We plan to make available to your committee just the type of programs which we feel best to coordinate and supplement our existing community and State programs. We will spell out in our best professional manner just the character of assistance that will expect to be included in this legislation.

We feel as most of you feel, that the Federal Government under the Employment Act of 1946, as far back as in those immediate postwar years, considered the economic decadence that sets in communities reflecting substantial and chronic labor surpluses. We feel that now is the time for Federal action.

Pennsylvania has many successful local programs which are locating new and diversified industries, creating new job opportunities and establishing new area economic bases.

Under Governor Leader and Commerce Secretary Davlin, the Commonwealth has established the most successful Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority, of which I am proud to be a member, and have made other administrative moves to guarantee a proper climate to attract new industry.

Representatives of NPIDC will be back soon and they will present a positive approach to many of the things that you have included in these beneficial measures now before you.

Meanwhile, I would like to recommend the subcommittee study further the National Planning Association's report, Depressed Industrial Areas A National Problem, expertly developed by William H. Miernyk. I was a member of this special NPA committee and while not subscribing to every punctuation mark in the study, I feel that the committee, representing the whole country and every strata of human activity, did produce an objective report.

I would like to express our NPA committee's great satisfaction with the Senate staff cooperation that was afforded to us in the study of our report. I am sure that you would like to know that they went out of their way to assist us in every detail.

Thank you.

That is the statement of Mr. Diehm.

Senator DOUGLAS. I appreciate that very much.

Mr. BLIER. Mr. Chairman and committee members; My name is Bernard B. Blier, and I am appearing here today on behalf of the City Planning Commission of Scranton, Pa. As further identification, I have been associated with the city's industrial development plan, and I am affiliated with the community's urban renewal effort where we have three projects. I am secretary of the Northeast Pennsylvania Industrial Development Commission, of which Mr. Diehm, whose statement I previously read, is the president.

At the outset, I would like to express my appreciation to Senator Clark and the committee for this invitation to express my views, as a representative of Scranton, on legislation that could conceivably restore balanced and stable employment in Scranton and its general metropolitan area.

Your staff in its research, and you in your personal observations have heard about the challenge to Scranton that resulted from the gradual depletion of anthracite reserves in the northernmost part of the hard-coal producing area of Pennsylvania.

The Senate of these United States and Presidents Eisenhower and Truman have saluted the tremendous industrial rehabilitation campaign that accepted the economic challenge and came up with a mighty but partial answer to our economic stress. This famous Scranton plan of industrial development, launched and directed by the Scranton Chamber of Commerce, has created jobs by the thousands, and it is continuing to open more new job opportunities yearly, and it will continue-irrespective of Federal or State assistance-until there is a full balance of employment opportunities in our region.

We will hear further of the Scranton plan program during the progress of these hearings.

In the field of community development, a vital activity that must accompany any extensive and successful industrial development program, the city of Scranton is already deeply involved in three urban renewal projects.

Comprehensive community planning, evaluating conditions for the future and a definite approach to the best and most logical manner to handle these programs, are well underway in our city.

Plans to integrate local programs into the thinking of State and regional plans are now progressing on all fronts.

But despite some of these very imaginative plans for Scranton, substantial unemployment with all its negative and antisocial characteristics, will impede our progress and delay the benefits of a stabilized economy if the Federal Government does not support a realistic program of area redevelopment.

Nowhere in these United States will you find a better spirit to overcome so-called distress than in Scranton and neighboring hardcoal Pennsylvania communities. Yet this spirit can be dulled and even obliterated by the Federal Government's continued bypassing of the problem amid declarations of the "best national prosperity ever." Scranton supports the Douglas-Flood bill, S. 964, simply because it spells out assistance in several different ways-ways that almost any community or rural region can accommodate into their local plan for recovery.

This bill backs up the principle of Federal support for local industrial development through a reasonable loan program. It assists local governments through loans and grants to restore and plan new public facilities that will save many cities from an early death. It recognizes that low rural economic conditions spot many areas of the Nationmost particularly in the South, the West, and Far West.

