STATEMENT OF HON. CARL ELLIOTT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA

Mr. ELLIOTT. Mr. Chairman, I appear before this committee today, first, to congratulate you upon the fact that you are holding these hearings on bills that are designed to aid areas of the United States that suffer with great unemployment. This is a subject that has needed congressional investigation and legislation for a long time. It is a problem that I have been wrestling with in the 7th Congressional District of Alabama for a long time. It is a problem that I am deeply interested in. It is a problem that I think the Congress can, by appropriate legislation, be of great help in the solution of.

Secondly, I appear before you today to offer some suggestions with reference to the legislation that you write. As I have indicated, my experience has been such, I think, as to qualify me to make a few suggestions.

For several years now, I have represented that area of the southern part of the country that has had the highest proportion of unemployment among its working force. I refer now to my home county of Walker County, Ala. But, what I am going to say will perhaps be equally applicable to several other counties of the 7th Congressional District where the problem in varying degrees exists. And, here, I want to call the committee's attention to the fact that the reporting system of our Government, insofar as it relates to unemployment. is inadequate. It is based primarily upon the larger centers of population and gives very little attention to the smaller communities. The point I am trying to make here is that if adequate investigation were made, it would, in my judgment, be found that there are perhaps hundreds of smaller communities throughout the country that have problems of unemployment just as great in proportion as are those in the cities where the figures are easily gotten at.

So, my first recommendation is that in whatever bill you report, you provide that the figures of unemployment in the small communities of the country be made available to the Authority, or the Board or Commission, or Agency that you set up to deal with the problems of unemployment.

In the rural areas of the South, and, in particular, the rural area that I have the privilege to represent, we have been going through an agricultural revolution in the past 10 years. Ours is an economy of small farms. However, we have reached the point in small-farm agriculture that, by and large, the small farmer is less and less willing to depend upon his small acreage to earn for him a very few hundred dollars with which to try to feed, clothe and educate his family. The trend in north Alabama, as elsewhere, is for the small farmer to leave the farm, to seek employment in the centers of industry. No longer are many thousands of our small farmers willing to try to rear their families on the meager returns from a few hillside acres that they can only farm with comparatively primitive methods. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood. We still have lots of small farmers in the 7th Congressional District of Alabama. I would say that we still have 25,000 of them. However, that figure compares with about 34,000 listed in the 1950 Census.

So, it is becoming more and more apparent that if we are to prevent even greater suffering and, in effect, unemployment, on the small farms of America, we must set up some system of aiding the farm communities to work out programs whereby maximum employment may be attained in those communities. The major crops are now allotted. There are over 22,000 cotton allotments in the 7th Congressional District of Alabama. Over half of these allotments are less than 5 acres in size.

There are many farm communities that desire to develop additional means of employment for their people, but they lack the resources to get going in this field.

So, my second recommendation to your committee is that you provide in whatever law you write that consideration be given the farm communities of the United States that have very great problems of unemployment.

Many Alabama farmers make so little in the course of a year that if they lived in one of the cities of this country, they would be classified as being unemployed. Our farm people should have consideration. There is a great field of planning and work in this regard that has yet been barely tapped.

I was pleased, a year or two ago, to see a recommendation by the President of the United States that it was the intent of this administration to aid in the location of industry in rural areas. There is much to be done. And, if you have any doubt as to the distress that exists in rural areas of America, I refer you to the number of people in southern rural counties who are now receiving surplus agricultural commodities from the United States Department of Agriculture.

Now, all of us know that the problem which you study is one of degrees in many places. For instance, there is the town that has lost, we will say, one of its principal industries. Of course, it may be possible that the town had some notice that it would lose that industry. There is a certain amount of suffering and dislocation and despair that goes with a situation like that. But, I submit to you that there is lots less trouble to all concerned in a situation like that than there is in one that I am going to describe to you.

I live in a community wherein coal has been the principal leg of its economy since about 1890. In 1947, that industry had 7,000 employees. Today, it has about 1,000, a reduction in employment in that industry of about 85 percent. Now, that is the type community that has really been hard hit. That is the type situation that is entitled to more consideration than any other as we go about trying to solve this problem. The question is what are you going to do with a community that has lost its main economic support?

Well, in the case of Jasper and Walker County, Ala., there has been great suffering. This is shown by the fact that the last figures I have revealed that approximately one-third of the population in the community was receiving surplus agricultural commodities. There has been much suffering, much unemployment, much distress. In this situation, there has been a great effort on the part of local people, political leaders, business leaders, and others to attract and develop new industry. There has been some success along that line, but not nearly enough to replace the lost employment in coal.

Here are a few of the things that local business, farm, civic, and political leaders have done in this community. They have urged the

local power company to build, and have cooperated in whatever way they could with the local power company in the building of, three new large steam electric power generating units. These units burn coal that is mined in the county. These units have helped to stabilize the coal industry. At least they constitute one new large customer that local coal has gained while it was losing nearly all of its other customers. The same people have cooperated with the same company in laying the plans and making the preparations to build a 300-foot-high dam in the county. It is estimated that the building of the dam, plus the clearing of the 20,000-acre reservoir area behind it will give employment to some 2,000 people during most of the construction period of approximately 2 years. The power that will be generated by this dam will be added to the supply available in the area, and it is believed that this additional power, plus the huge lake of water behind the dam will make the area more attractive to industry. The dam will be built in accordance with existing law, and the rules and regulations prescribed by the Federal Power Commission. The dam will be operated according to regulations prescribed by the Corps of Engineers. It is thought that the improvement of navigation on the lower river that will result from the building of this dam will make the entire area below the dam more attractive to heavy industry that might want to locate along the banks of the Warrior River.

