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3,000 counties have no public health nurse to help mothers with the problems of infant and child care.

II. So thinly are the United States medical care facilities spread, so many are the children who receive little or no medical attention at the early, curable stages of their illnesses that-175,000 children have tuberculosis; 500,000 children have rheumatic fever; 200,000 children have epilepsy; 1,000,000 children are partially deaf; 20,000 children need dental care.

III. Although 60 percent of children under 15 years of age live in places of less than 10,000 pooulation, only 4 percent of our pediatricians practice in those localities.

IV. Present facilities for crippled children are sadly inadequate. More than 20,000 crippled children are on State waiting lists and can get no help because services and funds are lacking.

V. Welfare services for dependent, neglected, delinquent children and children who are emotionally disturbed are so inadequate that 250,000 children come before juvenile courts each year; the United States has a total of 1,750 child welfare workers but needs 13,000.

The Congress of American Women supports the Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945 as a step in the right direction. We agree with the National Commission on Children in Wartime that "The health of children, no less than their education, is a public responsibility."

We disagree with those authorities who feel that expansion of services for mothers and children must wait for a total medical care plan designed to lift the level of health and medical care of all the people.

Nor do we hold with those groups that advocate delaying consideration of S.1318 until the Congress has acted upon the President's proposals for reorganizing the Executive branch of the Government.

In view of the fact that the reorganization plan is presently blocked in the House Expenditures Committee, we are forced to view such "reorganization" arguments as delaying tactics designed to forestall any additional maternal and child welfare benefits.

An entire Federal department devoted to improving the welfare of all the people would truly be a good and desirable thing, and our organization hereby goes on record in support of such a move.

However, we fail to see why such a reorganization should affect the immediate enactment of this bill. Surely, at such time in the future. as the Congress acts upon Mr. Truman's reorganization proposals, it can in its wisdom decide which agency most properly should administer the legislation under discussion.

Children do not wait to grow until the Nation decides what kind of a national health program it will have or for the reorganization of federal departments.

The statistics cited above show that State and local governments and private sources are unable to cope with the health and welfare needs of our mothers and children. They point starkly to the penalty certain children pay because they happen to be born in the country rather than in the city or in a State of low economic development or of Negro or other minority group parents.

American women represented in the Congress of American Women object to a situation where accident of birth creates second-class children. One sound way to attack this situation, as does the proposed

bill, is to expand the well-established principle that the Federal Government should use funds secured by taxation of all the people to assist the States in their public services and to remove inequities that exist within the various States.

The State Department and Secretary Byrnes have a great deal to say nowadays about the reputation the United States enjoys among the private citizens of other countries.

As an affiliate to an international body of private citizens, the Congress of American Women suggests that one way for the United States to create respect for itself and its system of democratic government is to put its own house in order. Enactment of S. 1318 would be a step toward this end.

When the Women's International Democratic Federation next convenes in plenary session, we trust that its United States affiliate, the Congress of American Women, can say to the women of the world:

Those deplorable conditions recited to you in Paris in November 1945, no longer exist in the United States. Our Government, by passing tthe Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945, has assumed responsibility for the health and welfare of its mothers and children.

A start has been made to convert into actual fact the international assumption that the United States of America provides for its mothers and children, whoever they happen to be and wherever they happen to live.

While endorsing and supporting S. 1318 as a whole, our organization wishes especially to commend its authors and sponsors for three specific features.

1. Child care for children of working mothers: Section 305 of Title III defines "Child welfare services" to include

care in foster-family homes or day-care centers of children whose mothers are employed or whose home conditions require care outside their own homes during any part of the twenty-four hour day

That is an important and essential provision because it officially recognizes the peacetime responsibility of the Federal Government in the care of the children of the mother who works.

American women have always been gainfully employed, the great majority because they needed the income. In 1944, some 7.5 million women were heads of families.

Of every 100 women employed in war production centers who planned to continue working (according to statistics gathered by the Women's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor) 84 worked to support themselves and, in many cases, others; 8 had some special economic reason for working; and only 8 worked because they liked to work and feel independent. This proves that 92 percent of American working women must have jobs at decent pay.

No accurate statistics are available on the number of working mothers with young children. But experience with wartime Lanham Act-supported child-care centers demonstrated incontrovertibly the need for a comprehensive national program of day care.

Dissolution of wartime centers has wrought great suffering and hardship on working mothers and their families. Local communities and State governments have not been able to pick up, or simply have not picked up, child-care facilities where Lanham Act funds were withdrawn.

Only the States of New York, California, and Washington have State-wide programs. As a result, we are witnessing a return today

to the much-discussed "latchkey children" problem of the early days of the war, potential delinquents, little tykes with door keys strung around their necks because their mothers are out working to keep them in food and clothing.

War widows and other mothers, self-respecting and able to work are being forced to stay at home, to accept the ignominy of public assistance or private charity and to maintain their children at inadequate relief levels because facilities are not available for their care. Alone of our allies in the Big Three are we evading our responsibility for the children of working mothers. Great Britain undertook an extensive program for care of children of working mothers during the war in spite of the fact that mothers of children under 14 were exempt from compulsory work provisions.

Except for a nominal fee for food, the British Government bore the full cost of this program. Great Britain is continuing its childcare program into peace. And even before the war the Soviet Union provided more than 8,000,000 "cots" for the children of its working mothers. The Soviet Union's child-care program expanded during the war; it is expanding even more now.

II. Positive approach to discrimination: The Congress of American Women applauds this bill for its positive approach to the problems of racial and other forms of discrimination in that it includes in its basic working requirements that State plans make services and facilities

available to all mothers and children

* who elect to participate

and that there will be no discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and no residence requirements.

