classroom capacity. The States reported that in September 1958, we needed 65,300 classrooms just to house the overflow, and an additional 75,200 classrooms to replace facilities which are obsolete or otherwise unsatisfactory.

Thus, for this school year we needed at least 140,500 additional instruction rooms.

The year before, 1956-57, it became necessary to abandon 15,700 rooms. During 1957-58 we had to abandon 17,300. New construction has not solved the problem and even that may slacken without aid.

As Secretary Arthur Flemming said to this subcommittee on February 17, it is not certain that new construction will continue at its present rate.

But statistics tell only a part of the story. The balance of the story rests with the children who spend their time in the schools and receive a mediocre education as preparation for a world that demands the highest accomplishment. The national need is clear. As Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration noted recently:

We have been handicapped not by lack of talent, but rather from our failure to develop what talent we have. We must select the best brains and push them harder.

The problem is that an inadequately staffed school system, operating on a grossly inadequate budget and poorly housed, cannot even properly identify, much less encourage, our brighter children.

In view of the acute shortage of classrooms over the Nation, we urge speedy enactment of the proposed School Support Act of 1959 and its section 5 provision for grants to the States for school construction. We note with approval that the funds will be granted to give priority to the school districts with the gravest need and which are least able to finance their needed additions.

We are particularly gratified that section 9 insures that expenditures under the proposed act will not be used to lower labor standards in construction, but, that on the contrary, provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act will apply to insure that prevailing wage rates will be observed.

I note, however, that these provisions do not insure time and onehalf for overtime for all hours worked in excess of 8 a day or 40 a week, and I would like to suggest that the policies of the 8-hour law and the Fair Labor Standards Act would be more fully carried out if the bill should incorporate these overtime requirements.

The proposed authorized appropriations of $25 per school age child for 1959, $50 per school age child for 1960, a $75 per school age child for 1961, and $100 per school age child for 1962 and each year thereafter are quite reasonable in view of the paramount needs met by the bill and the critical urgency of those needs. We in the AFL-CIO believe we can afford to educate our children properly. It is unthinkable that anyone would seriously deny the need at this late date. We hold that America can afford all that it needs.

When the proposed school construction and teachers' salary grants have every justification in their own right, it is also true that they will make important contributions to putting America back to work. February's 4.7 million unemployed continued without change the January figure. This demonstrates graphically that the recession is still very much with us. This figure is 12 million more jobless than 2 years before.

At their level of income, teachers can be expected to spend promptly virtually all of any salary increase, thus stimulating business activity. The construction provisions of the proposed act would serve as an important stimulus to those industries producing and processing building materials, as well as to the construction industry itself.

May I add that, despite strong indications of recovery in the construction industry, we are experiencing serious pockets of unemployment across the country. Our men are very frequently out of work in the very communities where manufacturing has been hardest hit. This bill will unquestionably help straighten out this serious situation.

TEACHERS' SALARIES

Contrary to the practice under the Soviet dictatorship, we in the United States pay our teachers factory workers' wages. Yet we entrust them with the future of our most precious possessions—our children, who are also our Nation's most valuable inheritance. All this must be changed, if we are going to give our boys and girls the education they deserve and our Nation so desperately needs to have. We must return the teacher to the position of dignity in the community which will attract brains and ability to the classroom.

The first step in this direction is to pay our teachers a fair salary. Let's see what the problem is:

At the beginning of the 1957-58 school year, according to the U.S. Office of Education, we had 91,200 full-time teachers in our schools on an emergency basis, as the holders of substandard certificates. Since then the situation has changed-for the worse. When the current 1958-59 school year began, 5 months ago, we had 92,337 teachers with inadequate preparation,

It will be suggested by some that, since this is only somewhat over 7 percent of the teachers in the public schools, it is of little consequence. But these statistics will not comfort the little girl or boy whose future will be shaped by education received from a person holding less than standard credentials. These 92,337 people with substandard certificates are the teachers of hundreds of thousands of children in thousands of classrooms across our land.

