the time of the adoption of the Constitution thereof; and by that Constitution Senators in the Senate and Representatives in the House and electors of President and Vice President of the United States were and are restricted to States of that Federal Union.

2. Please remember that said Constitution says: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States"; "each State shall have two Senators" (unless the State itself decides to have less); "each State shall appoint a number of electors equal to the number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." An amendment to our Constitution that would confer such privileges of representation upon a mere Territory of the United States is so destructive of the fundamental method of representation in the Congress and among electors of President and Vice President of the United States that it would tear to pieces the Constitution of the United States and rip to shreds the fundamental principle of representation upon which our Union of States was and is established. Under your oath (or affirmation) to support the Constitution of the United States can you in honor be parties to any proposal to vitiate and weaken it?

3. The Constitution of the United States specifically provided how more Senators and Representatives and more electors may be added to the Union when it sanctions admittance of new States by Congress to this Union. Can you not perceive that that is a perpetual prohibition against the admittance of a Territory or any lesser subdivision of the United States?

4. Yet the proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States presumes to confer upon the District of Columbia-one Territory of the United States a special and an exclusive privilege denied to all other Territories of the United States. Honestly, do you believe that such a proposal of favoritism can ever be embodied in the Constitution of the United States?

5. The proposed constitutional amendment you are considering would confer on one municipal corporation (the District of Columbia) the privilege of having Senators and Representatives in the Congress and electors for President and Vice President of the United States and deny throughout the entire United States a similar privilege to every other municipal corporation, as such. Seriously, can such an exclusive grant of favoritism ever be justified for inclusion in the Constitution of the United States?

6. Your subcommittee is reminded that the Supreme Court of the United States has declared that "the United States, under the present Constitution, cannot acquire territory to be held as a colony, to be governed at its will and pleasure." Yet you well know that the Congress of the United States does govern as a colony this territory (the District of Columbia), making the inhabitants thereof mere subjects and political slaves—and not freemen, as they must be, through restoration of their inalienable right of local self-government, before any of them could sit representatively in the Halls of the Congress or be among the electors of President and Vice President of the United States, and then only if they are free citizens of a State, which the Territory of Columbia, the seat of government of the United States, is not and never can be. Can you approve so grotesque a proposal as would reverse all human history by admitting slaves to the Halls of the Congress and permitting them to be among electors who name or select the President and Vice President of the United States?

Slaves, slaves, slaves, gentlemen! And why, honestly? Because following that awful experience of the territorial form of government here, when the people were deprived of those rights of self-government that they had possessed and which had never caused any trouble, following the terrible mess that was made, not by the people, but by the agents of the Congress, this Congress of the United States, without any authority, perpetrated the worst wrong when they said that the people could no longer vote here.

They made of this District of Columbia a deathbed. They made of the people here subjects. And it is the most inexcusable and Godforsaken enactment that ever was put on the statute books in all the history of this country, a diabolical one. No man with any knowledge of what this Government means, no man with any consideration for

the rights of the people under it, could ever subscribe to such a thing as that; but they did it, and they are political slaves, and you don't admit slaves to the halls of legislature.

We had an instance in this country, as you gentlemen are so awfully tied down by precedent-we had a situation in this country, we had slaves here, but the right of those men to vote was not confirmed until after they were made free. You see? Abe Lincoln, God bless his heart, freed those men, and the Congress of the United States said, "Let them vote." Freemen in the sight of God they became freemen in the sight of man, and that inalienable right of theirs, which Congress knew they possessed, was no longer denied them, thank the Lord! I have told you that you cannot admit slavesSenator HATCH. You are down to “7.”

Mr. CHEYNEY. Yes, one more.

The District of Columbia being thus a despotism-a Federal municipal corporation-a mere administrative agency of the Government of the United Stateswould you actually, by the proposed amendment you are considering, confer the privileges clamored for upon such administrative agency of the United States Government, thereby joining the legislative and administration functions of our Government-an act repugnant to the division of powers under the Constitution of the United States? Can your subcommittee sanction anything so ridiculous? It would make you the laughingstock of the world and surely the laughingstock of this country.

