had never discovered it. Most people enjoy it; most people do not get any material harm out of it. But when you do see some of the ones who are seriously injured and whose lives are wrecked as a result, there is not but one conclusion to come to, and that is the fact that we are worse off as a result of its presence.

So we enacted a prohibition law in the hope that it would eradicate the situation. But as a matter of fact it did not.

Now, this law-the FEPC law-as I understand it, is primarily designed to be applicable to the Southland. It will have, naturally, its most numerical impact in that particular area. And how will it be enforced? How will it be carried out? Will it be a mere farce? I am told that in other areas of the country where such laws have been attempted, the law is not enforced in any real sense of the word at all, but that it is just a sham, and that they hire people under the counter, you might say, so as to evade the law.

Now, personally I do not think any man ought to discriminate against any other man because his face happens to be black or his hair happens to be curly. I do not think he should discriminate against him because he happens to be disabled. I do not think he ought to discriminate against him because of his religion. But when you go to saying in a law that a man cannot discriminate, you have done something else. As a practical matter, you have said, regardless of what the words are that you use in the law, that people can litigate the question of whether or not they have been discriminated against. So as a practical matter, the chief result as far as I can see of this particular law will be that there will be litigation and trouble and strife about particular people who cannot get along with their fellow men. They are going to be bringing lawsuits to try to see to it that they are going to be employed, because they happen to be colored, and not because they were discriminated against because they are colored, but people who want to get employment are going to raise this issue and stir up a lot of strife and have a big impact on society involved simply because of some personal desire for aggrandizement or some desire for the particular job involved. Probably it will be more often the former, people who will desire to stir up strife and become the center of controversy and some sort of hero in the eyes of a few people. We do not have that kind of people in the South at the present time. One thing that always astounds me, when I read in the newspapers and magazines and hear over the radio about the relationships of people in the South, is the great distortion of facts. You would almost conclude that everybody condoned lynchings in the South, that people hated the colored people, and that they were always trying to hurt them in every possible way.

As a matter of fact, the situation is just exactly the contrary. I myself come from slave-owning ancestors. I have been reared in the southern tradition. I have never felt, and none of my friends and none of my relatives have felt, that we were superior to any other type of people just because our faces happened to be white. I think the colored people have pride of race. It does not mean that they look down on the white people; it means that they prefer to be among themselves as a general rule. They like to associate among themselves. You cannot change the nature of human understanding across the world.

When I was overseas in the Orient, I happened to be a platoon leader of some American soldiers for a while, and I had asked some of my friends there among the Filipinos why the Filipino girls did not go more often with the American soldiers. They said, "Well, now, lieutenant, we would be happy to see to it that there are some dates provided for the boys in your platoon if you would like to do that, but most of these girls feel that Filipinos are for Filipinos and Americans for Americans. They will go with the American soldiers just to be friendly. But as far as any serious thing out of it is concerned, it would not take place." That is not because anybody there has a feeling of superiority or inferiority.

I think people who fight for things like FEPC are either not properly informed about the circumstances or they are very much misled in some manner. I think, as a matter of fact, the enactment of an FEPC law will not bring about harmony; it will bring about a lot of evil and a lot of harm. It will stir up all these troubles that have taken place in the past. They are mostly historical at the present time.

I am not trying to condemn the press at the present moment, and I certainly would not want to. But when I was overseas in New Guinea I read with astonishment that the number of lynchings in the South averaged about 100 a year. Well, in the next week's Time magazine, I read in a small footnote that actually it had not been quite 6, the average. Instead of 100, it was 6. And as a matter of fact, there have not been any lynchings in my area for many, many years. Since I have been back from overseas, the most inflammatory thing that ever occurred with reference to race relationships involved the question of sex relationships.. That perhaps is the basis of most of the difficulties. There have been several horrible rapes by Negro men of white women, including murder, since I have been back, and I have only been back a few years. There has been no lynching involved in it. The men have been tried and they have been sentenced for the thing they were tried for.

