an even greater love for our institutions; you can help assure that out of this terrible war will come a finer world for all the people who live in it.

Senator CHAVEZ. Any questions, Senator Aiken?

Senator AIKEN. No.

Senator CHAVEZ. Thank you very much, young man, for your

statement.

Mr. PARKER. Thank you, sir.

Senator CHAVEZ. Mr. Clarence Anderson.

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE ANDERSON, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, METROPOLITAN DETROIT COUNCIL ON FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE, DETROIT, MICH.

Senator CHAVEZ. Do you care to make a statement before the committee on the F. E. P. C. bill?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I have a prepared statement here that I should like to read. Senator CHAVEZ. That contains your identification?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, it does. Possibly not as much as you required of Mr. Parker. There is nothing in here about my personal background. Is that what you are asking something about?

Senator CHAVEZ. Yes. You are a native American?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, I am. I was born in this country. I dropped out of high school before I was through and I worked at a number of different types of occupation in the last 8 years, including automotive assembly lines. I attended a university and I taught sociology and social problems for 31⁄2 years.

Senator CHAVEZ. What university?

Mr. ANDERSON. The Wayne University in Detroit. I am now in full employment of the council, and I have been for the last 13 months. I am here to speak in support of S. 2048, a bill to abolish discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, and ancestry.

Senator CHAVEZ. Can you give the committee some information as to the functions of the council?

Mr. ANDERSON. I am coming to that now.

Senator CHAVEZ. What are its functions?

Mr. ANDERSON. That is also included in my statement, so I will proceed, if I may.

Senator CHAVEZ. I am sorry.

Mr. ANDERSON. Quite all right.

The Metropolitan Detroit Council on Fair Employment Practice is a representative local citizens group which was organized early in 1942 for the purpose of implementing Executive Order 8802 and cooperating with the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice in order to combat the widespread discrimination that was then rampant against minority group workers in Detroit.

Today 19 of the nearly 100 organizations represented by the council have, by virtue of their membership on our executive board, a continuing hand in determining that the policy of the council shall be consistent with the official point of view of their own organizations. Senator AIKEN. Mr. Anderson, what is the nature of the organizations which comprise the council?

Mr. ANDERSON. That follows now. Among these are the following local organizations: The Association of Catholic Unionists, the Christian Social Relations Department of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, Consumers League of Michigan, Detroit Y. W. C. A. Public Affairs Committee, Detroit Council of Churches, Detroit Urban League, Detroit Council for Youth Service, Department of Guidance and Placement-Detroit Public Schools, Detroit Federation of TeachersLocal No. 231, Detroit and Wayne County Federation of Labor, Detroit and Wayne County Industrial Union Council, International Union U. A. W.-C. I. O., Jewish Community Council of Detroit, Jewish Vocational Service, Jewish Social Service Bureau, Michigan Branch of National Women's Party, National Council of Jewish Women-Detroit Section, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-Detroit Branch, League of Women VotersDetroit Branch, War Manpower Commission in Michigan.

The chairman of the council is Prof. Edward W. MacFarland, a well-known Michigan citizen and an economist at Wayne University. Serving as vice chairman are Dr. T. T. Brumbaugh, Father J. Lawrence Cavanaugh, and Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer.

The Metropolitan Detroit Council on Fair Employment Practice functions as a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization. Its financial support is derived from the War Chest of Metropolitan Detroit. It is incorporated under the laws of the State of Michigan for the purpose of furthering the training and assuring the full utilization of every worker at his highest skill without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry. Thus our purpose is to translate into employment practices at home the democratic principles for which we are fighting abroad.

In order to realize our purpose of economic equality of opportunity for members of minority groups, the council has seven functions around which centers the core of its activity. One of these relates to community education, the other to securing State and National fair employment practice legislation. We regard education and legislation as supplementary approaches, which are indispensably interrelated, to the solution of the difficult problem here under discussion. The right to work is the right to live. To refuse equality of opportunity in employment practice to large groups of qualified and employable workers for no other reason except that of prejudice toward their religious customs, the country of their birth, or the particular color of the pigment in their skin, is to refuse to these fellow Americans and their children a number of other rights. They are refused the right to have robust and healthy bodies, the right to a harmonious family life, the right to secure the type of education that will enable them to cope with the demands of modern living whether in war or in peace, and the right to provide for themselves the type of environment that permits the development of desirable moral character and a wholesome attitude toward life. These rights are denied to persons who are denied the means of an adequate income because of being discriminated against in employment in the specific ways outlined in Senate bill 2048.

