Senator HUMPHREY. What is that, sir?

Senator AIKEN. The Senator would not include long-distance calls

Senator HUMPHREY. Only for Senators.

Senator AIKEN. In free speech?

Senator HUMPHREY. Only for Senators, the free ones we get. I have no more questions and no more interrogations.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Morse.

Senator MORSE. No questions.

Senator HUMPHREY. No speeches either. [Laughter.]
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Withers.

Senator WITHERS. I want to ask the witness what is his an-wer to the question that the two lawyers put, "yes" or "no"?

Mr. BEIRNE. Well, the only thing that I caught that was of sign.ficance to me, although I listened attentively to the arguments pro and con, the only thing I got of significance was the Senator from Missouri's statements that all of this is irrelevant, and I recall that we have statistics to show that 1 out of every 52 people in the United States worked for the Bell system, and if what affects them is irrelevant, then something is wrong in all these democratic institutions which I have heard expounded from Philadelphia by the President.

Senator WITHERS. Have you been able to distinguish the difference between the right of orphans or widows as stockholders in a corporation and the rights of a full-grown man?

Mr. BEIRNE. I have not been able to distinguish that, Senator, and I do recall being one of those exposed in 1930 to 1933, or 1934, to the cries of the widows and orphans and children, as they paid $9 dividends on A. T. & T., as they laid off 185,000 workers who had all their means of income completely and effectively taken away from them when they were laid off.

Senator WITHERS. Have you found the Republican Party the guardian of all the widows and orphans or are they guardians only of the stockholders of certain corporations?

Senator DONNELL. I would like to hear his answer to that. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BEIRNE. I can only answer that by saying that I am a regis tered Democrat; that I love the Democratic Party; that there is a basic psychological difference, a philosophical difference, in our ap proach to certain problems which have a human equation, and I would not presume to say what or what not the Republican Party stands for, except since my voting career has started, it has seemed to stand for things that I did not stand for.

Senator DONNELL. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?

Mr. Beirne, I would like to ask you a few questions. You read from a book there in regard to a Mr. Wilson and somebody else who were directors, not only in A. T. & T. but certain banks. Do you draw the conclusion from that that necessarily those banks and the A. T. & T. are interlocking corporations?

Mr. BEIRNE. I do not draw it from this particular exhibit that I have in front of me that I read from. I can draw it, however, from a document I could present to the committee, should you be interested, which would show the holdings by these banks and by these various insurance companies in the stock of A. T. & T., and my recol

lection of those holdings is that these particular banks with which there are interlocking directors at the top own some A. T. & T. stock. Senator DONNELL. And do you know whether or not any of those banks hold A. T. & T. bonds-securities as distinguished from stocksin trust estates; do you know that?

Mr. BEIRNE. I imagine they do, although I do not know.

Senator DONNELL. You do not contend because a man is a director of the Quaker Oats Co. and also at the same time of the Chicago Railway & Equipment Co.-as a friend of mine has been-that those two companies are interrelated or interlocked?

Mr. BEIRNE. I do not quite catch-————

Senator DONNELL. Well, suppose you were a director of the Quaker Oats Co. and a director of the Chicago Railway & Equipment Co. You do not assert here that the mere fact you are a director of the two companies necessarily means that those two corporations are interrelated or interlocked in the slightest; do you?

Mr. BEIRNE. They may not in the hypothetical case you have drawn, using the companies you did.

Senator DONNELL. Yes. Now, I wanted to ask you just a few other questions. One of them is, Do you object, Mr. Beirne, to the inclusion, in the law of the United States, of the provision requiring an affidavit that a member of the union is not a member of the Communist Party? Do you have any objection to that?

Mr. BEIRNE. I can answer that by saying after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, the Communications Workers of America was one of the first unions whose officers signed that affidavit and submitted it to the proper agency.

Senator DONNELL. And you were glad to do so; were you not-the union was?

Mr. BEIRNE. I was not glad to do so, as an individual. The other officers with me were not glad to do so. We felt humiliated that we would be called upon to sign such an affidavit.

Senator DONNELL. Do you have any objection, my question was, to the inclusion in the law of the United States of the present provision of the Taft-Hartley Act requiring the filing of such a non-Communist affidavit?

