Senator ELLENDER. Would you explain that to the committee? How is that violated, and how would it be inconsistent with that freedom?

Mr. LOONEY. You might say that in a sense it violates the first amendment to the Constitution, the right of assembly. The right of assembly is nothing more than the right of association. That is given in one recent case where Justice Jackson said that among the rights protected by the first amendment were the economic rights.

Senator DONNELL. Do you have the citation?

Mr. LOONEY. I do not have that in this brief, but I could give it to you.

Senator DONNELL. Would you mind giving that to the clerk? Mr. LOONEY. All right. I will bring it tomorrow. I believe I have that in my file.

Senator ELLENDER. Can you point out any specific provision in the Constitution that would be violated by the passage of this bill?

Mr. LOONEY. The Constitution is based, and the preamble states the purpose of that Constitution to be a more perfect union to be established, justice, and the next item was the issue of domestic tranquility. Of course, the pursuit of happiness has a great deal to do with domestic tranquility. If a man is denied the fundamental rights, necessarily that man is deprived of a certain amount of his happiness. You will find the definition of happiness that is given is more theological than it is legislative or judicial. There are statements in some of the labor acts that almost bear that out. Happiness is naturally the first pursuit of man. He wants to be at peace with his fellow man. If that association is forced on a man, naturally that would prevent him from being as contented as he would be if he were not subjected to any coercion of any sort. The fact of coercion itself is irritating, and a man cannot pursue happiness when he has other things that he knows will keep him from enjoying that natural happiness which a man is intended by the Creator to have.

Senator ELLENDER. In other words, insteading of fostering domestic tranquility, it might affect it seriously?

Mr. LOONEY. Exactly. Just as is stated in the Declaration of Independence, the King of England incited domestic insurrections. There is no question on earth but where you force an employer to hire people that he does not want, and you force the association of people where some of those people may not be compatible, or the same sort of people, you are liable to have trouble. We have worked that trouble out to a great extent in the South. This is not in my statement, and I am departing from it, but I simply want to state that.

Senator DONNELL. You may use your own pleasure in departing from your statement, if you want to.

Mr. LOONEY. For instance, I will illustrate. Let us take the case of restaurants. We have restaurants in the city, and I particularly refer to Shreveport, La.

Senator DONNELL. How large is Shreveport?

Mr. LOONEY. It has a population of 100,000. It is the second city of Louisiana. We have restaurants there in which we have nobody but colored waiters. We have restaurants in which we have nobody but white girls. We have restaurants in which we have nobody but white men. We never mix them. The same thing applies to our system of

elevators in the large buildings in Louisiana. Some of the buildings have colored help. Some of the buildings have colored girls, and some have colored men. Others have white girls, and others have white men. The opportunity for both is equal, and the association is never mixed there, because whenever you do so you are necessarily going to have trouble from some source or another. You cannot expect people to take a position where they will accommodate themselves to conditions that they do not like. There has always been that segregation of the races in our part of the country, and it is a very small thing to respect those sentiments of the South, and not to disrupt the peaceful conditions that exist between the colored and the white men in Louisiana and the South. They have all of the advantages that the white man has. They can own property. Some of the property that has been owned in our section by colored people has produced great wealth on account of oil discovered. Nobody has passed any law or regulations taking those rights away from them. They have their own schools, doctors, sanatoriums, and whenever they call on the white people, they get help.

Senator ELLENDER. In connection with sanatoriums, is it true that in Louisiana we have quite a few hospitals that are maintained entirely by the State of Louisiana?

Mr. LOONEY. Yes, sir.

Senator ELLENDER. Is it not true that equal treatment is given to the colored, or the same as to the white?

Mr. LOONEY. That is true, but if they did not do it, and because that is a State matter, that would violate the Federal law. This is not a State matter. This is a private matter. This is a matter which the fourteenth amendment was not intended to affect.

Senator ELLENDER. The purpose of the question was to emphasize the manner and the method in which the colored people are treated in Louisiana in order to fortify the first statement that you made that there were not serious problems.

Mr. LOONEY. That is right.

Senator ELLENDER. That is, between the colored and the white.

