Mr. BAILEY. Dr. Conner, I want to thank you for this forthright and clear-cut statement. None of the witnesses that I have listened to in weeks of hearings has definitely defined the part and the contributions of the local, State, and the Federal Government in solving this problem.

May I say to you that I regret very much that Congressman Wier, a member of this committee, finds himself tied up in some labor legislation across the hall. He at one time for a number of years served on the Minneapolis Board of Education and I am sure you know him. Mr. JOYCE. I know the Congressman well; yes.

Mr. BAILEY. I will offer apologies for his not being present by telling you that he is on the labor subcommittee.

Mr. JOYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Give him my greetings. Mr. BAILEY. I shall, unless you see him personally, convey to him your best wishes.

Mr. Brademas, do you have any questions?

Mr. BRADEMAS. I would just like to say, Mr. Chairman, that I too was most interested in and pleased by this excellent analysis that Mr. Conner has given us and I was particularly interested in his analysis of the relationship between State, local, and Federal taxes.

It happens that my late grandfather was many years ago a State officer of the Indiana Association of School Superintendents, so that I find myself having more than one reason to be in some sympathy with what you have had to say. I want to thank you very much for being here.

Mr. JOYCE. You have grown up with the problems then, have you not?

Mr. BRADEMAS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you, Dr. Conner. We deeply appreciate your appearance here and we are hopeful we shall be able to get some kind of acceptable school legislation.

Our third and final witness for the morning, to present the viewpoints of organized labor, is Victor G. Reuther, administrative assistant to the president of the United Automobile Workers.

May I say in introducing the next witness that he is a native West Virginian, having been born and reared in the city of Wheeling, W. Va., and we have common cause to try to do something for two of the Nation's greatest assets, our boys and girls. I am going to listen with considerable interest, Mr. Reuther, to what you have to say.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Will the chairman yield?

May I say, Mr. Chairman, because I think Indiana ought to get into this, too, that the organization with which Mr. Reuther is associated, the United Automobile Workers, has a very large membership in my congressional district and that I too was a UAW member when, during college days, I was working on the assembly line at our great Studebaker plant at South Bend.

Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Reuther, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF VICTOR G. REUTHER, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON OFFICE, UNITED AUTOMOBILE WORKERS UNION, ACCOMPANIED BY SAMUEL JACOBS, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE, UAW

Mr. REUTHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your kind personal references and also Congressman Brademas.

I very much appreciate this opportunity to appear before this subcommittee in behalf of a bill. I suppose there is something rather symbolic about holding these hearings in a very small and crowded committee room, something symbolic perhaps because it somewhat reflects the status of the problem we are discussing, too. All across our country the hope of our future is being trained in very crowded classrooms with inadequate facilities and a teaching staff that is overburdened and terribly underpaid, not only in terms of standards that are possible today with the resources of our great country, but in comparison to what other segments of our society receive.

Mr. BAILEY. At this point, if you will permit an interruption, the chairman wants to apologize for the inadequate hearing facilities, but the main Education and Labor Committee room is being occupied by the Subcommittee on Labor, and we were completely unable to find a satisfactory committee room, because right now every one of the standing committees is busy on legislation of their own and their committee rooms are tied up. So we made this makeshift arrangement in order to continue to hold our meeting.

Mr. REUTHER. I am quite aware of that, Mr. Chairman. I meant no criticism of you or your committee or any indication that you were lax in making proper arrangements for these hearings. But I thought there was an interesting parallel, because this is the problem that we face throughout the country.

May I say at this time, Mr. Chairman, that our interest in this problem is not a new-found one. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that if there is one single thing which the trade union movement has been consistently identified with throughout its long history, it has been the deep concern about adequate educational opportunities for our children.

