Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir; this year the Immigration and Naturalization Service secured an appropriation and put on additional people to take care of this. That has always presented a great deal of a problem. We know that there has been a tremendous increase in applications for citizenship.

Mr. SCANLON. Do you have any questions, Mr. Burchill?

Mr. BURCHILL. Don't you attribute a lot of those applications for citizenship to the fact that a number of those people could not get positions in war plants without citizenship papers?

Mr. GREEN. They came at a time when there was no great difficulty in securing positions for aliens. They always faced some difficulty but actually the great increase preceded the war, by about 6 months up to a year. So that citizenship was not merely a thing needed to secure employment but actually it was to secure citizenship for that alone. It preceded the present situation.

Mr. SCANLON. Have you any questions, Mr. Day?

Mr. DAY. No questions.

Mr. SCANLON. Have you any questions, Mr. Kelley?
Mr. KELLEY. No.

Mr. SCANLON. If there are no further questions, Mr. Green, we thank you very much for your contribution.

STATEMENT OF MISS EVA COHEN, WELFARE DIRECTOR, HOTEL AND CLUB EMPLOYEES UNION, LOCAL NO. 6, NEW YORK, N. Y.

Miss COHEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, as a representative of the Hotel and Club Employees Union, Local No. 6 of the American Federation of Labor, with a membership of 16,000, many of whom are foreign-born, I wish to register opposition to the bill H. R. 804 which would prohibit workers from holding office or voting in the unions. This bill in itself is the essence of un-American ideals. I say this in the same sense that Vice President Wallace on May 16 said that we are all Americans. Americanism means freedom-welfare-the brotherhood of the plain people of the world.

Today as never before we must recognize the fact that all Americans, who are democratic-loving people, must be united in our common effort to win this war over fascism. Only under fascism do we have a policy of "divide and conquer." Divide the Aryans from the JewsCatholics from the Protestants-and so on.

The members of our union, as I said before, many of them are foreign-born but they are today engaged in buying War bonds. They have already given 800 pints of blood to the Red Cross and they are still giving.

Mr. SCANLON. Pardon me for interrupting you, but you tell us how many members of your organization are aliens.

Miss COHEN. I could not tell you. We have a large number of foreign-born, a good percentage. You see in the hotel industry we have many cooks and waiters.

Mr. SCANLON. I wondered if you had any definite figure on it for your particular local.

Miss COHEN. No; I do not.

Mr. SCANLON. All right, proceed.

Miss COHEN. They are engaged in a campaign to raise $50,000 for the labor war chest so that the Red Cross, allied war relief agencies,

and many other organizations may carry on their work of helping our boys who are giving their lives for democracy.

Mr. Green just mentioned the Philippines-the Filipinos. The Filipino people are not able to acquire citizenship in our country and yet in one of our shops where the crew is all Filipino, they were the first 100 percent shop in the labor war chest drive. Every man in the shop gave a day's pay for the war effort. Such a bill as H. R. 804 would say to those men: "You cannot participate in our democratic form of government." This bill would demoralize the American people from the war effort. Hundreds of our foreign-born membership have given their money, their blood, and even their sons and husbands in this war. We now have nearly 1,000 members serving in the armed forces of our Government. This bill would create an animosity toward all foreign-born, because many do not distinguish between a foreign-born and an alien person.

Mr. BURCHILL. I think that seems to be a terrible understanding. I do not see anything in here against the foreign-born but it speaks of "aliens" only.

Miss COHEN. I mention this particularly because when you speak of "foreign born" if a man has an accent and speaks to some one they will say to him, "Oh, you are one of those aliens, you cannot participate," and the man will say "I am sorry, but I am a naturalized citizen." He may be a very good citizen but the public generally does not distinguish between the foreign-born and the alien.

Trade-unions are based on the principle of democracy, with fullest opportunity for expression and participation.

H. R. 804 would ask the trade-unions to give up the principle of democracy and practice discrimination against sections of its membership. This in itself is a violation of the basic principles upon which our country was founded.

The vast majority of the foreign-born workers in this country are loyal Americans and are eager and willing to become legal citizens of our country but the complicated and lengthy procedure involved is a hindrance to becoming a citizen.

In the interests of thousands of foreign-born workers who have accepted the United States of America as their home and are willing to do their part, even to dying in protecting and preserving our democratic form of government, I ask that the bill, H. R. 804 be reported as "unfavorably."

Mr. SCANLON. Are there any questions you want to ask Miss Cohen, Mr. Landis?

Mr. LANDIS. I do not believe that I have any questions.

Mr. SCANLON. Do you have any questions you want to ask Miss Cohen, Mr. Kelley?

Mr. KELLEY. No, sir.

Mr. SCANLON. Do you have any questions, Mr. Day?

Mr. DAY. No; except that I am glad to see that she has emphasized the intolerance which is existent at the present time in that it does not distinguish between a person actually an alien and a person who is foreign-born. I think it is very unfair to the people who have been born on the other side.

Mr. SCANLON. Are there any questions, Mr. Burchill?