In the State of Florida, we have on occasion-several times-convicted white men and sent them up for long terms for raping Negro women. And you would never realize that sort of situation takes place if you read the newspapers or the magazines or listened to the radio commentators. They are just as distorted about that as they are about labor-management laws or many other things. They seem to think that Congress is entirely the puppet of people in the big unions, that everything they do up here is a lot of chicanery, and they are doing it just for political advantage.

So it is with the veterans' pension laws. You would think that Mr. Rankin is a pure demagogue, from reading most of the newspapers, and personally I think he desires very much to solve a situation. which is of great importance with regard to our veterans. But you would never guess it from reading the newspapers or the magazines or listening to the radio.

I thought before I came here that there was only one portion of American society which was distorted, and that was the question of relationships between the black and the white people of the South. Since I have come here, I have come to the conclusion that distortion runs the gamut from A to Z, and that there are many things which I can hardly accept when I read the accounts in the usual newspapers. Here in Washington they are a little better.

In speaking on this matter, I am trying to speak frankly. I think the colored people can be helped tremendously. They have already been helped tremendously. Just before I left to come up here I am very much interested in housing legislation-I went through the colored section of my home town, where there are about 75,000 or 80,000 colored people. There is generally a need for much better housing for Negroes, but things are not as universally bad as usually depicted. I saw one house there that the real estate men who were with me estimated probably cost $100,000, and another one that cost $50,000, which were new and were being occupied by colored people. Many of them have servants. My family has never regularly had a ' servant since the early days when they had slaves, long ago. They have never been able to afford it since that time.

Many of those colored people have servants, have several cars, and have big homes. One man in my home town runs an insurance company staffed by colored people from bottom to top. He employs nobody but colored people. He has a tremendous concern. I imagine his income must be-I would have to guess here on the recordbut I imagine his income might be as much as $25,000 or more. There are other colored people who run transportation facilities, funeral homes, restaurants, and things like that. I think, if you look in the record, you will find that there are more professional people from the colored people per capita in the South than there are per capita in the North. I think their chances of getting ahead in industry are better in the South than they are in the North. They cannot go to the top in the North. I think they are generally held down.

We have pride in our race, and the colored people have pride in their race. I do not think they ought to be mixed up. When the colored people write me about schools, they say they want better schools, but they do not say they want segregation abolished. They are proud of their race. I think they should be proud of their race. I think they should be proud of the integrity of the race. There is plenty of room in the South. The sky is the limit. There is nothing that cannot be done.

My chief feeling about all these laws is that they must stem from the people that are to be controlled by the laws, primarily. I was a member of the Florida Legislature which abolished the poll tax. I feel that the poll tax should be abolished. I personally do not favor— at the present time I have not been convinced, at least-that they should be abolished from a national standpoint. I think the States ought to be able to work those things out gradually for themselves. However, I would say that I do not think anybody is being prohibited from casting their vote by the poll tax. They are very small taxes. They count something toward our educational system, but I do not think that anybody is being excluded on account of that. I think that in most-possibly all-States that I have had anything to do with they should be abolished. But I think that is a thing that they should do for themselves.

I think there is some help that could be given to the South in the field of lynchings, the few that occur-there are practically none that occur any more-in that some assistance could be rendered to the Governors who request it or to the sheriffs who request it in the field of trying to find out who the culprits are. I think many State laws ought to be revised with regard to sex crimes between the various races.

There are many other things that I think can be done to help. But the most basic feeling I have about FEPC stems from my own human experience. A boy who runs around in juke joints all the time is not very likely to be happily married or even likely to associate all the time with somebody from a Methodist Epworth League. It is just human nature. Race is not involved in what I am saying now. People generally seek people that they are fairly similar to. They generally try to build up their acquaintanceships among those people. It does not mean that people think that other people are any worse or any better. I talked very recently with Princess Red Rock, an Indian, who is very much interested in things that can be done for the Indian race, and I was interested in some of her comments about what could be done. I was also interested in pointing out to her that perhaps some of these aborigines in the Indian race ought not to be forced too far against their will. If they want to do a certain thing, maybe they should be allowed to do it.

