Atlanta Daily World

U. S. DODGES
ON JOBS AT
DAM SITE

NEW YORK, July 12- Although
Secretary Ray Lyman Wilbur, of
the Interior department, personal-
ly assured a joint committee from
the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
and the National Bar Association
that Negroes would be employed
on the huge Hoover dam at Las
Vegas, Nev., in June, the govern-
ment and the contractors are still
pussyfooting and no Negroes have
been hired.
The daily payroll at the dam has
averaged $10,000 through the win-
ter and has run as high as $18,000.
The government contract with the
construction companies
specifies
that U. S. citizens be employed,
but so far only white citizens have
drawn any of the huge payroll.
About sixty foreigners are work-
ing at the dam.
Secretary Wilbur and the Six
Companies, Inc., builders of the
dam, are resting on the technical-
ity that Negroes will be employed
"when additional men are hired,"
in other words, when the present
force at the dam is increased.
However, a colored resident of Las
Vegas reports to the N. A. A. C.
P. that the turnover in the present
force runs as high as 80 a day. The
N. A. A. C. P., and the National
Bar Association do not see why
Negroes cannot be hired at once in-
asmuch as from sixty to eighty new
men are taken on each day re-
placing those who are dropped or
who quit.
Walter White, N. A. A. C. P.,
Secretary, in a letter to Secretary
Wilbur on July 1, asked that in
view of the high turnover report-
ed at the dam that Mr. Wilbur
again confer with the Six Com-
panies, Inc., so that the discrimina-
tion against Negroes may be ended.
Jos. W. Dixon, assistant Secretary
of the Interior, has replied that he
is calling for a report from the
contractors and will notify the N
A. A. C. P., of the findings.
Meanwhile in San Francisco, a
committee headed by Leland S.
Hawkins, a director of the National
Bar Association, conferred with
President W. A. Bechtel, of the
Six Companies, and renewed the
demand that Negroes be employed.
Negroes from other sections are
warned not to flock to Las Vegas
as there is no work of any kind
there for a colored man even
while waiting for the jobs at the
dam to open.