To continue to deny such basic rights to one-fifth of the Nation is not only unjust to those so victimized; it is contrary to the public interest; it is to court an inevitable national disaster. No nation that disregards the economic basis of the physical, intellectual, and moral development of one-fifth of its population can hope for long to maintain a dominant role in the affairs of the world.

Approximately one out of every five persons in the United States is potentially subject to the types of discrimination in employment dealt with in the bill under consideration. I am referring to possibly 400,000 American Indians, our earliest Americans, and to 2,500,000 Mexicans, 5,000,000 aliens, 5,000,000 Jews, 13,000,000 Negroes, and the smaller religious, national, and racial minorities.

Senator CHAVEZ. When you referred to the 5,000,000 aliens, did you refer to such people as Poles, Italians, and so forth?

Mr. ANDERSON. Exactly. In this instance this is the 1940 figure. There are many people, as we know, who have become naturalized since 1940 and perhaps that figure of 5,000,000 does not account for them. We do not know exactly how many, but I will touch briefly on that later. I have specifically in mind discrimination against people who are different simply because they are regarded so.

To take the time of the gentlemen of the committee to point out how the balance of our people who are not consistently discriminated against in employment actually foot the bills for all of the social problems associated with the inadequate incomes of those, who because of discrimination are "ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-clothed" would be exceedingly presumptuous on my part. This aspect of the problem is, however, one not to be overlooked.

Neither shall I undertake to point out at length the corrosive effects of discrimination upon religious beliefs and human personality. Psychologically, it is incompatible for persons to attempt to believe in the doctrine of brotherly love and the fact that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" while simultaneously witnessing or even participating in irrational practices which condemn the easily recognized members of minority groups to a substandard existence. This aspect of job discrimination as it relates to our religious and moral life has, I am told, been dealt with already before this committee by those who are far more competent than I to call attention to this schizophrenic character of our national life. As is well known, the major religious organizations in the United States have unequivocably recorded themselves in opposition to discrimination in employment.

The practice of discrimination in employment likewise runs counter to the political ideals to which we in America tenaciously cling and for which we are today sacrificing our blood on foreign soil. Our constitutional guaranties against discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color have not been overlooked by our Congress. On several occasions, as is well known, particularly in the last 10 years, our Nation's constitutional guaranties against discrimination have been incorporated in legislative enactments of the Congress.

Several times the voice of the Supreme Court has condemned discrimination in employment. In Hirabayashi v. United States, Chief Justice Stone, speaking for the Court, said:

Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. For that reason, legislative classification of discrimination based on race alone has often been held to be a denial of equal protection. ́

Concurring in the same case, Mr. Justice Murphy, who incidentally is a native and former Governor of the State of Michigan, said:

Distinctions based on color and ancestry are utterly inconsistent with our traditions and ideals. They are at variance with the principles for which we are now waging war. We cannot close our eyes to the fact that for centuries the Old

World has been torn by racial and religious conflicts and has suffered the worst kind of anguish because of inequality of treatment for different groups. There was one law for one and a different law for another. Nothing is written more firmly into our laws than the compact of the Plymouth voyagers to have just and equal laws.

And in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co., Mr. Justice Roberts, speaking for the Court, stated:

The desire for fair and equitable conditions of employment on the part of persons of any race, color, or persuasion, and the removal of discrimination against them by reason of their race or religious beliefs is quite as important to those concerned as fairness and equity in terms and conditions of employment can be to trade or craft unions or any form of labor organization or association. Race discrimination by an employer may reasonably be deemed more unfair and less excusable than discrimination against workers on the ground of union affiliation. We in Detroit, however, are not merely concerned with the religious and American political principles which this bill aims to translate into industrial practice; we are also, as earlier suggested, concerned about the high financial cost of discrimination against minorities in industrial employment for which indirectly we as American taxpayers foot the bill.

