The result has been that the school children here, the poorer ones, are getting the service, whereas before that plan was put into effect others got the service that really were not entitled to it.

So I think you will find from Dr. Ruhland and Dr. Murphy that the system in the District is working very well.

Senator PEPPER. Do I understand, Dr. Camalier, that it is your advice to us that you do favor this bill in principle, provided we make it clear that the needed dental services are made available?

Dr. CAMALIER. Yes, sir; and our objections met. We insist, however, that the passage of S. 190 and S. 1099 would better meet the situation.

Senator DONNELL. I understand there would be a very important modification on that, that you do not favor in principle the grants of public moneys to people who do not need those moneys. Dr. CAMALIER. Yes; that is just common sense.

Senator PEPPER. Are you able to give us any test of need?

Dr. CAMALIER. That is the only one, so far, that I just gave you, in the District of Columbia. I think this problem can be worked out at the State level.

Senator PEPPER. That is, the statement of the people themselves as to whether they felt they were able to pay?

Dr. CAMALIER. Yes; but I think studies along that line might develop it. I do not think anybody has given it real study. I can appreciate the difficulties, however, Senator.

Senator PEPPER. You do appreciate the difficulties of trying to lay down a means test?

Dr. CAMALIER. Yes, sir.

Senator PEPPER. Thank you, very much.

Mrs. Eleanor Vaughan, vice chairman, Congress of American Women.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ELEANOR VAUGHAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, CONGRESS OF AMERICAN WOMEN, NEW YORK CITY

Mrs. VAUGHAN. The Congress of American Women is a national organization of women from homes, industries, offices, professions, farms, schools and colleges. Our organization is a young organization, founded to give American women-without regard to race, religion, national origin or political partv-an opportunity to participate with democratic women of all countries in rebuilding a free, democratic world out of earth-shattering war.

We are affiliated with the Women's International Democratic Federation set up in Paris, France, last November with a membership of 81,000,000 women from 41 countries.

At our first working conference, held in New York City on May 25, 1946, some 600 delegates from trade unions, women's clubs, professional and housewives' organizations, representing nearly half a million American women, unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945.

As a woman's organization, we are vitally concerned with all matters relating to the health and welfare of our children, We feel that the hope of the world lies in the young people of today. Unhealthy bodies create unhealthy minds. Insecure children make insecure

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adults. Insecure adults fall easy prey to the kind of demagogic panaceas to economic maladjustments offered by the world's Hitlers and Mussolinis. It is only in the framework of stability, security, and good health that we can build a future generation prepared to create one world of genuine understanding and cooperation.

As the United States affiliate to the largest international organization of women, we are eager for our country to set standards of leadership in the treatment of its children.

Compared with children of war-torn countries, American children were little affected by the war. Our children's homes were not shattered into dust; we do not have millions of homeless orphans groveling in garbage cans and filching cigarette butts to exchange for a crust of bread.

We have not the problem of repairing wounded bodies and bombshocked minds. Our tuberculosis rate has not risen 8 to 10 times as it has in some European countries.

Set against the countries that felt the direct onslaught of Hitler's war machine, our task is simple. And, alone of all nations in the world today, the United States has the resources and technical knowledge to provide security and medical care to all its children.

Despite these vast resources and technical knowledge, despite the comparatively minor impact the war had on American children, the condition of our children today is not something about which we can boast.

For the record, we should like to state that the United States delegates to the Women's International Democratic Federation meeting in Paris last November were embarrassed by the inadequacy of our answers to questions women from other nations directed to us concerning the conditions of American children.

We found that ordinary women, private citizens of France, Great Britain, China, Yugoslavia, Egypt, and so forth, consider the United States a land of boundless opportunity and a bountiful standard of living.

Every home is alleged to have a tiled bath, every family a radio and automobile. Every American child is supposed to receive the best of medical care, a vitamin-rich diet, preventive health work, modern hosptalization when needed, and full opportunity for growth and development according to his individual abilities and aptitudes.

Correcting these misconceptions women from all over the world have about childhood in the United States was an unpleasant task for the United States delegates to the Women's International Democratic Federation.

They were forced to admit that the United States, the richest and most resourceful nation on the face of the earth, is so little concerned about the well-being of its mothers and children that such disgraceful conditions as the following exist (all figures from U. S. Government bureau sources):

I. Despite a gradual reduction in maternal and infant mortality rates in the United States-3,000 mothers die needlessly each year as a result of childbirth; 31,000 babies die needlessly each year before they are 1 year old; 16,000 rural mothers were delivered in 1943 without a doctor in attendance; prenatal clinics exist in only one-quarter of rural counties; 1,800 counties have no public health unit; 1,000 of our

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3,000 counties have no public health nurse to help mothers with the problems of infant and child care.

II. So thinly are the United States medical care facilities spread, so many are the children who receive little or no medical attention at the early, curable stages of their illnesses that-175,000 children have tuberculosis; 500,000 children have rheumatic fever; 200,000 children have epilepsy; 1,000,000 children are partially deaf; 20,000 children need dental care.

III. Although 60 percent of children under 15 years of age live in places of less than 10,000 pooulation, only 4 percent of our pediatricians practice in those localities.

IV. Present facilities for crippled children are sadly inadequate. More than 20,000 crippled children are on State waiting lists and can get no help because services and funds are lacking.

V. Welfare services for dependent, neglected, delinquent children and children who are emotionally disturbed are so inadequate that 250,000 children come before juvenile courts each year; the United States has a total of 1,750 child welfare workers but needs 13,000.

The Congress of American Women supports the Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945 as a step in the right direction. We agree with the National Commission on Children in Wartime that "The health of children, no less than their education, is a public responsibility."

