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certainly is a wonderful tribute to the youth of our country—at least in that city and that State.

I think those things, even if they have a bad side, they are all to the good.

In New York City they have the same kind of parade every year in which hundreds of thousands participate. That makes headlines. It just makes my heart work long to read about the fine things that the youth of America do, and I hope that it can be an inspiration to your subcommittee to bring this bill out in definitive form at an early date, without any weakening of the members.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Riley, it seems to me we have all been altogether too ignorant to find a salution for juvenile delinquency.

We look about over the landscape and we say "Well, it is the working mothers that are the cause of juvenile delinquency," and that works pretty good for a year or two-everybody believes that. Everybody says it is the working mothers that are the cause of our juvenile delinquency, but somebody comes up with some figures along the line and we find that maybe that is not the cause, and that maybe it has very little to do with it actually.

Then we turn to another reason. It seems to me that we have been turning all these years right around a wheel of new reasons.

For a long time we said that the rural areas did not have much. juvenile delinquency, and then, lo and behold, we find, in the figures last year, that the rural areas are having, in proportion, more delinquency, I believe they say, for the last year, than are the city areas. So there goes another one of our old standby reasons for juvenile delinquency. It seems to me we have got to the point that we have to recognize that we just do not know what causes this problem, and that we have to get started by some sort of means to try to isolate that problem, or those problems. If they can be isolated, perhaps we can use the same techniques that have been used in medicine and other fieldsonce having isolated the cause, find the cure.

So, after listening to testimony here for several days, and several more days in 1957, I am more convinced than ever that we really do not know at this point scientifically what are the causes of delinquency.

Mr. RILEY. It may be that we are reaching for straws, and trying to escape our national responsibility in this regard and, if that sounds like a convenient excuse, why we are having delinquency, or a reason why, maybe we are willing to take that and nurture it along and hope somebody else will pick it up and say "Yes, you are right in the first place," it seems we duck it by developing a national complex of escapism, to which we are not entitled.

If you get into that sort of thing you then have to explore further and say "Well, if it is working mothers, then why doesn't the Internal Revenue Service excuse them from payment on the income which they have to put out to hire babysitters or nurses or cooks or housekeepers in their absence?"

So, if you start in on that line you have to go into all of the exploratory cabinets and find out what is in there, all of these pockets of further excuses.

I feel even stronger now after I heard what you said, Mr. Chairmain, that now we have the greatest spur to get this bill out of the subcommittee and to the full committee and to the calendar; and if

the Congress, in its wisdom, wishes to make this a political football and say "It is expedient to be economical and balance the budget at the expense of these youngsters, the ones in whom the responsibility for this Nation will be reposed in before long," then let's really work, and we hope that our friends will stand up and demand a rollcall, and let's see that everybody be counted and be on the record. That is a good place to draw the line.

In our presentation to your subcommittee 2 years ago, we fully recognized the situation as supplying clear and sufficient reason for Federal concern in the problem of juvenile delinquency control.

We made the observation that "When we realize that the size of the ten to 17-year age group would be 50 percent greater in 1956 than it was in 1955," realizing that this is several years ago we then added the further remark that the need for such control "becomes imperative." And I go back to pick up that bit of recent history to say we are not newcomers in this thing, we are not Johnny-come-latelys. We have the feeling of belonging to this thing for some time.

In that connection, Mr. Chairman, if I may have leave before your record closes I would like to submit a supplemental appendix which will show, even in the days of Samuel Gompers, this was a very vital thing in his thinking. He was farreaching and farseeing in this field, and I would like very much to attach that for such further advisory information as it may have in the value of the deliberations, as you go along in your progress in this field.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Without objection, the statement to which the witness refers will be made a part of the record when received. (The statement referred to follows:)

LABOR'S POSITION ON HELP FOR CHILDREN IS LONG STANDING

There is nothing new in having the American trade union movement take an active part in helping shape a program to assist our children. Early in our Nation's history the workingmen's associations supported all programs to help children, to give them a better chance in life.

The founders of our labor movement fought for establishment of the free publice school. In fact, they actually built the schools themselves. We led the fight for a compulsory school attendance law, for free textbooks.

Not only did we ask for formal schooling for our Nation's children-all of them but we wanted that schooling given under the best possible conditions. We still do. In this connection, we have long recognized that the well-being of the child cannot be considered as something apart from his family and his community.