It is idle mockery to think we can wipe out racial and other forms of discrimination by ignoring the fact that such discrimination exists. We must, as does this bill, admit the ugly fact, then step forth aggressively to correct it.

The entire history of child-welfare and health work shows that Negro and other minority-group children are in the greatest need of such assistance as S. 1318 offers.

As a group at the bottom of the economic barrel, denied decent. job opportunities, living in overcrowded city tenements or on lowincome farms, Negro and other discriminated-against minorities cannot provide for their children the advantages received by other children.

The results are a higher incidence of disease and ill-health, greater need for foster- and day-care because a higher proportion of minoritygroup mothers work outside their homes, greater emotional insecurity, a higher infant mortality and maternal death rate, and so forth. But ironically, where the need is greatest the help available has been the least.

The time is past when we can divide our population into the privileged and the unprivileged. Our Negro and other minority-group people have made substantial contributions to American life. They left their blood on the battlefields of Okinawa and St. Lo. They labored gallantly in the nation's war factories. They have earned their right to the same care and protection as the rest of the United States population.

While S. 1318 cannot, and does not, correct the basic economic conditions which favor the children of settled, native-born and Caucasian families, it makes sure that the young products of such basic economic maladjustments are given some measure of security and health care.

III. Absence of a means test: The Congress of American Women especially wants to call this committee's favorable attention to the absence of a means test in S. 1318. The principle that good health, medical care and welfare services when needed are as much the inalienable right of every American child as is public education is a sound one. The bill is correct in establishing this principle as part of the law of the land.

Conditioning the bill's benefits on financial need would divide our children according to the financial status of their parents, setting up un-American class barriers between well-to-do and less fortunate families.

According to Dr. William C. Menninger, formerly chief psychiatrist of the War Department's Psychiatric Division, the major factor behind the personality difficulties that caused 43 percent of the Army's medical discharges and 39 percent of its induction center rejections was relief psychology developed by depression children.

The Congress of American Women feels that we have had enough "poor man's medicine." No longer can we permit self-respecting but poor families to allow their children to suffer from ill-health and curable physical defects because they are "too proud" to ask for help. No longer can we deny any American child full opportunity for physical, mental, and emotional growth and well-being.

For all the reasons cited above, the Congress of American Women urges the speedy enactment of S. 1318.

Senator DONNELL. Mrs. Vaughan, you spoke of your organization, the Congress of American Women. I understood you to say it was a young organization?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. Yes.

Senator DONNELL. When was it formed?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. On International Women's Day last, last March 8. We had our first working conference on May 25.

Senator DONNELL. March 8, 1946, it was formed?
Mrs. VAUGHAN. Yes, sir.

Senator DONNELL. And approximately how many members does the organization have?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. I cannot tell you exactly what the membership is. It has not been broken down yet.

Senator DONNELL. Could you give us approximately the number? Mrs. VAUGHAN. There are several thousand direct members, plus affiliated organizations representing nearly half a million men and

women.

Senator DONNELL. Is the active organization quite widely scattered over the United States or is it concentrated?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. At the moment most of the membership, or a good proportion of the membership, is in New York City, but chapters are also in the process of formation, and in some cases have been formed in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, and a number of other cities. Senator DONNELL. The greater numbers are in New York City? Mrs. VAUGHAN. Yes, sir. The organization was born in New York City.

Senator DONNELL. Mrs. Vaughn, have you studied the subject of care for mothers and children? I mean to say, have you done so in school?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. You mean am I a professional child care worker? Senator DONNELL. No. Have you studied it in your school work? Where have you studied it?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. I studied child psychology at Barnard and George Washington University, but that was a long time ago. I have since then worked in the field of child care in a non-professional capacity with parents' organizations, and so forth.

Senator DONNELL. Have you been employed by the Federal Government at any time?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. Yes, I have. I was employed by the Farm Security Administration and the War Relocation Authority.

Senator DONNELL. When did you complete your course at Barnard? Mrs. VAUGHAN. Oh, dear me. I don't remember the exact date. Senator DONNELL. I do not want the exact date.

Mrs. VAUGHAN. The class of 1935.

Senator DONNELL. And you came to George Washington University after that?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. That is right.

Senator DONNELL. When did you finish there?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. About 1939. I took evening courses there.

Senator DONNELL. Did you start upon your public employment after that, or had you already been employed by some governmental authority before you finished?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. I think in 1936 was when I first went to the Farm Security Administration.

Senator DONNELL. And for how long a time were you with the Farm Security Administration?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. These figures may not be accurate. About 5 years. Senator DONNELL. That would be around 1941.

Mrs. VAUGHAN. Yes.

Senator DONNELL. And after 1941 what work did you undertake? Mrs. VAUGHAN. Then I was with the War Relocation Authority for about a year. Those dates I am not absolutely sure of.

Senator DONNELL. That would be somewhere around 1942, approximately?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. Yes.

Senator DONNELL. Then what did you do?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. I was a housewife for a while and I worked for the CIO-Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Senator DONNELL. How long were you with the CIO?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. For only a few months.

Senator DONNELL. While you were with the CIO, what type of

work did you do?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. Organizing work.

Senator DONNELL. Organizing chapters of the CIO?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. That is right.

Senator DONNELL. And you were with them for a few months?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. That is right, and then I went to New York.
Senator DONNELL. When did you go to New York?

Mrs. VAUGHAN. February, 2 years ago.

Senator DONNELL. February 1944?

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