mittee is one of the chief cosponsors of this legislation. He might show cooperation in doing some things in his committee to complement this subcommittee's role.

It is tremendously difficult, however, in the present situation to get one piece of legislation put together that involves several different committees.

Mr. BLUESTONE. There is an aspect in the bill under the purview of this subcommittee that has to do with not capital but local power. This would not involve other committees. The councils are a very important part of the bill. But the necessity of protecting those councils from the central planners is not explicitly recognized in the bill. The experiment we are planning is such that the tensions between the community organizations that are planning local economic activity and the central planners in Washington, who would have much greater power than now exists in the United States in nonelected appointed officials of the Federal Government, the kind of warfare in the model cities programs, all of this would be evident in a program like this. Here there is much more to fight about.

So long as ultimately the Office of Management and Budget for example has control over the capital that goes to a neighborhood organization to fund its jobs program, to that extent there is going to be tension and conflict between that neighborhood organization and some anonymous bureaucrat in Washington.

We have got to find ways of dealing with that by writing those rights into legislation, defining what the protections are. For example, that they not be given the power to reject a local plan once they had shown that they earned the right to participate in the system. Once that had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of a Federal authority, the local wouldn't have to go to "Big Brother" for permission to do a health clinic. The choice of what to do with the capital should be in the hands of the local organization. That could be written into the bill. That is one example of the kind of thing.

Mr. HAWKINS. Mr. Benitez.

Mr. BENITEZ. I am thankful to the participants. I hope they bring their positions back home, where to a very large extent it belongs, at the universities. The very nature of the issues you have raised is underscored by your interest and your very valuable identification of the difficulties, how much educational work has to be done at the level of economics of government if we are to successfully restructure our governments and laws to make them compatible with the present mismatching between potential and reality.

Earlier the observation was made that this is primarily an ethical bill and not an economic bill. My question is, isn't it a basic fact that historically the meaningful economics have had an ethical underpinning and been essentially guided by a goal, a commitment? Is that why you are nodding your head?

Mr. HAWKINS. Let the record indicate that.

Mr. BENITEZ. It is a matter of setting a basic priority in the economy and therefore what we are doing fundamentally is an invitation to people responsible for economic thinking and administrative conceptualization to help the Congress and help the Nation to work out a basic solution.

Mr. THUROW. That is right. The bill is very important for stating the need for full employment. It is interesting how we take a word like full employment and gradually change its definition over time. Full employment at the time of the Full Employment Act of 1946 meant that everybody was working except people who were voluntarily changing jobs. But the President implies that full employment is 5.5 percent. Fortune magazine talks about 6 percent being full employment, and the administration suggests that 7 percent may be full employment.

It seems it is very important at this time to essentially redefine this priority, that a job comes before other things. It is irrelevant whether you call it a moral bill or an economic bill. I just think it is very important.

Mr. BENITEZ. A second thing. I think the emphasis of the three participants has been on productivity and on the employment potentials of industrial production. I would think a great deal of imagination could be used and ought to be used in developing an aspect of employment which is very meaningful, which is service employment. You were speaking of health. That is a service. Perhaps again the imagination of the universities can be addressed to the identification of zones of activity and services which are missing now and which would make our lives fuller and richer.

Mr. HARRISON. I would make one comment about the question of ethics and economies. You get jobs by producing goods and services. You produce goods and services with capital. I don't like who owns capital in the United States. I want legislation to put capital into the hands of different people to do different kinds of things.

Mr. BENITEZ. One of the suggestions the distinguished Governor made earlier in his testimony this morning was the basic assumption by the Federal Government in allowing the implementation of subsequent planning levels.

Mr. HAWKINS. I wish to thank Professors Thurow, Bluestone, and Harrison for their very effective testimony. We hope in the future to call on you for your services which would be very helpful to the subcommittee. Thank you very much.

[Applause.]

Mr. HAWKINS. The next panel consists of Father Thomas Corrigan, Carmen Pola, Carlos Lopez, and Mr. Chuck Turner.

