opens its press and platforms to those who would destroy it. We must therefore strengthen our institutions to meet this challenge.

It is not enough, however, to protect rights now freely enjoyed, if we are to retain leadership and to progress toward a fuller realization of democratic values. Those who oppose us make capital of the gap between our ideals and our everyday practices. Our weaknesses are made the subject of propaganda jibes. Our word carries less weight when the charge of hypocrisy can be leveled against us.

Moreover, to the extent that we are ignorant of our own shortcomings, or close our eyes to them, we nurture disease and eventual decay, for a free country cannot remain static. It must be our choice to make our practices comply with existing statutes and to enlarge the area of our freedoms.

So that democracy may thrive, we must be accurately and continuously informed concerning the extent to which fundamental rights are abridged or denied. To this end we must establish within the executive branch of the Federal Government a permanent Commission on Civil Rights, with effective means of investigating and reporting its findings. An informed citizenry will then serve as the guardian of its own liberty.

The establishment of such a Commission,. however, will not of itself guarantee our freedoms. A new body of law, affecting such areas as employment, education, and suffrage, must be enacted. The protection of life and property against mob rule must also receive legislative approval. The work of the Commission will pave the way for action by appropriate law enforcement agencies. To insure effective action, these law enforcement agencies must be adequately staffed. As a first step in this direction, the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice should be raised in status to a Division of the Department, headed by an Assistant Attorney General.

Within this larger framework, the Commission should devote itself to the following objectives:

FUNCTIONS

1. A permanent Federal Commission on Civil Rights should be a fact-finding agency concerned with the status of civil rights

The Commission should examine alleged denials or curtailments of these rights and hold public hearings when necessary. In addition, it should compile information regarding existing legislation and public policy in this field, and make it generally available. Studies conducted by the Commission may be initiated on its own motion or as a result of complaints or inquiries. The results of such continuous study should be published by the Government and made available to the public.

2. The Commission should be ready to aid in the prevention of conflicts and in the solution of problems involving civil rights

Occasionally there develop problems of such magnitude as to threaten our democratic pattern. The Commission should make itself available to assist in the prevention of such conflicts and should offer appropriate guidance.

3. The Commission should be prepared to offer recommendations for the improvement of civil-rights practices

In the course of its investigations, the Commission may receive requests from interested individuals and agencies regarding more effective procedures for the safeguarding of civil rights. In such cases, the Commission should, to the extent possible, give any necessary advice, based on its special experience and broad knowledge.

4. The Commission should call attention to emerging civil-rights problems on the national and international level

Abridgments of civil rights in the United States are no longer of purely domestic concern. International attention is focused on any evidence of inconsistency between our protestation and our practice. Our membership in the United Nations and particularly the recent adoption of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights present us with new responsibilities. As model and leader for the democracies of the world, we must be constantly alert to undemocratic practices in our midst. The Commission should inform the American people of the international implications of our practices here at home, and of our obligations as a member of the United Nations.

5. The Commission should consult with State, local, and private agencies working in the area of civil rights and should, when requested, offer assistance to such agencies

In order to maximize its efficiency and insure economy in its operation, the Commission should, where possible, utilize the resources and facilities of State, local, and private agencies working in the area of civil rights. In addition, the Commission might cooperate with these agencies by offering them, in turn, advice and assistance on civil-rights problems.

6. The Commission should seek to improve the civil-rights practices of governmental agencies by studying and reporting on these practices

Previous examinations have demonstrated that some administrative agencies under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government have failed to recognize their civil-rights obligations. A permanent Commission on Civil Rights could aid in an examination of these practices and, in addition, could furnish guidance toward possible improvements.

7. The Commission should make reports to the President of the United States

The Commission should be an instrument of the executive office. It should inform the President not only of its own activities but also of the status of civil rights in this country. Such information should be embodied in reports to the President to be made at regular intervals as well as on any occasion the Commission or the President deemed appropriate.

POWERS OF THE COMMISSION

In pursuance of its functions the Commission should have the power to investigate, subpena witnesses, take testimony and hold public hearings. The Commission should receive cooperation from other governmental agencies. The Commission should call to the atention of the Attorney General alleged violations of Federal civil rights. The Commission's geographical jurisdiction should include the United States and its possessions.

In order to function effectively, any investigative body must have the power to subpena witnesses and take testimony under oath, to record such testimony, and to hold public hearings. These are minimum prerequisites. Furthermore, any such Commission must be empowered to utilize services which can be provided by other governmental agencies.

It has been previously stated that, on occasion, the Commission might, in its investigations, uncover apparent violations of Federal laws protecting civil rights. In such cases, the Commission should have authority to call the alleged violations to the attention of the Attorney General, so that he, in turn, might take action to see that the law is properly enforced.

ORGANIZATION

The Commission should be directed by full-time Commissioners

We believe that the Commission could best meet its responsibilities if it were directed by full-time commissioners, preferably three in number, who had demonstrated their ability to perform the required services. The Commission should be adequately staffed in national as well as regional offices. This type of organization is to be preferred over one dependent upon prominent part-time or voluntary commissioners, who could not provide the continuous leadership necessary for the operation of an effective agency.