Of these unqualified teachers, 24,181 teach in the secondary schools, providing what will be the terminal education for most of the students, while 68,156 are in the elementary schools, charged with laying the groundwork for all of the future education of the children committed to their care.

The increase in the number of the emergency certificate holders in the past year has come in the secondary schools where students are formally introduced to the sciences and the humanities.

The figures speak with crystal clarity as to why more qualified young people are ont attracted to teaching. The average teacher's salary in the United States, for the year 1957-58, was only $4,520. For the school year 1956-57, the median salary of all beginning teachers was $3,600.

Accordingly, we are entrusting the education of our children-the future of America-to people whom we pay a marginal wage.

These underpaid teachers are this year instructing 1,948,000 more children than they did during the last academic year. That brings the total enrollment in the public schools up to almost 34 million, an

increase of 3.5 percent over the 1957-58 school year. Inevitably, the question arises as to whether we are exploiting our teachers or our children, or both.

Less than 15 percent of the men between 35 to 54 years of age in the United States who have completed college earn as little as $4,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1956. This indicates how far below average our teachers incomes are.

The truth is that our teachers do not earn a living wage. The U.S. Department of Labor's 1951 City Workers' Family Budget, updated as to prices and taxes to 1958, shows that a worker and his wife, with two children, require at least $4,656 per year for a "modest but adequate" standard of living. Thus the teacher's average annual salary of $4,520 leaves him with only a subsistence wage level. He is not even meeting the minimum $90 per week required each week of the year. The way he most often makes ends meet is to spend the summer and holidays working in some routine job instead of using this period to improve his worth as an educator.

Under these conditions, as Secretary Flemming admitted to you gentlemen on February 17, we cannot hope to attract first-rate men and women into the teaching profession.

Here again I want to give you some picture of the Milwaukee situation. Present conditions under the present budget are far from satisfactory. We have one salary schedule for all elementary and secondary school teachers. The starting rate for an inexperienced teacher with a college degree is $4,200. With a lot of added study and summer work and degrees and 12 or 13 years of experience, a Milwaukee school teacher may reach the highest salary of $7,500.

This salary range, pitifully inadequate as it is, was adopted in Milwaukee only for the purpose of keeping our city in a strong competitive position with the other cities in the country which are bidding against us for professional staff. It is already out of date today, in terms of the major cities. But it still goes to show the low level of teachers' salaries throughout the country.

Teachers' salaries and operating expenses present Milwaukee with almost insuperable problems. This year we are operating on a $33 million budget. Under present high enrollments this is totally inadequate but to spend any more would force us to operate at a deficit.

Right now our school board is asking for an increase in the taxing authority in order to:

1. Increase salaries modestly to keep Milwaukee in a competitive position with other cities.

2. Attain a slightly better pupil teacher ratio in the classroom. 3. Expand various services.

If this goes through we will be able gradually to make the urgently needed increase in our expenditures from $33 million this year to $47 million in 1963.

But even this very substantial increase could never possibly meet desirable standards for teachers' training and salaries, and it is my judgment that even with all possible local and State financingwhich I assure you we in Wisconsin will use first before we seek Federal aid-we would never be able to give teachers the type of pay which would attract to teaching the type of talent we want.

It is for these reasons that the AFL-CIO heartily endorses the provision of section 6 of the School Support Act of 1959 for grants to the States to be used for teachers' salaries. This is a vitally important step forward in discharge of the National Government's obligation in respect to this national problem.

We approve the necessary safeguard of section 8 that the Federal grants not be used as an excuse to reduce the States school effort or as a substitute for the States essential effort.

In sum, then, the American labor movement urges passage of S. 2, the proposed School Support Act. While it will not meet all of our needs in education, it is a long step forward.

THE CENTRAL ISSUE

As in the past there are those who will oppose all Federal aid to education on the grounds that it is a departure from past policy, that it implies Federal control of education and that, since tax money must ultimately pay for any expenditure for education, it might as well be through the taxing power of local government. Unfortunately these old bromides will influence some who do not take time to analyze them.