Would those witnesses please be seated at the table? We are very pleased to have you before this subcommittee today.

Father Corrigan, would you lead off as the first witness?

STATEMENT OF FATHER THOMAS CORRIGAN, MOST HOLY
REDEEMER PARISH, EAST BOSTON

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

I am Father Thomas Corrigan. I live at 65 London Street in East Boston. Since my ordination as a priest nearly 11 years ago I have had the opportunity to serve in several parishes in the neighborhoods of Boston as an associate director of Catholic charities in Boston with responsibility for developing an overview of current social needs in our city and most recently as a voluntary consultant to Bos

ton Fair Share, a new citywide organization of neighborhood groups concerned about the quality of life available to urban residents, which will be formally launched next week.

I appreciate this opportunity to testify before your committee today to express my enthusiasm for the proposed Equal Opportunity and Full Employment Act, H.R. 50.

I am not a labor expert nor am I an economist. I am a parish priest and a professional social worker who has some experience with the people, the potential and the problems of this city and its neighborhoods. We are a city proud of its heritage, symbolized by this hall and the many historic sites and bicentennial exihibits I hope you will be able to visit while you are here.

We are currently embroiled in a family argument that is serious and divisive. Like many arguments of its kind however the real roots of the dispute are deeper and more complex than the specific issue being discussed and the real instigators remain somewhat aloof from the fray. Yes, there are serious racial problems in Boston. Equal educational opportunity has been denied to many people over the years. The desegregation plan currently being implemented is not the best, is not entirely fair, but it is the best we have and most people, I believe, who understand it are trying to make it work, despite the inconveniences that busing places on the families of all racial and neighborhood backgrounds that are affected. We are slowly and painfully coming to grips with this problem.

We would have dealt with it better and sooner, I think, if it had been put before us in a better local and national economic climate, one that inspired, supported, and encouraged rather than oppressed us.

I have been told of and have read about the Great Depression of the 1930's. That is one kind of knowledge. Lately I have had more direct knowledge of the depression of the 1970's.

Simply put, the pie is getting smaller. People are worried. They are turning in upon themselves and mistrust of one another is building. For us it started in an unlikely location. Along Route 128, the Golden Highway, it was once called where highly sophisticated research and development firms blossomed in the 1950's and 1960's and were suddenly shut down by an administration petulantly explaining that without a war to fight or an elaborate and wasteful space ride to go on, this Nation didn't need some of its finest and most creative minds.

It has spread from there to blue collar and working class families and urban and suburban neighborhoods, who watch sadly while the bankers and insurance people tighten the reins on construction and rehabilitation money. And it has increased in the already depressed urban and rural low-income communities, where services and supports disappear first and crime and deterioration spread quickly. Some call this rhetoric. But some of us know it is real because we see it every day and we are worried.

We have to find a solution. I think work is that solution. We must put people to work. What kind of encouragement and example can middle aged people give their adolescent youngsters when they themselves are economically and psychologically depressed because they are out of work or are being laid off for longer and longer periods each season? Who will pay the medical bills, the insurance, the sales taxes, just raised in this Commonwealth and applied to food and clothing?

If you are young, why think seriously about finishing high school or college when you see the seniors of last year still seeking work? Why not hang out and drink cheap booze and smoke dope and steal or find blacks or whites or anyone to fight with or vandalize? What other way is there to deal with it when the leadership of our society has been hoarded by a few insensitive folks or perhaps abdicated altogether as it seems to have been in the last two administrations. Why govern seriously when there are world tours to take and campaigns to run? This country is at its best when it is dreaming, creating and building useful things, when it is at work. That is when our spirit comes alive. That is when people feel they are getting their fair share. That is when the great American achievements, born of the melting pot that is America, are made.