Submitted by the National Citizens' Council on Civil Rights, New York City

Drafting committee: Herbert Bayard Swope, chairman; Robert Carr, Dartmouth College; Robert Cushman and Milton Konvitz of Cornell University; Mrs. Sadie Alexander, Channing Tobias and Morris Ernst, members of the President's Committee on Civil Rights; Dean Ernest O. Melby, New York University; Louis Wirth, University of Chicago; Mrs. Ruth Bryan Rohde, former Minister to Denmark; Leo M. Cherne, Research Institute of America; Irving M. Engel, American Jewish Committee; Benjamin R. Epstein, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith; George Field, Freedom House; Thurgood Marshall, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Roger N. Baldwin, American Civil Liberties Union.

Members of the council: Dr. Henry A. Atkinson, William L. Batt, William Rose Benét, Irving Berlin, Charles C. Burlingham, James B. Carey, Dr. Harry

J. Carman, Dr. Harry Woodburn Chase, Leo M. Cherne, Norman Cousins, Gardner Cowles, Morris L. Ernst, George Field, Thomas K. Finletter, the Reverend George B. Ford, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Dr. Harry D. Gideonse, Hon. Nathaniel L. Goldstein, William Green, Mrs. Elinore M. Herrick, the Right Reverend Henry W. Hobson, Hon. Hubert H. Humphrey, Eric Johnston, Albert D. Lasker, Hon. Herbert H. Lehman, Tex McCrary, Edward McGrady, Dr. Ernest O. Melby, Dr. William C. Menninger, Newbold Morris, Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Leo Nejelski, the Right Reverend G. Bromley Oxnam, Hon. Robert P. Patterson, Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, Mrs. Ruth Bryan Rohde, Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt, Oren Root, Jr., Elmo Roper, Mrs. Anna M. Rosenberg, Rabbi William F. Rosenbaum, Msgr. Maurice Sheehy, Dr. George N. Shuster, Frank Stanton, Justice Meier Steinbrink Gerard Swope, Herbert Bayard Swope, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, Walter White, John Hay Whitney.

STATEMENT REGARDING CIVIL RIGHTS BILL SUBMITTED BY THE BOARD OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, United States of America, representative of over 8,500 local churches, has voted consistently through the years for civil-rights enactments which would assure to all citizens of this country their just and rightful heritage of the fruits of this democracy. This official body stated:

"We deplore the fact that Federal legislation in regard to lynching still awaits enactment, and that barriers such as the poll tax disfranchise a host of our fellow citizens"-1941, page 164.

"General assembly commends the essential purpose of the President's Fair Employment Practice Committee as being in keeping with Chrisitian principles, and favors its receiving legislative sanction rather than remaining in its present status as an Executive order"-1944, page 232.

"We heartily commend the adoption by Georgia of anti-poll-tax legislation, and by New York State of a State Fair Employment Fractices Act. These are measures which general assembly again urges for Federal action"-1945, page 209. "The declaration of human rights by the United States holds immense promise for the welfare of all mankind. We urge the passage of such legislation in this country as will be in keeping with our American traditions of freedom and democracy to all men and be a guide to those seeking these same rights through the United Nations."-1949.

WILLIAM H. MCCONAGHY.

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM, HARTFORD, CONN.

Subject: Civil rights.

To: The President, chairmen of appropriate Senate and House committees. The delegates to the annual meeting of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, at Hartford, Conn., May 5 to 8, 1949, urge you to hasten to enact legislation necesary for the protection of the civil and human rights of all Americans and residents of the United States in order to implement the standards set in the universal declaration of human rights passed by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom urges you to show the good faith of the United States by passing the legislation offered under the civil rights program such as the poll-tax bill, the antilynching bill, FEPC, and others in this category.

TESTIMONY OF HON. SAM HOBBS, OF ALABAMA

Mr. HOBBS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the subcommittee, permit me to express my gratitude for your courtesy in hearing me this morning and giving me this opportunity to pass on to each of you my ideas as to the legislation under discussion.

While I am approaching the subject generally, I will address my remarks particularly to H. R. 4682, our distinguished chairman's bill, believing that it will doubtless be the specific measure which will be pushed.

At the outset, I should like to recommend to all who may be interested, the splendid testimony of Dr. H. M. Griffith, vice president of the National Economic Council, Inc., which, it seems to me, will add immeasurably to the thought of the distinguished members of this subcommittee in their study of this legislation.

This subject falls into four topics: Anti-poll-tax, antilynching, FEPC, and antisegregation. I have spoken many times on every one of these, and crave your indulgence to allow me to reproduce some of the most concise and applicable remarks for your consideration. In the case of the antisegregation provision, I am attaching copy of a brief which I filed with the Supreme Court at the request of some of the members of our committee in the case of Henderson v. The United States et al. and which I will have the honor to argue orally in the next few weeks before that body.

