to help build schools, and at best the States which share in it will be tied up for long months and perhaps years taking the necessary State legislative steps required to take advantage of that.

In that sense I say the administration bill is deceitful.

The Murray-Metcalf bill is a practical program which does not clutter up the program of assistance with unnecessary Federal controls. It leaves the major responsibility and decisions at the State level. It is supplementary in that it offers assistance to the States who are already overburdened and overtaxed in the percentage of the load they are carrying.

I thank you for the great contribution your committee is making in holding these hearings and helping to focus the attention of our whole country on this, I think, the most pressing and challenging problem confronting us.

Thank you for the privilege of appearing here.

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you, Mr. Reuther.

May I say I regret that the full membership of the subcommittee, which consists of a total of six members of the Committee on Education and Labor, were not able to be present. Three members are here, two others are attending the labor subcommittee meeting across the hall, and one other is out of the city at the present time. I regret that they were not here to hear your masterful presentation.

May I say to you that after 12 years of battling for the youth of our Nation in an effort to get better educational opportunities for them, I have no regrets to offer and I am just as strong in the faith today, Mr. Reuther, as I have been through the 12 or 14 years I have been a Member of Congress and been leading the fight.

It was my pleasure back as early as 1950 to lead the fight to bring the Taft educational bill, passed by the Senate, out of the House Committee on Education and Labor. I have twice endeavored to get school construction legislation through the House. Both times we have failed. This time I have a feeling that maybe, despite the gloomy outlook from the standpoint of finance, this is going to be a fruitful year. I believe that the new blood that has come into the Congress is going to give us a sufficient number of votes to pass this legislation.

I have talked to a goodly number of the 72 young Members of the Congress and I find a growing interest on the part of these younger Members of the Congress. This is one problem that I think to a certain extent may have entered into the campaign that resulted in their election to the Congress. Despite the indifference shown in some quarters and the active opposition which is well known, I still am hopeful that we will get out of this subcommittee, I am sure, legislation that wil have a better than 50-50 chance of clearing the full committee and reaching the floor of the House.

Mr. Udall, do you have any questions?

Mr. UDALL. I do not think I have any questions. I would like to thank the witness for a very challenging statement to the committee. I wonder if he considers it significant that in the three great areas where we are very obviously being challenged by Communists today in the field of military preparedness, in the field of economic penetration, and then the third, which I think we are discussing here today, and which may be over the long run the most important of the three,

that this is one area where the Nation as a whole is making no effort nor giving any direction or impetus to what we are trying to do in this field. Would you care to comment on that?

Mr. REUTHER. Of course the greatest contribution we have made to Communist strength recently is to allow our own economy to go to seed. The dropoff in the productive capacity of our industry, and the spread of unemployment, of course, tilt the scales against us in the face of the obvious Soviet expansion. But I think you are quite right, Congressman Udall, in indicating that perhaps in terms of the long haul the relative greater emphasis which the Soviet Union is placing on technical training of their youth, on allocating a far higher percentage of their gross national product to education and training, indicates that the lag on our part is going to confront us with disadvantages that are going to mount each day.

Of course one can raise steel production rather quickly if a decision is made to step it up. But you cannot educate a nation, you cannot educate a whole generation to give them the technical skills, the language knowledges that are required, and the host of other things in a fortnight or in 6 months or in a year. We have to think far enough ahead to do it. That is why the fact that we are not even keeping pace with the pressures of school needs, let alone not matching the rate of growth of the Soviet Union, which constitutes a terrible challenge to us, is what is appalling and frightening.

Mr. UDALL. Thank you very much.

Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Brademas.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Chairman, following what Mr. Udall has said, I cannot help reflecting that several years ago, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Reuther, you were head of the European office of the CIO, where you gave very great leadership in fighting against communism on the Continent in Western Europe. If it is true to say that greater assistance to education in our country today will also help in that same fight against communism, although I am sure we are all interested in helping education for other reasons than that, it is clear that Mr. Reuther is still making a very great contribution in that struggle. Mr. REUTHER. I thank you, sir, for those comments.

