clear that no appropriation or financing assistance thereunder may be used directly or indirectly to finance the cost of facilities for the generation, transmission or distribution of electric energy. Sincerely yours, DON KAMMERT. WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, Morgantown, May 21, 1964. Hon. CLIFFORD DAVIS, Chairman, Special Committee on Appalachia, House Committee on Public Works, Washington, D.C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN DAVIS: As the president of West Virginia University, it is a privilege to state my views and hopes with reference to the work of your committee with particular reference to H.R. 11065, the Appalachian regional development bill of 1964. For the last 5 years, West Virginia University has been increasing the scope and content of its programs with reference to the needs of West Virginia and the opportunities of the Appalachian region. More than a year ago, the West Virginia Center for Appalachian Studies and Development was established to give particular emphasis to this great challenge which is in our midst. I cite these developments in order that I may indicate to you and other members of your committee that a growing number of our faculty and resource specialists speak to me now on the basis of a special competence and concern with the people and the resources of this State. We have collectively studied the report by the President's Appalachian Regional Commission of 1964 and the references in the bill itself. It is from such study and growing experience that we speak. One of the anachronisms of the American system is that a people, endowed with great natural capacities as are West Virginians, could live in the midst of such great natural resource abundance but in a state of uncertainty and considerable deprivation. Study after study and report after report have pointed out the discouraging facts about the State of West Virginia as an example of the larger region of which it is a part. Your committee has already received the stark statistics of the situation. But what one sometimes overlooks is the nature of the vicious circle in which people in such areas are confronted. It is a circle that is not easy to break up. It moves from family units themselves in no position to instill high aspiration in their children, on to the families in communities populated with relatively great numbers of older people who are oriented to past experience rather than to innovation, to the outmigration of teachers, managers, and other examples of leadership in the community, on to the subsequent and continuing depletion of community services, to the lack of capital growth, with resulting loss of buying power in the tax base, on to the very rapid increases of the more dependent ages-the very young and the very old, and to an ultimate disinterest in innovation by civic leadership. In a day in which the development of natural and human resources is a thing which captures the imagination of men everywhere, there is no greater challenge in America than to find in the midst of our accumulated wisdom and material possessions the ways and the means by which this anachronism may be removed. As I understand it, it is to this objective that the newly proposed legislation is advanced. The legislation results from an accumulation of Commission reports, from the cooperative planning of the Southern Regional Governors' Conference, from the growing number of objective studies by scholars in the region's universities, and by the synthesis provided by the President's Appalachian Regional Commission of 1964. It is a program to which considerable emphasis is given to natural resource development and to the substantial increase of facilities for improved communications and transportation. This emphasis must be importantly considered in view of the fact that whatever future the greater region of Appalachia will have, will to considerable extent depend upon how well the abundant resources of the region are developed and how best our people may come to move back and forth across the region with greater ease and the encouragement which is given to the development of new and modern industrial sites. I am confident that I speak for all of the institutions of higher learning in the State of West Virginia and in the region as a whole when I say that the expertness which we contain, inadequate though it is, will be contributed in every way possible to the improvement of natural resource development and transportation systems. As the report of the Regional Commission suggests, the longrun development of West Virginia and the Appalachian region will depend on the enrichment of human resources in order that the increased skills of the people may be more wisely applied to the abundance of resources about them. Accordingly, it is my hope that legislation on behalf of the Appalachian region, as well as that contained in other legislative proposals now before Congress, will invest substantially in human beings. The true victims of underdeveloped areas, wherever they are found, are children and it is time that we find new and more substantial ways of investing in the future of America's children located in the underdeveloped rural regions of our land and in the depressed slums of our cities. Accordingly, I hope that you and the other members of your committee will give special study to the ways and means by which Federal, State, and local agencies may combine their efforts, and with increased support find ways to motivate local initiative and program planning as a necessary part of the region's future. The purpose of this letter is that I, as an educator, might lend my support and my promise of assistance in pursuing the rapid development of our State and this region. Although greater and greater efforts must be expended locally, the plight of the southern Appalachian region is a national plight as well. The task is too great without the help of the country as a whole. Sincerely yours, PAUL A. MILLER, President. