Mr. FISHER. The bill proposes that if an employer is not satisfied with any order or finding of the F. E. P. C., he may appeal to the circuit court of appeals, the Federal court, for review. You are in favor of that provision, are you?

Mr. Ross. Yes; I have tried to indicate that I think that is the way to handle these matters. That is by a court sitting right under the Supreme Court. It has worked out extremely well. I think you will agree that it has worked well in most administrative procedures.

Mr. FISHER. You would prefer to leave that up to the circuit courts, of which there are only a few in the Nation, rather than the Federal district courts?

Mr. Ross. Yes. I think that you have to look at the history of this kind of act. At first, there is a good deal of litigation. Then gradually, after the thing has shaken down into its shoes, it results in very few cases coming up to the circuit courts. You have to establish precedents, and there is a great deal of litigation, but at that top level, and a great deal less than if you had it all at the bottom under jury trials.

Mr. FISHER. You recognize, of course, in questions of fact there never is uniformity because every situation is different. You cannot have a hard and fast rule to decide whether this is discriminatory or that is not. It is a question of fact. Every one is different. It is like burglary trials or damage suits-every one is different.

Mr. Ross. But hearings would be held and witnesses would confront each other.

Mr. FISHER. But it would be determined by representatives of the F. E. P. C. or the commission in Washington.

Mr. Ross. No. Let us put it this way, both parties have the full right to put on witnesses.

Mr. FISHER. I understand.

Mr. Ross. A record is made of the proceedings, and that is subject to scanning, first by the committee or, in this instance, a commission. The record is kept and goes on up with the commission's finding, and then it is subject to the scrutiny of the circuit court.

Mr. FISHER. Would you be in favor of the same procedure in disposing of a damage suit involving a tort?

Mr. Ross. I am not a lawyer. I am afraid I shall have to duck that.

Mr. FISHER. I have a number of questions that I would like to ask Mr. Ross if he can come back tomorrow.

Mr. Ross. I would like a full discussion of this. I would be very pleased to return.

Mr. BALDWIN. Do you find that most of your cases of discrimination originate in the South, or do you have just as many in the West?

Mr. Ross. That question has been answered, Mr. Baldwin. For your information, in the last 10 months we have closed 2,200 cases. Only 10 percent of them originated in the eight deep south States where we have our regional offices at Atlanta and Dallas.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very grateful to you Mr. Ross, and hope you will return on Friday.

We will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock Tuesday morning.

TO PROHIBIT DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT

TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1944

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON LABOR,
Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 a. m., Hon. Mary T. Norton (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please be in order. May I present to the committee Mr. Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?

STATEMENT OF WALTER WHITE, SECRETARY, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. White, have you a statement for the record that you would like to submit?

Mr. WHITE. I have a brief statement, Madam Chairman, that I would like to read, if I may.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be glad to hear it.

Mr. WHITE. I speak today specifically for 763 branches, youth councils, and college chapters, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with a paid membership of 350,000 in warm approval of H. R. 3986, H. R. 4004, and H. R. 4005 to make the President's Fair Employment Practice Committee a permanent Government agency. I voice as well the earnest wish of many other Americans, both white and Negro, including 700,000 Negroes serving in the armed forces-some of them now fighting desperately on the beachheads of Europe-who ask the Congress to arm with permanent authority and adequate funds this agency to eliminate employment discrimination in the United States Government and so-called war agencies.

In testifying, I do so on behalf of the principle inherent in these measures. Undoubtedly beneficial changes can be made in the form and substance of the bills. But out of these deliberations can come, and we trust will come, an unemasculated, uncompromising measure which will do the job of eliminating discrimination on account of race, creed, color, or national origin both during the war years and in the possibly crucial and troubled post-war period.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is proud of having played a part in the establishment of the present Fair Employment Practice Committee. When in 1940 we joined in a conference at the White House with the President and certain members of his Cabinet to ask that some means be found to check the flagrant discrimination from which loyal, skilled Negro Americans were suffering in what were then called defense plants the situation was critical. The morale of 13,000,000 American Negroes, one-tenth

of the Nation's population, was at a tragically low ebb. Though they were taxed at the same rate as other Americans to pay for the products being manufactured by these plants, the overwhelming majority bluntly refused to employ Negroes. Establishment of the F. E. P. C. checked the descending spiral of the Negro's morale more as a symbol that his Government was willing to take this wise step than in the actual results accomplished by the F. E. P. C.

