for education amounted to only $93.18 per child as compared to the national average of $125.41. May I repeat, though, that West Virginia was second in its effort to support education.

I have mentioned these facts to show that West Virginia, despite its great effort, is not providing educational advantages even of average national quality. We face a real crisis in public education in our State. West Virginia's average salary for teachers and principals in 1945 and 1946 was $1,672. Yet the average earnings of West Virginia's laborers, exclusive of agricultural and domestic help, amounted to $2,115 in West Virginia. Is it any wonder then, gentlemen, that September 1, 1946, 3,000 of West Virginia's boys and girls did not enter any school because there were no teachers? Two hundred and sixty-five teaching positions were not filled? Three hundred and eight of our teachers in West Virginia last September 1 had not even finished high school, 662 had only high-school training, and 2,000 of our teachers had less than 2 years of college training?

Too, there were 60,000 of our boys and girls being taught by teachers with substandard training. Since 1941, 8,509 of our teachers have left their job, a loss of 56 percent of the total teaching personnel. If we in West Virginia are to have well-trained, competent teachers, we must provide economic security through a professional salary.

It is true that $9,500,000 additional money was provided for teachers' salary by the State legislature in January of this year. But even with that increase, 6,745 West Virginia teachers will still average only $1,572 per year.

West Virginia cannot achieve the recommended minimum salary of $2,400 a year without Federal assistance. West Virginia, in its 1947 legislature, enacted into law a general fund budget for the next biennial amounting to $118,732,381. Of this amount, more than $87,000,000 were appropriated for educational purposes, a figure higher than the entire 1945-47 budget of $86,572,908.

It is estimated that in 1947 and 1948 West Virginia will be spending for education 3.24 percent of its estimated total income payments. Gentlemen, that is more than double the amount for the national average of 1.5 percent, which I believe shows again that West Virginia is exerting a great effort to support education.

We must have better schools, but we cannot have them without better teachers. Better teachers in West Virginia, or in any State in this Nation, can be secured only by providing better salaries, and we are convinced that West Virginia must have Federal assistance to assure better salaries.

With only 1 out of every 3 entering the first grade in West Virginia finishing high school, think of it, 1 out of every 3, human erosion of almost 67 percent, with West Virginia ranking forty-seventh among the States in the percent of adults who finish high school, with teachers leaving our profession daily, and with almost half of the teachers of our State receiving an annual salary of only $1,572, we know that West Virginia must have Federal assistance if she is to provide for her youth the educational advantages to which every youth of America is entitled and which America, I believe is, well able to provide.

At this point I have some charts which I should like included in the record which will show statistics in West Virginia.

Mr. McCowEN. They will be inserted.