This indicates that many people are working on low-income farms. This is subsistence farming. That is all you can call it.

When you couple this fact with the few industrial opportunities, we find very serious effects on Kentucky's income position.

Now, a word on our per capita income in Kentucky. It was $1,187 in 1953. That is only 692 percent of the United States average of $1,709. There were 89 counties with per capita income below $1,000, while in 23 percent, or rather, while in 23 per capita income was actually less than one-third of the national average, and I have submitted for the committee's convenience certain figures over here in a graph showing the income.

You will find over here in the eastern part of this attached graph, in table 3, Martin County, per capita income for 1953, $368. That is our very lowest, but there are some other low ones here, too.

Knox County, $455; Laurel County, $604; Wayne County, $506; Clinton, $481. So that is the reason why we say that we have a boom in the valley and a depression up in the hills.

As a matter of fact, you know we have always had the problem of revenuers up there in the mountains. I don't think they are dissatisfied with the brands on the market and just want to try something different. What they are actually doing in making their own whisky, they are trying to bring in a cash crop. They are trying to get some cash for the family budget that they don't now have.

Of course the law frowns on that. I was possum hunting not long after in Livingston County, between the rivers in western Kentucky, and we ran across a still in full operation. The fires were still going. We beat it. It is time to leave. You don't want to be seen there. You are considered an outsider if you are from another county.

What those people are trying to do is to get some money. They are not risking going to the Federal penitentiary to make their own whisky for their own taste. They need some money and need it badly. They are resorting to that as a medium for getting it.

Further reflection of the economic problem in some areas, and to me this is as startling as anything that any statistic that we have dug up in Kentucky reveals, 294,897 people in our State are eligible for surplus commodity foodstuffs in April 1956. Our population isn't quite 3 million. This is 10 percent of the population of the State of Kentucky today, which is eligible for charity, which is eligible for surplus commodity foodstuffs in order to live.

You can go to Louisville today and you will see a very prosperous city, and you can go to Lexington, and you will see another prosperous city, and your home up in northern Kentucky, in Covington, Mr. Chairman, but when you get up in the mountains, away from the beaten path, except for an occasional TV aerial and except for a changed radiator on the automobile that goes down the highway, in the looks of the faces of the people up there in the mountains you see depression, the same look we saw on people's faces in Hopkins and Christian counties, where I lived as a boy, when the great depression came. Those people are impoverished. You have to see it. They look it. They are not getting proper food, they are not getting proper housing, or proper medical care, they are not wearing decent clothing. We have a depression in Kentucky.

In the Hazard area, which is down in the southeast, you know, in Kentucky, in the bituminous area, 54 percent of the people in that

area, over half, are eligible for surplus commodity foodstuffs-over half the people in that whole area there are eligible. Their county judge in the fiscal court determines eligibility. They can get charity in order to live.

Depressing though it is, in some respects the Kentucky unemployment problem of too few jobs will become more pressing in the future years. It is not only that there are more people, the biological processes being what they are, our population is increasing, but in addition there are certain technological developments in Kentucky which we see which are displacing people. You can go to the coal mines that strip coal today and see 50 men doing what 500 men did a decade and a half ago.

Not long ago I visited the Corning Glass plant in Kentucky. A year or 2 ago women stood beside this conveyor and placed little bulbs in cartons. Now only two people do that. They have found a machine which operates on a compressed-air principle, and as the little bulbs come down the rack, air turns them rightside up and drops them into the holes in the carton. Two people do the work that 23 used to do.

That is typical all over the State, in the construction industry, all these technological developments, bricklaying devices. Now they set brick up instead of using hod carriers. The use a forklift to displace people.

Due to our technological development, and the displacement of people, forcing migration, we need a good many additional jobs, not just to make progress but to stay where we are.

This statement was prepared for the purpose of setting forth some basic economic facts about problem areas in the Kentucky economy. It is believed that the data analyzed will point to the need for greater increased industrialization in most Kentucky areas.