One of the things that has been brought very sharply to my attention as a result of my travels abroad and contacts which I have had with our own Foreign Service people stationed in different lands, is the fact that very, very few of them have been properly trained in the knoweldge of the culture and the language of the country in which they are assigned. I know that in each international conference that I have participated in, where the Soviet Union or its satellite countries send delegates, they can well participate in the details of the subject matter to be discussed in the conference, and they can do it with a technical competence in the required language, too. The son of the Soviet Ambassador stationed here in Washington, who is a journalist from Moscow, who was here on a State Department-sponsored tour, came over to talk with me. He spoke to me not only in English but real Yankee English on this, his first visit to the United States. He asked questions about the internal political situation in the United States, about steel production, and auto production which revealed a fantastic knowledge of details of what is going on within our country. I wondered how many newspapermen from the United States could

go to Russia and ask a Soviet official detailed questions about what is going on in their country, and to conduct the conversation in Russian. It is not that Americans do not have the capacity to learn the language of other countries. My children spent 212 years in a French school when I was stationed there. There was no Englishspeaking school nearby and they learned French just like that, in a matter of a few months.

I think we ought to give a real push to providing language training opportunities throughout our school system.

Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Reuther, may I inquire what are your reactions to the Educational Defense Act that at least attempts to meet some of these problems? You are familiar with that act passed by the last Congress?

Mr. REUTHER. Yes.

Of course anything that can be done in this direction is a help and is of some value. But I think it is time we realized that what is required is not a crash program and a sort of fire engine approach to this problem. Our needs will be adequately met only if we can expand the facilities at the local community level and begin to provide educational opportunities to children from all walks of life, not a crash program on top to train a few hundred or thousand scientists quickly to meet a certain defense need.

Who knows, perhaps some of our future great scientists are being denied opportunity to take the first step toward acknowledging an education. A crash program superimposed on an inadequate local school structure is not the answer.

Mr. BAILEY. Are there any further questions?

If not, again may I express our deep appreciation for your excellent presentation. Your brief in detail will be accepted for inclusion for the record.

Mr. MEANY. Thank you, sir.

(Mr. Reuther's prepared statement follows:)

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

My name is Victor G. Reuther, I am administrative assistant to the president of the United Automobile Workers Union and director of our Washington office. I wish to thank you for the opportunity of presenting the views of our union in support of H.R. 22, the Murray-Metcalf bill, which would help the States improve the Nation's school facilities and to raise the salaries of our teachers. The position of our union, expressed in resolutions adopted at our constitutional conventions year after year, is that the delay by the Federal Government in this most important area has produced a crisis that threatens our national security, the future economic growth of our economy, and the democratic structure of American society.

Our membership is directly involved in the problems which the existing shortages of classrooms and teachers have created. Those who live in the congested city centers must, along with their neighbors, send their children to the oldest and least safe of the schools. Here teachers, many of them inadequately trained for the problems they face, are frequently burdened by oversize classes under most trying circumstances. Teachers are reluctant to accept assignment to these schools. Instead of attracting and inspiring children, many schools today only repel them.

Classroom shortages and teacher problems press down on families in the suburbs as well as in the cities. Schools built to serve new communities are overcrowded before they are finished. Their tax bases heavily burdened by

the needs of a rapidly increasing population, many of these communities settle for two-shift operation with standing room only in the classrooms.

The most tragic situation of all is that of the children of the 2 million hired farmworkers. The economic ladder which Lincoln said enabled hired workers to climb by steady ascent to independence does not exist for these children. Born in deep poverty, they are in the main condemned to the lowest level of society for the rest of their lives, because there are no educational opportunities for them worthy of the name.

NO CLASSROOMS FOR 2 MILLION CHILDREN

Congressman Metcalf, one of the major sponsors of legislation to improve our school system, recently read into the Congressional Record some of the latest statistical findings of the U.S. Office of Education, which show the size of the problem to be met. The figures show that our public schools have nearly 2 million more children than they have room for. Altogether, the States need more than 140,000 additional classrooms, of which 75,000 are needed to replace obsolete facilities which are kept in use because of the shortage of space.

The figures show, too, that we are falling behind in the race for adequate facilities. As Congressman Metcalf pointed out, the 68,000 classrooms which will be built this year will not be enough even to keep up with the increase in enrollment.

These figures were gathered before the Chicago fire. How many more burned bodies will it take before we take the measure of that side of the school shortage the one out of every five schools that is potentially a firetrap and the other unsafe buildings that should have been replaced long ago, which are being attended today by tens of thousands of our children.

The Office of Education reports that nearly 100,000 people are teaching in our elementary and secondary schools with inadequate preparation and substandard certificates. This, in a period when national survival may depend on the education we give today to the rising generation.

Most American schools do not have adequate laboratory equipment, and they lack the visual and auditory aids, the libraries and library books, the art objects, the auditoriums, and other teaching devices that would provide the kind of education the children of this country deserve and which would be worthy of our democratic traditions and our educational commitments.

