Mr. Chairman, as a Member of Congress representing the Fifth District in San Francisco, I am pleased to appear before the Special Subcommittee on Labor to register my endorsement of proposals to establish a Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to present, in summary form, the effective commissions I have observed in California: San Francisco's Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity and California's Division of Fair Employment Practices.

Mr. Chairman, prior to my coming to the U.S. Congress some 13 years ago I had long been an expondent of government fair employment practices commissions aimed at the uprooting of discriminatory employment practices because of race, color of skin, country of origin, or age. It has been, and is, my firm belief that the denial of equal opportunity in employment of individual human beings, not because of personal shortcomings, but because of the accident of birth, or age, is diametrically opposed to the American ideal of liberty and justice for all.

To my way of thinking, discriminatory practices in employing an individual which assume that a member of a minority racial or ethnic group cannot or should not be permitted to rise above a certain job classification, without regard to education, intelligence, personality, and capability are unsound economically and morally wrong. When such practices exist, they deprive individuals in the United States from achieving the jobs to which they are best prepared by ability and inclination. Such practices deprive our country of much needed talent. Such practices, which deprive individuals of positions commensurate with their capacity, serve to depress their standards of living, to the serious detriment of this country.

It is my conviction, Mr. Chairman, that the passage of a Federal law outlawing discriminatory employment practices may to a great extent be considered as an educational tool. Earl Raab and Seymour Lipset, in their excellent "Prejudice and Society" have this to say:

The importance of law is not that it prohibits or eliminates prejudiced behavior and attitudes-but that it changes the social situations and community practices which breed prejudiced behavior and attitudes. Since these situations and practices are the prime learning influences with respect to prejudice, law must then be perceived as a prime educational weapon in combating prejudice. Since the enactment of antidiscriminatory legislation in California, I have had occasion to discuss the operation of these laws with a number of employers and employees in California. Quite often, I am informed, an employer in California will seek a qualified employee. I have been told that many employers now do not weigh or consider a prospective employee because of his ethnic, racial, religious background or because of his age. Rather, he simply seeks the most qualified applicant. If any complaint is registered because of his selection of such a person, the employer can easily dispose of it with a reference to the existence of a fair employment practice law.

More basically, I feel that individuals in California have accepted well the operation of such legislation for they will accept and adhere to laws that support what their conscience whispers to them is right. I feel that quite deep in our American sense of justice and fairness, most of us welcome laws to implement that sense of justice and fairness. From what I have read relative to the operation of fair employ

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ment practice laws in other States and cities, such laws have equal success in bolstering equality of employment opportunity.

The San Francisco Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity began functioning during the middle of 1957. It was the first fair employment practices law adopted in California. It continued operation until the middle of September of 1960. The San Francisco Commission was terminated because of the enactment by the State legislature of the State Fair Employment Practice Act in September 1959, which provided that local commissions were allowed 1 year to terminate their pending cases. During the operation of the San Francisco Commission, some 90 complaints were filed. A number of these complaints were found to be without adequate foundation and of those remaining the great bulk of them were satisfactorily adjusted with the employment of the aggrieved party or other forms of settlement ranging from collection of back pay or the processing of the complaint through normal company procedures. In no case did a complaint of discriminatory employment practice reach the state of an open hearing.

The first executive director of the San Francisco Commission was Edward Howden. With the formation of the California Division of Fair Employment Practices, he was chosen as division chief. Under his able and devoted leadership, complaints with the State division, excepting five, have been resolved through investigation, conference and conciliation, without public disclosure of the names of the parties and without public hearings.

Mr. Chairman, based on the successful record of these two Commissions in California, and those in other States and cities in the United States, I feel it may be statistically demonstrated that such a Federal commission would insure great rewards to the people and economy of our Nation.

Mr. Chairman, several times over the years I have been asked why I feel this way on this subject. I have very vivid recollections of my own father telling me of some of his own personal experiences when he first came to this country as a young immigrant from Ireland; how as a husky, healthy young man of 21 or 22 years of age he had come to this land of freedom and opportunity in about 1889 or 1890 and, was shocked, by signs "No Irish need apply." How in other instances he would not be hired when the prospective employer found he was a Catholic. These stories, told me as a young boy, shocked me, and they were related to me by my own father who became an American citizen on the very first day he was eligible to do so and was proud that he picked this country as his own.

I have seen in my lifetime other cases of discrimination, Mr. Chairman, based on race, religion, or color. Isn't it about time we stopped this and become the great country in all ways?

Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, the achievements of a Federal Commission will be best marked-as I believe they are in State and local commissions by the opening of new doors of employment opportunity to those who never have nor will approach a commission with a complaint, but who have and will benefit from the growing awareness in the United States of the existence of fair employment practices commissions.

It is my sincere hope that the vigilance of our laws and the awareness of our citizens will not terminate until our fellow Americans are protected in the right to employment on a merit basis alone.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. Thank you very much, sir, for your contribution. As I said to Mr. Vanik, I look forward to having your help on the floor when that time comes.

Mr. SHELLEY. You may depend upon it, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you once again for the privilege of appearing.

Mr. ROOSEVELT. The next witness before the committee is Dr. A. Dudley Ward, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

Will you come forward, sir?

May I welcome you to the hearings on behalf of the committee. We appreciate the time that you have taken in preparing to give us the views of your very fine organization.

STATEMENT OF REV. A. DUDLEY WARD, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE U.S.A.

Dr. WARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate the opportunity of coming here.

I, first of all, would give a word of appreciation to Dr. Allen, who is the next witness, for allowing me to take his place. I have come here prior to an important executive board meeting of the national council this afternoon. This is the reason he was willing to give his place to me, and I appreciate that.

