The Pittsburgh Press (December 20, 1945)
Stokes: GOP opportunity
By Thomas L. Stokes
WASHINGTON – The Republican Party in Congress seems finally about to take hold of an issue that is highly important in this critical post-war era and one in keeping with the party’s best traditions of the past.
This is the effort to eliminate discrimination in jobs on account of race, creed or color. Such discrimination is reported on the increase, which is not at all in keeping with our ideals of democracy that we would spread elsewhere in the world.
Republicans are beginning to bring pressure for enactment of bills pending in both branches of Congress to create a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission to eradicate such discrimination. It would be modeled along lines of the Fair Employment Practices Committee set up by executive order of President Roosevelt, except that the permanent federal commission would have statutory authority not possessed by the temporary wartime agency.
Permanent commission needed
The wartime FEPC is now seriously handicapped in its operations. It is almost nonexistent. This is due to a fund shortage that has forced it to close all but three branches – it only has $63,000 to operate until next July 1 – and to narrowing of its jurisdiction because of the end of the war. It was restricted to plants with war contracts.
This is why a permanent federal commission is so needed.
A group of six Republican senators, mostly newer, younger and of progressive inclination, are organizing a campaign to get the bill before the Senate for a vote after the Christmas recess. It is high on the calendar. As a preliminary they are putting the case before the public this final week of Congress in a series of Senate speeches.
The six senators are Aiken (R-Vermont), Ball (R-Minnesota), Knowland (R-California), Morse (R-Oregon), Smith (R-New Jersey), and Tobey (R-New Hampshire).
Republicans in the House also seem to be bestirring themselves for a permanent FEPC as endorsed by the party’s 1944 platform. Rep. Martin (R-Massachusetts), House Republican leader, publicly has offered his cooperation to force the bill before the House by a petition to discharge the Rules Committee which has had the bill since last February.
A petition now lies on the speaker’s desk. It has nearly 160 signatures, of which only about a third are Republican. It will require 218 signatures to bring the hill to the floor for a vote. A Republican drive to fill up the petition is expected after the first of the year.
Opportunity for GOP to act
Democratic dereliction gives Republicans the opportunity to press this issue and get credit for the legislation. It is one of many similar legislative opportunities waiting for the GOP, if it would only take the initiative.
President Truman has urged passage of the FEPC bill. But his efforts have been blocked by the Southern wing of his party. Southern Democrats on the House Rules Committee have bottled up the bill there arbitrarily for ten months. Democrats from other parts of the country have sought its enactment in vain.
The titular leader of the Republican Party, Gov. Dewey of New York, secured enactment of a Fair Employment Practices laws in his state similar to that proposed nationally. Never has the case for it been put more concisely than by the governor in discussing the New York measure. He said:
“There are those who believe the anti-discrimination bill is designed to fix by law the taste, the habits, the associations or the special lives of people. Others believe it is a law to tell you who you may have in your homes as domestic help or guests who they may not hire, or that it is designed to discriminate in favor of one group against another. Of course, it is none of these things.
“The bill establishes by law the simple principle that in business and industrial employment there shall be no discrimination on grounds of race, creed, color or national origin. It translates into law what is inherent in our Constitution, and is the very essence of our free society.”
The proposed federal law would do the same, no more, no less.
Republicans deserve public support in their campaign.