I do not underestimate what the F. E. P. C. has done. When one studies the persistent sabotage of its efforts and the insistent struggle it has had to make for survival in the face of hostile attacks upon it, its accomplishments are phenomenal.

It is our contention, however, that the F. E. P. C. has only scratched the outer surface. Woefully understaffed, and with neither adequate funds nor sufficient authority, it is tackling courageously what is probably the most complex problem of democracy we face today. It is complex because prejudices and greed are deep-rooted, evasive, and unscrupulous. They are foes it is not easy to combat.

As this committee and the country well know, the problem of discrimination on account of race, creed, color, or national origin is threefold. There is, first, the unwillingness of employers to hire members of the minorities for which the F. E. P. C. fights. Second, there is the prejudice of some of the craft unions. Third, there is discrimination by the Federal Government itself. It is out of the practices of these three groups that the situation arises where 78 percent of the F. E. P. C. case load deals with discrimination against America's largest minority-the Negro. That this is true is America's fault, not the Negro's.

I wish to present a few figures to give this committee a partial picture of the causes of unemployment and underemployment of Negroes. The Negro has traditionally been confined to unskilled, low-paid, unattractive, and insecure jobs. This is almost as true today as it was many years ago, which is the reason why the F. E. P. C. must be made a permanent agency of the Government until these conditions are corrected. Up to 1910, 58 percent of all Negro men gainfully employed were engaged in agriculture; another one-third was in domestic and personal service. Less than 9 percent were employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries, trade, or transportation. During the past 33 years these conditions have caused a steady exodus of Negroes from the South and the farm in efforts to escape such poverty. Between 1910 and 1930 the Negro had thereby gained 480,000 nonagriculture jobs in the North and West. Today the Negro is an industrial worker and he is in northern industrial centers to stay. It is therefore imperative that we recognize this fact and develop a national program of sufficient scope to meet this problem.

Even to achieve this modest gain, the Negro has had to make an unremitting struggle. As the most marginal of American workers the Negro is the last to be hired and first to be fired, and usually the poorest paid and underemployed when employed. The 1937 unemployment census revealed that 42 to 46 percent of the colored males in urban cities with 25,000 population or more were designated as fully employed, while 60 to 63 percent of white males were so designated. As recently as 1940, 41 percent of colored men over 14 years of age were unemployed. Even while public hearings were being

held by the Congress last year on compulsory national service legislation, the War Manpower Commission released figures showing that more than 600,000 Negroes who were begging for employment at their proper skills were unemployed, while other millions of Negroes were working at jobs below their maximum skills.

This was not solely a question of skin color. Many short-sighted employers have deliberately sought to preserve the concept of the Negro as industriously inferior for the purpose of paying the Negro a lower wage even when he did the same work as a white man by designating certain jobs as "Negro jobs," by declaring the Negro generally to be nonpromotable, and by utilization of this large reservoir of cheap Negro labor as a club over the heads of organized labor to depress wages for all workers. Holding up the Negro as a potential competitor or strike breaker, these employers deliberately capitalized on an aggravated fear of Negro labor among white fellow workers. Unintelligent unions accepted this concept based upon prejudice particularly during times of low employment. Constitutional employment, ritualistic practices, and other devices were conceived to keep Negroes out of unions and out of jobs. Fortune magazine recently showed one of the results. Five thousand ranking business executives were queried showing that 86.1 percent of them employed no Negroes, or Negroes constituted less than 10 percent of their personnel. Even after the first year of war, 82.3 percent employed no Negroes, although 64.7 percent admit that they could employ Negroes efficiently.