I also wish to bring personal greetings to you, sir, and to the members of this committee from Mr. Irwin Miller, the distinguished lay president of the National Council of Churches. He is the president of the Cummings Engine in Ohio and would come to speak to you if he were not otherwise engaged on very important business for the national council. He feels very deeply about these matters and considered the invitation from this committee to testify on behalf of the national council, to which he has given very great leadership as a layman, a most important opportunity and he especially stressed that I should come on his behalf.

In addition to this, I want to point out that personally I will be speaking for the national council in the prepared statement and making one or two remarks on behalf of the Methodist Church, which is the largest Protestant denomination in America, larger than the Southern Baptists, although they are giving us a great run for our

money.

I have had a great interest in this field for a long time, served with your brother in a previous committee and another administration, and was chairman of the Religious Advisory Committee to the President's Committee on Government Contracts and in that capacity had occasion to deal directly with these things you are concerned with.

I also come as a member of the general board of the national council and executive board of Christian life and work which deals directly with these things about which we are talking this morning.

My name is Rev. A. Dudley Ward. I am an ordained minister in the Methodist Church and serve as general secretary of the Division of Human Relations and Economic Affairs in the Methodist Board

of Christian Social Relations. I appreciate this opportunity to speak at this hearing on behalf of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., as well as of the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns, and on behalf of the Methodist Church.

As spokesman for the National Council of Churches I have been asked to appear on behalf of its departments of the church and economic life and of racial and cultural relations. In relation to both of them I serve as a representative of the Methodist Church on their governing general committees.

Constituent members of the National Council of Churches include 33 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Church bodies, with a total membership of approximately 40 million. Let me make clear that in presenting this testimony at this or other legislative hearings the national council does not presume to speak for each of its 33 constituent communions or for each of their many members. The views I will give here, however, were adopted after careful consideration by official representatives of the council's member churches who serve on its general board. In addition, it should be added that many of these member churches also have policy positions supporting equal opportunity for employment for all people.

One of the earliest statements of position adopted by the National Council of Churches set forth a series of "Christian Principles and Assumptions for Economic Life." High among the principles of the Christian faith which lead the council to its concern for the economic well-being of all persons regardless of race, or nation or class, is the belief that, and I quote:

Persons uniquely combine body and spirit, and the needs of both should be emphasized in the Christian church. That the material needs of men be met through their economic institutions and activities is one condition of their spiritual growth * * *.

These fundamental principles should be represented and reflected in the working of any economic system. Economic institutions and activities should never become a law unto themselves. Their purpose is to serve human need.

As norms for guidance of Christians in seeking to judge or to adapt economic institutions and practices in accordance with these standards, problems relating to employment were strongly emphasized. Among them I cite as most important the following, all of which have a bearing on the problem before us at this hearing, namely:

(1) Christians should work for a situation wherein all have access at least to a minimum standard of living * * *.

(2) All youth should have equal opportunities to develop their capacities, insofar as society can provide them, through equal access to the means of health, education, and employment.

(3) Economic institutions should be judged also by their impact upon the family-which involves standards of living, hours of labor, [and] stability of employment * * *

(4) It is a clear Christian responsibility to work against those special forms of economic injustice that are expressed through racial and other group discrimination.

(5) Every able-bodied adult has an obligation and the right to an opportunity to serve the community through work ***. Large-scale unemployment, or long-continued unemployment for any considerable number of persons able and willing to work is intolerable. It ordinarily indicates defects in or relaxation of social and economic safeguards. All practicable safeguards should be provided and maintained.

To give meaning to these principles in terms of day-to-day living and working, the general board, in January 1951, voiced its concern regarding the need for safeguards against discrimination in employment in a formal resolution urging that

legislative and administrative safeguards be provided against discrimination in employment and working conditions based on race, creed, or national origin in the use of civilian manpower * * *

Subsequently the council, speaking through its annual Labor Sunday message in 1955, stated that

an obligation to be truly democratic in its procedures and to weight its very act in the light of its effect upon the general welfare rests upon every organization as upon every individual, and that this obligation is not discharged unless the opportunity for employment and creative expression is equally available to all men and women regardless of creed, race, social status, or national origin. The council's most recent statement on the subject of discrimination in employment issued from the meeting of its triennial general assembly in San Francisco in December 1960. Since it bears so directly on the subject of this hearing, I will file with this testimony the full text of the statement, which is titled "Christian Influence Toward the Development and Use of All Labor Resources Without Regard to Race, Color, Religion, or National Origin." For our purposes here I will cite only a few of its salient emphases.

For instance, the 600 or more official representatives of the council's member churches meeting in this large assembly agreed that, and I quote from their statement:

The Christian concern about employment according to ability stems from the Christian belief about man * * *. Each man is created by God in His own image and therefore has supreme worth. Human beings cannot add to nor detract from this worth.

*** Men are responsible to God and to each other to see that all men have the fullest opportunity to develop and to exercise their God-given capacities ***. Employment based on individual ability * * *should be a concern to all in the churches.

It is clear, according to the views of this church body that both justice and efficiency in the full use of the Nation's manpower resources call for selection for employment and promotion on the basis of qualifications with major emphasis on individual capacity, character, training, and experience. Practice has shown that achievement of such justice and efficiency requires cooperative effort by the total community, including government on every level, industry and business, labor unions, educational institutions, community and church organizations, as well as individual employers, workers, and other citizens. Though notable progress is being made toward this end, we recognize that many barriers to employment on this basis continue to exist.

A major deterrent to equal opportunity in employment is still discrimination based on a wide range of causes. Negroes, who comprise about 95 percent of the nonwhite persons in America, are victimized by discrimination in employment based on race or color. Persons of other groups also face employment barriers based on race, color, religion, or national origin. These groups include Puerto Ricans, other Spanish-speaking peoples, American Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and

Jews.