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EDUCATION AND OTHER READJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE

FOR POST-KOREAN VETERANS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1959

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON VETERANS AFFAIRS

OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10: 15 a.m., in room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Ralph W. Yarborough, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senators Yarborough (presiding) and Prouty.

Committee staff members present: Frederick R. Blackwell, counsel of the subcommittee, Ray Hurley, minority staff member.

Senator YARBOROUGH. The subcommittee will come to order. The Subcommittee on Veterans' Affairs now resumes hearings on S. 1138, to provide educational and other readjustment assistance benefits for post-Korean veterans; S. 270 and S. 930, to provide educational benefits for post-Korean veterans; and S. 1050, to provide educational assistance for orphans of post-Korean veterans.

We will have with us later this morning several of our colleagues from the House side. Because of their deep interest in the general questions before this subcommittee, I am sure their testimony will be most illuminating and helpful to the committee.

But before they arrive we will hear from Mr. Reuben Johnson, Coordinator, Division of Legislative Services, National Farmers Union.

STATEMENT OF REUBEN JOHNSON, COORDINATOR, DIVISION OF LEGISLATIVE SERVICES, NATIONAL FARMERS UNION

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, we are interested in the hearings of the subcommittee on S. 1138 and related bills to extend certain provisions of the GI bill. Delegates to the recent convention on National Farmers Union again expressed support for the continuation of a program along the lines of the highly successful GI bill. We support the extension of educational benefits to veterans as long as the draft continues. We believe, also, that the Congress should continue the other benefits which S. 1138 provides.

The GI bill, including the Korean extension, has enabled approximately 9.5 million servicemen and women to get special training to better equip them to earn a livelihood and to catch up the years lost by military service.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Pardon me just a moment. Does that figure include veterans of World War II and the Korean conflict?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, sir, it does. That is the best figure I can put together out of the estimates I have seen. It is a sizable number and percentage of people in the total population of the United States.

When President Roosevelt signed the original GI bill on June 22, 1944, the opponents of educational provisions viewed this experiment with alarm. But as the program developed, the experts began to see it in a new light. Veterans flocked not only to college campuses, but to technical and trade schools, to business training institutions, to onfarm training classes in the public schools operated in cooperation with existing departments of vocational agriculture and to jobs where, as apprentices, they could afford to learn new skills. The full impact of the GI bill can probably never be fully assessed. Public acceptance and approval still apparent today, however, is evidence that it was far more successful than its most ardent supporters had dreamed possible. College enrollments doubled and tripled. At the peak of college enrollments in 1947, almost 80 percent of all male students were obtaining degrees-thanks to the GI bill. Among them were many from the farm areas of the Nation who would never have had the opportunity to attend college except for the assistance it provided.

The cost of this program, while viewed by some as large at its beginning, has actually been a sound investment when consideration is given to the opportunity provided for 9.5 million soldier-citizens to make a solid contribution to the productivity and wealth of the United States. Federal taxes paid by these soldier-citizens on incomes resulting from increased earning power made possible by the GI bill training will repay the Government for the program.

Under the GI bill more than a million veterans have studied agriculture in the on-farm program. National Farmers Union maintains a deep and sincere interest in the continuation of this program for our young men who have served and continue to serve in military service of one kind or another. It is becoming increasingly difficult for young families to become established in the business of farming. The kind of training and assistance given them in the on-farm training program will mean the difference between success and failure for many young people who want to farm.

In way of summary, Mr. Chairman, we see the following benefits in the approval of S. 1138 by the Congress:

(1) Inequity of educational opportunity for veterans will be corrected.

(2) Educational opportunities will result in additional scientists. engineers, and technicians, thereby greatly increasing the number of qualified persons for jobs where current demand of industry has created need for further emphasis on scientific and technical training and education.

(3) Opportunities for individuals to make their own choices of Vocation assuring education and training on balance with the total needs of our society.

(4) The economy of the Nation will be strengthened.

In this connection, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to add further that the strengthening of the economy through education is permanent strengthening of the economy.

(5) Skills and abilities which otherwise may be lost or not used will be developed at every level of education.

(6) Production increases can be expected through increased enrollment in programs of vocational education.

(7) Voluntary enlistments for military service will increase with greater purpose and planning on the part of volunteers.

(8) Cost of veterans' educational benefits can be expected to be repaid by the recipients of such assistance through additional Federal income taxes paid on additional earnings.

(9) Labor markets will be relieved of nontrained and semitrained applicants.

We believe that the support given similar legislation last year in hearings and the support that you have received in this series of hearings fully warrants favorable action on S. 1138. We urge you to act promptly to see that veterans' benefits are provided under the GI bill as long as the draft continues.

We hope that the subcommittee will act promptly to report the bill to the full committee, and that you will have prompt, favorable action by the full committee, Mr. Chairman.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Johnson, I want to thank you for that statement. I also want to thank you for the work that you have shown in the organization of it and your point by point enumeration of benefits under the bill. That enumeration, of course, answered some objections that were made in some quarters about costs. I was glad to see you consider those various economics aspects.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, the word "readjustment," it seems to me, in the title of this act, ought to be changed to "equity"—"The Veterans' Equity and Assistance Act." When a young man spends 2 years in the military service at the age at which young people today are called upon to do so, it seems fair that there be some provision made to help him make up for the time lost. One of the ways in which our Government can show its concern and interest in young people today in military service is to provide this kind of a program. And it is a program which everyone in the country can probably benefit from, and not only the people who are the direct beneficiaries of the assistance.