Senator WHERRY. What would happen if they did?

Mr. CHEYNEY. This is very respectfully submitted for your careful and extended consideration as my objections to the constitutional amendment you are now considering, with the request that it be made a part of the record of hearings thereon.

Senator HATCH. I very gratefully thank you, because a hearing is not a hearing unless objection is heard, and you have presented your objections, Mr. Cheyney. Thank you, sir.

Mr. CHEYNEY. Thank you very much, sir, for this opportunity you have given me.

Senator HATCH. Was there anyone else here who wanted to be heard in opposition?

Mr. CHEYNEY. I might say just one thing more.

There was a redeeming feature in the previous amendment you considered, because there was something there about restoring local government. But that wouldn't help the situation. You can't make people inhabitants of a State not represented in Congress, and you

can't make it a State.

Senator HATCH. State your name, Mr. Calvert.

Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Chairman, I realize you folks have been put to a very severe strain

Senator HATCH. For the record, your name is Alfred D. Calvert? Mr. CALVERT. Yes.

Senator HATCH. President of the Lincoln Park Citizens' Association?

Mr. CALVERT. Correct.

Senator HATCH. All right, go ahead. That was just for the record, Mr. Calvert.

STATEMENT OF ALFRED D. CALVERT, PRESIDENT, LINCOLN PARK CITIZENS' ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. CALVERT. I might say that when this matter came up originally-that is, we have been voting on this off and on for years, in the Lincoln Park Citizens' Association. When the matter came up on the Sumners-Capper bill, we called a meeting of the executive committee, with the understanding that nothing else was to be considered that night, and after 3 hours, a very thorough going-over of the bill, we decided not to endorse it.

When the time came to present the matter to the meeting, the ensuing meeting of the association and the report of the executive committee-it was a very brief report, not attempting to color the action of the meeting at all-I, personally, as president, made the request, and I made it again just before the vote was to be taken, that anybody voting must not feel that because the report of the executive committee probably gave the opinion as briefly as it could as to their attitude, that that was not supposed to bind them, and that if there was only one person present that felt that the Capper bill should be endorsed, I hoped he would speak for it and vote for it.

That was the attitude that we took in our meeting, and at the end of the meeting, when the vote was taken, some member of the association, I can't recall who it was now, got to the floor and moved that we show our disapproval of the bill.

Senator HATCH. That is this proposed resolution?

Mr. CALVERT. Yes. With the result that the man making the motion said, "I would like to make that motion a unanimous motion, in which I would like to say that we unanimously disapprove the bill.”

I said, I supposed that was a real motion, a legal motion, and if there was no objection, that would be the way the motion would be put, and it was so put, and the organization voted unanimously against the Capper amendment.

We are against it out there for a number of reasons. I don't want to take too much of your time, as I started to say a few minutes ago, but before I get to that part, I want to say that personally, I have some mighty fine friends on both sides of this subject, and I understand, I think, their viewpoint as well as anybody in this room; but I am reminded of a statement made by one of our public men some years ago, I can't recall now just who it was, that said when your premise is wrong, the more logical your conclusion, the more you are in error, and that is the way a number of us feel on this matter of suffrage.

Some of us old-timers that have given a great deal of study to this can have only one opinion. There are several reasons for it, and one reason I will speak of, first of all, is that you cannot have a city-state in a republic, and you cannot have anything else than a city-state by this particular plan of suffrage.

Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and different other places, like the Virgin Islands, would like to come in and be enrolled with the States as a matter of privilege. A great many of us feel that by giving the State rights to the District of Columbia-and you can deny it any way you want, but it won't hold water- that by giving State rights, giving us two Senators here, our Representatives, and other things, we are going to make it possible for those people that can never be assimilated into our republic to be an integral part of the Nation.

