TESTIMONY OF BEN KAUFMAN, NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JEWISH WAR VETERANS OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. Chairman, my name is Ben Kaufman. I am executive director of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States. Mr. POWELL. Do you wish to read your statement or file it?

Mr. KAUFMAN. I would rather read it.

Mr. POWELL. Very well.

Mr. KAUFMAN. In connection with H. R. 4453, I have the honor to represent the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, which is the oldest veterans' organization in the country next to the Grand Army of the Republic and the Army and Navy Union. It was established in 1896 by Jewish veterans of the Civil War who fought in the armies of both the North and the South. Today it has 650 posts all over the United States, with approximately 120,000 members.

I am authorized to present the views of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States by virtue of resolutions passed by its national executive committee, and I appear before your honorable committee upon express direction of our national commander, Myer Dorfman of St. Paul, Minn.

I shall not repeat, in this brief statement, arguments which have been presented to your committee by other witnesses with reference to various details of the bill, but desire to make a few comments from the standpoint of a veteran-one of those 18,000,000 veterans of our last two wars who fought for our democratic way of life; one of those 600,000 Jewish veterans of World War II who returned, leaving behind 13,000 Jewish dead with the dead of other Americans of all religious faiths.

In considering the implications of any legislation to end discrimination in employment and other fields of human endeavor, I should like to point out to this committee that the Jewish War Veterans of the United States has expressed its ardent support of such policies as the European recovery program and the proposed North Atlantic Pact. We were prompt to voice that support because we conceive these measures to be important segments of a total pattern designed to guarantee this country's security and stability. As veterans, we are perhaps more sensitive to the needs of our Nation's security than the average nonveteran.

It requires an unusual lack of perception not to recognize that we are engaged today in a conflict of ideas and moral values on a scale at least as great as the war we finished fighting less than 4 years ago.

In the first World War-in which I fought-and in the second war-in which younger members of my family bore arms-we found that the enemy did not resort to guns alone in seeking to defeat our troops. The artillery barrage was matched by the propaganda barage. The enemy was as eager to exploit a weakness in our social system as he was to take advantage of any weakness in our combat positions.

The "hot" war nazism and fascism were waging against us 4 years ago has been supplanted by a "cold" war being waged against us by communism today. The primary weapons in this war are not guns; they are political and social concepts.

In this conflict, we of the Jewish War Veterans are convinced that legislation to seal off one of the few remaining gaps in our social

system can be as important to our country's security as the North Atlantic Pact and the European recovery program. For, if we cannot show that the guaranties of our Constitution and our Bill of Rights mean exactly what they say, we shall be risking a major defeat in the field of ideological combat. We shall permit to go unanswered the crafty lies of those who slander representative government and foster the vicious untruth that man's only hope is to believe and behave by the dictates of a totalitarian state. Most of all, we shall run the risk of encouraging a sinister handful within our gates who can only thrive on the frustration and despair that comes with the denial of the basic human rights upon which our country was founded.

In advocating enactment of H. R. 4453, our organization is mindful that equality of opportunity has produced outstanding leadership during times of national emergency. Veterans are keenly aware that the men who led every echelon of our country's forces to victory in both World Wars were Americans of every racial and religious background who rose to leadership through individual ability manifested during periods when the very existence of our country was at stake. In those hours of crisis, it would have been unthinkable to question the racial origin or religious belief of an American chosen by his superior officers to lead a combat unit in the field. The sole basis for such a choice was merit. The only question to be resolved was whether the individual singled out for leadership was capable of assuming responsibility for efficient and successful accomplishment of assigned missions. The record of American achievements in military combat throughout our history demonstrates the wisdom of this principle of selection. By ordinary adherence to American concepts of fairness and equality we have kept our country free and secure since the day we became a republic because-as soldiers-Americans were not singled out for discrimination in their right to fight and die for their country's preservation.

It seems to us tragic that-as veterans-so many of these same Americans returned to find themselves challenged in peace, not on issues of individual competence or character but on grounds relating to the religious beliefs or origins of their forbears. Gentlemen, the American serviceman who listed his religious faith on his identification tags did so only against the possibility that he might lose his life in the common effort for his country's survival. None of those who fell was ever denied a military grave marked by the symbol of the faith in which he lived. But we have been less considerate of thousands upon thousands who survived war. To these, some employers, some landlords, and some educators have denied the equality in peace that was readily conceded in war.

Americans have never gone to war as Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or Negroes. They have gone to war as Americans. It is in the pursuit of peacetime employment, housing, education, and other social and economic necessities that thousands of veterans have been confronted with racial and religious distinctions that were never imposed on them when they were called upon to serve their country and all its people.

The Jewish War Veterans of the United States has come here today in the deep conviction that legislation of the kind proposed in H. R. 4453 is no more than worthy and legitimate payment of a promissory note to millions of American veterans who took up arms in defense

of their country in the belief that constitutional guaranties of equal justice and equal opportunity were more than fair compensation for the equal hazards of fighting a war.