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Hon. CIFFORD DAVIS, Chairman, Special Committee on Appalachia, House Committee on Public Works, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. DAVIS: As a citizen of West Virginia, and being in a position to know through actual firsthand contact, of the impact of the social and economic depression on that State, I am gratified to have the opportunity of expressing to the honorable members of the Committee on Public Works, my opinions on H.R. 11065, a bill to provide public works and economic development programs and the planning and coordination needed to assist in the development of the Appalachian region. The bill, while being somewhat optimistic on the amount of highways that can be constructed with a total of $920 million in the rugged terrain found not only in West Virginia, but in the other areas of Appalachia, and being somewhat naive in promoting vocational training for jobs that do not exist, appears to be a well-rounded, longtime program that, in 10, 20, or 30 years, would be highly beneficial to the entire Appalachian area. It will open up areas now isolated by providing access roads; it will provide for greater utilization of natural resources, raise the health standards, and promote tourist trade. On the basis of H.R. 11065 being the initial step in a long-range program to rehabilitate Appalachia, I strongly urge its enactment into law with full confidence that the coming years will prove it to be a wise move. At the same time that I recommend enactment of the bill, I realize that it will have little or no impact for several years on the conditions now existing in the depressed areas of Appalachia. The bill provides Federal and State matching funds in the amount of $920 million for the construction of highways. Such work is highly mechanized and past experience has shown that the few jobs that exist are usually filled by man on the regular payroll of the road contractor, and they are usually nonresident of the State or area in which the job is located. Sewer projects are also highly mechanized and employ few people. The other activities mentioned in the bill will require a very small working force and my conclusion is that the entire program will have a very slight impact upon the unemployment problem, which is the major factor in causing the depressed situation existing in the Appalachian area. The people of Appalachia need work today, not a promise of good times in 10, 20, or 30 years. They want the opportunity to earn their living, and not be the recipients of charity and surplus commodities. They want to feed, clothe, and educate their children and have them develop into responsible citizens and not into social misfits. It is unfortunate that West Virginia, as well as many other counties listed in the bill as being depressed areas, has depended too much on a single industry, the mining of coal and the welfare of that area has always been very sensitive to the economic climate of the coal industry. In the early part of the preceding decade the coal industry was subjected to severe competition by the importation of residual oil, a waste product of refineries in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other places. To meet this competition, it became necessary for the industry to expedite the mechanization of the mines. Mechanization was already underway, as it is in every industry, and eventually would have come anyway; however, the urgent need to remain competitive forced the coal industry to do, in a very few years, what the other industries of this country have taken a lifetime to do. In 1955 the industry still not being able to compete with imported residual oil, a waste product that could be sold for the freight cost, began seeking new markets in Europe. Coal could be mined in this country, shipped to Europe, and sold at several dollars per ton less than it could be mined in European mines. The effect of this export program can very easily be seen by referring to the report of the West Virginia State Department of Mines which shows production as follows: In 1957 the export program was brought to an abrupt halt by Western European countries either placing a large import duty on American coal or establishing a license requirement with licenses being very difficult to obtain. In the meantime, these countries continued to export automobiles, steel, glass, textiles, chemicals, and what-have-you, into this country, thereby forcing curtailment of those industries in this country and in turn causing further loss of coal markets. Mechanization of the mining industry was speeded up, and today the coal industry and the railroads working together have made great progress in meeting the competition of residual oil and other competing fuels. In the meantime, however, mine employment in West Virginia has dropped from 119,500 men in 1950 to 33,532 in March 1964. Waste residual oil is still being shipped into this country in amounts equivalent to 56 million tons of coal each year, and most of the coal displaced came from the Appalachian area in the counties and States listed in H.R. 11065 as being depressed areas. Since it requires the yearly employment of approximately 400 miners and 200 railroad employees for every million tons of coal produced, it can easily be seen that over 33 thousand men could be employed in Appalachia by abolition of the residual oil import program. With thousands of men returned to gainful employment, and the enactment of H.R. 11065, immediate relief could be given to the unemployment situation in Appalachia and the long-range program proposed in H.R. 11065 should return the Appalachia area to a condition of comparative prosperity at an earlier date and at a much lower cost to this Nation, both in terms of finance and in the alleviation of human misery. In closing, I wish to express my appreciation of being