Here again there is the opportunity for a group of people to work with the disadvantaged few not in terms of administering an overall program but in terms of the need of the particular situation.

So, in summary of this summary, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee-and I am afraid it is getting longer than the statement itself, and you will excuse that because there is no matter on which I have talked to this committee in terms of deeper conviction than this I see a situation in which there will remain the necessity of meeting, in terms of a comparatively small number of people, problems which our overall programs cannot possibly meet.

I want to speak directly to one point, which I know has come up in connection with the consideration of this legislation, and that involves the suggestion that a good deal, a considerable part of any program of this kind, can best be carried on by local people rather than by representatives of the Federal Government. I agree with that completely, just completely. And to the fullest extent that problems of this kind can be worked out and will be worked out through local volunteer groups of one sort or another, they by all means should be. And, as a reflection of that feeling, there is a specific provision that there shall be no carrying out or there is a specific intention that there be no carrying out of any programs of this kind except on the request of people in the local communities which are involved.

But that leaves a very significant role, a role of catalyst, a role of coordinator, a role of distributor of information which can be carried on by the group of a thousand in the first year which is contemplated by this bill. We see the situation as one in which the members of the National Service Corps will go into communities only for the purpose of multiplying their effectiveness, the result of their efforts, by working with the local people who are involved here. I see very little of this program being carried out on the basis of the members of the National Service Corps actually doing the work with the individuals who may be affected. I see it rather as a situation in which they bring their own experience and training and the experience of the National Service Corps gained sometimes in other areas, bring that to the advantage of the people who are working locally on this problem.

I say to you, it is our most conservative careful estimate and judgment that this program will in no way possibly interfere with any local program and can only be used to complement and to supplement and to improve the effectiveness of the local programs involved.

I close with one other point: There is this great need in parts of the population today for the kind of service we are talking about here. I think there is another need which should not be overlooked; that is, the need which exists today in the minds of a great many people in this country to have some opportunity to identify themselves with something larger than their own concerns.

We know from the experience with the Peace Corps that there will be a very great number of people who will seek very actively the opportunity for service which this kind of program presents.

As far as the college graduates are concerned, I guess most of us are about at that point where we are experiencing it; where we are encountering firsthand the experience of college graduates in our family. We hear talk about the silent generation, the sullen generation, and so forth. That is not the impression I get out of them. I get the

impression of a generation which wants, more than anything else, to be able to identify itself with something which involves more than the welfare of the individual involved.

The experience of the Peace Corps is that it has attracted the finest kind of young people in this country and an increasing number of older people who are interested in programs of this sort. The provisions in this bill would give the opportunity not only to young people but to older people, would give them the opportunity to identify themselves with the kind of program which would make their own lives more meaningful.

It would also have the effect of introducing these people who are in the Corps to an area in which we have presently a great shortage as far as personnel is concerned. We don't have enough people who have had experience with this kind of program, and we think of this as an invaluable training program.

So, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I urge as strongly as I can, in personal as well as in official terms which the circumstances warrant, favorable consideration of this bill which seems to me to offer such great opportunities for humanizing, if you will, the service program of this Government, the State governments, the local governments in this country.

Senator WILLIAMS. Well, the noble purposes of this legislation could not be more eloquently expressed, Mr. Secretary.

I have been told that you visited the community of Welch, W. Va. I wonder if you would care to describe the impoverishment there, and perhaps express a view as to whether this Service Corps could be helpful in that kind of situation.

Secretary WIRTZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was last fall, but I know the situation has not changed. May I introduce my answer by saying this: We have spent a lot of time in the Department of Labor trying to describe the unemployment situation of the people in this country in terms of statistics. We can't do that job. We can't get through in terms of the overall statistics; it is so big. They are, in terms of seasonally adjusted, decimal point figures. There are so many now that any comparison could be made to prove either that the economy is going to pot or enjoying prosperity. I am not sure we are getting through on the figures at all.

