That difference in funds available for State use might make it possible for Vermont to take care of herself. Even so, there are still other States with low incom.es, with high percentages of school-age children in relation to the adult population, with dual systems of schools, and with predominantly rural distribution of the population which would need help. This point cannot be called in question, if we are going to raise the national educational level.

We could, of course, ignore the States whose educational burdens cannot be borne without Federal aid and thereby create a pool of human beings unfit by mental and physical standards to defend the Nation in time of crisis. That policy would be as short-sighted as it would be inhuman and unworthy of a United States. It would be, as it is now, a fallacious economic policy. The consuming power of any group of people depends on earning power. The power to earn depends on the level of education, cultural wants, and the skills of the people. Our national welfare at home and our security with the rest of the world depend on equality of educational opportunity. It is not inconceivable that a time might come when the safety of the Nation would depend on several millions of men who would have to be rejected by reason of physical and mental disabilities. A few millions spent by the Federal Government, year by year as might be needed, would be cheap national insurance as well as a source of satisfaction in the common welfare.

The American Association of Junior Colleges believes that it would be a sound policy for each State to finance its own educational program, if it were possible. We are aware of the fact that all States could do a great deal more than they are doing now. Even with added resources for education there are some States which could not reach satisfactory standards. Federal aid, therefore, should be granted on a basis that will insure the gradual upgrading of education at all levels in all States receiving such assistance.

The association further believes that some kind of national scholarships should become available for high-school graduates of unusual ability who lack the means for securing further training and education. It would be money well spent in the general welfare and for national defense. During national emergencies and following World War II, such scholarships have been provided to the lasting benefit of the Nation. In the light of national needs there are just as many reasons to provide these scholarships in times of peace as in times of war.

Senator AIKEN. The next witness is Mr. Cowles and Mr. Elmer Rogers, either one or both of them. Will you come forward, please? You have submitted a rather voluminous brief. I understand you have a summary to present.

STATEMENT OF ELMER E. ROGERS, AIDE TO THE GRAND COMMANDER, SUPREME COUNCIL, 33d DEGREE, ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE OF FREEMASONRY, U. S. A., S. J., WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. ROGERS. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have left the summary with the secretary of the committee. If it is the pleasure of the chairman I would be glad to read some of the statement of Colonel Cowles.

Senator AIKEN. We are crowded for time this morning, so why not tell us what you think are the high spots of your testimony, and we will insert the complete brief in the record of the hearing?

Mr. ROGERS. I have given that in the brief which I have left with the secretary, and I prefer, if it is the chairman's pleasure, not to talk outside of the particular matters that I have stated, unless questions are asked of us.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I will not read all of this, if it is your pleasureI mean all of what the grand commander states.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Rogers, and give what you think we most ought to have.

Mr. ROGERS. This is the statement of Mr. Cowles, representing as Grand Commander the Supreme Council, Thirty-third Degree,

Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America: Ours is the Mother Supreme Council of the World. Its jurisdiction extends approximately south of the Mason and Dixon line and west of the Mississippi River and all the territorial possessions of the United States. Needless to say that the observations I here make are supported by the weight and opinion of the council-whose membership has always consisted of distinguished businessmen, publishers, generals of the Army, and lawyers, some of whom have served on the bench and in Congress and one in the Cabinet of the President-insofar as they bear upon what it favors and which is published at the end of my statement. What I otherwise state has not been passed upon by the council and though it may accord with the council's opinion, particularly my deductions from its formula, i. e., what it favors, I therefore assume personal responsibility. The same is true of what Mr. Rogers, my assistant, may have to say at this hearing.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am opposed to all Federal aid to education. My remarks are directed at all such pending bills in general and in particular those which contain provisions to aid sectarian schools.

Though I am impressed with the great importance of adequate support for tax-supported free public schools at all times and especially in their present crisis, it is my opinion that they should be maintained at the sole expense of the several States. I favor such for three

reasons:

First. There is no State in the Union which at this time is not more able, financially, to maintain its schools than the Federal Government is to contribute to such maintenance. This is to my mind indisputable when it is considered (1) that there are a few States which are free from debt and have a surplus, and (2) that the total bonded indebtedness of all the States and municipalities is around $14,000,000,000, the municipal debts being $11,886,000,000 in 1945, whereas the bonded obligations of the National Government is close to $262,000,000,000, and in view of the obligations we are about to take upon ourselves to aid a number of such countries as Greece and Turkey our indebtedness is very likely to increase, more especially if we reduce our taxes.