Our organization is unanimous in its belief that this Congress has before it a prime opportunity to provide the world with a conclusive and unassailable demonstration of genuine Americanism in action. We are convinced that enactment of H. R. 4453 can serve as a final refutation to the sinister propaganda offensive being waged on a global scale in a determined effort to discredit our way of life. Gentlemen, the privilege-yes, the responsibility-of closing one of the last remaining gaps in the structure of our national security is within your grasp. Failure to take affirmative action on this vital issue will be construed, unfortunately, as a tacit endorsement of the existing undemocratic and un-American practices which H. R. 4453 seeks to correct.

The Jewish War Veterans of the United States strongly urges your honorable committee to do everything possible to speed the passage of this legislation.

Thank you.

Mr. POWELL. Thank you ever so much. It is very interesting to know that the Jewish War Veterans fought on both sides.

Mr. KAUFMAN. Yes, sir; there were over 10,000 of us in the Civil War, sir.

Mr. POWELL. I appreciate your testimony. Thank you very much. We are pushing along because the House of Representatives is going to operate under the 5-minute rule any minute now, and when it operates under the 5-minute rule all committees must adjourn. The last witness is Dr. Felix Cohen.

I would like to say this afternoon at 2 o'clock, or as close to 2 o'clock as the operation of the 5-minute rule will permit, Congressman Brooks Hays, of Arkansas, will appear to offer a counter proposal to this committee as to the FEPC proposal for the South. We are going to give him ample time to develop it, and we hope to meet at 2 o'clock, if the 5-minute rule permits. If the House is under the 5-minute rule we will meet as soon as the 5-minute rule comes to conclusion.

Dr. Cohen.

TESTIMONY OF FELIX S. COHEN, REPRESENTING ASSOCIATION ON AMERICAN INDIAN AFFAIRS

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the privilege of appearing here on behalf of the oldest minority group, the Indians.

I want to reciprocate the courtesy of the committee by limiting myself to matters which the committee has not heard, as far as I know, from any of the witnesses who have been testifying on this subject in the last 6 years.

Mr. POWELL. Do you want to file your statement?

Mr. COHEN. I should like to file it; yes, sir.

Mr. POWELL. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(The statement is as follows:)

I appear here today, through the courtesy of this committee, to testify on behalf of the Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., on H. R. 4453. This organization, with offices at 48 East Eighty-sixth Street, New York 28, N. Y., represents

people in almost every State of the Union who are interested in promoting a better understanding of the needs and problems of our Indian fellow citizens. The president of this organization is Oliver LaFarge, of Santa Fe, N. Mex. The honorary president of the organization is Dr. Haven Emerson, of New York City. For 25 years the chief activity of this organization and of the various associations which combined in 1937 to form the Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., has been that of educating the American public as to the needs and problems of our first Americans, and, in particular, this organization has tried to educate the American public concerning the various discriminatory schemes and devices, public and private, which have been used to deprive the Indian of his fair share of the benefits of American life.

My own qualifications to speak on the subject of the fair employment practices bill can be summarized very briefly. In the first place, I served for some 14 years in the Department of the Interior as legal adviser to Secretary Ickes and to Secretary Krug, and during that time specialized in the various racial problems which fall within the jurisdiction of the Interior Department, particularly Indian problems, problems of discrimination and segregation affecting the Negro, and similar problems affecting Puerto Ricans, Alaskan natives, Hawaiians, and Americans of Japanese descent. In the second place, as an outgrowth of that experience, I assisted informally, at the request of various Senators and Congressmen, in the drafting of the various bills dealing with this problem of job discrimination in the Seventy-eighth, Seventy-ninth, and Eightieth Congresses. Finally, as a private attorney both before and after my years with the Government, I have specialized in the legal problems of minority groups. Among the minority groups which I now serve are the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations, which serves as an adviser to the United Nations on Jewish problems, and the All-Pueblo Council, which is an organization of 18 Indian tribes or pueblos in the Southwest established in 1685 for the purpose of protecting Indians against attacks on their human rights and their property rights; also among my clients are the American Jewish Committee, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the Oglala Sioux Indians of South Dakota, the Hualapai Indians of Arizona, the Omaha Indians of Nebraska, and various native communities in Alaska.

I am appearing today on behalf of the Association on American Indian Affairs, of which I am general counsel, but I think I may say that the position which the Association on American Indian Affairs takes with respect to fair employment practice legislation is a position which is supported in principle by every other minority group with which I have ever had any professional contact.

There are two reasons why the Association on American Indian Affairs appears before this committee.