I wish I could take every person in this country for 5 minutes through a country community like Welch, W. Va., a noble community, with noble traditions, deep roots, fine schools and high schools and so on and so forth, but a community in which about 40 percent in realistic terms, 40 percent of the potential of the community, is being wasted. I don't know what the official unemployment figure is there now. I know as you walk along the streets you realize that most of the houses have not been painted for a very long time. In talking with those people you see them shrug their shoulders more than anything else. Nobody gets very much interested in anything there. But you get a picture of unemployment as it really hits in a few communities of this country. Not 5 percent, but in such a high degree that really the figures no longer become realistic. There is no more opportunity there.

We can take in training programs, but without bringing in new industry they don't have a point. We can do our best to bring in new

industry, and we are, and I don't give up by any means as far as the Appalachian region is concerned. But I know that unemployment there has reached the point of human poignancy, of human denial of opportunity, of human want, human poverty that requires an approach to it in human rather than overall terms. Not "rather than," because both have to be done. I only make the point in this connection that where in general there is only 5 to 6 percent unemployment in this country, there is in a community of that kind of unemployment which has become a matter of real human need and want which we simply have to find some way of doing something about despite the apathy of the country as a whole.

Of course, this is a geographical illustration. Then you go on to the youth situation. There is 5 percent unemployment in this country today. As far as youth is concerned it is 10, 11, 12 percent. There is not 5 percent in the minority groups; it is 10, 11, 12, 15 percent. When you get into the younger people among the minority groups, we are talking today about an unemployment situation as far as young minority group members are concerned of 20 and 22 percent. We simply have to recognize that when the country is doing so well, there is nevertheless the possibility that a real slag heap of human waste is developing here, and we have to do something about it.

I am sorry to take advantage of your question, but that is what we are talking about.

Senator WILLIAMS. I am glad you did.

You described the awful tragedy that happened in Florida about 2 weeks ago when a bus with migratory workers and their children was forced into a canal alongside the road. These folks, as I understand it, lived in and around Belle Glade; the reason the smallest youngsters were on the bus, as you described it, is that there was no one to take care of them back home, so they had to accompany their parents. They were youngsters, little ones. I have seen pictures of those who drowned in that accident. Day-care facilities would have prevented their being aboard the bus.

The double tragedy is that in Belle Glade-we have been theresome of the most enlightened work is being done in caring for the youngsters, but it is far, far from enough. Julian Griggs of the Migrant Ministery was there when we were, 3 years ago. His work was the type of thing we are talking about, true care for people who desperately need it. While we were having lunch, I remember that over in the corner a young mother with a couple of kids was going through a stack of clothing. Those youngsters had not been to school because they didn't have clothes. But Mr. Griggs and his folks were finding clothes and getting these people to come in and accept the offer of care and service.

I am sure that group, which is there now, would welcome the assistance of volunteers in their noble private effort.

I have nothing further. Maybe I will come back to one practical question after Senator Burdick has an opportunity to talk with you. Senator BURDICK. Mr. Wirtz, I don't know whether you can give us any specifics, but I have followed your testimony very carefully. I thought it was very fine.

In talking about this area in West Virginia, of course, you are trying to do something on the economic front through the ARA programs and the like. Would you care to list some of the activities that a Peace Corps man might do in a town like that?

Secretary WIRTZ. I think, Senator Burdick, that the problem in a situation of that kind, probably presents the hardest questions about what we can do through a National Service Corps there. I do want to answer your question, but I want to preface my answer by saying that when you have a situation in which the economics have gotten as out of joint as they are here, I should not want to pretend that I see anything that a National Service Corps could do about curing the roots of that problem.

But it does lead to the question which you ask, what even in that situation, recognizing that there has to be economic surgery there of one kind or another, what can the National Service Corp people do there? I think they could, just as one illustration, go in and work out with the people in that area a program of counseling with the children in that area which would involve some very hardheaded as well as warmhearted talk about what their futures ought to be. It seems to me that one of the worst possibilities is that in those areas whose present prospects are poorest there will not be a realization by the next generation of what it can do to meet the problem.

