Dr. DIMIT. No, sir; and we are not advocating that. We are saying that the States and local communities can do that, and they are in better condition to do it than the Government with a debt of $265,000.000,000, and in addition, build another bureau which has to supervise it.

Mr. McCOWEN. Of course, that statement, as a universal statement, is not correct. There are some States that can do much more than they are doing and yet there are some that cannot.

Dr. DIMIT. Yet, this would give some of the States that can do it and are not doing it more than the States that cannot, so that it does not really equalize in that respect.

Mr. McCowEN. Of course, you are aware of the fact that even in the wealthy States there are very poor sections.

Dr. DIMIT. Right.

Mr. McCOWEN. And poor districts that cannot take care of their responsibilities at all; they need more money.

Dr. DIMIT. May I make this statement?

In some cases the districts do not have it. I will take one section in my own county. There are 1,280 students in that district. Only 20 percent of the people are paying taxes for their schooling. They are not even paying a per capita tax, and yet that is a mining section in which the people have been making good wages. They are not paying in, so 20 percent are paying for the education. Is that a case of a "cannot" do it, or is that proof that they will not do it?

They are not assuming their responsibilities as citizens.

Mr. McCOWEN. Of course, you do have that. Any time you put a levy on in any district for more money for local schools you have certain people that fight it, because they do not want to put up any tax money at all.

Dr. DIMIT. The men who have to pay for it are home owners, and many people will not invest in homes because they know they can levy on real estate, where otherwise they cannot.

Mr. McCowEN. Do you have a sales tax in Pennsylvania?

Dr. DIMIT. No, sir. We are advocating it. Our Grange is on record for it.

Mr. McCOWEN. Would that not take care of the criticism you made just now?

Dr. DIMIT. It would. That is why we are advocating it.

Mr. McCOWEN. Doctor, you have made a very good statement from your point of view, and we are glad to have had it.

Mr. Owens, have you any questions?

Mr. OWENS, Doctor, I am very much interested in the question asked by the chairman concerning national defense and illiteracy. I am just wondering if you have any knowledge concerning whether the majority of our Revolutionary soldiers were illiterate or not, that is the ones who turned back the English troops in the Revolutionary War. Dr. DIMIT. I do not have the figures, but I understand they were not. Mr. OWENS. You mean they were not illiterate?

Dr. DIMIT. They were illiterate.

Mr. OWENS. That is what I understood, but they succeeded in winning the war.

Dr. DIMIT. Right.

Mr. OWENS. I understand, too, in the First World War, there was a sergeant by the name of York, who was an outstanding hero, some hillbilly from Tennessee or Kentucky.

Dr. DIMIT. Yes.

Mr. OWENS. I was just wondering whether that group of people who were turned down as being illiterate were, in fact, incompetent. Do you have any figures to show that it was because they could not read or write that they were turned down?

Dr. DIMIT. No, I do not have that.

Mr. OWENS. I believe if you checked it, you would find it was incompetency rather than illiteracy.

Dr. DIMIT. A man who is illiterate is often a scrapper.

Mr. OWENS. We have found that among our champions, I guess, and that will probably continue.

Now, with respect to Federal control, during the last 17 years we have had a great deal of it.

Dr. DIMIT. Yes.

Mr. OWENS. And since we had the deficit, around 1930, of about $18,000,000,000, and now we have one of over $260,000,000,000, that is the result of centralized control, would you say, Doctor?

Dr. DIMIT. I think that that statement is true, and we have now 1 person out of every 17 a Federal employee.

Mr. OWENS. So these matters of common defense and these various things as regards education would have to reach out and take in agriculture and roads. They would also be in the common defense. Therefore, the whole matter ought to be handled by the army.

Dr. DIMIT. That was the control that happened in Europe.

Mr. OWENS. And if we keep to the point where we continue to feel it is a matter of common defense, and we send money over to Turkey and Greece, and spread money out over the United States for that reason, we might as well let the army take over completely, as they did in Germany, is that not right? That would be the final result, would it not?

Dr. DIMIT. Yes.