Attention is given to rates of unemployment in areas classified as having substantial unemployment. Major emphasis, however, is placed on areas in which there is a scarcity of job opportunities and great underutilization of the labor force.

We point to the fact that in the Nation today about 34 percent of the work force is now composed of women; 34 percent, and nothing like that is true in Kentucky, and there is an accompanying graph which will show you a very small percentage of women in Kentucky, in spite of the fact that many women are used in the distilling industry in packaging and many women are used in the tobacco industry in packaging, and we have quite a bit of garment industry in Kentucky, they are small, but they do the State fairly well.

In spite of these factors, Kentucky is far behind the national average in the employment of women in the work force.

Kentucky has 11 areas, including 30 counties, that are now classified as having substantial unemployment. Six of them, as I have said before, are coal: Corbin, Hazard, Harlan, Madisonville, Pikeville, and Prestonburg, slackness in the coal mining industry and others, such as Morehouse, layoff in the clay industry; men go underground and mine this hard clay that looks like flint. They mine it from under the coal, as you would mine coal, with a slope mine, and when they get it to the surface, they convert it into refractory fire brick. This industry employed 2,300 men until recently. Now there is a depression in that. I don't know, they said it is tied to steel. For some reason or other

layoffs in the clay industry have been very sharp, east of your home in northern Kentucky, Congressman.

I mention the more-severe-than-average cutbacks in the distilling industry. These are luxury items. I don't know whether people are forced to choose between buying food for the table and distilled spirits. and they slack off on the luxury items or what, but setbacks have been. rather harsh.

We have other items, one down near Henderson, where Camp Breckenridge shut down and caused depression in that area.

The atomic energy plant in Paducah has played out. For a time they employed 20,000 workmen. That played out. They brought people into Kentucky from the South and West. I never saw so many people, with trailers from Alabama, Louisiana; they came in and worked the job south, and there they sit, causing no minor depression there in the purchase area of Kentucky in the extreme west.

The CHAIRMAN. When did this depression start?

Mr. EZELLE. 1953, Mr. Chairman. It reached a rather severe stage then and has continued until this time, with no hope in sight for relief. It is about 3 years old, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What has been its course?

Mr. EZELLE. It has gotten progressively worse.

The CHAIRMAN. Worse?

Mr. EZELLE. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. It is worse now than it has been at any other time? Mr. EZELLE. Yes, sir. Another thing is true in our State that a lot of our people go north and they work in the automobile industry, and when there is a layoff up there in Detroit, these people come back to Kentucky, you see. They are out of work. They come home. That is why we were glad to see Mr. Reuther inaugurate his annual wage. That will help our State back in Kentucky.

Then the cancer scare, to some degree it affected the cigarette manufacture in Kentucky. There is no question about it. The industry has been increasing about 2 percent a year and then it went down 2 percent a year.

The CHAIRMAN. What has been the reason that coal mining has decreased? Has it been purely technological improvements?

Mr. EZELLE. Well, Mr. Chairman, the consumers' buying habits have changed so greatly. They are bringing gas in now in the pipelines, and people are having gas installed in their new homes now. All of these new housing projects you see built, they are not heated with coal. They are heated with gas. Some even are heated with electricity, and so the homeowner is turning away from coal to other sources of fuel, and then you know what the railroad industry is doing. After the coal industry built several of the railroads, including the L. & N., now these are changing, and I don't blame them, they are changing to dieselization. It is displacing workmen. They require less maintenance, but it is also displacing the bituminous coal miner too because he isn't needed in that process at all. They don't care about him any more. They are using diesel oil.

The CHAIRMAN. That has done away with the old roundhouse on several railroads.

Mr. EZELLE. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. They employed great numbers of men.

Mr. EZELLE. That is true.

The CHAIRMAN. It has caused the layoff of great numbers of railroaders because 1 of those diesel engines would haul as much as 3 steam locomotives.

