that will force any employer to discharge anyone to put in his place a person of another racial or religious group.

Mr. HOFFMAN. No; but how about filling new jobs?

Mr. POWELL. New jobs, yes, on an equal basis, if qualified.

Mr. HOFFMAN. If, in the judgment of the commission, they should have a Mexican in there, and the employer does not want him, he takes him.

Mr. POWELL. If, in the judgment of the commission, the Mexican applied along with other people for the job and by virtue of his experience and education he was just as qualified, or more so-not less, but just as much, or more so-then if he felt he had been discriminated against because he was a Mexican, he goes through the process of this bill, and if in that process he is found not to have been discriminated against, then the petition is thrown out. And then at the end of the process, you do have recourse to the courts.

Mr. HOFFMAN. And experience has demonstrated that the commission considers itself the advocate-the special pleader-for the person who applies. All you need to do, if you want to see how these commissions and boards act, is to go back and read the hearings of the special committee appointed, of which Judge Smith was chairman, to investigate the National Labor Relations Board, and there is no room for argument. After you read the reports you will find that the National Labor Relations Board was the organizing agent of the CIO as against the AFL. There is not any question about it. They took

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