It permits cities like Scranton, who are working out the urban renewal principle of self-help, to take advantage of certain liberalized provisions in the now existing Urban Renewal Administration program which would permit the development of new industrial sites. This noncontroversial feature would be of great assistance to coal communities badly in need of sites to locate willing new industry. Technical assistance, with a substantial appropriation as contained in this bill, will permit redevelopment areas to obtain essential assistance which cannot now be considered by present distressed areas.

The vocational training program suggested in the bill, the procurement informational feature, the several other aids-all are compounded to give chronic labor surplus area communities some positive assistance through a plan of local certification and administration. But the major theme of this nationally conceived and nationally expected legislation was the statesmanlike position expressed so effectively by Senator Clark in his testimony last week.

"It is a curative measure for some areas, an emergency standby measure for the rest of the country," so stated the Pennsylvania Senator.

While Scranton feels that the proposed area redevelopment program holds practical application to some of its problems today, the pioneering of this program now will offer to the rest of the Nation a sound and experienced vehicle to serve other hard-pressed areas in another day.

The Congress of the Nation has postponed for too long the sound development of the integration of Federal-State-local cooperative programs to demonstrate true American capabilities during periods and in regions of economic stress.

In Scranton, the chamber of commerce leadership has shown the industrial development way; Mayor James T. Hanfon and his associates have challenged the municipal invader on the urban renewal and comprehensive plan front; Governor Leader and his administration have coordinated and support both industrial and urban development through sponsorship and nonpartisan backing of sound programs in the general assembly.

Now it is up to the National Congress to exhibit true leadership through enactment of the Douglas-Flood program, and for President Eisenhower, upon its passage, to quickly and effectively administer this proposed area redevelopment program.

As Winston Churchill said at the dark introduction to the active phase of World War II, give us the tools and the people will persevere

to success.

All the areas in America honestly but begrudgingly showing substantial labor surpluses and well-bemedaled veterans of local campaigning to help themselves respectfully appeal to the Congress for the economic tools absolutely needed to defeat economic deterioration whether it shall be on an Indian reservation or in burnt-out lumbering sections of the Northwest or in the low-income rural areas of a Mississippi or in the disappearing soft and hard coal fields of the Nation.

Scranton earnestly petitions your intensive and expeditious support

of S. 964.

Thank you.

Senator DOUGLAS. Thank you, Mr. Blier, very much. I may say that this testimony is particularly pleasing to me, because when I first became interested in the bill some 4 years ago and began making preliminary plans for drafting it, I found that many localities in the country felt that the problem should be solved only by local agencies and that the Federal Government should keep its hands off.

Your community is one which has probably done as much, if not more, than any other community in the country to deal affirmatively with its own problems, and yet, as you have said, this is something that needs cooperative effort not merely of the local government but also of the State and National Governments as well. Since this is my own philosophy, that these agencies of government are not rivals but are partners, naturally your coming here in this mood and with this concrete testimony is extremely pleasing.

Mr. BLIER. We can quote a very practical application of the principle on a local-State basis under the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority program. So we feel that the Federal Government should join and give the benefit of their vast experience and resources to this local-State-Federal cooperative program.

Senator CLARK. Mr. Blier, I would like to thank you for the kind. words you were good enough to say about me, and I know-at least I think I know; I wonder if you would agree that there are pretty close to Scranton a couple of rural counties which might be substantially helped by the provisions of this bill. I am thinking about up

along the northern tier rural areas and over in Wyoming County where it is my understanding this bill might be of substantial assist

ance.

I wonder if you agree with that?

Mr. BLIER. I do. I believe that was pointed out by Governor Leader in his testimony, that many of the northern tier rural areas of Pennsylvania would qualify under this program.

Senator CLARK. And a number of the mountain counties, like Sullivan.

Mr. BLIER. There is considerable margin farming in northern Pennsylvania.

Senator DOUGLAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Blier.

Mr. BLIER. Thank you.

(The following was received for the record:)

Hon. PAUL H. DOUGLAS,

Senate Banking and Currency Committee,

Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C.:

SCRANTON PA., May 31, 1957.