One of the most vital of war- as well as peace-time industries is shipbuilding. In this industry the Negro has actually lost ground since World War I. At that time 20 percent of the Negroes employed in shipbuilding were skilled; in 1942 only 3.1 percent of Negroes employed are skilled. Twenty percent are semiskilled, and 75.2 percent are working at unskilled jobs whatever their training or experience. In large measure this serious decline is due directly to the A. F. L. Metal Trade Union which has contracts with most of the major shipyards in the country. This union, along with the machinists, the electrical workers, and the plumbers union of the A. F. L. exclude the Negro by ritual or other means. The Boilermakers Union, A. F. L., which has 65 percent of the shipyard workers under its jurisdiction has relaxed its rule slightly but only to the extent of organizing Negroes in so-called auxiliary lodges to be composed of "colored male persons." The Negroes are barred from membership in the regular local lodges by racial restrictions embodied in their ritual. The following requirements are pertinent:

1. Article II, section 14 of the auxiliary bylaws provides that the business agent appointed by and acting for the local white lodge "supervising" the colored auxiliary "shall perform the same duties for the auxiliary lodge as are performed for the supervising lodges, including the dispatching and assigning of members to jobs. Thus Negro members of auxiliary lodges have no voice or vote in the selection, control, or dismissal of the man who is arbitrarily set up as their representative in the most important and fundamental contracts with the employer.

2. The shop committee of the supervising white lodge established under article XIV of the subordinate lodge constitution to handle shop disputes and grievances is designated in article XIII of the

auxiliary bylaws to exercise the same functions for the auxiliary lodge. The members of the auxiliary lodge have no voice or vote in selecting or controlling such shop committees.

3. Article VIII of the auxiliary bylaws prohibits the change of classification of the Negro member of an auxiliary lodge from helper to the higher paying grade of mechanic, unless such classification shall be approved by the white "supervising" lodge. Thus, the Negro worker, unlike the white worker, has no voice or vote in the body which exercises a veto power over his upgrading.

4. Article II, section 13 of the auxiliary bylaws provides that the grievance committee of the supervising lodge shall act for the auxiliary lodge as well, yet limits the auxiliary lodge to one member who may function with the committee regardless of the relative size and membership of the auxiliary and supervising lodges.

5. An auxiliary lodge has no voice or vote in the quadrennial convention which is the ultimate legislative authority of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, and Helpers of America. In contrast, at each such convention, each white local lodge is entitled to voting representation proportional to the number of its members. See article II, section 2, international constitution.

Moreover, Negro workmen and their auxiliary lodges have no security even in their nominal status. Article I, section 4, of the auxiliary bylaws authorizes the international president within his uncontrolled discretion to suspend any auxiliary lodge or any officer or member of an auxiliary lodge, thus arbitrarily depriving the Negro even of limited status within the union. In contrast, the international constitution contains no provision for the suspension of a white local lodge but provides for revocation of the charter of a subordinate lodge only by the international president, in conjunction with the executive council and only after such lodge shall have been proved guilty of violation of the said constitution. Members of white local lodges can be suspended or otherwise disciplined only after formal trial following the procedure prescribed in detail in article XIV of said international constitution.

The next effect of this scheme is to make it lawful for a white local lodge and its business and other bargaining agents at their whim and caprice to permit Negroes to work on union jobs, reserving arbitrary control over their status, upgrading, and even their continuation in nominal good standing. All significant rights of union membership, including all participation in collective bargaining, are denied to the Negro. In substance he pays his dues and gets in return only a work permit revocable at will.

That there is necessity for the F. E. P. C. to tackle this problem may be seen, however, in the following list of unions which, by one means or another, draw the color line. This information is taken from Organized Labor and the Negro, by Herbert R. Northrup, published by Harper & Bros. in 1944.

1. Union which excludes Negroes by provision in ritual: Machinists, International Association of (American Federation of Labor).

2. Unions which exclude Negroes by provision in constitution:

A. American Federation of Labor affiliates:

Airline Pilots' Association.

Masters, Mates, and Pilots, national organization.
Railroad Telegraphers, Order of.

Railway Mail Association.

Switchmen's Union of North America.

Wire Weavers' Protective Association, Amercan.