Mr. OWENS. On the radio last night-I do not want to comment on my remarks, but I made a statement, and I said that during the hearings of the committee that admissions have been made by proponents of Federal aid that Federal control is involved. It has repeatedly been admitted that practically every State in the Union has a financial surplus, and that such aid should certainly be withheld until a State could make a bonafide showing it has done everything within its power to do its duty and has failed. Therefore, until such contingency arises, and until a State has shown it has done everything in its power to meet its obligations but has failed to fulfill its responsibility, there is no such crisis that will justify Federal intervention.

What is your thought concerning that?

Dr. DIMIT. I think that expresses what I said. When a State does for a pupil what a pupil could do for himself, it does that pupil harm. Mr. OWENS. In other words, you believe in strengthening the backbone instead of coming to their aid

Dr. DIMIT. At the expense of the public.

Mr. OWENS. You believe that they should stand on their own feet? Dr. DIMIT. Yes.

Mr. OWENS. On this matter of the various States handling it, is it your thought that before we are through there will be only 15 or 20 percent who will be bearing the entire burden? In other words, if

H

we have 20 States that are truly in need and can only furnish 50 percent of what is needed, then you will have about 15 other States that can furnish only about 1 percent and finally the balance of the States will be furnishing the money and what they are getting back themselves will be their own money which they are sending to Washington. Dr. DIMIT. With a lump taken off for administering it.

Mr. OWENS. And we send directions as to how they will distribute it in their own group?

Dr. DIMIT. Yes.

Mr. OWENS. So that, as I have mentioned here, the plan suggested by Federal aid advocates would place the entire burden upon approximately 25 percent or 30 percent of the States, and although those States would participate to some degree, participation just means Federal control extended into those States.

What do you think?

Dr. DIMIT. I think that is true.

Mr. OWENS. There is one thought I do not know whether I can agree with you on. I have heard a great deal said heretofore about this separation of church and state. I asked one of the witnesses a short time ago whether or not our first amendment to the Constitution did not provide that the Congress shall not establish a religion or interfere with the free exercise of a religion.

Dr. DIMIT. That is right.

Mr. OWENS. Now, the States are recognizing the fact that these parochial schools and certain private schools are giving a good education to children and they are permitting them to do it.

Dr. DIMIT. Some of the States are.

Mr. OWENS. I believe you will find that all of the States will permit parochial schools to operate.

- Dr. DIMIT. Will permit them to operate at their own expense.

Mr. OWENS. Yes. They would not do that if they did not think they were given the proper kind of education, would they?

Dr. DIMIT. Well, that is all part of our religious freedom and the freedom that we have here.

Mr. OWENS. Do you believe they would permit a school to operate. promoting education as a part of their religious freedom, do you think they would permit them to teach the children if they were not giving them a proper education?

Dr. DIMIT. I don't know how far you say you have to take this particular type of education, because that may become dictatorial.

Mr. OWENS. You certainly have a right to say whether or not a school which is set up, even though it is operating under its own expenses, when it is required that the children have to go to school in the community and get an education-they certainly do not have to approve the standards unless they meet the requirements.

Dr. DIMIT. That is right.

Mr. OWENS. Therefore, when you have that fact there, you have to admit, with such a distribution of money, they would have to distribute it to all schools and control all schools equally, whether they were parochial or not; they would have to be controlled by the Federal Government if money were expended on all those schools.

Dr. DIMIT. I would say they would have to be, if you follow through with that.

Mr. McCOWEN. Mr. Kearns?

Mr. KEARNS. Doctor Dimit, did you formerly teach at Slippery Rock State Teachers College?

Dr. DIMIT. I did.

Mr. KEARNS. Are you appearing here on behalf of the State Grange on behalf of education?

Dr. DIMIT. Particularly the educational office of the State Grange, and because the State Grange has always been interested in education, as lecturer of that Grange, I am the educational adviser of that Grange.

Mr. KEARNS. How does the state Grange feel about the State of Pennsylvania substituting the State teachers colleges in lieu of the liberal arts schools? We are speaking here of Federal aid. In the State of Pennsylvania, we have all this controversy as to whether or not the State of Pennsylvania should keep the State teachers colleges, and thus keep the students away from the liberal arts schools. Of course, right now, with the influx of G. I.'s, we do not have much of a problem but you know how it was when you were at Slippery. Rock, and when I taught there.