Mr. BURCHILL. I think it brings out the fact that whoever made up the phraseology of the bill had in mind those who had been here

for a great number of years who had not taken advantage of citizenship and it was not because they were ignorant.

Miss COHEN. Well, you see most of the people who have been here a good many years, when they came, as Mr. Green said before, they did not bave the opportunity at that time to take out citizenship. I deal directly with it because I am the welfare director and we will have these people come in and say, "What can I do to take out citizenship?" I know that whatever their ages, whether they are 40 or 50, they are more or less set in their ways. They will tell me, "I cannot sit down and study this. It is hard for me and it would take years." They are afraid that when they come down for an examination that the examination would be so technical that they could not know how to do it.

Mr. LANDIS. And they are also located in communities where they only speak their own language.

Miss COHEN. Like French.

Mr. LANDIS. We have had French settlements and Scotch settlements, and they only speak the one language, and when it comes to an examination they could not make the grade.

Miss COHEN. I can speak in regard to the expression of our membership in the war effort. Their attitude in the whole war effort has been remarkable. In all phases of war activities they have shown by their expressions that they are Americans in their hearts but they haven't had the opportunities to take out the citizenship papers. We have had many thousands who have first papers still pending. They are not real citizens, but they will tell you, "I am a citizen, I have my first papers."

I have carried on various activities and I think it would be a real attack upon the trade-unions generally to say to them that certain portion of their membership may not participate in the policy making and the voting and the holding of office in those organizations. Mr. SCANLON. Thank you, Miss Cohen.

There are no other witnesses to be heard today?

Mr. LANDIS. Mr. Chairman, I wish to submit the name of the New York Typographical Union which has sent me one of their financial reports. Since I mentioned the names of other organizations that have sent their reports, I wish to report this name, also.

Mr. SCANLON. If there is no objection, it is so ordered.

I want to tell the committee that over the week end while I was back home, in Pennsylvania, I contacted several organizations and probably tomorrow I will have the complete list of the C. I. O. locals, particularly in Pittsburgh, whose officers are working in the shops and factories who are not on salaries of the local unions.

I will have a complete summary of the Pittsburgh district by tomorrow and I will ask permission of the committee to insert that in the record or read it in the hearing.

I would like to ask the people in the audience today if they are proponents of these bills to come forward. So far, we have not had any people speak in behalf of the bills and if you know anybody we surely would like to have them come forward and speak in behalf of the bills, because we want to carry on an impartial hearing here and see if we cannot get both sides of the question before the public. Mr. LANDIS. I spoke on my bill.

How

Mr. SCANLON. We haven't as yet been able to have Mr. Woodruff, the author of H. R. 804, come over here and speak on his bill. ever, we may be able to get him over here before we adjourn our hearing.

We will now adjourn until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. At this time we have no witnesses for Thursday morning but we do have witnesses for next Tuesday.

Mr. KELLEY. Could we postpone the hearing for tomorrow until Thursday?

Mr. SCANLON. We could do so, except that we have witnesses scheduled for tomorrow morning who will be coming in at that time. However, you have been very faithful and we will excuse you until Thursday.

The hearing stands adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning

TO REGULATE LABOR ORGANIZATIONS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1943

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met at 10:45 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, Hon. Thomas E. Scanlon, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Mr. SCANLON. The subcommittee will please come to order. We have as our first witness Mr. Morris Milgram, national secretary of the Defense Workers League. Other witnesses are supposed to appear this morning, but they have not yet come.

Will you come forward, please, Mr. Milgram? State your full name for the record.

STATEMENT OF MORRIS MILGRAM, NATIONAL SECRETARY, DEFENSE WORKERS LEAGUE, NEW YORK, N. Y.

Mr. MILGRAM. I want to speak briefly about both bills that you have before you, H. R. 804 and H. R. 1483. I am very much troubled by the feeling in this country that people who were born elsewhere are not decent people, who can participate equally in our trade-unions. Let us think for a moment: Who are the aliens that would be excluded from voting in unions if Representative Woodruff's bill is passed? They are not the Fascist leaders of Germany, of Japan, or of Italy, against whom we are fighting; they are not the Fascists of those countries. They are simply lowly individuals who left their lands of birth because they learned that this was the land of opportunity and of freedom.

This bill proposes to limit sharply their freedom. Most of the aliens are children of the United Nations. Why are they not all American citizens? Some of them-in fact, many of them-are too illiterate. Many of them do not know how to go about it. I have talked to people who have explained the difficulties. They did not have the money to purchase copies of old records which proved on what ship they had come here and when they had entered. The Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service states, it is reported in today's New York Times, that the 1940 Census shows that aliens are but 3 percent of our population, which is a dwindling from 5.1 percent in 1930 and 7.1 percent in 1920, a regular, steady drop. Twenty years ago those aliens formed proportionately more than twice the part of our population that they now form. Their median age is 48 years. They are older people. They will be retiring. They are people who are dying at a greater rate than the average person in America, because the median age for American citizens is 28 years.