When I was in the Hawaiian Islands for about 7 months in the early part of the war, I was astounded to see the difference between the native Hawaiians and the other people. They live about the way they want to live. They live rather primatively, you might say. They have their outrigger canoes, and they live in nipa huts. They are not particularly poor people. They are fairly happy people. That does not mean that they are happy people just because they are ignorant, because they are not. Many of them have wonderful educations. I met in the Philippine Islands many people of similar caste. I remember meeting a man who was in my father's graduating class from George Washington University here in 1905. I remember meeting this fellow, who at the time was dressed as simply as a coolie. He was a very happy man in the Philippine Islands. I do not know why we should press them into different kinds of fields if they do not want to be in those fields. And I do not see why we should try to rework society against the laws of nature and against our own human instincts.

I am against discrimination-very violently against discrimination-but I do not think a Federal law will accomplish anything, and I think it might make for a spectacle which will not be helpful for our country. I think the State laws could be improved with regard to certain things, but I doubt that there should be any State FEPC laws. I think what needs to be done-and I am very realistic about approaching all problems with regard to the colored people-I think what is needed is that more economic opportunity be made available to the colored people. But they are not exactly up against a brick wall at the present time. It is not perfect, but I think it is much better than it would be under FEPC.

Now, I have talked too long here, and I have made this entirely extemporaneous, but it is all from my heart. I am very sincere about this. I want to help the colored people so much that I would say there is probably nothing in my public life that touches me more than trying to help the colored people. I think I have shown it in the past. I have openly tried to help them when it was of no political advantage, and perhaps of political danger to myself, because of misunderstanding; and I have backed all movements that I thought were practical to help them. I may be wrong in my thinking, but I think that I am

right, and I come from an area where the problem is prevalent. I am not coming from some remote area. I am coming from an area where the actual situation exists.

I think the Federal Government ought to try to help in the things where the colored people can be helped, and there are many places where they can be helped.

We can have. for instance, a greater aid in the control of venereal disease. There is a terrific incidence of venereal disease among the colored people of the South. There is a terrific tubercular rate. It is five times what it is among the white people. Maternity death rate is three times as bad among the colored people as it is among the white people. They do not have proper hospitalization facilities. But all of these things largely stem from lack of funds.

Now, the Federal Government, in my opinion, in washing its hands of the colored people at the end of the War Between the States, did a very serious injustice to everybody in the country and to the colored people particularly. I would not say to the South particularly; I would say to the colored people in the South particularly. I am not asking anything for the South. I would think the colored people need help in the South or wherever they may be, and I think the Federal Government ought to realize some of that responsibility, but I do not think it ought to do it in this back-handed way, which is impractical and will cause nothing but hardship and ill will all the way through.

I am for trying to help people where they can be helped, and I do not care whether it kills my political career to do it. It is a much bigger thing than "little me" is in this matter, and I would like to help in every way I can.

Now, I said I was going to stop a minute ago, and this time I will. Are there any questions anybody would like to ask me?

Mr. POWELL. I appreciate the statement from Representative Bennett of Florida. There are a couple of things that I would like to mention in reply. The first is that this bill, and I hope you will have a chance to read it

Mr. BENNETT. I read the previous one.

Mr. POWELL. This bill does not in any way go into any of the problems the gentleman mentioned-social, education, recreation, or transportation. It just goes into the field of employment. And when it goes into that field, it goes into that field only insofar as there is discrimination, but not segregation. Segregation does not come under this bill at all.

Mr. BENNETT. As a practical matter, Mr. Powell, if you have a concern, for instance, where there are, say, three or four white girls that must work at night, the average person in the South, whether he be colored or white, would think it would not be a matter of discrimination to refuse to employ a colored man to be with those girls at night. As I said before, a lot of this trouble stems from lack of education which has brought about things which are unpleasant.

Why are there separate drinking fountains in certain sections of the South? Well, because the incidence of venereal disease is much higher among colored people.

Why is there segregation on buses and things of that kind? The average person in the South does not necessarily want to see those