Mr. EZELLE. That is right. They have those A and B units in diesel locomotives. GM makes them, Fairbanks Morse and American Locomotive Co., and they just keep adding units. They just keep adding A and B units. They can pull as much as they want.

The CHAIRMAN. How are we going to revive the coal industry? Do you think that can be done?

Mr. EZELLE. Sir, I would like to see the Federal Government do more research in projects to ascertain what we can do with coal. We have a lot of coal, and other things can be made from coal. Coal doesn't necessarily have to be used as a fuel. It can be used in making synthetics, and they can burn it underground and convert it into gas and use the gas.

Mr. RAINS. If I may interrupt the witness there, Mr. Chairman, down in my State, Alabama, there is a project being carried on jointly by the Bureau of Mines and by the Allah Power Co., for a good many years of research in which they gassify the ccal underground, and instead of bringing it out as coal, they bring it out as natural gas. The experimentations have been going on for several years, and they are quite successful with it.

The CHAIRMAN. Can that compete with the natural gas?

Mr. RAINS. I don't know that. I know each year we try to get another appropriation for the Bureau of Mines to continue it.

Mr. EZELLE. Of course, Mr. Chairman, another thing that we can do up there in that area, we need to get an industry up there that will employ large numbers of workmen, such as the textile industry.

Mr. RAINS. I advise you, coming from a textile State, don't be too anxious to get those. They are in the same shape that the coal industry is in. I think Mr. Nicholson, from New England, will tell you that. The textile industry is on shaky ground most of the time.

Mr. EZELLE. We need to get something up there in eastern Kentucky, if we are going to solve the problem in one fell swoop. We need an industry which will consume a great amount of coal and take the coal out of that bituminous area up there.

The CHAIRMAN. This bill provides that the Government will lend 25 percent of the amount that is needed to build a plant. Then as the condition of getting that loan, there must be 15 percent come from the local area, the local subdivision.

Say it would take a million dollars to build a plant, the Government would loan $250,000. You have to get $150,000 locally. Now, there are no big cities up there.

Mr. EZELLE. That is true.

The CHAIRMAN. There are no rich areas where that money could be raised, and if it isn't raised, it would preclude them from getting the loan from the Government.

Do you think that is a practical matter?

Mr. EZELLE. I wouldn't think so, Mr. Chairman. They don't have the money up there. The subdivisions don't have the money.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no center of population up there. Not only the mines are down but counties are poor. That section of the State is poor. It would be perfectly impossible for them to get any

thing like what is contemplated locally, if locally means the local area, and that is what I think it means. I don't think the State will appropriate big sums of money for one area which will be paid largely by others. States don't operate that way. They might get it here, but they won't appropriate it themselves. It seems to me that is a practical thing. There ought to be no condition about where they get the balance of the money after the Government makes the loan; if they can get it anywhere, it seems to me that ought to be sufficient."

Mr. EZELLE. Perhaps there could be inaugurated a plan of training the people up there, too. The men are trained in coal and nothing else, but if we could have a training program, with perhaps some financial assistance from the Federal Government, to see it through and to train these people into skilled and semiskilled operations, we might attract more industry up there, also.

I think I painted the picture fairly accurately. As a Kentuckian I am sorry I can't paint a prettier picture about our State to a committee whose chairman, of course, is from the same State, but things are bad back there in our State. They have no sign of getting better. We will have to have outside assistance to do the job, and again, in a nation which has a gross national product of $400 billion a year, it is inconceivable that we would allow such a large area as we have in our State to exist on emergency rations, so to speak.

The CHAIRMAN. The object of the law is to do justice. It seems to me the law is a failure in some respects, where there is great prosperity in one section of the Nation and the deepest poverty in another. There is certainly something wrong in our economy when that takes place. We should find some way to remedy it.

I am glad you, who represent the people who are most interested, those who labor, are taking a great interest in this.

Mr. EZELLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If there are no questions, I am through with my presentation. The CHAIRMAN. I suggest we insert your graphs in the record, if it can be done, because they contain some information that is very useful. (The graphs follow:)