If one will read the history of our country, he will find frequent reference to the fact that the early champions of the right of free public education for our children were found among the spokesmen of the trade union movement. Our support for educational opportunities has been consistent throughout the years, and I say with more sadness than anger that those who were the traditional opponents of advanced educational opportunities, those who thought more of their own vested interests than the future of our children and our Nation, have likewise been consistent down through the years. They remain bitter opponents of expanded educational opportunities for our children, and continually would confine the growth of our Nation and inhibit it in its responsibilities for world leadership.

I have, Mr. Chairman, a very brief prepared statement which, with your permission, I would like to file with your committee as part of the record, and make just a few extemporaneous comments on this, because I would not want to consume the valuable time of your committee in repeating and duplicating the excellent testimony which has just been submitted by the good superintendent, and I would want to support the detailed statistics which he has submitted in support of his statement.

So I do not want to take the time of your committee by duplicating that kind of facts and figures. But let me say that the million and a half people whom I am privileged to represent are painfully aware of the fact that their children are being robbed of their opportunity

for proper growth and proper preparation for the growing responsibilities that will be placed on their shoulders. We can tolerate split shifts in factories when needed, but there is no need today for this Nation of ours, which has the responsibility of world leadership, to crowd our children into the cramped classrooms and put them on split shifts with inadequate instructors.

We believe that there is a note of urgency that reflects itself throughout all of the testimony that has been brought before your committee.

Time is passing. There would be some basis for complacency, I assume, if we could point to the fact that the gap between our needs and the facilities available was being narrowed. But the truth is, in our classroom construction we are not even keeping pace with population growth, with the new entrants into our schools. We are falling behind instead of catching up. We need 340,000 classrooms today. We are building some 65,000 to 68,000 this year, which is less than 75,000 that is required, just to keep pace with the new entrants into schools.

Let me say as one who, from an industry that is confronted today with chronic unemployment-for our members are part of the nearly 5 million out of work in our country-this is the time when America ought to be building the things it needs. We ought to have great classroom construction programs underway. Not that this will mean jobs necessarily for the unemployed automobile workers as such but the carpenters and bricklayers who are employed building schools will require steel from our steel factories and they will require trucks from our automobile plants, and this today would be an important stimulant to getting our economy back on its feet.

am appalled by the real prophets of doom who have so little faith in the capacity of our country to meet the needs of our own childern that they talk as though we do not have the funds and do not have the resources to meet this challenge.

If we had an annual 5-percent growth in our economy, in our gross national product, which is easily attainable-we have already outstripped that in the past and we could set this as a reasonable and easily attainable goal-within a 10-year period this would give us an increase of some $275 billion in gross national output. A very small percentage of this is all that is required to meet this crucial, urgent, immediate educational need.

So the real prophets of doom and gloom, to be truthful and honest, have no faith in themselves, no faith in our own country, and no faith in the new generations that are coming on. We must not face this problem with that kind of defeatism. The resources are there and they should be mobilized for a frontal attack on this crucial problem. Likewise, the prophets of doom and gloom predict that we are opening the door to a Pandora's box of great Federal domination and control of our school system. It is quite obvious that the MurrayMetcalf bill, which we are pleased to support, allows the States to continue to administer the school program.

That is the way it should be and that is proper. But it is also quite obvious that the States do not have the resources required to meet this great problem today. The need for a school-construction program, the need for improvement in teachers' salaries so that larger numbers

and still more competent people can be attracted to the profession is great. And as has been clearly pointed out, the pressures that are mounting today, that are growing up at the State level, mean that the limited resources that are currently available to education are being squeezed and squeezed. Federal help provides the only possibility of supplementing the resources now available to the States, which, incidentally, provide in excess of 90 percent of the total funds which go for educational purposes. The States and local governments are now assuming overwhelmingly the larger proportion of the costs of public education. The only possibility of adding to those resources comes from the Federal level.