There is another thing. There have been several of our cities, New York and some other big cities, that are very anxious to be States on their own account. New York City, for instance, does not like to have the balancing power of the people of the State of New York to check the kind of government that New York wants. There are several other big cities in our country, the same thing. You can see that when that thing comes, as it must, if you give the District of Columbia the right of suffrage, you are going to rip the Constitution apart in a way that will emasculate it beyond any repair.

Some of you think those are extreme views, but when, as in the District of Columbia now, we have a bureaucracy, an overpowering bureaucracy, you can imagine that that would not be for the best interests of the Nation. We are the capital of all capitals. We get untold sums of money advanced to us in order to beautify the capital of all the capitals. We ought to be in the position of an umpire, absolutely free so that the other 48 States can have us as a city of refuge, a sort of a place where they can all come to settle their grievances, to get us to decide what is right and what is wrong.

If we had the vote here, I feel that would not be. They tell me that when we had the vote here before, the irregularities-and the opportunity for the same irregularities is present; I am not going to speak of them now, because they might be a cause of further discussion, and they might have a controversial nature; but those of us that have, whose heart interest has been in this war, and others, are worried now, while this war is still on-maybe the bitter fighting, the bombing of cities and so on has stopped, but the war is still on, and we are heartsick and heartbroken to think that the pressure groups in the United States that are attempting to bring things like this before you men-if there was ever a time in the history of this United States when the Congress should have been free to confront the issues that demand their attention, it is at this time, and I feel that it is a sin and a shame and unworthy of us as District people that we bring in a resolution like this at this time.

There is much more that I should like to say, gentlemen; I'd like to have an opportunity to extend my remarks, if I could, but I see that you are a little bit anxious to get away from here. I do want to answer one question the Senator asked before, the Senator who sat over in that chair, I think.

Senator HATCH. Senator Wherry.

Mr. CALVERT. Senator Wherry. You see, I don't know some of you newer Senators. I know most of your old-timers very well. But he asked a question about the citizens' associations.

Let me tell you, the citizens' associations in the District of Columbia give us a privilege to conduct our own government that no city in the United States or any other city on earth has. We have the old-fashioned New England meeting here, and our sixty-odd associations, we can reach you men as we are reaching you here today, and the greatest amount of good to the greatest number is accomplished by the present form of government.

I dislike the statements that were made here this morning. I don't generally get vehement in these things, but I did dislike the slurs on the District of Columbia that were made by the suffrage proponents here, referring to us as "idiots," saying we were lazy, saying we were irresponsible, saying we were-I forget the other word now; there

were three or four words I picked out during the course of the arguments this morning that insulted the people that had the courage to stand up for what they believed was right and for the best interests of our country.

I believe that our forefathers, in writing the Constitution, acted better than they knew when they put in the clause that vested in the Congress the complete, entire government of this city.

One more thing that I recall: If we really want suffrage in this town the way it ought to be had, we can get it, and people here know it, but they don't want it, because like Napoleon looking on Moscow, they see that the District of Columbia is a great city to sack.

If we would recede to the State of Maryland the District of Colum bia, the same as we receded it to Virginia at practically no cost, at no ill feeling, and keep our flag with its 48 stars, we would avoid the possibility of these cities that I am telling you about withdrawing from the Union and becoming States of their own in some way or another; we would have peace, and the people that are against the present idea of suffrage, I know I can speak for them, if nothing else could be done, if it had to come, we would say, recede the District of Columbia to Maryland and let the Congress still have the oversight of the District of Columbia, but make it so that we don't have to have a lot of extra Senators and extra Congressmen and a great army of officeholders more than we have now.

I thank you for your time, gentlemen, and I hope I haven't wearied

you.

Senator HATCH. Thank you, Mr. Calvert. No; we are here to hear both sides. That is what we are here for.

(The hearing ended at 3: 40 p. m.)