With veterans accounting for 38 percent of the men graduating, 63 percent of honor graduates were veterans.

All three men receiving B.A. degrees magna cum laude in the College of Arts and Sciences were veterans. Of the nine men graduating cum laude, six were veterans. In the same college, of the four men receiving B.S. degrees, magna cum laude, one was a veteran. Of the four men graduating cum laude, three were veterans.

Two veterans received the highest honors granted in the College of Agriculture, both magna cum laude. Of the three men receiving cum laudes, one was a veteran.

Veterans took three of the six cum laude degrees granted to men in the School of Business Administration.

In the School of Engineering, a veteran earned the only cum laude in chemical engineering; all three magna cum laude electrical engineering degrees were earned by veterans and of the nine cum laude degrees granted in electrical enginering, six were earned by veterans. In mechanical engineering, the three magna cum laude degrees were earned by veterans and of the four cum laudes, three were veterans.

In the division of physical education, the two cum laude degrees were earned by veterans.

Of the 32 undergraduate men elected to the honor society, Phi Kappa Phi, 21 were veterans. Of the 11 men elected to Sigma Xi, honorary scientific society, 7

were veterans.

Departmental honors were awarded to 14 men; of these 6 were veterans. The subcommittee will adjourn until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. (Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene Thursday morning, May 7, 1959.)

EDUCATION AND OTHER READJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR POST-KOREAN VETERANS

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 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 a.m., in room 4232, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Ralph W. Yarborough, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senators Yarborough (presiding) and Williams.

Also present: Senators Morse and Randolph, members of the committee, and Senators Sparkman of Alabama, Kuchel of California; and Representative Meyer of Vermont.

Committee staff member present: Frederick R. Blackwell, counsel of the subcommittee.

Senator YARBOROUGH. The Subcommittee on Veterans' Affairs will come to order.

This is the concluding session in a series of public hearings on S. 1138, to provide educational and other readjustment assistance to post-Korean veterans, and on S. 270 and S. 930, to provide educational assistance alone to post-Korean veterans, and S. 1050 to provide educational assistance to orphans of post-Korean veterans.

The first witness this morning is Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, one of the sponsors of S. 1138.

Senator Sparkman, we appreciate your action in taking time from your busy schedule to come here and testify for this legislation. I don't think there is any man in the Senate who has a more intimate knowledge of the problem than you.

I recall all of the fine things I have heard about your service in the House in being one of the draftsmen of the GI bill of World War II that first enacted into law a comprehensive bill for veterans instead of pensions, a concept that enabled them to increase their earnings while they were young.

I want to congratulate you on having the convictions to be one of the authors of that first GI bill for World War II which has done so much for this country.

We have heard a lot during these hearings about how much it has helped not merely those veterans, but it has helped the country, because out of the more than 15 million veterans, 7,800,000 took training. I don't know whether those figures will be in your statement or whether you had those figures or not. But under the legislation you sponsored and were so largely responsible for, 7,800,000 Americans

got educational training. Twenty-nine percent or 2,340,000 of them in college. And the other 71 percent hadn't finished high school; it was either subcollege or vocational education.

And then, of course, the Korean GI bill was based on your legislation. And now, this bill that we have introduced together is based on your idea of World War II of doing something to enable these veterans to make better citizens, have better incomes, better homes, better businesses, and better themselves and the country.

With your distinguished background in leadership for the veterans of this country, it is a particular pleasure to invite you to these hearings and to hear your testimony.

Senator SPARKMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SPARKMAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA

Senator SPARKMAN. I do have those figures in my statement to which you referred; the very fine results of the training program that was enacted into law back in--if I remember correctly it was in 1944, the GI bill of rights, a very comprehensive bill.

May I say, Mr. Chairman, that I enjoy thinking back over how this thing grew. You know, it didn't come just all at once. I served on the Military Affairs Committee of the House all through World War II, I was chairman of the Subcommittee on Pay and Allowances. And I was the author of the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act, which I am sure you knew something about during World War II. Senator YARBOROUGH. Let me interrupt you a minute.

While I was in service, and owing a mortgage on my home, I deferred those principal payments during my period of overseas service. I was beneficiary of that act.

I want to thank you for that.

Senator SPARKMAN. I may say in that connection that I believe no bill was ever offered to Congress that had more thorough preparation than that particular bill. It was a difficult job to write a bill that would give full coverage to the people in the service and yet be constitutional.

I have a prepared statement. I shall give the gist of it, but I won't take the time of the committee to read it.

But I hope that the full statement will be printed as if I had stuck strictly to the manuscript.

Senator YARBOROUGH. It will be printed.

Senator SPARKMAN. When I was given the job of heading up the committee to write the legislation on the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, I saw that it was going to be a very complex and difficult job. So I asked the Legislative Liaison Section of the Defense Department to assign a fulltime legal member to our subcommittee. And that was done.

Our subcommittee met and discussed the general principle, what we wanted. I told this legal member that we wanted to go just as far as we could and still be constitutional. And I asked him to go over to the law library and to read every case that had ever been decided by the Supreme Court from the Revolutionary War right down to date. And I think that was done. I think we had a complete briefing.

We decided the general pattern of what we wanted. Then we started working. We worked I guess 3 months on study and preparation of the bill. I think it paid off.

I believe you would be interested to know that the different phases of the bill have gone to the Supreme Court probably two dozen times without a single reversal. Every single provision that has been carried to the Court has been sustained. And I have naturally received a great deal of gratification from recalling that.

Now, with reference to the Ci bill of rights, that bill, of course, when it was finally put in its overall form and enacted, came out of the Veterans' Committee of the House of Representatives. But it started in this way:

Time came that many of the boys were getting out of the service from time to time because of disability or various things that gave them cause to be discharged; but the time came that we set up the rotation policy.

Then we started getting them back from the services in big numbers and we got worried as to employment for them. And then the time came when we could see that the end of the war was approaching so far as Europe was concerned, and that great numbers of men would be coming home. We were fearful of what the economic consequences might be.

You may recall that some of the outstanding economists of the country predicted that we would have as many as 8 million unemployed as a result of the boys coming back and of shutting down or terminating many of the war contracts, and we started working trying to find means to absorb some of that shock.

The very first thing was under the pay and allowances provisions, the termination pay. That was really the beginning of the whole thing.

Then we started developing different phases of the program, until finally the comprehensive measure which became known as the GI bill of rights was enacted into law. And it was done primarily to take care of this unemployment shock.

We realized that boys who had been out of school for several years might not want to go back to school. Boys that had been in employment would come back and see their fellow employees advanced far beyond what their level was. And they might not be able to fit back into the groove. And so it was that we worked out these various programs.

By the way, I think it is an interesting commentary that about the time the boys got back in great numbers there was a very interesting article that ran in one of our national magazines, one of our best known magazines, telling what a flop the educational and training program was; that the boys were simply not taking advantage of it and not going back to school. The print was hardly cold until the educational program began to take hold. And we know what a tremendous job it did, as you pointed out; 7,800,000 took advantage of it. I don't think there is any question but what it was a mighty contributing factor toward sustaining our economic stability during that time. I could go on and elaborate on that. But I will not.

With reference to this bill, Mr. Chairman, which I like to call the cold-war GI bill, I would like to bring out just a few points.

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