Let me call to your attention, particularly yours, Mr. Chairman, since you come from West Virginia-although it was not necessarily out of deference to that fact that I drew a parallel between the States of West Virginia and Michigan-but rather because I was born in the State of West Virginia and later adopted Michigan as my own State. I have presented some figures here which indicate the portion of the Federal tax that would be raised from these two States under a program of Federal aid and what portion of it would flow back again. These figures show that for each billion dollars of tax money that would be raised at the Federal level, some $48 million of the tax moneys would come from the State of Michigan; some $43 million would be returned to the State of Michigan. In contrast with this, the State of West Virginia would have returned to it approximately twice the amount that would be raised within that State as its portion of the Federal tax moneys.

Is it a dangerous thing to suggest that those States that are in greatest need should get the greatest assistance?

Or is it a great patriotic gesture to suggest that we should build walls around our States and set off those born in one State as being less worthy than those born in another?

Are we not all citizens of this great country, no matter what State we are born in. Are we not entitled to the opportunity for growth in line with that capacity which was given us by the good Lord?

What is proposed in the Murray-Metcalf bill is that we recognize education as a national responsibility, and that we help those States in proportion to the number of children they have, regardless of what their own individual contributions might be to the total tax funds.

Let me draw your attention to two tables which are part of my statement and which compare the effect, by income level of tax collections by the Federal Government with collections by the State governments. That is, since we may raise money for schools either way, these tables show who pays the taxes if they are collected by the Federal Government compared with who pays them if they are collected by the States.

Because so many States depend heavily upon sales taxes and on other forms of taxation which lie heaviest upon the low income people, and since the States are already raising in excess of 90 percent of the funds that are used for public education purposes, the Murray-Metcalf bill is attractive to us because it will provide some money for education through Federal taxes which do not rest so heavily on those in the low income brackets.

These tables reveal very clearly that the Federal methods of taxation are not so oppressive against the low income groups as are the traditional schemes of taxation at the State level.

I do not want to bore you with the detailed statistics.

Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, in closing, that there are great changes taking place in our country and in the world. We are on the threshold of what has been described as the second industrial revolution. The impact of automation and the new technology is already being felt in industry. The requirements for new and different skills are mounting daily. It is not within the possibility of industry itself to meet these new technological requirements for higher skills on the part of our work force. We are being challenged in the world by nations that have little regard for human rights but appear to have mastered some of the secrets of the new technology.

If we are to keep pace with these challenges at the world level we have to train our people to be technologically competent.

But of course we do not live by bread alone, either, and we want our children as they grow up to have an appreciation of art and of the finer things of life.

May I say too, as the spokesman of a million and a half people who have learned enough to realize that they want to learn more and are clamoring for opportunities to continue their education as adults, that our union, with its own limited resources, has developed perhaps the largest worker-education program of any labor organization in the world. Sixty thousand people enrolled in classes last year alone, paid for out of our union dues, instructed primarily by people trained out of the shops. This thirst for knowledge is a wholesome force and needs to be encouraged.

But this thirst for knowledge reveals itself on the part of farmers as well as factory workers and housewives. My own wife these past 6 months, now that the children are in their later years, are in high school or entering college, has found the time and has the desire to go back to school. She has gone back to college.

All of this helps strengthen the position of our Nation, helps prepare us for better leadership to meet the pressing problems here at home, and would give all of us a greater sense of security as we approach the challenging problems at the world level in the months and years that lie ahead.

I congratulate your committee on the faith which you have shown throughout the long years in the future of our country, in the persistence with which you have plugged away at this urgent question. I hope that the Congress will see fit to take this initial step toward meeting our needs.

It is only an initial step. I would not want to create the impression that if this bill is passed and if the initial funds which this proposes are made available that this automatically will solve our probÎem. What I like about this bill and why our membership feels strongly this should be supported is, it is a realistic step forward with a progressive increase year by year in the amount of funds that are available and it will help the States grow into a larger program.

It is not deceitful in that it does not create the illusion of solving all the problems such as the administration bill obviously does, because at best only half the $600 million they talk about is Federal money