Mr. SEE. The statement is made that American citizens were discharged to make room for Jamaicans, and if they were Jamaicans, they were aliens and they should not have been working on the Panama Canal. Another statement is made that the locomotive engineers are Jamaicans, while American citizens are being fired daily. There were some more British subjects on the Panama Canal. A yardmaster was also a Jamaican, a British subject. I submit the man who wrote the letter, while I do not like his language, and maybe I do not like his attitude about a lot of things, maybe he had an idea that Americans should be employed on the Panama Canal. Now on the Panama Canal today about the only white people who are employed are engineers and conductors, all the rest are natives, and they are working with considerably less money than the white men are in this country.

Mr. POWELL. I am sorry to interrupt you but it so happens that I have invited to testify before this committee on Thursday workers from the Panama Canal who are going to present the shocking, undemocratic labor practices of our Government in Panama, and we will ask them to go into the whole question at that time.

Mr. SEE. We do not have anybody down there.

Mr. POWELL. I know. I would like to ask you one last question. Suppose the FEPC, this bill of the President, becomes the law of the land; what will the brotherhood do?

Mr. SEE. I don't know.

Mr. POWELL. Will it go out of business?

Mr. SEE. No.

Mr. POWELL. Then it will accept Negroes, won't it?

Mr. SEE. I suppose it would be a matter for the brotherhood convention to determine. I don't know. You understand we do not have any closed-shop agreements. Nothing compels a man to belong to the brotherhood in order to work on the railroad.

Mr. POWELL. Except that the agreement with companies on a percentage basis.

Mr. SEE. No; we have not.

Mr. POWELL. You have got to the place now where you are so strong that the workers have to come through you?

Mr. SEE. Of course, they have a right to vote for the organizations that will represent them.

Mr. POWELL. Only whites can vote for it?

Mr. SEE. No.

Mr. POWELL. Excuse me for interrupting you. What railroad was it that used to be 41 percent Negro and today it is 5 percent? Mr. Houston, can you answer that, or Mr. Brown?

Mr. BROWN. I think the percentage you are referring to is for the Firemen.

Mr. POWELL. What railroad was that on?

Mr. BROWN. That is the entire industry.

Mr. POWELL. The entire industry used to be 41 percent and now it is 5 percent. There is no way to win an election when you only have 5 percent.

Mr. SEE. I have been on the railroads 35 years and I have my doubts about the 41 percent.

Mr. POWELL. When they come on the witness stand we will have the facts.

Mr. SEE. They can probably testify better than I can on that. May I correct one thing?

Mr. POWELL. Yes.

Mr. SEE. I am sure you did not mean to say what you did, because when we vote for representation in an election on any railroad, the United States Board of Mediation compiles a list of those employees who are eligible to vote, and just this morning I inquired of them if they made any distinction and they said they did not, that they had a list of brakemen or yardmen, they took everybody on the seniority list regardless of whether he was colored or white.

Mr. POWELL. What happened yesterday that made you change the practice that through the years you displaced Negroes with whites? Mr. SEE. I have been informed where we had a representation election with rival organizations, in many instances, the colored yardmen and colored brakemen voted with the brotherhood.

Mr. POWELL. That is true in many instances. The yard and trainmen are, a vast majority, white and there is no way for the Negro to join the brotherhood.

Are there any questions, Mr. Perkins?

Mr. PERKINS. No.

Mr. POWELL. Mr. Burke.

Mr. BURKE. Has your organization taken any stand either for or against the bill now before the subcommittee?

Mr. SEE. No position either way.

Mr. POWELL. All right, thank you.

I would like Mr. McBride, the vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen, to come forward.

TESTIMONY OF JONAS A. MCBRIDE, VICE PRESIDENT OF BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEMEN AND FIREMEN

Mr. POWELL. Mr. McBride, kindly give the clerk your full name. Mr. MCBRIDE. Jonas A. McBride, vice president and national legislative representative of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 10 Independence Avenue, Washington, D. C.

Mr. POWELL. Mr. McBride, have you any statement to make?