enabled to present my views on this matter, to recommend enactment of H.R. 11065, and to express the hope that the Committee on Public Works will use their great influence in providing some early relief in the form of jobs to the large numbers of unemployed people in the Appalachian area. Yours very truly, R. O. LEWIS, Vice President. Hon. CLIFFORD DAVIS, Chairman, Special Subcommittee on Appalachia, House Committee on Public Works, New House Office Building, Washington, D.C. BECKLEY, W.Va., May 26, 1964. DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: As the nominee of the Democratic Party for Governor of the State of West Virginia, I am pleased to indicate my support of the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1964, H.R. 11065. Prior to my campaign for the gubernatorial nomination, I served as commissioner of the Department of Commerce of West Virginia from the time of the creation of this department in 1961. I attended the meetings of the Conference of Appalachian Governors and their supporting staffs and was present when the President's Appalachian Regional Commission was created by President Kennedy at the White House in 1963. I believe, therefore, that I am well acquainted with the problems of the Appalachian region and the need for attacking these problems through a joint Federal-State regional approach. The proposed legislation, if enacted, will go a long way toward solving these problems through the implementation of the regional approach by bringing some of the most critically needed programs into being. This bill certainly will not solve all of the problems of Appalachia. It must be supplemented with other legislation dealing with the vital needs of preserving and developing our human resources. Appropriate consideration should be given to the problem of making some determination of manner in which the developmental highway system is to be built. This is legislation which I can support, and I want to assure you that if it is enacted into law, and should I be elected as the next Governor of West Virginia, our State will implement the provisions of the act expeditiously and with all the vigor and energy at our command. Sincerely, HULETT C. SMITH. Hon. CLIFFORD DAVIS, GOVERNOR'S COMMITTEE ON WOOD UTILIZATION, Chairman, Special Subcommittee on Appalachia, House Committee on Public Works, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. MY DEAR MR. DAVIES: The West Virginia Governor's Committee on Wood Utilization is deeply interested and concerned with the timber and highway recommendations outlined in the President's Appalachian Regional Commission report and the implementing legislation (H.R. 11065) now before your subcommittee. These have been carefully examined by our committee in their relationship to present economic conditions and the need for stimulating immediate and longtime employment opportunities through programs that are basically sound and provide for continuity in an orderly manner. West Virginia is a forest State and, as such, has an abundance of hardwood timber. The net annual growth exceeds 1 billion board feet, while the annual cut totals about 434 million board feet. This means that timber is growing approximately 21⁄2 times as rapidly as it is being cut. In this connection, it is important to note that 80 percent of the better quality lumber is being shipped to other States where it is manufactured into consumer goods. And, further, land use studies show that of the State's 15 million acres, more than 10 million acres are in commercial forest lands. The Governor's Committee on Wood Utilization was appointed by the Honorable W. W. Barron 3 years ago to stimulate interest and initiate an aggressive wood utilization and timber management program for West Virginia. Its 36 members represent all of the major primary and secondary wood-using industries, State and Federal forest management and research agencies, banking interests, public and private development organizations, and woodland owners. The committee has been highly successful in helping to create a favorable climate that has resulted in the establishment of numerous wood-using industries and the expansion of existing enterprises. Through the committee's efforts, including those of the forest industries, certain problems and needs became apparent. Most important of these are technical assistance to woodland owners and wood products enterprises, increased research in new uses of wood and the utilization of poor quality timber and species not presently utilized. The distribution and merchandising of forest products, access roads in timbered areas and improved highways, and the protection of forest lands from fire and disease are additional areas requiring research and implementation. The answers to these needs are important and will provide the basis for a permanent forest economy in West Virginia. Basic research, technical assistance, and highway construction is traditionally a function of government. However, in recent years, the forest industries have played an ever-increasing role in these areas as a means to further enhance their operations. It is the judgment of the committee that an environment must be created and maintained In the € to severe ( fineries in it became 1 Mechaniza would have the coal in country hav In 1955 1 oil, a waste markets in sold at seve The effec report of th as follows: Year 1954 1955. 1956. 1957. 1958 In 1957 t European c establishing In the mean textiles, che tailment of i coal markets Mechaniza industry and meeting the In the me from 119,500 Waste resi to 56 million the Appalach depressed are Since it re railroad emp that over 33 residual oil in With thous H.R. 11065, i Appalachia a Appalachia a and at a muc alleviation of In closing, views on this hope that the viding some e people in the Yours v Hon. CLIFFORT Chairman, Sp House Commii New House Of Washington, 1 DEAR MR. C of the State c palachian Reg Prior to m missioner of i |