The support of education by the National Government is, of course, not an innovation of the 1950's.

National aid to education is older than the Constitution, itself, as evidenced by the Northwest Ordinance of 1785. It has been nearly a century now since the land-grant college program was initiated, and major Federal participation in strengthening education has continued down through the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

There is no merit to the claim that Federal aid means Federal control. A century of Federal land-grant aid shows a record of continuing local control. No major national organization or group in America, and no group in the Congress, favors Federal control, hence this is not a valid issue. Most organizations in the United States, like the AFL-CIO, insist on continuing local control of education. The proposed School Support Act of 1954, of course, specifically-and properly provides statutory safeguards for local control.

The suggestions that the States or localities can solve the pressing needs themselves is given the lie by the realities; they have not been able to do so. The truth, although they may be making a proportionately greater effort, is that some States and districts simply do not have available to them the tax source necessary to raise the funds required. Figures for the 1956-57 school year show that of our total, national school budget almost two-thirds comes from the local governments, about one-third from the States, and only about 4 percent from the specialized Federal grants.

Thus it is clear that the localities are carrying the burden.

Unfortunately those with the greatest need due to lack of tax sources are already making the greatest effort, in many instances having been such that school debt has reached its legal maximum. Overall local and State debt has gone up 182 percent since 1948, while the Federal debt has increased 10 percent.

Accordingly it seems clear that, despite a heroic effort, many school districts find it impossible to carry the burden without substantial Federal assistance. While Federal responsibility is expressed through

payment of only about 4 percent of our overall school budget, the Federal share of highway construction is 3 times that amount-12 percent and that in public welfare over 11 times-46 percent-that percentage. Yet, if anything, the Federal responsibility is even greater in education than in these other fields.

As noted before, this is a national problem of all Americans everywhere, and it must be met on that basis.

We have a saying in the trade unions which fits this situation. An injury to one is an injury to all.

It has been suggested from one important quarter that those asking Federal action should be ready to pay the bill. First it should be clear that the working people are more than willing to pay their fair share of the taxes. However, we are not faced with the need for great, across-the-board tax increases to pay for Federal aid to education. We could collect all that is proposed to be spent on education and more by a few simple steps. Among these might be repeal of the special tax relief granted dividend income by the Revenue Act of 1954. And we might require withholding taxes on the payment of dividends and interest.

In addition, we could repeal excess depletion allowances and remove from such tax privilege many of the metals and minerals now covered. Another step would be to tighten the capital gains tax structure by lengthening the holding period of long-range gains and increasing considerably the 25-percent tax rate. Congress might remove from capital gains treatment the many types of income not originally included. Thus there are ample means of raising the money for education.

The opposition to Federal aid seems to a very large degree to be based on the contract between State and Federal taxing methods, a contrast between the progressive tax system of the Federal Government and the less equitable, regressive tax systems of most of the States.

The so-called taxpayers' groups, of course, favor the latter system as it makes them less "taxpayers." And I believe you will find that the real motive of many who raise the cry of Federal control or invasion of local rights is to avoid the burden of supporting an effective educational system.

The trade unionists in America question seriously whether there is really any cost at all in providing better schoolteachers and safer school buildings. We see this, rather, as an investment in children. In this the working men and women of America are more than willing to pay their fair share of the attendant taxes.

Section 2 of the proposed act makes a central point to which wẹ would like to call your particular attention. It is that States and localities do not now, in fact, control their school systems. Control implies direction, choice as to courses of action. The States and school districts do not have this choice. Instead, their decisions are governed by the reality of poverty-the harsh demands of privation. Accordingly, S. 2 would have the effect of returning control to the local authorities, far more than it would imply any conceivable threat to whatever local control they have.

Thus, far from imperiling or diminishing the goal of local control of our schools, this bill would, in fact, put us on the road back to local control and protect that local control by economic reality.