The same people mentioned have brought the poultry industry into the area with the result that since 1949 the county has become one of the largest broiler producing counties in America. Many small industries have come along with the poultry industry. I will name some of them: 4 small poultry feed mills; 3 hatcheries; a poultry processing plant is now under construction. Another feed mill will be. started within 60 days. The county will produce 6 million broilers this year.

The same people I have mentioned have brought in other industries. I will name some of them:

1. A brassiere factory that employs about 200 people;

2. Three small furniture factories;

3. A mattress manufacturing plant;

4. A small pillow and baby-bed factory;

5. A national brush warehouse, and brush distribution point; 6. A cattle slaughter and processing plant;

7. A steel fabricating plant;

8. An asphalt manufacturing plant;

9. A concrete pipe plant;

10. Several new public warehouses;

11. Some of the existing industries were enlarged and expanded. I know the part that these people played in making this progress possible. I saw them do it. I worked with them wherever it was possible.

In other fields, progress was made. Five public-housing projects were built in the county. A public health center, and a public health clinic will be built this year. Many new roads of all kinds have been built, and are now being built in the county through Federal, State, and local cooperation and effort. Many more will be built in the next few years. The Federal Government was prevailed upon to reinsti

tute experimental studies in the underground gasification of coal at a cost of approximately $225,000 per year.

All of this brings me to my third point. It is: In whatever law you write, be sure that you do not take away, or hamper in any way, the operation of private initiative in this field. Instead, I hope you will encourage every local effort that may possibly be made. The Federal Government should occupy the role of a strong partner to do the things that magnificent local efforts, like the one I have described, have not been able to do.

The State of Alabama has just set up an industrial development commission and planning board. It is headed by Gen. Lewis A. Pick, retired, former head of the Corps of United States Engineers. It will constitute a wonderful element of the strength of Alabama's effort to aid its areas of high unemployment. The Federal effort should cooperate with this State effort.

Not every community can have the large and financially strong industries. Some industries will be located in a particular community if that community is able to build a building which it can rent to the industry over a long period of time. My fourth point is that whatever agency you set up should have some money to help these communities of high unemployment to do the reasonable things that they might do to attract industry. A Government guaranty of some kind on the financing of such a building might do just as well.

The Federal Government's participation in this battle against the cancer of unemployment should be effective. It should be dramatic. The agency you create should have the power to wage an effective battle, with its local allies, against the dragon of unemployment. The head of this agency should be appointed by the President. The agency should report each 3 months to the Congress, as well as the President. There has been no centralized and coordinated attack on this problem. I trust that you gentlemen will be able to devise a law that will hasten the day when our people will not be a prey to unemployment, and the hunger and misery that follow in its wake. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL J. FLOOD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. FLOOD. Mr. Chairman, today I come before the Banking and Currency Committee to discuss with you the fundamental basis of our life together in the United States of America-the economic processes which support our 162 million people, and which alone give us the promise of material security and a rising living standard against the future.

My theme is the part in those economic processes to be played by areas of economic distress and acute unemployment. Our objective is to use every reasonable power of the United States Government itself, combined with State and local governments cooperation and participation, every resource of our dynamic people, every ounce of leadership which we possess in our national councils, to the purpose that our economy in the Nation gear itself once more to an economy of full employment and economic progress.

We are today declaring war against the shameful waste of human energy and human ability and human capacity to produce, which

comes about when men and women find no work when they seek work; when marvelous energy sources like our Pennsylvania coals lie unmined in the ground; when whole communities and regions are seemingly condemned to chronic unemployment, deterioration, and hopelessly prolonged distress.

We are not proposing a magic formula-a single panacea-a cure- ́ all. We are proposing a new sense of dedication, a new flow of purpose, that will be applied throughout America to give us expanded industries, new industries, more job opportunities, better and happier communities.

It has been brought to my attention that there was introduced in the Senate on January 9, 1956, what purports to be the administration's area development program.

In view of the fact that this bill which, incidentally, I am advised further, was introduced in the House, is nothing more than a rewriting of a series of bills already introduced by me, all of which is well known to the people of the anthracite coal fields. It is clear this is a belated though welcome approval of what has long been my program for the economic development of areas of surplus unemployment such as ours.

As a matter of fact, every provision in this bill just introduced is contained in the Douglas-Flood bill introduced by Senator Douglas, Democrat, Illinois, S. 2663, July 28, 1955, in the Senate, and by myself in the House, H. R. 7857, August 2, 1955.

It was agreed that since the Senate Labor Committee was sitting, hearings on this bill would begin and did begin before the Douglas Subcommittee of the Senate Labor Committee. As is well known in our area, investigators of the Senate Labor Subcommittee, preparing for hearings on the Douglas-Flood bill, appeared in Wilkes-Barre for several weeks last summer and made my Wilkes-Barre office their headquarters, and hearings were held also in several other States.

I arranged interviews for them with various leading citizens of Luzerne County and the entire anthracite area to permit these investigators to obtain statements, interviews, statistics, material, pictures and so forth; all of which are now being presented at the Senate hearings.

As the wire services noted at length, and very properly so, Mrs. Min Matheson, representing the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in Wilkes-Barre, and Mr. William Sword, chairman of the Committee of 100 from our area, appeared to testify at my invitation and the invitation of the Douglas committee; and I myself testified.

News columns last summer carried an analysis of the Douglas-Flood bill as well as a statement issued by me and by Senator Douglas detailing the provisions of our joint bill. The purpose of our bill is to provide both a short and long term program to rehabilitate chronically depressed areas in Pennsylvania and other sections of the country. It contains loan provisions authorized to $100 million to distressed areas, as well as provisions for direct grants for technical assistance. These loans are to be made only to properly authorized existing local organizations recognized as bona fide in the communities which have indicated their ability to first help themselves, and provides for the creation of regional assistance administration units

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