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has so far failed to share its abundance. Volunteer efforts can help us to do this job properly. Among the indigenous people with whom I am primarily concerned, many of those most in need of help are either too proud, too timid, or too depressed to seek it. Without infringing on legitimate privacy, we need to find them and at least make them aware of opportunity.

The tasks available are myriad. Our Indian people are rich in land and will for many years remain oriented to agriculture. Yet some reservations constitute wastelands for lack of knowledge of modern dry farming and irrigation techniques. Infant mortality has been dramatically reduced; yet children die or suffer lifelong physical impairment because parents have not learned elementary concepts of diet or hygiene. Unemployment affects as much as 40 percent of those in the labor market on more reservations than conscience likes to admit. Lack of opportunity accounts for only a part of this unhappy statistic; adult vocational training could prepare many for useful and available work, if not on the reservation then off-in the mainstream of American life. Tribal and individual Indian lands can be vastly improved through good conservation practices if trained leadership and guidance were available to make effective use of contributed Indian labor. Idle Indian youth is prone to the same temptations that lead non-Indians to delinquency: idleness can be supplanted by constructive activity if direction can be made available at community centers, schools and similar points.

Our responsibilities extend also to remote Pacific Islands where the atmosphere of tropical paradise has been invaded much as aboriginal American society has. After decades of neglect, the scene in American Samoa is being transformed under the dynamic leadership of Gov. Rex Lee and with liberal grants made available by a responsive Congress.

This bill includes the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. We are now engaged in a belated but intensive campaign to bring living standards of that area up to a level of minimum decency. A population of 80,000, spread over more than 100 inhabited islands in an area of 3 million square miles has been entrusted to our care by the United Nations. They must close a gap of centuries in a few years. The American democratic ideal requires, and the sentiment of an anticolonial world environment demands, that we give them the educational tools for sound citizenship and the health and economic standards of an enlightened society.

English language instruction not only has the support of the people; they ask for it. It is needed at all age levels to bridge the gap of nine basic languages and thirty-odd dialects. Normal public education cannot do this in a reasonable timespan; a Service Corps could help accelerate the process. Instruction and leadership in construction skills would create housing, community centers and improved sanitation. Home nursing instruction and tropical agriculture guidance will improve health and diet. Here the manpower crisis is acute. Distances are great and present resources are not adequate for continuous contact with the people. From my knowledge of them, I can think of no people who would respond more readily and more enthusiastically to the Service Corps spirit than would the Micronesians.

Happily, our more metropolitan territories of Guam and the Virgin Islands have profited from close contact with the American way of life. Yet here, as in our own cities and rural areas, there exist pockets of neglect and underprivilege. Social service and community activity guidance, vocational counseling and adult leadership training can stimulate the human resource to new ambitions and achievement. Guam still has before it the monumental task of replacing the almost unbelievable destruction wrought by successive typhoon onslaughts. Leadership and instruction to community groups cooperating to rebuild their own facilities is a task genuinely worthy of Service Corps purpose.

There is no lack of work which fits into the program which the bill before you would authorize. Let us provide a channel for the good will of those Americans who have the desire and are in a position to make their energies and their talents available to improve the plight of all men.

We know perfectly well that S. 1321 cannot meet all of our demands. Our fair share will not be enough to work a dramatic and widespread change in the standards of Indian life. But we must begin somewhere and if we improve the lot of one, two or a half dozen communities, that is a net gain for America in itself. We are confident that this program will be a success.

If made available for the tasks outlined above, I can assure you that the corpsmen will be accorded a station of honor, respect and admiration in the eyes

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of my Department and in each of the communities where we are able to influence attitudes. We can use their hands and their minds. The people we serve need the kind of personal contact and encouragement permitted by the Corps approach. More than either of these, the morale of depressed American communities must be stimulated and elevated by the kind of enthusiasm which I fully expect the Service Corps spirit to produce.

Senator WILLIAMS. The staff is authorized and instructed to have included in the record the text of the bill; explanations of the bill; departmental reports, individual and organizational views, and other materials related to the bill, issues, or testimony.

The staff is authorized after the conclusion of oral testimony to hold the record open for such period as is necessary to carry out these instructions.

We will reconvene tomorrow at 10 a.m.

(Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the subcommittee recessed to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, May 29, 1963.)

NATIONAL SERVICE CORPS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 1963

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL SERVICE CORPS
OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Williams (presiding), Burdick, Kennedy, Tower, and Javits.

Also present: Senator Bartlett of Alaska.

Subcommittee staff members present: Frederick R. Blackwell, counsel; Harry Wilkinson, associate counsel; and Woodruff Price, research assistant; George Denison, minority associate counsel; and Robert Locke, minority research assistant.

Committee staff members present: Stewart E. McClure, chief clerk. Senator WILLIAMS. The subcommittee will come to order.

Mr. Attorney General, we are honored to have you before the subcommittee this morning to talk about what in my judgment is one of the most promising programs to deal with the important human problems that remain in this country.

It was only on November 17, last year, that the President established a Cabinet-level study group under your chairmanship to develop a National Service Corps modeled partly on the Peace Corps abroad. We have come a long way in a few months.

