St. Paul Recorder

Chicago Daily News and Chicago F.E.P.C.

Last week, the Daily News had occasion to don a shroud of black
because Chicago's alert, wide-awake City Council took prompt action
to prevent any post-war racial tension and violence through the enact-
ment of a city ordinance prohibiting racial-discrimination in employment.

The Daily News wrings its hands in grief to proclaim that the law
won't work. Its editorial writers then go into a song and dance about
the possibilities implied in the law. For instance, "If the ordinance
was impartially enforced, white men could go into colored neighbor-
hoods and demand jobs in places now employing colored people. They
could bring proceedings under the ordinance if they were refused."

This fantastic line of reasoning follows the Westbrook Pegler's school
of thought. Pegler may be gone from the Daily News, but his memory
lingers on.

The argument that Negro concerns would be forced to hire whites
is not new. It was first suggested by the filibustering Dixie solons from
down Mississippi way.

It is based on the premise that it is the white man in this country,
rather than the 13,000,000 Negroes, who are being discriminated against
in industry. It follows the Hitler line which he used so effectively in
Germany that claimed that the Jews were taking all the Aryan jobs
in that country. It is demagogy, pure and simple.

The story of the enforcement of the FEPC law during World War II
completely contradicts all assumptions that a fair job law will not work.

The facts are the law did work and can work in the future.

Only stupid misleading drivel, such as expressed in the Daily News
editorial, can block the intelligent enactment and enforcement of a fed-
eral, as well as city FEPC law.—Chicago Defender.