Now if this means facing squarely the fact or the possibility of having to move to some other area, it probably had better be faced squarely. I know the difficulties in this situation.

In part, the answer to your question would be to set up a counseling service for the youth of that area, and I would like not to make it Welch, because that overpersonalizes it. Any area of this kind. There is the possibility, first, of setting up a counseling service which would really give those boys and girls a better picture of what the future might be.

Then with respect to the older worker who is in that area, I would not propose to give up the life of an individual in an area of that kind just because he had lost his job at age 45, 50, or 55. There is more and more discussion of what can be done about individualized rehabilitation of the older worker. You see, the problem with respect to a good many of that group is that they never learned to read or write. They didn't need it for the jobs they took. I would assume that another specific program which could be set up would be one of adult education, using local facilities but catalyzing those interests through the outside.

There is a great deal which can be done, and there is already a good deal of experience about it, by way of developing work interest programs, workshop programs of one sort or another, but also recreational programs for people whose jobs are done. I think it would probably make living in those communities a great deal more attractive for those who are through working if there could be a development from experience which we could bring from other States to set up meaningful vocational and recreational programs for older people. These are only illustrations, but I come to the conclusion again in answer to your question, I don't propose to exaggerate about the possibilities of a National Service Corps changing what is basically an economic situation of the kind that you have in that kind of area. Senator BURDICK. Thank you very much. Senator WILLIAMS. Senator Javits.

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Secretary, I am a cosponsor of this bill, but that does not prevent me from having some concern about it, and I do have some concern.

Now, for one thing, the program would start with 150 to 300 men and women, gradually expanding to a thousand.

Secretary WIRTZ. That is correct.

Senator JAVITS. And perhaps 5,000 in 3 years. Now, isn't this all the smallest drop in the bucket compared to the problems you have described. School dropouts, people who need special help in hospitals, poverty-stricken people throughout our country, and the half million migrant workers? Do you know what 150, 300, or even 5,000 will do in these cases?

Secretary WIRTZ. The easy answer would be that we would, of course, welcome a larger program, but I don't propose to make an easy answer. I am convinced that this is the right starting point for this program. I am much less convinced about the suggestion that in a second year it will go on up to only 2,000 or something of that sort. I would hope very much that one year's experience would show a much larger utility for this. But the proposal of a thousand for the first year has been quite carefully arrived at.

Part of the answer to your question is that we are going to try to be sure that we know what we are doing before we go into it on a larger scale. But I don't believe we ought to underestimate the possibility of a thousand people having a very, very large effect if they use their services properly.

I have tried to think through this problem of meeting the school dropout situation in Chicago. I believe with four or five people there in Chicago, I could organize part-time services of several thousand present students at the universities and people in the community, I think with three or four or five people from a National Service Corps you could build up, taking Chicago as an illustration, a volunteer activity which would mean that one person would be working with two or three of the dropout group, and you could cover almost the whole group.

Senator JAVITS. I gather that what we are talking about is an elite corps, really high-spirited, highly patriotic, unusually talented and trained people. Is that correct?

Secretary WIRTZ. Yes, in terms of the detail. I would want to remove the stuffiness which some people attach to the term elite, but in terms of that definition of it, that is the kind of group which we have in mind.

Senator JAVITS. In New York, for example, we have a State Division for Youth. We have a New York City Youth Board and a Youth Counsel Bureau. They have dozens of people, perhaps several hundred. They think those people are fully as good as anybody you are going to have in your National Service Corps, and they themselves are terribly short of help. How are you going to make a dent with four or five in that kind of situation?

Secretary WIRTZ. I am not sure that there could be any improvement, substantial improvement, in a situation which has already been developed to the point that one has. I simply don't know the facts well enough to answer in detail, but I mean the answer quite specifically, that before the efforts of this group are brought to bear on a

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