Mr. BEIRNE. We most certainly do; and I testified some years ago or a year or so ago before a subcommittee that heard testimony on that particular question, to our objection to its inclusion.

I think again it might be called psychological, but it has a very definite impact upon the relationship of worker and employer to suggest or intimate, as the Taft-Hartley law does-it may be all the Communists are in the labor movement, and maybe it is bad to be a Communist and 2 to be in the labor movement, it being bad to be a Communist-and I can agree with that part of it-and to be in the labor movement makes the whole labor movement made up of a bunch of Communists, and to an unitiated or uninformed person in the United States who gets to know me by way of introduction, I find it awfully embarrassing to have to say to him, "Yes, I signed a nonCommunist affidavit; yes, I am not a Communist, even though you might have the illusion that all officers of unions are Communists."

I have found in associations with other trade-union officers who are representing workers who are independent or unaffiliated with

the A. F. of L. or CIO, as well as officers of the A. F. of L. and CIO, that you find a high type of American citizen, the kind that you would be proud to have in your company, and it is humiliating to single out the officers of a labor union and say, "Now, you must sign an affidavit to say you are not a Communist," and we most certainly object to it. Senator DONNELL. Mr. Beirne, of course, there is nothing whatsoever in the Taft-Hartley law that makes any such statement that the labor unions consist of Communists or all of the Communists are in the union, and yet may I call your attention to this: You referred many times to the city of St. Louis where I lived, or in very close proximity to it where I lived, for many years. Do you happen to recall that in the CIO, one of the men who was forced out of the union there only in the past few months, I think, was a man by the name, as I recall it, of Senter, who was a Communist? Now, do you agree with the statement made in the majority report of the Joint Committee on Labor and Management of the Senate that the committee believes that the non-Communist affidavit provision has already demonstrated its effectiveness as an aid to unions and their members in their desire to drive the Communists from positions of power in labor organizations! Do you agree with that statement?

Mr. BEIRNE. I do not agree with it, and I would have to point out to the Senator what happens under your Taft-Hartley law if I. who was born here, who loves the institutions that we have, who, by voluntary expression, would say that I am not a Communist-and from what little I know about them I do not want to be one-I point out to you if I, as an officer of the union I represent, saw fit to go to the members of this union and point out what a ridiculous position your law places me in as an officer, and as a result of that ridículous position refuse to sign that affidavit and they agree with me because they did not want their president placed in such an embarrassing position, that then they, the individual members, those who cannot be accused of communism or another and they wanted to seek relief under the Taft-Hartley Act. should an employer discriminate against them for some one reason or another and they wanted to seek relief under the Taft-Hartley Act.

Senator DONNELL. You do not think it is a good idea for the Communists, if they are any officers of unions, to be required to be eliminated from such officerships?

Mr. BEIRNE. I will not argue the relative merits or demerits of communism except to state that I am not one, have no ambitions of being one, and would not be with one if I was offered such an opportunity.

I think that they are just no good, but I am saying the Taft-Hartley Act, which pointed up this particular Communist issue in labor unions. did a disservice to those like me who believe in the institutions that we have in this country but yet have to be subjected to the humiliation which nothing else but the Taft-Hartley Act submitted us to, because before that time there was not this same thing in the picture.

Senator DONNELL. Now, Mr. Beirne, I want to ask you also if you have any objection to the laws of the United States retaining the provision in the Taft-Hartley law requiring the filing with the Secretary of Labor, by labor unions, of a report showing their receipts, their assets, their disbursements. Do you have any objection to that!

Mr. BEIRNE. Yes; we do not have serious objections, but we have bjections.

Senator DONNELL. But they are not serious.

Mr. BEIRNE. They are not serious. Our objections are simply these, hat we do not see why we have to file, being a voluntary association as ve are, these reports which we make up anyway, which a certified public accountant makes up for us every month, a man outside of jur union. We do not see why we have to go through that process of iling.

That does not prove anything that I know of. If any member sks what we have got, they received a monthly statement long before he Taft-Hartley Act said we should give a report. We believe in giving reports to our members.