There are, no doubt, scholars and civic leaders who with historic perspective are mindful of labor's fight in many States for mothers' pensions, to help keep a fatherless family together. There are many who rejoice when these battles for our children at State and local levels were recognized as a national problem, when certain aspects of the social security law adopted in 1935 at long last recognized the Nation's responsibility to help the States serve their children. Yes, labor's fight for our children goes back many, many years. Many, no doubt, have read of Sam Gompers' magnificent support of the proposal, when first made, to have a childrens' court established. Few men at the turn of the century recognized as did Samuel Gompers the need for a special form of equitable procedure in dealing with the child who had broken the law. Gompers was, you will recall, not only a vigorous crusader for human rights; he also was a scholar. His own family background in England had made him conscious of the severity of the English common law-especially of its harsh treatment of children. He told his coworkers that he was shocked when he realized that under the common law a child of 8 could be held responsible for a capital offense and executed. But even more, he was shocked when he read our American colonial laws, especially those compiled in the blue laws-Connecticut's blue laws, particularlywhich legally, certainly not morally, authorized a parent to present testimony in

support of his request to have his own child executed if the child were "persistently and perniciously disobedient."

We've

Today we shudder as we read that court records show that under those laws children of 12 and 10 and even 8 were tried, convicted and executed. come a long way since the law permitted parents to have their children executed. We are proud to recall the step by step fight made by our trade union leaders to bring greater protection to our children and to help the child and youth recognize his responsibilities.

It was shortly after establishment of the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in the last quarter of the 19th century, that the humanitarians of that day became interested in protecting children as well as animals. So the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded. The puritanical Mr. Comstock took a leading role in these movements. Labor did not like Comstock, but as the old meeting records show they decided to support these movements, in spite of their feeling toward Comstock. It was the well-being of the child and the world he lived in which concerned our members then. At that time there was an especially bad practice legally recognized. Children-mostly the hungry children-who could not get food at home were kidnaped by representatives of farm lands, beet fields particularly, and shipped out on the Great Lakes boats. There were also the poor indentured young workers who were actually slaves, during the period of their indenture. If there were time I should like to present this story of child exploitation as recorded by Edith Abbott. This brilliant able citizen, you will recall, headed the Children's Bureau in the 1920's. Her writings and those of her sister record these shocking abuses of our children. But they also tell of our trade unions' fight to protect the children.

When the movement to give the child malefactor a rebuilding was started, our trade union members gave support to these movements.

Some early records show that our unschooled men sensed the social necessity of firm, positive training for children and youth but also recognized that severe even brutal punishment is not the answer. "It's what they're thrown with that we must fight," said one of our early New York leaders.

Sam Gompers liked to recall the wisdom and the foresight of Teddy Roosevelt in facing children's problems as "the problems of people who are least able to help themselves."

The attitude of our early leaders to child protection is actually the basis for our present concern. We want a program of firm child discipline but a discipline which will encourage social rehabilitation. It is in this frame of reference that we appear today.

Mr. RILEY. Delinquency is a cancerous malignancy never shrinking its dimensions, always advancing metastasis into the healthy elements of our society.

Certainly, we are privileged to praise the purposes of the several bills before your subcommittee and give full encouragement to the intent of the proposed legislation.

We note that the Green bill, H.R. 772, is of briefer proportions than the two related bills, H.R. 319 and H.R. 1084, and any which have been introduced since this statement was started.

All herein mentioned are essentially grant-in-aid measures to a limited degree, designed to advance the development of children into responsible citizens and thereby add to the strength and vitality of the Nation, to paraphrase some of the language in section II setting forth the policy statement.

WORK VERSUS EDUCATION

Of course, perhaps labor has the greatest concern in the problem and interest in legislation designed to bring about solutions of any other segment of our population. Labor is the main cross section of American life, family life, more especially.

Organized labor has engendered all possible steps to advance employment opportunities for our younger population and to foster ap

prenticeship training and vocational training as well as retraining.. In connection with the problem of youth employment, the question of child labor laws has become a basic part of America's labor legislation, and without them the degree of delinquency undoubtedly would be much greater today because they have developed as a result of shocking conditions under which young people were employed up to relatively recent years.

