It should not be felt that we, as a nation, are the only nation that has the problem. The problem of antisocial conduct by young people is worldwide.

Mr. QUIE. Is it more serious here than it is in some of the other countries with industrial cities?

Secretary RIBICOFF. I would say that what is happening in the big cities of America is more serious, as a whole, than what is happening in foreign cities. I think that no foreign cities have quite the migrant problem that is presently confronting our own metropolitan areas. Nor do I think there is such severance of ties, and pulling up of roots.

With 5 million people moving across State lines every year in the United States, we have developed a mobile population. In big cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles, there is a large transient population. They move from house to house or rooming place to rooming place, wherever they can lay their heads. And there is a rootlessness, and an instability, that I do not think we can find any other place in the world today to the extent that we find it in some of the big cities in America.

Mr. QUIE. Have there been any studies made by the Department with regard to the contention that so many people make, that some racial groups have better control over their children than others? I always hear that the oriental, even after he is transplanted into this country, is more successful in the prevention of juvenile delinquency. Secretary RIBICOFF. I do not have them, but I believe there are studies.

I would say that there are certain people to whom family means more. I would say that in a family that has religious training, where there is a respect for the tenets of religious teaching, respect for parents, respect for neighbors, respect for school, respect for one another-in such a family you certainly would have less juvenile delinquency.

One of the greatest antidotes to delinquency is close family ties. Where there is love and understanding and respect and pride you do not usually have juvenile delinquency.

Mr. GIAIMO. Will the gentleman yield there for a moment?
Mr. QUIE. Yes.

Mr. GIAIMO. That is all good if the adults are not delinquents themselves. Is that not one of the problems?

Secretary RIBICOFF. That is right. This is one of the problems you

have.

For instance, look at what is happening in many migrant groups. A family in which the father has authority, moves from the South or from Puerto Rico or from some other section into a big city where the father does not get a job and the mother does. Suddenly the mother becomes the dominant factor in the community instead of the father. The ties of the father are weakened. The mother brings home the pay envelope. The children look to her, and the father finds himself no longer very important. The result is destruction of a family pattern that has existed for generations. This is one of the factors that have had a large impact.

I have always felt that one source of the problems we have in this country is too much leaving everything to mama. Once upon a time

a father used to assume the responsibility for the upbringing and care of his children. Today, too many fathers neglect and are derelict in their duties to their children. They expect the mother to do the whole job.

I have always felt that stern, fatherly control over the children would have a greater impact and a salutary effect. But the neglect of fathers deprives their children of this firm guidance.

Mother and fathers, who both work and leave their children adrift, help to break down close family ties.

The failure of families to find the importance of living together as a family, to share their enjoyment and their off hours as a family has had an enormous impact.

I say to you, sir, that if all mothers and fathers would assume their duties as parents to their children, you would not eliminate, but you would certainly reduce this problem of juvenile delinquency greatly. But there are millions upon millions of parents who do not shoulder their responsibilities. Consequently you have the task of trying to retrain parents, or trying to bring up children so that when they are married, they will exercise their parental authority properly. The problem persists because you cannot make everybody perfect.

Given this situation, how would you handle rootless millions in this country who develop antisocial feelings, who are unable to work and who turn to negative outlets instead of positive ones?

I would say to you: There are no easy answers to this. If you say to me, "If we give you this, will you promise to lick juvenile delinquency? I will answer that I will promise you nothing of the kind. The only justification for this program is that it is a problem that we ought to try to solve, and I think the matter is important enough to try. Even if the $10 million is wasted, we at least need to find out if there is anything that we can do. You cannot continue to have millions and millions of youngsters doing what they are in America today and expect to have a healthy society.

Mr. QUIE. Coming to what the Federal Government, or even State governments, can do there are a number of causes of juvenile delinquency that we have not touched upon. One of them is mental retardation. We have done some work in that field, and we have some legislation before this committee, one bill I introduced myself. But that is really getting out of the hands of the parents when you have mental retardation and there is no parent or family that does not need help on this from some governmental unit. Would that not be true?