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Johnson, as Coordinator of the Division of Legislative Services for the National Farmers Union, I do not know whether it has come to your attention that in previous testimony we have heard representatives of vocational training from the State of Vermont and also young farmers who have had this training from Virginia, one a president of a farm organization in Virginia. They have testified to its beneficial results for young veterans who come out and want to go into agriculture, but find that in modern agriculture it takes quite a lot to succeed. We have had quite a lot of testimony as to the benefits of this bill in that specific field.

Mr. JOHNSON. Of course, Mr. Chairman, we are in complete agreement with the groups that you have mentioned and the need for continuation of the on-farm training program for veterans. In the early part of my career I taught vocational agriculture, and I had in each of the schools where I taught a program of this type. I have seen at first hand the great benefits which it has been to young farmers and veteran farmers as they worked to become established in farming.

It has meant a great deal in helping these young people get started in farming. And they face many difficulties, as you know, today, even more so than when I was familiar with the program.

Senator YARBOROUGH. In some courts in east Texas, Mr. Johnson, I have heard the difference mentioned between the witness who was not on the scene and an eyeball witness. As an eyeball witness, you have seen this happen.

I want to thank you for your very fine statement. It will be of help to the committee.

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator YARBOROUGH. The next witness, I believe, is Congressman Leonard Wolf, a Member of the Congress of the United States, a member of the House of Representatives from the Second District of Iowa.

We welcome you here, and will be glad to have you testify.

STATEMENT OF HON. LEONARD G. WOLF, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IOWA

Mr. WOLF. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, Mr. Chairman. I would like to say that I came to urge you to act favorably on Senate 1138, but I can see I will not have any problem with you. I hope that other members of the committee are equally as interested. Senator YARBOROUGH. Well, we have a clear majority of this subcommittee as cosponsors of this bill. We also have a clear majority of the whole committee as cosponsors of the bill. And we are hopeful of favorable action in the committees.

Representative WOLF. I might say I intend to introduce your bill this afternoon in the House to complement your position.

Senator YARBOROUGH. We are glad to hear it.

Representative WOLF. I might say we have special interest in such a bill as this, because I dare say if the granddaddy of the bill had not been passed into law by President Roosevelt, I would not have had a chance to attend college, and I like to think I am a useful citizen as a result of my college training.

Now, multiply my case by 7,800,000, or over 51 percent of those who attended schools in this period from 1944 to 1956. The bill turned out 440,000 engineers, 43,000 doctors, 23,000 nurses, 113,000 scientists, 237,000 teachers, 42,000 machinists, and 36,000 ministers. I am sure that over 50 percent of these people would not have gone to college if it had not been for the GI bill.

America would have been a cultural and scientific desert without that bill. America could well have been a place where bitter young men after the war with no opportunity offered to them by society could have formed and joined violent and totalitarian groups to vent their embittered feelings against our democratic society.

So America within 10 years after the Second World War would have become a second-rate power, because we would not have had the necessary educated manpower to go forward in every field of scientific, cultural, and business endeavor.

Let me give you a particular individual example of who this program has helped and how the United States was helped because of it. Floyd Gould came home after 3 years overseas with no idea of what he wanted to do. He took a menial job in a laundry, then

switched to selling soap. He tried, then quit, a typing course on the GI bill.

By 1948, disgusted, he went to the VA for vocational counseling. When the tests showed he had an outstanding IQ and a natural tendency for sciences, he was enrolled in college as a GI physics student.

Now, 8 years later, exlaundryman Floyd Gould has three degrees, including a doctor of philosophy degree. Dr. Gould is now an atomic physicist at the Brook Haven National Laboratory.

Many of you will remember the honest fears of those who were against the GI bill. They feared that our college campuses would be taken over by the Federal Government, that the intellectual level of students would be lowered, that educational standards would be poor. Well, none of these things happened. The Federal Government did not take over our universities, the intellectual level of all students was improved, for the returning GI's were serious about their studies.

I know this was true in my own case. I was a little more casual about college when I went into service. When I came home, I was in a hurry to get my education and get to the serious business.

So they set a tone of importance and meaning to college education which in the past, was not present. Their purpose was getting an education, not participating in many activities that detracted from education.

Educators generally agree, as the distinguished educator, Dr. Harold Hunt, has said, that

many veterans came to college with a deeper sense of values than those who came directly from high schools. Their seriousness brought good scholarship and a high level of achievement.

Professors themselves were forced to revise their conception of teaching and their lecture notes because of the inquiring minds of these war veterans. These students knew too much about life to be satisfied by a rehash of old lecture notes of lazy professors. This, too, was one of the important results of the GI bill and cannot be underestimated, for the return of the GI shook out the intellectual and social cobwebs that gripped our institutions of higher learning for scores of years.

Many times, Mr. Chairman, we concentrate on those activities with which we are unsuccessful. We are pessimistic about the decisions we make and the results of many of our programs for which we vote, but this is one program which America can point to with pride and say that it was an unqualified success.

The GI bill took many of these young men, their minds half formed, who knew only the hard discipline of the military, who knew only ways of killing, and educated these men to the point where they became useful beings to themselves and society.

But somehow this program was allowed to die. Despite our pious pronouncements on education and the lift the GI bill gave to our society, and despite the fact that millions continued to serve and be drafted into the Armed Forces, the program ended. I have always felt that this was a dreadful mistake and for that reason I am going to support and introduce legislation similar to S. 1138. I would like to outline the following reasons as to why I think we should reinstitute the GI bill as it pertains to education.

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