Mr. LOONEY. The colored and the white wards in the hospital are separate and in other institutions in Louisiana, but they have more colored people, I understand, and a large percentage in New Orleans which are treated in public hospitals. A good proportion of the people in the county hospitals are colored. I have never heard of any righteous complaint. I have never heard of any complaints about discrimination.

Senator ELLENDER. Mr. Looney, to what extent, if any, would the clause in the Constitution, "to promote the general welfare," be violated by this bill, in your opinion?

Mr. LOONEY. The general welfare does not mean the class welfare. General welfare means the welfare of all of the people. Whenever you go to making any discriminatory law, that forces people to seek men because they belong to a class, or if it does not force them to take those men, it punishes them one way or another for refusing to take them. No matter the reason, it punishes them. There is doubt that that condition exists and always has existed, and will exist, and the people have their own method of personal selection, of their husbands and wives, and their schools, and of the people that work

for them, and so on. To be perfectly candid with everybody, I would not have a white servant in my home. I do not want anyone but colored servants. I have been raised with them from the cradle, and I would not know how to get along with white people as servants. We have been fortunate in being able to keep colored servants.

Senator ELLENDER. Mr. Looney, in your opinion, is the right of people to peacefully assemble, a right guaranteed them by the first amendment-and is that intended to give them freedom of association in fraternal, religious, and political matters?

Mr. LOONEY. That is my opinion, and it seems to be Justice Jackson's opinion. There is no doubt these associations, or social relations are referred to. I do not mean in the sense of society, but I mean that in the sense of natural dealings between man and man. All social relations are included in the idea of assembly. In fact, they have called popular legislative assemblies, or assembly bodies at times. In fact they have the general assembly, and in States they call their legislatures assemblies. In the mechanical world, we have what we call an assembly line. The word is distinctly associated with as

sociation.

Under the provisions of this bill, the employer is called upon to do certain things, and the employee is not. As I understand it, the employee is not called upon to do certain things.

Senator ELLENDER. What about the provision of equality? What do you have to say about that under the Constitution?

Mr. LOONEY. I do not think equality has anything to do with the right of a person to hire. That is a fundamental right. I would like to read from a statement that Justice Harlan made many years ago. The case referred to is Adair v. United States.

Senator DONNELL. What is the citation of that volume?

Mr. LOONEY. It is 208 United States.

This is the quotation that is made from Cooley on Torts.

A part of every man's civil rights is that he be left at liberty to refuse business relations with any person whatsoever, whether the refusal rests upon reason, or is the result of whim, caprice, prejudice, or malice; with his reasons neither the public nor the persons have any legal concern. It is also the right of the individual to have business relations with anyone with whom he can make contacts, and if he is wrongfully deprived of his right by others, he is entitled to redress.

Senator ELLENDER. Would not the principle of equality be further violated under this bill since the bill through a commission would force an employer to do certain things, and would not force the employee to do that? That is what I had in mind in asking the question a moment ago.

Mr. LOONEY. A man naturally is going to try to employ people in his business that will increase the property value of his business. Of course, private property has been recognized by all just countries as something that is necessary. I believe that here in this country we have made a special provision where we could protect all of the private property, and the rights of individual establishments, and the right of individuals to build up their properties when they can. That cannot be done if anything is forced on the man. If he is told to hire a man, and he does not want that man, and he does not want him perhaps because he is a Chinese, and he does not want him because he is a colored man, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, or anything else, you cannot

say that he is not able to refuse to take him. You cannot necessarily particularize as to what special things should be exempted.

For instance, let us illustrate that a man is running a Jewish newspaper, or a business in which he is employed and everybody in the establishment is a member of that religion. If somebody else comes in, and that man might cause trouble there, and he refuses to hire that man because he is not a member of that particular religion, it might be Jewish or Catholic or Protestant, then is he to be punished because he refused something that might injure his business very greatly? That right of hiring in one case recently, I believe was called J. I. Case-I do not believe I have it listed. That is J. I. Case v. N. L. R. B. (321 U. S., p. 335).