Secretary RIBICOFF. I would say there are certain phases that are completely beyond parental control such as a case of mental retardation, or a psychopathic personality. This is a burden that society is going to have to handle.

Mr. QUIE. Do you not think there is another problem in this country, where it has been the policy that young people should not work unless they are at least of a certain age, or at least out of high school? And some people think it would be preferable not to work until they are 20 or 21, or at least past 18. Do you not think this has caused a rootlessness and lack of responsibility among the young people? This has gone on since the thirties and some of the childlabor laws in some States really prevent a person from working as he should.

Secretary RIBICOFF. What you are talking about is right down my alley, sir. I agree with you completely. We have too many laws that do too much coddling of children. There are many tasks that the youngsters could do. I would say there is nothing so valuable as useful, gainful employment by youngsters as long as they are protected from hazardous employment or employment that would tend to interfere with their morals.

In many places throughout this country we have been too strict in the laws that we have passed concerning work by young people. There is nothing that will lift up a youngster's self-respect and give him a sense of responsibility so much as doing worthwhile tasks.

I would say that the most enjoyable parts of my growing up were the jobs that I did when I was a boy. And outside of peddling newspapers, there is not a task that I did as a youngster that any boy could do in the United States today because there are laws against them. They did not hurt me and I do not think they will hurt many youngsters. Certainly it is better for a youngster to be a delivery boy for a drugstore than to be hanging around a corner drugstore.

I have said many, many times that this is a responsibility of management and labor. And I think that we ought to take a look at it. However, these are not Federal standards; these are statewide standards, created by State laws saying when you can and cannot work.

It would certainly be worthwhile to take a good look at our restrictions on youth employment. There are many jobs from which youngsters are restricted that would not hurt them at all to do, and society would be the gainer.

Mr. QUIE. We could set an example in the District of Columbia, where the Federal Government does have jurisdiction. It might not be a bad project for this committee and for your Department to look into these laws and try to get some remedies.

Secretary RIBICOFF. Whether under this committee's auspices or under the Children's Bureau, I feel strongly enough about this that I would not mind authorizing a study to see the impact and the effect of restrictive work laws on youngsters who are able to work, so long as they are protected from hazardous employment.

Mr. QUIE. I am glad to hear you say that, because I worked since before I can remember. I can see the problem now of young people like my own children of finding work for them. There are just not enough paper routes for all the youngsters that are growing up. I think this is one of the reasons that parents are moving out to the suburbs.

Secretary RIBICOFF. I think that if you would ask the circulation manager of any newspaper, he would disagree with you. His toughest job is to find boys. I have talked to many newspaper publishers about it. I peddled newspapers in New Britain, Conn., and every time my hometown paper mentions me, it refers to my having been a newspaper boy who delivered the New Britain Herald. The publisher tells me that when they put that in, a few more boys come in and apply for a newspaper route.

There seems to be a psychology against work, so that in many places throughout this country publishers have experienced difficulty in finding boys to distribute newspapers.

72848-61-3

So I would reply that if your boy would like a newspaper job, I bet the Post or Star or the News would be glad to give him one.

Mr. QUIE. As soon as they are old enough, they are going to get the opportunity.

That is all.

Mrs. GREEN. Congressman Ashbrook, do you have any questions? Mr. ASHBROOK. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, I gathered from your testimony, which was very well to the point, very concise, very informative, that there are probably two major purposes of this bill, the first of which, in your earlier statement, was to coordinate the work and the ideas and the efforts that are being made in various parts of the country and, secondly, but not exclusively, to properly conduct pilot projects in this country, to incorporate some of these ideas and possibly experiment on others that you and members of your Department might have.

As to the first, I notice in your testimony, on page 2, that you say you want to

make it possible for the whole Nation to benefit from the fresh thinking and creative actions of communities that have acted.

It is your contention now that this is something that is not coordinated. As a member of the committee, I would think it would be interesting to know if there are any efforts among the groups you cite to coordinate this. Or is there so much in it, that it is so overwhelmingly important, that you feel some agency of the Federal Government should do this?