We disagree with those authorities who feel that expansion of services for mothers and children must wait for a total medical care plan designed to lift the level of health and medical care of all the people.

Nor do we hold with those groups that advocate delaying consideration of S.1318 until the Congress has acted upon the President's proposals for reorganizing the Executive branch of the Government.

In view of the fact that the reorganization plan is presently blocked in the House Expenditures Committee, we are forced to view such "reorganization" arguments as delaying tactics designed to forestall any additional maternal and child welfare benefits.

An entire Federal department devoted to improving the welfare of all the people would truly be a good and desirable thing, and our organization hereby goes on record in support of such a move.

However, we fail to see why such a reorganization should affect the immediate enactment of this bill. Surely, at such time in the future as the Congress acts upon Mr. Truman's reorganization proposals, it can in its wisdom decide which agency most properly should administer the legislation under discussion.

Children do not wait to grow until the Nation decides what kind of a national health program it will have or for the reorganization of federal departments.

The statistics cited above show that State and local governments and private sources are unable to cope with the health and welfare needs of our mothers and children. They point starkly to the penalty certain children pay because they happen to be born in the country rather than in the city or in a State of low economic development or of Negro or other minority group parents.

American women represented in the Congress of American Women object to a situation where accident of birth creates second-class children. One sound way to attack this situation, as does the proposed

bill, is to expand the well-established principle that the Federal Government should use funds secured by taxation of all the people to assist the States in their public services and to remove inequities that exist within the various States.

The State Department and Secretary Byrnes have a great deal to say nowadays about the reputation the United States enjoys among the private citizens of other countries.

As an affiliate to an international body of private citizens, the Congress of American Women suggests that one way for the United States to create respect for itself and its system of democratic government is to put its own house in order. Enactment of S. 1318 would be a step toward this end.

When the Women's International Democratic Federation next convenes in plenary session, we trust that its United States affiliate, the Congress of American Women, can say to the women of the world:

Those deplorable conditions recited to you in Paris in November 1945, no longer exist in the United States. Our Government, by passing tthe Maternal and Child Welfare Act of 1945, has assumed responsibility for the health and welfare of its mothers and children.

A start has been made to convert into actual fact the international assumption that the United States of America provides for its mothers and children, whoever they happen to be and wherever they happen to live.

While endorsing and supporting S. 1318 as a whole, our organization wishes especially to commend its authors and sponsors for three specific features.

1. Child care for children of working mothers: Section 305 of Title III defines "Child welfare services" to include

care in foster-family homes or day-care centers of children whose mothers are employed or whose home conditions require care outside their own homes during any part of the twenty-four hour day

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*

That is an important and essential provision because it officially recognizes the peacetime responsibility of the Federal Government in the care of the children of the mother who works.

American women have always been gainfully employed, the great majority because they needed the income. In 1944, some 7.5 million women were heads of families.

Of every 100 women employed in war production centers who planned to continue working (according to statistics gathered by the Women's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor) 84 worked to support themselves and, in many cases, others; 8 had some special economic reason for working; and only 8 worked because they liked to work and feel independent. This proves that 92 percent of American working women must have jobs at decent pay.

No accurate statistics are available on the number of working mothers with young children. But experience with wartime Lanham Act-supported child-care centers demonstrated incontrovertibly the need for a comprehensive national program of day care.

Dissolution of wartime centers has wrought great suffering and hardship on working mothers and their families. Local communities and State governments have not been able to pick up, or simply have not picked up, child-care facilities where Lanham Act funds were withdrawn.

Only the States of New York, California, and Washington have State-wide programs. As a result, we are witnessing a return today

to the much-discussed "latchkey children" problem of the early days of the war, potential delinquents, little tykes with door keys strung around their necks because their mothers are out working to keep them in food and clothing.

War widows and other mothers, self-respecting and able to work are being forced to stay at home, to accept the ignominy of public assistance or private charity and to maintain their children at inadequate relief levels because facilities are not available for their care. Alone of our allies in the Big Three are we evading our responsibility for the children of working mothers. Great Britain undertook an extensive program for care of children of working mothers during the war in spite of the fact that mothers of children under 14 were exempt from compulsory work provisions.

Except for a nominal fee for food, the British Government bore the full cost of this program. Great Britain is continuing its childcare program into peace. And even before the war the Soviet Union provided more than 8,000,000 "cots" for the children of its working mothers. The Soviet Union's child-care program expanded during the war; it is expanding even more now.

II. Positive approach to discrimination: The Congress of American Women applauds this bill for its positive approach to the problems of racial and other forms of discrimination in that it includes in its basic working requirements that State plans make services and facilities

available to all mothers and children

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* who elect to participate

and that there will be no discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and no residence requirements.

It is idle mockery to think we can wipe out racial and other forms of discrimination by ignoring the fact that such discrimination exists. We must, as does this bill, admit the ugly fact, then step forth aggressively to correct it.

The entire history of child-welfare and health work shows that Negro and other minority-group children are in the greatest need of such assistance as S. 1318 offers.

As a group at the bottom of the economic barrel, denied decent job opportunities, living in overcrowded city tenements or on lowincome farms, Negro and other discriminated-against minorities cannot provide for their children the advantages received by other children.

The results are a higher incidence of disease and ill-health, greater need for foster- and day-care because a higher proportion of minoritygroup mothers work outside their homes, greater emotional insecurity, a higher infant mortality and maternal death rate, and so forth. But ironically, where the need is greatest the help available has been the least.

The time is past when we can divide our population into the privileged and the unprivileged. Our Negro and other minority-group people have made substantial contributions to American life. They left their blood on the battlefields of Okinawa and St. Lo. They labored gallantly in the nation's war factories. They have earned their right to the same care and protection as the rest of the United States population.