As the current congressional session is moving along with increasing momentum, labor surplus areas throughout the Nation together with an increasing number of rural districts who need immediate economic balance are appealing to you for forthright leadership in passing some sound program that will assist communities and areas to provide the necessary support for industrial and urban development, technical assistance, and loans and grants for public works.

It is most distressing to find that both political parties in their 1956 platforms pledged the above program, but due to lack of dynamic leadership as displayed thus far, the White House, the Department of Commerce, and the Congress at large, have frankly forgotten the tens of thousands of idle people and their families when they continue to stall on this vital program.

There should be some definite expression of leadership at the White House level, from Secretary of Commerce Weeks, and from the majority and minority leaders in both Houses on just how and when some of our best metropolitan and rural areas can expect some sympathetic action.

BERNARD B. BLIER.

Secretary, Northeast Pennsylvania Industrial Development Committee, Senator DOUGLAS. Our next witness is Mr. Harry Block, secretarytreasurer of the Pennsylvania State industrial union council, AFLCIO.

Mr. Block, very glad to have you with us.

STATEMENT OF HARRY BLOCK, SECRETARY-TREASURER, PENNSYLVANIA STATE INDUSTRIAL UNION COUNCIL, AFL-CIO

Mr. BLOCK. Senator Douglas, my name is Harry Block, secretarytreasurer, Pennsylvania CIO council.

On behalf of the Pennsylvania CIO council, representing more than 650,000 members of affiliated unions in all parts of our State, including those in the 11 areas afflicted by the lack of job opportunities and continued unemployment, we welcome the opportunity to present our views in support of S. 964.

We were privileged to present statements in February 1956 in support of somewhat similar legislation at hearings in two of the worst afflicted centers, Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre, where the hearings were conducted by Senator Neely. It is significant that since then, only slight improvement has been reported in the areas of substantial labor surplus.

We know that the need for this area redevelopment legislation is just as great now as at any time in the last 6 years. We are convinced that Federal assistance as provided in S. 964 must be given if these problems are to be solved. In all of the distressed areas, valiant efforts have been made by their own residents to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Our local union members and officers and those of unions otherwise affiliated have participated in such local community organizations to bring in new industries and our members have made significant financial contributions to such programs.

On the State level, Governor Leader's program to provide industrial expansion and job opportunities, supported to a degree by legislative appropriations, has already shown benefits. We feel, however, that if the job is to be done properly, the Federal Government must stimulate and encourage such local and State rehabilitation efforts if the blessings of continued prosperity are to be enjoyed in all areas of our State.

Knowing that your committee will be provided with adequate and authentic statistics and data from governmental and other sources and to save time and reduce the record, we would like to confine our statement to a few phases of this problem we consider most significant. We feel that the millions of dollars required to provide buildings, machinery, and equipment under this program may be jeopardized unless steps are taken quickly to preserve the most valuable asset, the skills of thousands of workers who are unable to get jobs in their home communities. Some have already moved away to other areas and many of them to other States. They have taken their families with them, leaving behind additional problems for local and State tax authorities. Some have been able to commute to new jobs but increasingly distressed areas face the consequences of these skilled workers, decent citizens pulling up stakes for good. The consequences of this migration are serious from a social and community viewpoint. And I would like to state that in industrial plants you have onethird unskilled workers, one-third semiskilled workers, and one-third skilled workers; and if the skilled workers leave entirely, they cannot get jobs then in that area for semiskilled or unskilled workers, and the vocational training program would only assist in making semiskilled workers because you would need apprenticeship programs for the skilled workers.

Senator CLARK. Mr. Block, let me interrupt you for a moment.

Are you familiar with another social problem which has given me some concern in Pennsylvania, which is that frequently in these areas of surplus labor and unemployment the men can't get any kind of a job and the women go to work?

Mr. BLOCK. In the mining areas it is common to see especially at the end of a day or on payday-the men come to the shirt factories, pajama factories, and dress factories with the kids on their arms to pick up their wives who are working in those plants because the mines are down for good.

Senator CLARK. Does your organization have any position on that, as to whether it is desirable or not?

Mr. BLOCK. It certainly is not socially desirable and will create problems later on as far as the child-care centers are concerned and matters of that nature.