Second. The incomes of practically all the States have materially increased during the past several years, and such incomes have exceeded expenditures. A number of these States have recently increased their appropriations for their schools and others are considering doing so.

Third. Federal aid tends to place the control of the public schools under the Federal Government.

Many of the pending bills, including S. 199 and S. 472, contain provisions to aid nonpublic schools tax-exempt. I am especially opposed to appropriating tax-raised funds to private schools of any kind whether sectarian or nonsectarian. Two reasons occur to me for opposing such appropriations. They are closely related. The first is that such schools would become stronger and stronger competitors of our American tax-supported free public schools, a competition which would ultimately destroy their great function as the nursery of our democratic and republican principles of government. This function on their respective levels is to educate all the children of all the

people irrespective of race, religion, social status, or their personal financial conditions. This great and highly important homogenizing agency of some 50 races and nationalities would fade out of existence in proportion as the nonpublic schools would come into the ascendancy through their support from tax-raised funds.

Very bluntly and quite positively I assert as my second reason for opposing aid to sectarian schools, that the history of the world shows conclusively that such schools, supported from tax-raised funds, are administered at cross purposes to the principles of the first amendment and to that inherent urge of mankind in its evolutionary movement. I concede that, to many, this assertion is bold in meaning and in its implications but not essentially so to this able committee and to other students acquainted with the history of those countries and civilizations where ecclesiastical schools have been and are now predominant. My remarks are therefore for the record to provoke thought.

The proposals that Federal school funds may be allotted to sectarian and other nonpublic schools has raised a renewed chorus of specious argument and sophistry from the Roman Catholic press for "a share in the tax money they pay for education."

The usual trend of such casuistry is an exaggerated estimate of the alleged savings to taxpayers through parochial schools, and of the amount Catholic taxpayers are contributing to the support of schools which their religious scruples forbid them to patronize. It is not fair, they urge-it is double taxation-and the parochial schools are entitled to a share of what is thus being saved to the taxpayers.

This plausible but spurious argument has in a few States been sufficiently effective to divert some school funds to the sectarian schools, though usually this has required a subterfuge to circumvent constitutional bans against such diversion.

Friends of the public schools maintain that before yielding to such arguments and demands, voters and legislators should give careful consideration to their validity and soundness, and to the sad situation which might result from the acceptance of such a policy.

Taxpayers of the Roman Catholic faith who send their children to church schools are by no means the only ones who are paying school taxes without deriving any direct benefit from the schools. Bachelors and unmarried women, married couples without children, people whose children have passed school age, others who prefer to send their children to private schools--all these might voice the same complaint as do the Roman Catholics, and with as little reason.

The basis for support of the public schools by taxation is not the direct benefit the taxpayer receives from the schools. Rather it is the vital need for an educated citizenry which warrants such use of the taxing power. It is a basic American principle that such a tax is justified, and is fair and equitable, even though the individual taxpayer has no children to educate, or having children, does not choose to send them to the public schools. It is not inequitable to levy such a tax on the bachelor or the childless, nor is it double taxation when levied on the person who chooses to educate his children outside the public schools.

The savings to taxpayers through the parochial schools have been greatly exaggerated. In several communities, careful and accurate surveys have shown that the public school system could take over the education of the parochial school children with surprisingly little

additional expense. But even should the additional costs claimed by the Catholics be found real, the taxpayer of that faith would still be obliged to pay his share of the increased expense, and his net savings would be little or nothing.

What is fair for one is fair for all. If the Roman Catholic parent is entitled to a distributive share in the public school funds, so is every other parent who chooses to educate his child outside the public school system. There are numerous private schools throughout the country, many of them very expensive, and patronized by people who pay high taxes. On the principle of giving each a "fair share," it is alleged that these persons should be entitled to a much larger portion of tax money than the patron of the low-cost parochial school. But there is yet to be heard any demand from them for reimbursement from public funds, or claim that they are doubly taxed.

Coming still more directly to the point, the predominant nonpublic schools of a sectarian character in the United States are administrated by the Roman Catholic Church. The Lutheran Church maintains some sectarian schools, and the St. Louis Lutheran of February 9, 1947, commented on such schools and the position of the Roman Catholic Church on freedom. The publication stated:

Catholicism in other countries has revealed itself as not in sympathy with those broad freedoms which are the foundation of our democracy. Should our Government be placed in the false position of aiding a religious system which has revealed itself through the centuries as a feudal institution, with a self-enclosed ruling class, not answering to the laity of the church, and as a system of irresponsible power which, wherever it gains dominance, asserts it over minority religions and groups? What is a parochial school? It is an instrument by which a religious body establishes, confirms, and propagates its religious beliefs. It is not the primary purpose of a church school to serve the public good, but to serve its own purposes; that is, the perpetuation of its own beliefs, religious, social, scientific, economic; for it is no longer a religious education principle that geography or mathematics may be divorced from religion. All subjects taught in a parochial school are properly religious teaching.