How do you feel about that?

Dr. DIMIT. The teachers colleges are our training institutions, and the system of the State for providing teachers for our public-school system, and we feel it is part of our public-school system. You know the Grange has always been against the domination by the State of all those institutions, whether secondary, teachers colleges, or whatever it is. But you know what has occurred lately, that there has been more or less control from Harrisburg of the teachers colleges, and the cost has gone up since that control has gone in.

Mr. KEARNS. And there is going to be more control, probably, as we go along.

Dr. DIMIT. You are probably right. Right now they cannot set the salaries of their faculties, they have to be set by the State. The purchasing has to be done by the State rather than individually. It was claimed at first that would be an economic measure, but instead of being an economy, it has really cost more.

Mr. KEARNS. And you would feel under normal times it would be better to dispense with them?

Dr. DIMIT. Dispense with the teachers colleges? Give them more local control, more control of their own affairs.

Mr. KEARNS. That cannot be done under the present set-up.

Dr. DIMIT. It cannot be done as the set-up is now.

Mr. KEARNS. Do you think it will ever change?

Dr. DIMIT. I am hoping the good people will see the light.

Mr. KEARNS. How many paid up members do you have in the Grange now, Doctor? How many in the State Grange?

Dr. DIMIT. About 73,000. Last year we had seventy thousand, six hundred and some. There has been an increase. I do not know the last statistics.

Mr. KEARNS. We have had the farmers in here before us and the American Farm Bureau. Why does the Grange differ so completely in the concept of Federal aid with those two groups? Can you explain

that?

Dr. DIMIT. Perhaps they are the most conservative group that we have, and it includes some of the most fundamental citizens we have. It is merely part of their principles. They are changing with time,

but they are not changing away from the idea of real democracy and local control.

Mr. KEARNS. Inasmuch as you have been in education for a number of years, I would like to ask you what are we going to do with Federal aid with respect to the land-grant colleges, and how are we going to wipe out the good reason and good effects we have on the SmithHughes Act with our educational training program? What I am trying to get at here, we have to dip into some concept of Federal aid, do we not, if we are going to maintain those bills, like the SmithHughes bills, and our agricultural acts, helping the vocational agricultural students, and so forth?

Dr. DIMIT. That is for the common good, and was set up to reimburse for funds that had been taken from the states by reason of land owned by the Federal Government in those States and taken from the State tax rolls. That is, in a way, a paying back of something that belongs to them. When we first started there wasn't the control that has been developed as we went along. What I am trying to say is there has been a progress toward control that was not there in the first instance.

Mr. KEARNS. You do not believe in that particularly?

Dr. DIMIT. I do not.

Mr. KEARNS. Doctor, you and I have been out through the rural districts a lot. Do you think the rural child today is getting a square deal in education?

Dr. DIMIT. I wonder what you mean by a square deal?

If it is the facilities and the money spent, no. If it is in the training and responsibility to assume their own responsibilities, I still think that in many cases our rural schools are giving training equal to and sometimes better than some of our best-rated schools.

Mr. KEARNS. Can you sell the children who go to rural schools on that idea?

Do they know the opportunity they have in the city schools as opposed to the rural schools?

Dr. DIMIT. Well, the children want to have the things that other people have.

Mr. KEARNS. A child is not any different in that?

Dr. DIMIT. That is right.

Mr. KEARNS. We have raided the rural schools of the best teachers they have and taken them into the city schools. Yet we want the rural youth of America to go to these one-room schools and remain satisfied and stay on the farm, and we preach to them the glories of the farm. But they read and listen to the radio. What do they have in comparison to the city schools?

Dr. DIMIT. And a great percentage of them will go off the farms. because if they all stayed on we would soon have such an overproduction we would have one of the biggest problems in the world.

Mr. KEARNS. Well, we are still worrying about an ample production rather than an overproduction, are we not?

Dr. DIMIT. In some places they are. Among the rural people sometimes it is the other way.

Mr. KEARNS. What did the Grange do about the school lunch proWere they in favor of it?

gram?

Dr. DIMIT. The National Grange is in favor of it.