THE POLL TAX

Universal suffrage has never existed anywhere in the history of the world. Every sovereignty has fixed its own qualifications prerequisite to the privilege of the exercise of the elective franchise. The poll tax is one of these qualifications; age, residence, property ownership, and registration are some of the others most common. That the poll tax is a qualification made a prerequisite to the privilege of voting by some sovereignties is too clear for argument. Section 178 of the Constitution of Alabama, for instance, reads, in its pertinent part, as follows:

To entitle a person to vote in any election by the people he shall have paid all poll taxes.

* *

Whether or not there should be a poll tax may be debatable, but not in the Congress except on the question of submitting a constitutional amendment to the States for ratification. The fixing, vel non, of such a requirement is exclusively for each State to determine for itself. There never has been a Federal election; nor a Federal vote. All elections have been and are State elections, and only those who have qualified under State law are eligible to vote therein.

The exclusive right of a State to fix the qualifications prerequisite to the privilege of voting is well recognized and established:

DISTINGUISHED TEXT WRITERS

"Among the absolute, unqualified rights of the States is that of regulating the elective franchise; it is the foundation of State authority; the most important political function exercised by the people in their sovereign capacity." Whilst "the right of the people to participate in the legislature is the best security of liberty and foundation of all free government." yet it is subordinate to the higher power of regulating the qualifications of the electors and the elected. The original power of the people in their aggregate political capacity, is delegated in the form of suffrage to such persons as they deem proper for the safety of the commonwealth; Brightly Election Cases (Anderson v. Baker, 32, 33, 34, 23 Maryland 531).

Story, treating of this subject, says:

Every constitution of government in these United States has assumed, as a fundamental principle, the right of the people of the State to alter, abolish, and

modify the form of its own government according to the sovereign pleasure of the people. In fact, the people of each State have gone much further and settled a far more critical question by deciding who shall be the voters entitled to approve and reject the constitution framed by a delegated body under their direction. (1 Story Constitution, ch. 9, sec. 581.)

From this it will be seen how little, even in the most free of republican governments, any abstract right of suffrage, or any original and indefeasible privilege, has been recognized in practice (ibid.). In no two of these State constitutions will it be found that the qualifications of the voters are settled upon the same uniform basis, so that we have the most abundant proofs that among a free and enlightened people convened for the purpose of establishing their own forms of government and the rights of their own voters the question as to the due regulation of the qualifications has been deemed a matter of mere State policy, and varied to meet the wants, to suit the prejudices, and to foster the interests of the majority.

The exclusive right of the several States to regulate the exercise of the elective franchise and to prescribe the qualifications of voters was never questioned, nor attmpted to be interfered with, until the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was forced upon unwilling communities (the States then lately in rebellion) by the military power of the General Government, and thus made a part of our organic law; a necessary sequence, perhaps, of the Civil War, but nonetheless a radical change in the established theory of our Government. (Brightly Election Cases, author's note, pp. 42, 43.)

The right to vote is not of necessity connected with citizenship. The rights of the citizen are civil rights, such as liberty of person and of conscience, the right to acquire and possess property, all of which are distinguishable from the political privilege of suffrage.

The history of the country shows that there is no foundation in fact for the view that the right of suffrage is one of the "privileges or immunities of citizens." (McCrary Elections, p. 3:)

"The right to vote is not vested, it is purely conventional, and may be enlarged or restricted, granted or withheld, at pleasure, and without fault."

In Blair v. Ridgely (41 Mo. 161), the question at issue arose out of the provision of article II, section 3, of the Constitution of 1865 of the State of Missouri. By this section it was provided that no person should be deemed a qualified voter who had ever been in armed hostility to the United States, or to the government of the State of Missouri; that every person should, at the time of offering to vote, take an oath that he was not within the inhibition of this section, and that any person declining to take such oath should not be allowed to vote. The plaintiff, at an election held in the city of St. Louis on November 7, 1865, offered to vote, but refused to take the oath prescribed by the constitution. His vote being rejected, he brought his action against the judges of the election for damages. The case was taken to the Supreme Court of Missouri, where it was argued exhaustively, and with much learning, by eminent counsel, and the argument is to be found in full in the Reports of the Supreme Court of Missouri, volume 41. It was contended by the plaintiff that the section of the constitution in question was in violation of the Constitution of the United States, being a bill of attainder and an ex post facto law within the meaning of that instrument, and, in consequence, null and void. But the court held against this contention, drawing the distinction between laws passed to punish for offenses in order to prevent their repetition and laws passed to protect the public franchises and privileges from abuse by falling into unworthy hands. It is said by the court that

"The State may not pass laws in the form or with the effect of bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts. It may and has full power to pass laws, restrictive and exclusive, for the preservation or promotion of the common interests as political or social emergencies may from time to time require, though in certain instances disabilities may directly flow in consequence. It should never be forgotten that the State is organized for the public weal as well as for individual purposes, and while it may not disregard the safeguards that are thrown around the citizen for his protection by the constitution, it cannot neglect to perform and do what is for the public good."

It was argued in Blair v. Ridgely that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Cummings v. Missouri (4 Wall. 277), where it was held that this section of the Missouri Constitution, so far as it provided an oath