The study group has given us a lot of information. It is comprehensive and it deals with the broad array of human problems that are associated with the poverty that still remains in our most affluent society.

Speaking for our subcommittee, I want to say that we are grateful to you for your work, and we are pleased to have you before us today. STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT F. KENNEDY, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

May I read my statement?

This bill is a call to service. It is a challenge to people of all ages to follow the example of those in the Peace Corps-to serve their Nation by helping other citizens to help themselves.

This bill is a challenge to youth. It is a challenge to millions of older and retired people whose reservoir of skill and experience remains untapped. It is a challenge to all of our people, to do more than merely talk about the ideal of service.

Every sixth citizen in the United States needs our help; there are five of us who should help him.

Six months ago, the President asked me to chair a Cabinet committee to determine whether the principle embodied in the Peace Corps could be applied effectively at home. This study has involved the attention of the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Interior, and Health, Education, and Welfare, the Administrators of the Housing and Home Finance Agency and Veterans' Affairs, and the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission. We also have been assisted by Mr. Shriver, the Director of the Peace Corps, and Mr. Gordon, Director of the Bureau of the Budget.

One aspect of our work has been the study of deprivation.

The facts are discouraging. Millions live with pride but without resources in the mountains and valleys that run from Alabama and Kentucky to West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Millions more live in city slums only blocks away from unprecedented wealth.

The information booklet which has been submitted by the study group to the members of this subcommittee and the Congress contains many examples of the high price of poverty-examples members of the study group saw firsthand only a month ago.

They visited a State hospital for the mentally retarded on a bright April day when you would have expected all the children to be playing outside. Not one was outside, nor was there a single child in either the well-equipped gymnasium or the classroom, well stocked with books.

The children were inside, standing a room which was bare but for a few benches. The floor was covered with urine.

Severely retarded patients were left naked in cubicles-which suggested kennels-made of an elevated mattress enclosed on three sides by high marble slabs and covered on the fourth side by wire mesh so thick you could barely see through it.

Patients were washed by a device resembling a carwash—a spraying mechanism through which patients could be directed without the need for anyone to touch them.

The only toilets for the approximately 70 patients in a large ward were located in the middle of the room, permitting no privacy.

The hospital's hard-working but inadequate staff could provide at best only custodial care.

There is not even custodial care for great numbers of migratory farmworkers, who live in almost unbelievable squalor.

At a southwestern migratory labor camp one morning last month, a husband, his wife, and their 14- and 15-year-old sons had to leave for the fields at 4:30 a.m. in order to reach work in tomato fields 30 miles away. They had to leave their 11-year-old daughter Sarah at home with three younger children, because she has a crippled arm and cannot work in the fields.

All day, until the trucks came back from the fields at 6 in the evening, Sarah was responsible for three younger children, one 7, one 4, and a sick baby 6 months old.

While she was fixing lunch for the children and trying to keep an eye on the baby, 4-year-old Pete knocked a pan of boiling water off the oil burner, scalding his right leg and arm. His screams attracted an elderly woman in the next row of shacks. She did the best she could

with home remedies. Nevertheless, within a day or so, infection set in. Finally, Pete was taken to the county hospital but even after treatment, he was left permanently crippled.

In another camp, cottonpicking was over, after a season shortened by the introduction of mechanical cottonpickers. The last work the pickers had found was 6 weeks before, 300 miles west, and then it was only for a short time.

One family of 11 people had been living in their car for 3 months. The mother and father slept in the car and two of the children were tucked into the trunk. The nine children ranged in age from 3 months to 14 years old.

The mother was seriously ill. The children were suffering from malnutrition and were unbelievably dirty because of the lack of sanitary facilities. All had been without food for several days. They had no money and virtually no hope; they did not know where to turn for help. Since they were not residents of the area their appeals were certain to be rejected.

These are not isolated examples.

MIGRATORY FARMWORKERS

Of some 400,000 domestic migratory workers, 92,000 could find work for less than 25 days in 1960. The remainder, who worked more than 25 days, earned an average of $1,000 for the year. Those who worked less than 25 days received only $388.

Because of their constant movement from place to place following a harvest, migratory children fall years behind in education.

ALASKAN NEEDS

In the Wade Hampton District of Alaska, which has a native population of 3,000, the median of school years completed is only 1.6. In Bethel, the 5,000 Alaskans average only a second-grade education.

Only 13 percent of the Alaskan rural natives have structurally sound housing. In Wade Hampton, which has 528 occupied homes, 476 are either deteriorating or dilapidating. None has a flush toilet. Only seven have hot and cold piped water. An average of 42 persons occupy each room.

Alaskan natives on the average live only 30 years, compared to more than 62 years for the entire U.S. population.

EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

There are more than 8 million Americans over 25 years of age who are illiterate. In 1960, 8.4 percent of our population 25 years or over had completed less than 5 years of school. More than one-fifth of our men fail the selective service preinduction mental exam.

MORTALITY RATES

It is still true that a nonwhite mother is four times as likely to die in childbirth as a white mother.

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