Mr. MCBRIDE. Congressman, my organization is not for or against this bill; therefore, I have no prepared statement. I might say to you, though, in line with your opening remarks, since I have been in Washington the railroad organizations have endorsed you and endorsed Congressman Powell because of your splendid labor record.

Mr. POWELL. Thank you. I was going to bring that to the committee, because I have letters here before me from the four presidents of the brotherhoods endorsing me for reelection each year because of my splendid labor record. I have letters when I ran for the Eightieth Congress, and again when I ran this time for the Eighty-first Congress. That shows that this chairman sits here with a 100-percent trade-union mind.

But I want to tell you, Mr. McBride, what is being developed here today is causing the chairman very grave misgivings concerning the brotherhoods in connection with our trade-union movement.

I would like to go through the history which we had compiled of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. How many years have you been with the brotherhood?

Mr. McBRIDE. I have been a member of the brotherhood 46 years the 13th day of next November.

Mr. POWELL. Forty-six years. Do you think, Mr. McBride, that it is in keeping with the things that we are fighting for in the trade-union and working-class movement to have an organization such as the brotherhood that has in its constitution "whites only"?

Mr. MCBRIDE. Congressman, if you will permit me, my brotherhood, the same as most of these railroad brotherhoods, was originally organized as a fraternal benefit society. There was a locomotive fireman killed at Fort Jarvis, leaving a wife and three helpless children, and the firemen got together and made up a collection, and they organized the brotherhood. For many years all they did was to try to help the widows and orphans and the dependent ones in case of an injury of that kind, and it was only in later years that they became identified as labor organizations.

Mr. POWELL. You would not deny the fact that the brotherhood is a labor organization now?

Mr. MCBRIDE. Yes; it is a labor organization now.

Mr. POWELL. How many members has your brotherhood?

Mr. MCBRIDE. I would say 105,000, approximately, at this time. Mr. POWELL. Only white?

Mr. MCBRIDE. The law states, if you will permit me to read it, that he shall be white born, of good moral character, sober and industrious, not less than 16 years of age, and be able to read and write the English language and understand our Constitution. Mexicans or those of Spanish-American extraction are not eligible.

Now this was adopted at our last convention in 1947:

Should the provisions of this paragraph, or any part thereof, be in violation of or in conflict with the laws of the United States, the Dominion of Canada, or any State or Province as contained in the statutes or court decisions, then in that event the provision of such law shall supersede the provision of this paragraph to the extent required to bring about conformance of such law and to remove the violation or conflict.

This was effective July 28, 1947.

Mr. POWELL. Do you know if that was adopted by the other brotherhoods?

Mr. MCBRIDE. No; I don't know anything about their constitutions and bylaws.

Mr. POWELL. I shall have to ask that question of the succeeding witnesses, then. Then, in other words, if the FEPC became the law, according to your own resolution passed 2 years ago, you would change the constitution?

Mr. MCBRIDE. That is the action of our last convention, Congress

man.

Mr. POWELL. Because the record before me of the Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen is just about as bad, from the standpoint of democracy and from the standpoint of trade-unionism, as the one I read concerning the Railroad Trainmen.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen was organized in 1873, and its name was the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Is that correct?

Mr. MCBRIDE. That is right; yes, sir.

Mr. POWELL. The joint committee delegated by the Brotherhood of Trainmen, Brotherhood of Railway Conductors, Switchmen's Mu

tual Aid Association, and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, composing the United Order of Railway Employees, in 1890 requested the officers of the Houston & Texas Central Railway that all Negroes employed in train, yard, and locomotive departments of the Houston & Texas Central Railway System be removed and white men employed in their stead. That is the first step in your effort to remove Negroes and replace them with white men.

Mr. MCBRIDE. That is my first knowledge of that.

Mr. POWELL. I would like to give you the correct history on this brotherhood.

Mr. MCBRIDE. I would like to say during my career I handled assignments all through the Eastern and Western States, and I have had no contact or knowledge of the other situation that you are speaking

about.

Mr. POWELL. This comes from the Locomotive Firemen's magazine, December 1890, volume 14, at pages 1094 to 1096.