We are not a people who like to be controlled. We are not folks who like to be dependent on welfare. But like all God's children we need to have shelter, to eat, to be healthy, to be clothed and live in an environment where we can grow physically, culturally, spiritually. A free nation owes these opportunities to its people and when the resources grow scarce as they are now; then its leadership must act to see those opportunities are equitably distributed.

We must go back to work. We must stop the hoarding of our national resources by a wealth minority who control the corporations. And when we go back to work it should not be to the work of building weapons to oppress other nations, nor to work that is beneath the dignity of our men and women. We must open public and private job opportunities that will give us a cleaner, safer, healthier, more responsible and creative society, that will help us atone for some of the injustices we have done to the poor and the minority group members of our society and others throughout the world, that will help us discover new sources of energy that we need to survive beyond the next generation or two.

Clean air, clean streets, decent housing, mass transit, quality education for all our people, adequate health care, and a safe environment are goals that can mean jobs at all levels of our culture if we are serious about achieving them. I believe H.R. 50 is an imaginative, helpful beginning toward that end.

On final word. Many have ridiculed the social programs of the 1960's as failures. They were social experiments. But that was not a bad idea. They failed because Nixon and Ford wanted them to fail. They didn't solve all the problems but they helped. Mechanisms were created that could be very helpful in the implementation of H.R. 50. People in our neighborhoods learned how to form community corporations, how to set up job banks and training centers that can be revived should H.R. 50 become a reality. I hope you will consider this. America needs to discover its hope again. I hope the Congress will lead us. Put us to work and we shall find it.

Thank you.

[Applause.]

Mr. HAWKINS. Thank you, Father Corrigan.
The next Witness is Carmen Pola.

STATEMENT OF CARMEN POLA, BORICUA HEALTH ORGANIZATION

Ms. POLA. I came here this morning not as a person with specialized economics. I am concerned about this bill because of the relations with the Spanish community of Boston, I feel it is very important that this bill get approved and not just approved but implemented the way it should be.

I would like you to hear from my counterpart here. Carlos Lopez, who is more informed and better prepared to express our feelings of why we feel this bill is so important.

Mr. HAWKINS. All right. Mr. Lopez.

STATEMENT OF CARLOS LOPEZ, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE MAYOR OF BOSTON

Mr. LOPEZ. Thank you very much for this opportunity, Mr. Hawkins. We are here to raise the issues of Hispanic concerns in relation to the equal employment legislation which we are here in support of. We believe this bill should address the needs of the Spanish community as well as other poor and oppressed groups in Boston.

A 1972 study by the Massachusetts Advisory Committee for the Restoration of Civil Rights states that one in five poor people in Boston are Hispanic. This means that 20 percent of Boston's poor are Hispanic whereas they only comprise 8 percent of the total population in the city.

The Hispanic is by far the fastest-growing sector of the Boston population. This is a migrant group while the rest of the population has roots. One of our local service agencies found that 61 percent-or 64 percent, excuse me of the respondents had moved here since 1968. Every year the Hispanic population increases by 10 to 15 percent or approximately 5,000 people.

Twenty percent of Boston's poor only make up 8 percent of the population. We find that the Puerto Rican community is at the bottom of socio-economic indicators. English is not the native language. There is the problem of poor housing with exorbitant rents. A growing num ber of young Puerto Rican men are leaving and coming to the urban centers like Boston.

Sixty-one percent have only 8 years of education and only onequarter had graduated from high school; 62 percent are illiterate, according to a 1972 survey. This is one of the most critical problems facing the migrant Puerto Rican, the lack of education. The language barrier shuts off many channels of learning, psychologically, and emotionally. Many have settled in urban areas where employment was thought to be greater. About one Mexican family in four lives in nonurban areas but only one family out of 20 among Puerto Ricans live in nonurban areas.

The unemployment rate for this minority in Boston is double that of any other group. Puerto Rican workers come here without skills. Or they canot get jobs because of insufficient education, lack of a socalled "connection" and racial discrimination.

Thirty-four percent of their households are headed by women, which compares with a national average of 1 in 8.