In the first place we believe that this committee is faced with one of the most difficult problems of American statesmanship and will want to take account of all phases of our national experience that bear on its solution. We think that our experience on this continent with our oldest minority-an experience that stretches across four and one-half centuries-has a very important bearing upon our choice of effective measures in dealing with the general problem of discrimination.

In the second place, we appear before this committee because the American Indian even today is a victim of serious economic discriminations and we hope this committee will do its part to eliminate those discriminations.

On the first point, the bearing of our experience with Indian discrimination on the general problem which this committee faces, I should like to call attention to the fact that discrimination against the Indian has not been primarily a matter of social segregation. Discrimination against the Indian has almost always taken the form of denying to the Indian the right to engage in the economic pursuits open to his fellow countrymen. We thus have a good case study of the consequences of economic discrimination. This economic distribution began when we denied the Indians the right to sell their land or furs or agricultural produce to customers of their own choosing or to hire agents or managers of their own choosing, insisting that they could sell only to the United States or its agents or Government-approved traders and could not employ unapproved attorneys or real-estate agents or business management to advance their own economic interests. That discrimination resulted in the Indians being forced to sell their lands, their furs, their fish, their timber, their agricultural produce, and their minerals at prices which were generally far below the market prices at which their white neighbors could make such sales. The long-range effect of such discrimination has been to make of our Indian reservations hos

pitals for the victims of our oldest social disease on this continent-discrimination. I have seen on a number of these reservations conditions of helplessness, misery, starvation, and preventable deaths which could not be duplicated in the worst city slums in America-not even in the slums of Puerto Rico, which I have visited. One would have to look to China or India for parallels. And these centers of misery and starvation infect surrounding communities, keeping wages down, and add to local and national tax burdens. That is the end result of centuries of economic discrimination. That is the end result to which similar discriminations in the economic field can reduce any segment of our population. And that is a result which we know this committee wants to avoid.

Now the second and final point which I want to make is more specific and relates to the impact of the particular bill before this committee on the American Indian.

It may seem strange to some members of this committee, particularly to those whose constituencies do not include very many Indian tribes, that Indians should have a special interest in nondiscriminatory employment. The general picture of the Indian is a romantic and unrealistic picture of somebody with a war bonnet on a horse, somebody at the end of a trail, who wouldn't know what to do with a job if he had one. Indeed it may come as a surprise to some members of this committee that Indians are subject to economic discrimination to this day. In some parts of the country is it rather considered a distinction to carry in one's veins the blood of Pocahontas or some other distinguished Indian chief or princess. In any event the common opinion is that the Indian is an insignificant and vanishing minority.

Now, in fact, the Indians of our country-more than 450,000 of them-about as many as the total Jewish population of Germany when Hitler assumed powerare the most rapidly incerasing racial group in the United States. And the economic discriminations practiced against them today are probably more serious than those practiced against any other minority group. Conditions are particularly acute in Alaska. For example, under the Tongass Act of 1947, in southeastern Alaska, Indian timber may be sold by the Forestry Service at its discretion as to buyer and price and the Indians may not receive any part of the proceeds unless they carry through expensive litigation over a period of many years to win it. Under present laws and regulations, Indian fishing sites in Alaska may be and are given into the control of non-Indian canning companies without compensation to the Indians. In one extreme case, a Government agency controls the disposition of the fur catch of a valuable native fur ground, and year after year practically all the sealskins in Alaska are turned over to a certain fur company. The native owner of the hunting ground may receive as little as $176 a year out of the millions made in this transaction by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Fouke Fur Co.

I mention Alaska as an outstanding example of systematic economic discrimination, because only a hundred years ago these natives were among the wealthiest people in America and they have now been pushed down to the bottom of the economic ladder.

I might also mention that in two States of the Union they are not even allowed to stand on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. An American citizen who is otherwise entitled to social-security benefits-aid to the aged, aid to the blind. or aid to dependent children-cannot receive such benefits in Arizona or New Mexico if it is discovered that he is a member of any Indian tribe. In that connection I should like to quote very briefly from a petition to the President, to Secretary Krug, and to Federal Security Administrator Ewing by the Association on American Indian Affairs, and signed by its president, Mr. Oliver LaFarge, and its honorary president, Dr. Haven Emerson: "By such arrogant racial discrimination 100,000 American citizens are excluded from the benefits granted all others and their right to live is thereby seriously impaired. This callous denial of rights guaranteed by national law has intensified suffering among American Indian people in New Mexico and Arizona for the past 14 years. These people are among the most deprived in our country. * * The conscience of Americans cannot tolerate the racial discrimination by which the States of New Mexico and Arizona violate the social-security law and deal without justice or humanity with thousands of their citizens of American Indian blood." These things I mention not because the social-security problem is within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, but merely to indicate that Indians are, at least in some parts of our country, victims of a peculiarly devastating set of prejudices and economic discriminations. I know of no Southern State, for instance, where prejudice against the Negro goes so far as to deny to the Negro

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