We hope that the time will come when there will be no racial or religious discrimination in any area of life. But a person's right to a job for which he is qualified is basic, and seems to us a very sound place to start in the effort to abolish discrimination. We know that many people say that you cannot legislate prejudice out of existence. But legislation can remove some of the obvious injustice arising from prejudice.

Thirdly, we want the highest possible standard of living for all the people of this country. As long as there are large numbers of disadvantaged people, prevented by discrimination from securing jobs for which they are trained and so prevented from making their maximum contribution to the Nation, the welfare of all the people is hindered. Only as every person is enabled to work to the best of his ability can we reach the maximum of efficiency and production and improve the economic condition of all the people. We feel that this act will further this end.

We have studied S. 984 carefully. It seems to us to offer ample protection to all parties, and yet to give enough enforcement powers to the Commission to make the act workable. For the sake of the many religious, racial, and national groups against whom discrimination is practiced in various sections of our country, we urge its passage by this Congress. But we urge it even more strongly because we are convinced that the enactment of such a law will benefit all the people of our Nation and will demonstrate clearly to the world that our much-heralded American principles of liberty and equality really operate for all people.

Senator DONNELL. Do you have anything further to submit, Mrs. Wedel.

Mrs. WEDEL. No. sir. That concludes my statement.

Senator DONNELL. We thank you very much for your presentation. It has been called to my attention that Homer A. Jack is present. Dr. Jack, you ask for 5 minutes. I am not able to grant that time. We have had numerous applications for permission to appear, and it would not be fair to people who have been denied the right to extend that privilege to persons who just drop in upon the committee without having been granted the permission.

I do not mean that the committee intends to be arbitrary in the matter, but the number of people who desire to appear could not be accommodated within the period of time that we have in which to hear them.

We would be very glad indeed to have any written statement that you desire to submit, and it will be incorporated in the record, and I assume it will be within reasonable bounds of space and it will be incorporated and printed in full in the record of our committee.

We thank you very much for your courtesy and for coming.

The committee will stand in recess until tomorrow morning at 9:30 o'clock to convene again in this room.

(Whereupon, at 1:05 p. m., the committee adjourned, subject to reconvening at 9:30 a. m., June 20, 1947.)

ANTIDISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT

FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 1947

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTIDISCRIMINATION, Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:30 a. m. in the committee room, Capitol Building, Senator Allen J. Ellender presiding.

Present: Senators Smith, Donnell, Ives, and Ellender (presiding). Senator ELLENDER. The subcommittee will come to order. We will resume the hearings on S. 984.

The first witness this morning will be Mr. William Green, president, American Federation of Labor.

You may proceed, Mr. Green.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM GREEN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR

Senator DONNELL. Proceed, sir.

Mr. GREEN. I am glad to have this opportunity to testify on behalf of the American Federation of Labor in strong support of S. 984, the Ives-Chavez bill to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, religion, color, national origin, or ancestry.

The American Federation of Labor urges prompt consideration and early adoption of this law because it believes that the enactment of the proposed statute into law is essential to make fully effective the principle of equality of opportunity to all, a principle to which this Nation is dedicated. Our support of this legislation is pursuant to the mandate of the sixty-fifth convention of the American Federation of Labor, held in Chicago in October 1946. This action of the convention is not new. The American Federation of Labor was founded on the ideal of affording to men and women, regardless of race, religion, or color, an equal chance to employment at the skills for which they are qualified and to advancement with a fair and equitable compensation for their productive contribution to the community.

Through the years of its growth, the American Federation of Labor has encountered many situations in which discrimination and intolerance were deeply imbedded. The source of discrimination cannot always be easily ascertained or readily stamped out, but our record of many decades of direct experience in dealing with this issue has conclusively demonstrated that the most powerful single force behind

discrimination against persons because of their color or creed is economic discrimination. Wherever in our land the standard of living has been low, wherever men and women have been subjected to economic stagnation, wherever unemployment or underemployment has been widespread and chronic, racial and religious prejudice has spread rapidly like a blight through communities and whole industrial areas. The evidence is conclusive also that in periods of prosperity or in areas of rapid industrial growth, where economic competition for livelihood is less keen, discrimination in employment tends to disappear.

