affirmative side on the basis of its obvious requirements and the obvious need to do this regardless of whether we are doing 50 other things at the same time or not. Mr. CAVANAGH. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Could I ask the Senator from New Jersey, in connection with this-Let us take the space program. It is not quite as emotional as the war, nor has it been as controversial, but I think I saw somewhere in one of these notes that approximately $4 billion or $5 billion a year would do a great deal in a city like New York. Being our greatest city and attracting more attention than any other city, if New York were on the road to curing its problems and considered as orderly, as it ought to be, I wonder if that wouldn't be a much greater lift to the spirits of this whole Nation than the space program. Senator CASE. Well, you see what I am getting at, Mr. Chair man The CHAIRMAN. This is tangible. I mean it is something right here today. Senator CASE. I am not sure. The CHAIRMAN. I think it would. Senator CASE. The problems of New York City and the problems of urban American everywhere, Detroit, you have a place of a couple of hundred thousand people. The CHAIRMAN. Our cities are well conducted and it isn't a good example. I only pick New York because it is the largest city. It is really the center of attention of the whole Nation. MOVEMENT OF RURAL POOR TO CITIES Senator CASE. But these problems are national problems. One problem that New York has and Newark has is transplanted rural poor. We insisted on not taking care of our rural poor in Arkansas and in Mississippi and what not and shipping them up to New Jersey and New York where they would get adequate relief. Now, this is just one aspect of it and naturally it is simple for a State like Mississippi or other rural States in the South to ship their problems out and then raise their hands in dismay at the terrible conditions in Newark and New York. But this is just one of many things about it, and Detroit, too. In World War I they started to come to Detroit and a lot of them stayed and a lot of them got assimilated and a lot of them didn't and your city is very much like ours. EXPLOITATION OF CITY PROPERTY Then there is the incredible idea that a man who owns a piece of property has the right to exploit it to any extent, and he has the right to put it to its highest possible money use, and this is retrograde. This automatically makes every city once it has gotten built up to be retrogressive all the way because you can't have a one-family home in the city any more. The land is too valuable. Then when you lose one-family homes, pretty soon you lose two-family homes, and four, so all you will have is a lot of apartment dwellers and that is all there is in the city. And you will have nobody with a stake in the city except renters or merchandisers and people who come to work by the day. This is what has happened to destroy our cities in addition to the special problems of the concentration of the very poor. So we have to educate ourselves to deal with these problems, which is something that isn't going to happen automatically if we just stop doing some of the, I think, poor things we are doing, the very bad things in Vietnam, the other matters of doubtful validity, and the space program. I agree with you on both of those. But could I have a comment from the mayor. I know he doesn't want to be discourteous to the chairman, but I have a feeling you were leading him a little further than he wanted to go. Mr. CAVANAGH. I am not sure where I was. [Laughter.] The CHAIRMAN. Do you wish to comment before I call on the Senator from New York? Senator JAVITS. Who happens to be the best witness. Senator CASE. You missed some good testimony from the chairman. VIETNAM IS SINGLE, MOST DISRUPTIVE CAUSE OF DOMESTIC CRISES Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, I gather the tenor of the testimony attributes the deprivations of the cities to the Vietnam war, but I wonder whether you would agree with me, Mr. Cavanagh, that endemic in the crisis of motivation, of relationships among and between Americans as groups, minorities, black, white, poor, rich, et cetera, that the most disruptive single cause of these crises is Vietnam? Mr. CAVANAGH. Yes. I think all of the frustrations and the terrible feeling of disenchantment and impersonality and distrust of Government and everything has been focused on that issue. I would agree with the chairman that frequently it serves as the emotional background for a number of other things, but I think it has surfaced and highlighted the kind of conditions you have just described. This growing alienation that is so distressing to me, that between the young and the old, the black and the white, and the rich and the poor, and it is far graver, I think, in these cities than anyone realizes and even in the last couple of years as I mentioned in testimony earlier, I think the hostility has risen considerably and one of the reasons for it and one of the reasons why tragically this problem will bring even greater social chaos because of the feeling that nothing really has