MORE EDUCATION NEEDED AHEAD

Moreover, by 1965 we will need 350,000 more teachers than today for the more than 6 million additional elementary school and 4 million more high-school teachers.

Also, the need for more education and better training will keep children in school longer. Consequently, the costs of education will continue to go up. It is reasonable to expect that in the next 10 years the total bill for public education will at least double the present level of approximately $15 billion per year spent presently on elementary, secondary, and higher education.

However, there is no question about our ability to meet the bill. During this same period, even minimum growth in our economy should be more than enough to take care of this increased cost. If we have the good sense to achieve the 5 percent annual rate of growth which is within our power, our gross national product 10 years from now should have increased by $275 billion. A small part of this increase should be enough to take care of our education needs, and leave enough for increases in every direction which would do credit to American life and culture.

The members of our union are aware of the close connection between education and the earning capacity of the individual. This is one-but only one-of the reasons for the strong support which labor has given the American educational system since the very first days of American history. The differential in family income between persons of elementary, high school, and college education is a matter of deep interest to us. School systems which fail to hold the interest of the child through high school and college, or which fail to provide the child with an education that measures up against modern needs, is a sense condemn the wage earners of the next generation to substantially lower earnings, to a lower standard of living, and to a lower position in society. A national educational policy which does not provide every child with an equal opportunity for

education thus fastens a heavy economic penalty on some of its children. It is to avoid this injustice, which perpetuates and renews itself in succeeding generations, that we support this bill.

EDUCATION AND JOBS BOTH NEEDED

Mr. Chairman, I am fully aware that we are discussing this problem at a time of widespread unemployment. More than 5 million workers who ought to be employed members of our labor force are either not in the labor force at all or are unemployed. It is a fact that thousands of jobs for unemployed workers would be provided by the school building program that this bill contemplates. I understand that expenditures on school buildings provide one job for each $7,100 (approximately) that is expended. Certainly, in view of the widespread persistent and chronic unemployment from which this country is suffering, this is an extra and important reason for adopting this bill at this time.

LABOR'S SUPPORT IS TRADITIONAL

Our support for public education goes back a long way. In the United States, one of the first demands of the first unions was for universal and equal education. In 1829 the Working Man's Party of New York demanded "a system that shall unite under the same roof the children of the poor man and the rich, the widow's charge and the orphan, where the road to distinction shall be superior industry, virtue and acquirement, without reference to descent." American historians universally recognize that the establishment of free public education in the United States in the 1830's was almost a single-handed accomplishment of the newly-organized unions and the Working Man's Party.

It is not so well remembered that our State agricultural colleges are also rooted in the trade unions. The Working Man's Party had also recommended that agricultural and mechanics colleges be established in the States.

George Henry Evans, one of the leaders of the Working Man's Party in New York and the father of the Homestead Acts, was also the father of the land grant colleges. You will recall that the Morrill Act, passed during Lincoln's first term as a product of Evans' activities, provided for agricultural and mechanics education. However, with the passage of time the responsibility for the mechanics who had sponsored the law was forgotten; the exclusive concern of the land grant colleges came to be with agriculture.

However, our support for public education has always been met by opposition from the predecessors to the groups which today oppose H.R. 22, such as the chamber of commerce and the NAM.

The arguments advanced against public education by these resistors have by now become well standardized. Unfortunately, the money available to propagandize these objections has fastened many of them firmly in the minds of the American people. For this reason, let me repeat the answers to some of the current arguments, even though your committee may be thoroughly familiar with them.

ARGUMENTS FOR FEDERAL HELP ARE POWERFUL

It must be repeated that Federal aid for schools is a solid and creditable part of the American tradition. It is older than America; it stretches back to before the signing of the Constitution, and is a functioning part of our system of government today. Those who doubt this statement should consult the biannual reports of the U.S. Office of Education which list, State by State, the sums of money graned each year to help with specified education programs,

Amazingly, this fact has been kept secret from millions of people in the country. We encounter large numbers of members of our union, residents of States which every year receive Federal money for their schools, who have never heard of these sums and who are being told that H.R. 22 and similar proposals would set a new and dangerous precedent.

I will not deal with this argument in greater detail. I prefer to use my time to document three points which are not generally developed in detail before these hearings.

These points are:

1. The fact that the American economic system would not have reached its present high level of development without the expenditures on education made in this country for many years back;