Now in 1892 Grand Master Sargent of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, in August, replied to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers' committee seeking cooperation with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen wanted the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers—

to remove from locomotives that class of men who cannot become members of our organization *. I refer to the colored men in the South.

That is from the proceedings of your first biennial session at St. Paul, Minn., May 9, 1894, at pages 50 to 60.

Grand Master Sargent above reported to the third biennial convention of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Cincinnati, 1892, in words to this effect:

I say to the engineers, when you will come to the firemen and show some interest in their welfare, when you will root out the colored firemen who are debarred from membership in our organization and demand that brotherhood men be placed in their positions, when your organizations will give positive evidence that you are the friend and ally of the firemen, it will be time to consider a proposition looking forward to less promotion of firemen and the employment of engineers.

That came in Cincinnati in 1892. Up to that time the provision "white born" was not in your constitution?

Mr. MCBRIDE. This is the first time I have heard this information. Mr. POWELL. The provision "white" was added to your constitution in 1894 when you met in Toronto, Canada. In other words, the Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen came into being only when your Grand Master Sargent told the firemen that they had to root out Negroes first before the enginemen would accept them. That is not good trade-unionism, or good democracy; is it?

Mr. MCBRIDE. I would say, Congressman, going back years and years and bringing up matters of this kind, outside of filling up the record, it does not tell the true picture today, so far as these organizations are concerned.

Mr. POWELL. I am going to come to that.

Mr. MCBRIDE. My organization, I think, has just about as clear a record, from the standpoint of doing what is legitimate and fair, as is possible to be done. I do not think it is fair to go back all these years, because I think all of us have improved in the last few years.

Mr. POWELL. The fact that you said you would accept the FEPC 2 years ago you went on record for it-does that mean that you would abide by this bill if it was passed?

Mr. MCBRIDE. This bill that you are considering today-we are not for it or against it. Until I got notice of the meeting, I did not read the bill.

Mr. POWELL. I will give you one to take back. You just read from your constitution the fact that 2 years ago you agreed if any national legislation was passed your organization would agree to it.

Mr. MCBRIDE. Yes; because we are law-abiding American citizens. Mr. POWELL. That is an indication of the fact that you are amenable to an FEPC.

Mr. MCBRIDE. We do not care what you call it.

Mr. POWELL. Let us call it the President Truman bill. President Truman is a friend of the brotherhood presidents. Let us call it his bill, his policy to abolish discrimination in employment, because this is his bill. Believe me, I did not see this bill, not a word of it, untl John McCormack handed it to me, and it came to him from Attorney General Clark. It came from Mr. Truman through General Clark to John McCormack to me. I want you to know that this is Mr. Truman's bill.

You say that past history is not apropos of the conditions now. I say it is because it shows how this policy has been developing. But we will cut across some of the history and we will include it in the record without objection, and we will come up to date.

In 1917, let us begin there. Mr. Burke, were you here when I pointed out that the brotherhood, during World War I and World War II, when the Nation was conducting a war and needed workers and some of the railroads, because of the shortage, wanted to use Negroes, that the brotherhood protested and passed resolutions against that?

Mr. BURKE. No.

Mr. POWELL. I see. I will bring that out later, because you are acquainted with those resolutions.

Mr. MCBRIDE. No; I am not.

Mr. POWELL. They were passed by your organizations. Would you kindly get them for him, Mr. Houston, the resolutions in World War I and World War II? While you are looking for them, may I say in 1917 President W. S. Carter of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen instructed all general committees and local committees to protest the introduction of Negro firemen on any railroad where they were not then employed. That is coming up to date, and I am going to come on up to the present day.

In 1917 again President Shea of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen ordered the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen general chairmen on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad property to protest the hiring of Negro_firemen_on_that property and issued a circular to all Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginmen lodges stating they would have the support of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen in striking against any attempt to employ Negroes in train and engine service, even under war conditions.

Mr. BURKE. That is World War I?

Mr. POWELL. That is World War I. Do you recall that incident?