been done and we are continuing with this tragic misadventure in Vietnam. Senator JAVITS. Exactly right and what distresses me-and I think it was reflected yesterday in the statement which the chairman made about Cambodia-what distresses me is that while we now seem to be committed to disengage, we are going to disengage so slowly that it is almost by implication a commitment of 1 to 3 years of additional war, so that all you see in front of you is the same tragic road winding along with almost no real terminal point. Would you feel that way, Mr. Cavanagh? Mr. CAVANAGH. Yes, I do, Senator. DOMESTIC EFFECT OF TERMINATION OF VIETNAM WAR Senator JAVITS. Now, the other thing that affects me very deeply is this: What would you think would be the effect, let us lay money aside, and let us talk about money only as an element in the totality of the picture we have been discussing, what would you think would be the effect of a real termination, let us say within 6 months, a year, of the Vietnam war? The effect if we really do get out, and we are out of it, and that subject is closed. Sure, Indochina would continue having its troubles, et cetera, but at least our people would not be seeing casualty lists. The deep resentment of the young that they are the ones being drafted and being killed would be dissipated and our young people not directly involved in Indochina would no longer feel that the United States is perpetrating some deep moral wrong. This proposition does not address itself to the rightness or wrongness of the issue. It is the old legal adage. It isn't what the facts are, it is what the judge thinks they are that counts. Would you think then that that kind of terminal point would be a major change for the cities? Mr. CAVANAGH. Yes. Mr. Chairman and Senator, it has been said frequently, as we know, that the cardinal sin of mankind is despair, which means the lack of hope and certainly if the war were ended, let us say, in 6 months, it would provide, apart from money, it would provide fresh hope to just millions of people in this country that we are prepared or at least now we have an opportunity, we don't have an excuse, to meet these obligations and problems that we have here at home and it would provide a hope which is lacking and hopelessness is growing daily, contributing to this terrible malaise in which we find ourselves. IS DETERIORATION IN AMERICAN MORALE REPAIRABLE? Senator JAVITS. Now, we are a Foreign Relations Committee, not the Government Operations Committee or the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare or any others and while I feel that it was gifted on the part of our chairman and our staff to understand that the conditions in our cities are a factor in the Indochina war just like business is a factor, and so on, I don't think this is necessarily the forum for me, anyhow, to deal with the ills of my city or the ills of the great cities of my State. But I do think that what you have just said is extremely pertinent to the issue of understanding what seems to have happened to this country and I would like in that spirit to ask you one other thing. Do you feel from your own experience with the cities that this deterioration in the morale of America, in our faith in our own destiny is a deep endemic weakening of the national fiber or do you feel it is still repairable by a shift in direction, a change in our national priorities and ending the Vietnam war? Mr. CAVANAGH. Well, I believe we still can save certainly our society and create the kind of society which all of us desire if we do the sorts of things that we are talking about. But time is so quickly running out on us and this is the most disturbing thing to me-that if we continue along the same road we have been embarked on for too many years, that we will just be faced with the fact that we won't have time to repair the fabric of our society. I think today now we still can, but given a couple of more years of this same sort of a situation I just would not be that optimistic and don't think, as I said earlier, I am being overly dramatic or trying to be an alarmist about it. I am trying to perceive it as accurately at least as I can. Senator JAVITS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel exactly the same way and every additional day we live under these conditions counts, and counts tremendously, and possibly makes more certain that the time bomb ticking against us will blow up in our faces. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND DOMESTIC PROBLEMS The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Cavanagh, I think you have made an effective witness. The purpose of this hearing, as the Senator from New York has suggested, is to highlight the urgency of changing these priorities and especially changing the situation in Southeast Asia as being the key point. Of course that, as I have tried to make clear, is related to the other activities which I think are fostered by the war. They are not directly in the war, but grow out of it. It is the correction of a sentiment which results in votes and very practical actions taken because of the war that relate to these other areas. I think your testimony emphasizes the urgency of changing our policies in foreign relations and that is what I thought would be the case. This hearing wasn't held to try to analyze what should be done in New York City, but I do think it proves that nothing much is going to be done in New York City or Detroit or Los Angeles or any place else unless we change these other policies. Perhaps even more important than the amount of money is the attention and the concern, the work that is being done, the programs being developed in the agencies of government, both at the local level and at the national level. If we proceed in the same way for the next 2 years as we have the last 2 years, the hopelessness and, I suspect, the violence and other disorders will increase, which will tend then to create a much greater repression and a machinery of government simply to repress this violence without dealing with the causes. Down that road you run a great risk of even preserving our democratic system because the democratic systems are really not consistent with the continuation of warfare. Warfare and crises government are the enemy of the democratic society. As we see all around the world, most countries have lost their democratic system. They have all reverted primarily to military dictatorships. That is what has happened in country after country. So I think it is an extremely important matter and you are testifying on one of the great domestic problems which, I believe, is related to foreign policy. That is the reason for this hearing and I think you have made a great contribution. Mr. CAVANAGH. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. I thank you very much. Do you have anything further to say? Mr. CAVANAGH. No, but I certainly would commend you, Mr. Chairman, and members of your committee for holding these hearings to establish this very valid relationship that you have just spelled out 44-296-70-pt. 2- -7 between the problems at home and our foreign policy. I think it is long overdue, as a matter of fact, and I am delighted that you, Mr. Chairman, and members of your committee have chosen to do so. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. SCHEDULE OF HEARINGS These hearings will continue tomorrow morning at 10:30, when the committee will hear testimony from Mr. Charles Schultze, former Director of the Bureau of the Budget, concerning the impact of the war on various Federal programs. The committee is adjourned. (Whereupon, at 12 noon, the committee recessed to reconvene at 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, April 29, 1970.) (The following statement was subsequently submitted for the record.) STATEMENT BY WHITNEY M. YOUNG, JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, ON VIETNAM For some time now I have viewed this country's agony in Vietnam with a sense of deepening distress. Day after day, month after month, our involvement in this war on distant Asian soil has sharpened the divisions and frustrations among the people of this country as no other issue has in recent history. I am totally convinced that Vietnam is tragically diverting America's attention from its primary problem-the urban and racial crisis-at the very time that crisis is at flash point. I am totally convinced that Vietnam has increased tensions in the United States Armed Forces as a direct result of frustrations and bitterness growing out of this war. What started out as the best example of racial teamwork is rapidly eroding and is adding to the already severe tensions in the black community. I am totally convinced that this war has an extra dimension for black people that it does not have for many whites. We are suffering doubly. We are dying for something abroad that we do not have at home. At the same time we are victims of backlash among the white majoritya backlash greatly sharpened by the tensions of the war. By a strange twist of human folly the groups that are most at odds in our country today-whites and blacks from working class and poor families—are those whose young men are dying in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam. I am further convinced that the most effective way for America to win credibility as a democracy in the eyes of the world is through the immediate resolution of its domestic crisis rather than through expansion of its defense capability. The agony of Vietnam has twisted America's soul. It has intensified America's domestic crisis. It has created a disastrous drain on our national resources— economic, human and spiritual. Millions go to bed hungry in America every night. Our black ghettos are wastelands. The urgent needs of our rural black people remain shamefully neglected. Our young people-black and white-are in revolt. We must turn away from Vietnam, we must terminate this war immediately. We must pour our vital resources back into our own land, our own cities, our own people. For all these reasons I am supporting the October 15th Moratorium across the country. Millions of Americans, I am sure, also will support it as a dramatic, nonviolent expression of the national will. |