Surely it must be said that labor is in an excellent position to say what is good for growing America, as members of our own families and as younger citizens taking their places in the everyday workaday world, but only after they have been delayed from entering the work force sufficiently long to afford them the educational and training opportunities to which they so rightly and so justly are entitled.

It must be remembered that, in assessing the requirements for maturity, this Nation has always placed education above employment opportunities.

It is more important, we believe, that a young person receive all the education to which he is fully entitled and for which he has the capacity, than it is for him to receive employment at an early age. Even though he may prefer employment, the education which he will receive in the long run will make possible a higher paid job and one contributing more to society.

Today, in the light of slack employment, when younger persons are competing more intensely with those of maturity, often for the same jobs, the incomes of American families are being eaten away through attrition, including inflation, lagging wage increases, and curtailed or eliminated take-home dollars.

DELINQUENCY WORLDWIDE

With all the contributing factors entering into the incubation of juvenile delinquency, it is not difficult to understand how the figures on youthful crimes are increasing day after day.

Judge Samuel Leibowitz of Kings County, N.Y., is convinced that delinquency is a world problem, not confined alone to our own borders.. There are those who may be willing to particularize on the causes of crime-poor housing, for example. On this score, we call your attention to a housing bill which is ready for consideration on the House floor, and doubtless will contribute greatly toward the elimination of many slums in this land.

There are others who say that broken homes, lack of playground facilities, parents who are not blameless, the availability of gravity knives and hari-kari knives and yard-long chains which can be bought easily by our younger citizens, and still others who say that body formations have a great deal to do with crime incipient violence.

Many of these acknowledged causes of delinquency could be expected to be cured or treated at the local government levels. They apparently are not being treated, however; and the Federal Government, as is so often the case when local authorities and communities disregard, or are unable to discharge, their obligations to the rising generation, must step in in some degree or act to take a hand-since delinquency, not unlike illiteracy and pestilence and sanitation and air pollution and other causes of maladies, spreads across political boundary lines, and blights the lives of others in better tended communities.

REESTABLISHING CONTROL

The problem of control and reduction in juvenile delinquency is another of the list of conditions which originate locally, but which quickly spread beyond local confines and blend easily into national

issues.

Only a few days ago, two 14-year-old youngsters were discovered delivering illegal narcotics. To locate the source of such traffic is a problem as old as the hills.

Today, it is evident that preventive steps are slow, while conditions they are aimed to meet are moving with greater rapidity. Reformatories are overpopulated and understaffed. Schools are overcrowded and underpaid teachers are overworked.

Court calendars are overloaded and judges carry extra burdens. The number of young Americans who have appeared in juvenile courts is near the 2 million mark. Delinquency now has increased 9 consecutive years.

This is the problem in the fewest possible words. The sponsors of these bills recognize this. They have returned to your subcommittee with substantially the same bills as in previous years, because the problem is the same, though even more intense.

The year 1959 will go into the lawbooks as outstanding, if this legislation can be advanced through the two Houses substantially as introduced.

When we witness a western legislature in recent years passing weakening laws to permit a minimum age for farm labor after school to go from 14 years to 10 years, it would be important in these bills to establish floor ages as prerequisite to receiving any benefits under the act.

The same State I mentioned also allowed 10-year-olds to work as caddies, do domestic work, work in street trades, and lowered the age from 16 to 14 for canning and processing industry work.

Such youngsters should give their full time and thought to schooling or recreation and development, not hustling for a few dollars or cents instead.

I mention these conditions as bearing correction before Federal money can be obtained under this legislation, and as an elementary guide for the council to be created under these bills.

Reforms literally from the ground up at local and State levels should be spurred to meet the encouragement from the Federal level under the act herein proposed.

Truly, the problem does overreach "local and even State boundaries in some of its aspects" to quote from the bills themselves.

Controls or minimizing of dereliction and delinquency of juveniles, some of whom may be the adult major offenders of tomorrow, is a problem bigger than those who would maintain the inviolability of today's budget. Not fighting delinquency through the Federal level at its sources can be an extremely high price to pay for holding the budgetary line, if the budget is made a defense against these bills.

CONCLUSION

The several bills pending here have a common purpose, principally the creation of a Federal advisory council to coordinate the attack upon problems where they originate. The amounts of money are