The Supreme Court said, "There is little left to individual agreement except the act of marrying." In other words, practically everything else has been taken control of by the Government in some form or another. I do not think there is any criticism to be made in the matter of wages, or in the matter of morale, or false arraignment, or anything of that sort. The very fact that private individuals should be protected in this right is also shown by the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of the United States in dealing with public matters. The Supreme Court said that in the case of Perkins v. Lukens Steel Company (310 U. S., p. 127), like private individuals and businesses, the Government enjoys unrestricted power to produce its own supplies, to determine those with whom it will deal, and to fix the prices and conditions upon which it will make needed purchases.

"Like private individuals" is the way that statement begins. Conceding that private individuals have the right to choose those with whom they will deal, that case is cited. That was a case where, as I recall it, the law prohibited the employment of aliens on certain public works, and the question was raised and the Supreme Court said that the Government was free to make such a discrimination, or prohibition, as that cited.

Senator ELLENDER. Proceed with your statement, Mr. Looney.

Mr. LOONEY. I would like to quote this because it is from the statutes of the United States. It is title 29, section 102 of the United States Code. It comes under the heading of Public Policy and Labor Matters. This is the statement:

Though he should be free to decline to associate with his fellows, it is necessary that he have full freedom of association.

Senator DONNELL. Is that a part of the United States Code, or is that the citation? In what connection does that appear?

29.

Mr. LOONEY. That is under Public Policy and Labor Matters, title

Senator DONNELL. What particular section is that?

Mr. LOONEY. Title 29, section 102 of the United States Code. I do not have the number of the act of Congress. Of course, that act is not limited. In the South, we are more interested in the question of the colored man, and the necessary forced association. It works both

ways.

As I have stated, we have certain employments, and especially in the domestic field, where we rely entirely on colored people, and do not want white people. I say that the wages are not discriminatory, and for instance a colored man would be able to do most of the work

of cutting the grass and taking care of the yard, and get paid at a rate of about $1 per hour, which is more than the Government has been fixing as requiring a minimum wage to be paid. Nobody has ever objected to that wage. They make their own contracts. People would ordinarily rather have colored help. We are used to colored people in the South, and we know how to get along with them. We would rather have them insofar as matters around the house are concerned, more than we would want white people in these employments. Senator ELLENDER. Mr. Looney, do you know of any property rights in the State of Louisiana that are enjoyed by the white people that are not similarly enjoyed by the colored people?

Mr. LOONEY. No, sir. I know of no rights that they do not enjoy. They have all of the rights that the white people have, and if they can qualify, they have the right to vote. Of course, we put difficulties in the way of men who are not literate enough to vote, and there is no doubt that there are times when the power that is given to registrars is abused. There is no doubt of it at all.

Senator ELLENDER. Insofar as the law is concerned, it applies to both white and colored?

Mr. LOONEY. Yes, sir; there is no discrimination at all in the law. There are cases that sometimes come up in which the right of a colored man is advertised as having been abused, when it is a matter of fact that the right to vote has never been established, because he has not used the necessary methods to determine his right to vote. I am not going to question that at this time. Also, I am not going on to the question of the white primary. That is something that we have our own views on. I am bound to admit that under the law there are discriminations that are now made in certain States, and in our own State, which should permit, under the decisions of the Supreme Court, the Negroes the right to vote in our primaries. We have tried to get the legislature to make certain amendments in those laws, or make provisions to meet the requirements of the Supreme Court of the United States, but we have not been able to do it. Unfortunately, we have not had the best government in Louisiana.

Senator ELLENDER. Mr. Looney, you have been discussing property rights, and as you understand them under the Constitution, is not the right to choose employees an element of property rights as defined under the Constitution?

Mr. LOONEY. It is an element of the property right, but it is more than that. It is a personal right, because it does not necessarily mean that the employment of the colored person, under the law, should be made. The right is so personal, and so peculiarly personal, that it has been called the first freedom. I think that many years ago the poet Dante wrote an Essay on Freedom. He began it thus:

The human race when most free is best disposed. This will be clear if the principle of freedom be understood. Wherefore, be it known that the first principle of our freedom is freedom of choice.

We all concede the freedom of choice in reference to marriage, selection of associates, firms, and other business matters, but the idea of compelling a man to hire another man, if carried to its legitimate extreme, would be prohibiting a man from engaging in partnership, or refusing to take into partnership, a man who belonged to a different creed, or color, or nationality. That sort of thing is peculiarly