This experience demonstrates that racial and religious discrimination is not rooted in the American soil. Like a green bog, it spread over the depressed areas as a direct result of the low standard of living, infecting with its disease the channels of America's trade, commerce, and welfare. This experience makes it abundantly clear that to assure healthy economic growth of the Nation, to safeguard and sustain the general welfare of the people of America, it is the duty of this Congress to enact this antidiscrimination legislation, for it is only such legislation that will drain the swamp of wage and employment discrimination and thus assure healthy economic growth to every community and every American family. In a real sense, the proposed bill is an economic reclamation project to prevent the loss of the rich terrain which is now submerged and which must be recaptured if America's economic frontier is to advance.

When discrimination exists and jobs are denied because of race, color, or religion, the minority group affected is forced to a relatively lower economic level. There is evidence of the heavy toll of discrimination in the cities and on the farms. City slums, into which a larger proportion of Negro famiiles have been driven by necessity, along with white families, provide first-hand proof of the harm of such discrimination upon the whole community. We all know the high cost of city slums in child mortality, in disease and crime, and in delinquent taxes. But studies of recent years have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that mortality, disease, and crime are no higher among Negro slum dwellers than among white slum dwellers. It is the economic degradation, forcing these men, women, and children into the slums, that breeds these infectious, festering sore spots upon community life. Labor is committed to the task of slum clearance, in our cities and on blighted farm areas, through the enactment of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill, S. 866, now pending before this Senate. But labor believes discrimination in employment dooms untold thousands to joblessness and privation which make it impossible for them to buy enough food or to afford decent homes, which leaves them no choice but to become underprivileged slum dwellers.

Discrimination in hiring workers who belong to minority groups results in disparity in income. But, in addition to job discrimination on the basis of race, color, or religion, there has been such discrimination against Jews, against Mexican-Americans, against Catholics. and, most extensive of all, against Negroes.

An analysis made by the American Federation of Labor research staff of the official surveys recently conducted by the Bureau of the United States Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the average weekly incomes of Negro and white veterans in 27 communities in the South, shows dramatically the disparity in incomes on the basis of

color. The study reveals that the average weekly income of white veterans is between 30 percent and 78 percent above that of Negro veterans. Right here in Washington, for instance, there are 84,000 white veterans and 36,000 Negro veterans. The average income of white veterans is shown to be $53 per week, while the Negro veteran's income is $32 per week. This means that the white veteran's income is 66 percent above that of the Negro veterans.

This disparity is due to three causes: (1) Many Negroes have been denied employment opportunities in higher grade jobs they are qualified to perform; (2) many Negroes have been barred from both training and job opportunities where they could acquire the skill and experience necessary to qualify them for better paid work; and (3) the rates of pay of Negroes doing the same work have often been substantially lower than that of the white workers.

Quite frequently Negro workers are paid less, not because they do less or are doing a lower-paid job, but solely because they are Negro. There is abundant evidence of this in the wage records of the War Labor Board. To cite but two typical examples, in the case of the Pan-American Refining Corp., Negro workers on the labor gang were paid at the rate of 75 cents an hour, but employed as carpenters' helpers, a job for which employees received the rate of $1.07 an hour (National War Labor Board Case No. 2778-CS-D, July 30, 1943). Senator DONNELL. Was that in the same locality?

Mr. GREEN. Yes; that is in that case, in the Pan-American Refining Corp.

Senator DONNELL. I say, but was that in the same State, the same place where the whites and colored worked?

Mr. GREEN. Same place.

Senator DONNELL. Why should the War Labor Board make such a difference?

Mr. GREEN. I cannot understand that, of course. They submitted the records, the facts as they found them. It was in that case, that hearing of discrimination, the payment of rates.

In the Memphis plant of the Buckeye Cotton Oil Co., the rates for unskilled workers were 45.1 cents for Negro and 54.2 cents for white workers. The semiskilled workers' rates were 48.2 cents for Negroes and 69.2 cents for white workers. That is obtained from the records.

An extensive study made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1942, includes reports covering 7,245 establishments on hourly rates paid to male common laborers. Here there was no question of differentiation of skill-only the rates of unskilled manual workers were reported. It is significant that the study showed a wide differential between the rates of Negro and white workers. The average in the United States for white workers was 65.3 cents an hour and for Negro workers 47.4 cents an hour. The prevalence of these differentials based purely on race has been shown in a number of studies of the wage structure of individual industries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly earnings in the steel industry, in 1938, showed white workers averaging 85.7 cents an hour as compared with 68.7 cents an hour for Negroes. Similar factual evidence is available for tobacco, fertilizer, meat packing, and a number of other industries showing the conditions prevailing before and during the war.