Secretary RIBICOFF. First, not only has it not been coordinated, it has not even been reported and evaluated. The only way knowledge of these projects is disseminated is through one group hearing about another group's activities and then making a visit to observe what is being done.

There has never been a concerted attempt to evaluate or coordinate these projects and try them out simultaneously. Much is done on a voluntary basis. Public spirited people contribute money because they are interested. But they can only finance one project at a time. Suppose we were to take what is going to be done in San Francisco by the Friends and what is being done in Chicago by the YMCA, what is being done in Detroit and what is being done by Higher Horizons.

I am just curious. Suppose we tried all these good programs out together in New York City or Chicago or Detroit. What would happen if you brought together for the first time the four or five things that are working? I am not speaking merely of ideas that are floating around in the air, but of plans that have shown results.

I am curious. What would happen if we tried them all out? No one community can afford to do this on its own.

Furthermore, there are a lot of other good ideas we should be willing to look into. Let's give them all a try. I think you put your finger on the core of this program. It is to coordinate, demonstrate, and evaluate.

The other phase in which there is a desperate need is in the training of people. We can try to encourage four or five universities scattered regionally around the country to give scholarships and professorships to induce pepole to work in this field.

When I was out in Detroit talking to the last national meeting of the Boy Scouts, I had informal discussions with many of the Boy Scout leaders. Of course, they are doing a good job. The Boy Scouts recognize the need to go into the slum areas, to bring the pride of scouting into the slum areas, instead of just dealing with the boy in the middle class areas. They appreciate the need to take some of these children, for the first time into camps out in the country. Many of these boys have never gone to a Boy Scout camp or even gone swimming, never been in the fresh air or seen trees out in the country. But such organizations find that there is a great lack of personnel to carry on their programs. To be sure, a lot of it is done by volunteers. Fathers and mothers who are Boy Scout leaders, den mothers, or den fathers do it as voluntary work.

But where do you get the leaders to go into a slum in New York to organize a Boy Scout movement. There is complete indifference among these parents. As a result you are going to need more volunteers and more trained personnel.

I have already said to this committee, that it is not my intent that this all be done by Government. If this bill goes through, I am going to sit down with the voluntary agencies, the Big Brother movement, the Boy Scouts, the Boys Clubs, the YMCA, the Catholic Youth Organization. There is a big job for them to do. This is not just a job for social workers. I do not think you can solve all the problems through social workers. I think a lot of commonsense, a lot of modern fathers and mothers, are needed.

This is an opportunity to ask people to give of themselves in every community in the United States. It is an opportunity to rally a lot of people and give them a task to do, give them a piece, a share of it. It is not a job that should be done just by the Government.

Mr. ASHBROOK. Then you have answered one of my questions-to whom the payments would go, or the funds would go, for nonpublic agencies. It would be people who may be working within these gangs or juvenile delinquents or in nonpublic agencies.

Secretary RIBICOFF. The nonpublic recipients would be mostly involved in training. Those in nonpublic agencies with whom I have talked do not want any public grants. They are very strongly against it and I respect their point of view. I know these men. Frankly, they do not want public money, and I would not encourage them to take it. It is my feeling that there is no greater task for many of the foundations in America who are looking for worthwhile programs. They have been in the health field, and in education. I would like to see many of these foundations, many of our industries, many of our charitably inclined people, contribute large sums to the Big Brothers, to the Boy Scouts, to the Boys Clubs, to the YMCA's, to the Catholic Youth Organization, and the YMHA's.

I know of no better place for private contribution of funds than to these agencies which are doing such a fine job. These agencies have limited financial resources and to the fullest extent possible, I want to encourage help to voluntary agencies.

However, voluntary agencies have difficulty in training people. Now it is my intent that when we train people and give them scholarships to go into this work, there will be no restrictions. These people can go to work for a voluntary agency as well as for a city, or State, or Federal agency. This is my thought, sir.