Furthermore, the economic practicability to industry of employment of minority group workers is no longer a matter of doubt. Referring to Negroes, constituting our largest minority, the American Management Association stated:

Industry's pressing need for the service of able-bodied persons-irrespective of the color of their skin-effectively and happily removes the problem from the province of social reform, paternalism, or other sentimental considerations Consideration for the Negro rests on the solid base of enlightened *. It is a question of the total health and strength of the

*

selfishness Nation.

In 1943 the National Industrial Conference Board circulated a questionnaire on experience with Negro workers. One hundred and two employers replied. Eighty-five stated that Negroes produced as satisfactorily as whites; 5 that the production of Negro workers was higher; 12 that it was lower.

In a leaflet put out by the Ford Motor Co. entitled "Ford Summer Hour," under the date line of August 3, 1941, appears the following

statement:

Henry Ford has always believed * * * that the right to work is a sacred privilege of every law-abiding resident of this country * * * he considers that a man's color, religious belief or nationality is less important than his ability and willingness *

It will also be of interest to the gentlemen of this committee to hear that we have 1,600 colored platform men and women operating our municipally owned transportation system in the city of Detroit. That the great majority of Detroiters are well satisfied, despite their wartime nerves and the incredible overcrowding of their equipment, to have public contact with and to entrust their own and their childrens' safety to Negro motormen, bus drivers, and conductors, is, I think, a significant fact. It should be considered by persons who have distorted notions of the willingness of most Detroiters to be fair with Negroes. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the accident rate of our colored bus drivers and motormen is proportionately lower than their total representation in the labor force.

In this reference it is also pertinent to point out that the great majority of the citizens of Detroit do not in any way wish to be identified with the inhuman, Hitlerian, master-race principles emanating from the convention of the America First Party in Detroit last week. This is not to say that Detroiters are without anti-Semitic and anti-Negro prejudice, and prejudice toward other minority groups. Of course they are prejudiced, in varying degrees, generally speaking. They are, however, aware of the problem of greed and prejudice. They are working in many ways to solve this complex dilemma. We yet are not agreed on all the answers; but we are united on the basic need of legislation such as this bill proposes for the purpose of mitigating our own interracial problems. The agreement on the need of this solution is so widespread that the Republican Party in the State of Michigan at its 1944 convention not only pledged support of its national body's platform plank to establish a permanent F. E. P. C., but in addition pledged the establishment of a State Fair Employment Practice Commission.

Moreover, as citizens of Detroit and of the United States, we are vitally concerned about the future peace of the world. Two-thirds of the 2,000,000,000 people in the world are not light-skinned. Onehalf of them are Asiatics. They have many faiths. These are facts that have important implications.

That light-skinned peoples themselves constitute a minority in a world which as a result of invention is rapidly tending to become one large community, is of great significance for the future. For the greater safety of our children and of our children's children it would seem only expedient and practical to prove to the entire world that we have the capacity to deal justly and amicably with people in our midst who have faiths and colors unlike our own. As a predominantly white nation constituting a minority in the world, we don't want a race in 20 years or in 40 years, or at any time. The least we can do now is to attack our complex minorities problem in the area of employment where experience shows that advances which are wholly practicable and equitable can be made through legislation.

We are well aware, as we know the gentlemen of this committee to be, that Axis propaganda has exploited among the other peoples of the world the discrimination we practice against our own citizens of minority group origin.

Senator CHAVEZ. May I interrupt right there?

Mr. ANDERSON: Yes.

Senator CHAVEZ. I would like to tell you a little about a personal experience. Early in January or February of 1942, in cooperation with the Coordinator's Office on Inter-American Affairs, I made a radio talk over short wave to Latin America in Spanish. I tried to point out our position in the world. A week after that Berlin answered to Latin America and brought out all of the things that you are talking of.

Mr. ANDERSON. That speech that you gave, Senator, I feel you should be complimented on, because few people in the country were aware of the great need at that time for doing exactly that type of thing. Incidentally, this problem that you have just referred to augurs ill for the plans for world peace which are even at this moment being discussed not far from here. In fact, our discrimination against.