Senator DONNELL. You do not believe in keeping them secret at all? Mr. BEIRNE. I believe in keeping them as secret as we can. I do not believe in going to the company and saying, "This is how much we ave in the bank"-talking big, when we might not have anything. Senator TAFT. Has the filing with the Secretary of Labor had the effect of making them public, or has that been kept pretty confidential successfully?

Mr. BEIRNE. To my experience, it has been kept confidential.
Senator TAFT. Of course, going to all members, anybody who made
A determined effort could get it from one of the members, could he

not?

Mr. BEIRNE. That is right; that is why I say we have no serious objections to it.

It is just another one of those things which pointed out one thing. The effect of it was-this and nothing else that maybe the labor union officers are dishonest, maybe they are not doing what they should do with financial statements.

Whether you intended to or not-and I would daresay, from having heard Senator Taft on many occasions in public addresses defend the Taft-Hartley Act and point out his thinking-I know that Senator Taft did not have in mind that he wanted to point up that maybe labor union fellows would be dishonest or conduct their offices fraudulently, and he did not have any intention of taking a big brush and tarring all of us with it, but it had the effect of doing that whether he wanted to do it or not.

The reason we filed these things is because maybe some of us do not want to tell our members or anyone else what we do with money collected, what our source of income is, or how we disburse it.

Before the Taft-Hartley Act we were doing it anyway, so we do not have any serious objection to it, but I do wish to point out the effect of what that particular part of the act as far as members, and sometimes just the general public, were concerned.

Senator DONNELL. At any rate, you do not have any serious objection to the provision?

Senator TAFT. And in this field any corporation of any size listed on any stock exchange has long had to do the same thing, so there is not the same discrimination here that there was which you alleged in the anti-Communist oath.

Mr. BEIRNE. I will not argue this one seriously with you.

Senator DONNELL. Now, do you object to retaining in the provisions of the Federal law that provision which appears in the TaftHartley Act making it an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents to refuse to bargain collectively with an employer provided it is the representative of his employees? Do you have any objection to that being in the law?

Mr. BEIRNE. Again, you hit one of these "snivvies."

Senator DONNELL, Hit what?

Mr. BEIRNE. A "snivvie." A "snivvie" is something that is small. You just can't quite keep your fingers on it as it slides around.

Senator DONNELL. You do not regard the provision requiring the employer to agree to bargain collectively as being-what is that word?"snivvie?"

Mr. BEIRNE. "Snivvie."

Senator DONNELL. You do not regard that as a trivial provisio: of the Taft-Hartley Act as applied to employers, do you?

Mr. BEIRNE. No; I do not. That may be one of the things that hecomes one of these philosphical differences that we have that maybe we approach the thing in a different way. I have never known a labor union negotiating committee that did not honestly, conscientiously, and sincerely go into negotiation, and I could not just visualize ary kind of situation arising wherein a labor union would not bargain . good faith and try to reach an agreement.

Now, when you start saying, "We will make it an unfair labor practice if they do not do it," you and I have a falling out of company because from what I heard from one of the other Senators, you are a lawyer and I am not, and I know that language could be written and somebody could concoct a big story technically which might put a union at one time or another at a disadvantage, and I can only urge on you that you do everything you can to assist the union, as you do not have to do so much to assist a company because an 8-billion-dollar outfit that we do business with, they do not need any help from you, b we do; so, do not give lawyers, let us say, a field day and have some sharp operator come up and say, "Well, this is an unfair labor practice."

1 think you do a disservice to the people of the country, especially those who have seen fit to belong to unions, when you give to an enployer the right to go in and say, "This thing you are talking about, this so-called unfair labor practice which would stem from a union's not bargaining in good faith should be something now permitting an employer to go into a court and by so doing, hold up collective bargaining."

I say, "no," you will be doing a service to the people of the country if you do not give him that kind of weapon to go in and use against a union as technical point to stifle collective bargaining.

Senator DONNELL. So you are opposed to having the law include a statement that it shall be an unfair labor practice?

Mr. BEIRNE. That is right.

Senator DONNELL. For a labor organization to refuse to bargain collectively?

Mr. BEIRNE. That is right.

Senator DONNELL. Now, Mr. Bierne, I want to ask you another question, and I am particularly glad that you are not a lawyer, in