If Federal aid were to be appropriated to parochial schools that serve as instruments for the establishment and propagation of religious beliefs, the state would be aiding in the establishment of religion. As not all religious bodies maintain parochial schools, Federal aid would be extended not equally to all religious bodies, but to a few religions which maintain parochial schools. This would introduce into American life the preferment of one religion above another, the very thing that the first amendment seeks to avoid. What if other Protestant Churches not now operating parochial schools * should resolve to open parochial schools in order to qualify for Federal aid? Is it not apparent that the Federal Government would involve itself in endless dispute, which in the end would force it to exercise authority by limiting the establishment of parochial schools?

* * *

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May the Federal Government involve itself in a situation in which it can be accused of undermining the status of the public school? American public schools are free schools; and the Federal Government, if it is to aid education at all, is to aid the public schools to the full extent of the taxpayer's dollar in order that democratic principles may survive. Parochial schools are * * special-interest schools. The state is called upon to provide free education, for one of its chief obligations is to remove illiteracy. Why should a Lutheran taxpayer's dollar go to support the Catholic religion, and a Catholic taxpayer's dollar go to support the Lutheran religion?

*

In discussing this question the Protestant Voice, of Fort Wayne, Ind., in its issue of November 22, 1946, stated:

Any demand for state money in support of Roman Catholic parochial schools is a demand that Protestants help pay for teaching children that Protestants are infidels.

To such a demand here is a test question: Are you willing that Protestants shall help supervise your schools if they help pay for them?

Will you eliminate from these parochial schools all teaching that Protestants, whose money you seek, are guilty of heresy?

Will you eliminate all attacks on the public schools and all denunciation of religious liberty and democratic government, from whatever source they come, including the Pope of Rome?

The question answers itself.

This agitation is a demand that we be forced to pay to help blacken our own names, undermine our democratic government, and destroy that freedom of conscience on which America was built.

Further in this connection I wish to emphasize the fact that much matter is being sent to me from all over the country which shows conclusively that great effort is being made to break down the tax-supported free public school systems by certain ecclesiastical interests, and gain control through State and Federal aid. Permit me to cite one graphic bit of evidence of this activity. The Institute of Educational Research of the Fordham University, a Jesuit school of New York, disclosed in its Bulletin No. 1 of 1936 that direct appropriations of public money to the Roman Catholic schools would be legal in more than half of the States of the Union and a similar result might be obtained in most of the other States by a simple subterfuge.

The last phrase by a simple subterfuge reminds me of a famous expression of Edmond Burke concerning an infamous act when he said:

By a miserable subterfuge they hope to render this proposition safe by rendering it nugatory.

I may add that Webster's Dictionary uses this remark to illustrate the meaning of "subterfuge."

Gentlemen of this committee, I and members of the supreme council who are lawyers have given much thought to the provisions of the various State constitutions against giving aid to sectarian schools and I am of the opinion that the bulletin above quoted is overconfident in getting its hands on public funds despite the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the now famous New Jersey school bus case.

An old phrase was applied to the effect of this celebrated case on State and Federal aid to sectarian schools by a commentator who said that "Liberty had lost a battle but had won a war against those forces which would destroy the first amendment." The interpretation by some is that the people will see in the decision reasons to become aroused as they did in the Dred Scott decision of 1857: and by others that the Supreme Court (and by implication those four justices dissenting) so defined the first amendment that States may go no further than providing a safety program where parochial school pupils are concerned; that is, that no appropriations may be made to sectarian schools in money or things nor to the pupils in the way of books as is being done in Louisiana.

Whether or not other Supreme Court decisions will sustain this view, it is my judgment that if either S. 199 or S. 472 is favorably reported the one so reported should, in the spirit of the first amendment, specifically provide that the funds appropriated therein be allocated only to the use of tax-supported free public schools. To this end I respectfully suggest the following amendments to each of the bills, for the consideration of the committee. In S. 199 strike all matter pertaining to nonpublic tax-exempt schools.