in 1961 for the aged, the blind, and the handicapped. These Federal and State improvements have resulted in the fact that Alabama's rate of growth in average public assistance payments between September 1958, and December 1961, is several times higher than the rate of growth in the national averages. For example, the average old-age assistance payment in Alabama rose from $38 to $59 while that for the Nation rose from $62 to $69 during the same period.

Our latest average payments (March 1962) for these people were $63.42 for the aged, $44.16 for the blind, and $40.93 for the permanently and totally disabled. It is obvious from these figures that additional funds are still needed to provide a better way of life for these recipients.

The changes proposed for child welfare services would make it possible for Alabama to expand and strengthen its program of services in behalf of children in an orderly manner. Our State long has been concerned about its children. In fact, our public welfare program today grew out of a child welfare program which was begun in 1919. The increase in authorization for these services (from $25 million this year to $50 million in 1969) is badly needed out of equal importance is the appropriation of the full authorization.

I am glad to see the emphasis in this pending legislation that is given to providing for and strengthening preventive and rehabilitative welfare services. Although the value of preventive and rehabilitative services in public welfare has been long recognized and repeatedly demonstrated, these services have not yet been built up to a level which begins to approach their potential effectiveness. The 75 percent Federal participation in the most of certain services will make it possible for Alabama to provide more clearly adequate services.

While there are other constructive amendments contained in this pending legislation, I will not discuss them with you as I am sure other witnesses have already indicated their reaction to them. Again, thank you for the privilege of appearing before you today and may I commend you on your demonstrated interest in and concern about the public welfare program in this country. The enactment of this legislation would be a step forward in making it possible to preserve and strengthen our greatest asset-our human resources.

We are proud of the progress that we have made in recent years in Alabama in our public assistance programs.

We, since the fall of 1958 have been able to increase our average old-age pensions in Alabama from about $38 a month to about $65 a month. This pending legislation would assist us to do an even better job.

I would like to also point up that we are constantly increasing the amount of State money going into our public assistance program.

In fact, we have made major strides in getting substantial increases in appropriations from the State general funds as well as increased State taxes in the 1959 sessions of our legislature and the 1961 sessions going into the public assistance programs.

So we are making a substantial contribution from the State level to this program.

We, of course, appreciate the assistance of the Federal Government in this field, and I think that we are working together very effectively in the State of Alabama, in fact, I am told that in the last 3 years

we have improved our public assistance program in our State probably more than any other State.

We are very proud of that, and this new pending legislation would help us to do an even better job, and I heartily recommend it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Governor Patterson.
Any questions?

Senator TALMADGE. It is a pleasure, Governor, to welcome you to this committee.

Governor PATTERSON. Thank you, sir. It is a pleasure to be here. The CHAIRMAN. I hope you will come again, sir.

Governor PATTERSON. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. The next witness is the Honorable Henry A. Wise. Will you come forward, Mr. Wise?

I would like to state that Henry A. Wise is a New York State senator, who is chairman of the committee on public relief and welfare. He comes from a very prominent and distinguished Virginia family. One of his forebears with the same name of Henry A. Wise, let me say, was a candidate against me for the U.S. Senate, and I was fortunate enough to get elected-that was about 28 years ago and I received a letter from him that I treasure as much as any I have ever received, written just a month or so ago, saying that he had watched my conservative record, and that he was glad that he was defeated and I was elected. I appreciate that very much.

Senator Wise, you may proceed, sir.

Senator MORTON. Will you yield, Mr. Chairman, for a moment? I would like to say to Senator Wise that my grandfather came from Virginia, so that is about the only good thing about either one of us. [Laughter.]

But I do want to say, Mr. Chairman, I took the liberty, sir of notifying Senator Keating that Senator Wise would appear here this morning. Senator Keating said that he would be present to hear Senator Wise if he could, but that he had to attend one of his own committee meetings. He asked me to express to you, sir, and the committee, his appreciation for scheduling Senator Wise this morning.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very glad to have you, Senator, before us. Proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. WISE, STATE SENATOR, 43D DISTRICT, NEW YORK

Mr. WISE. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I certainly appreciate those undeserved kind words and, like Senator Scott, of Pennsylvania, I am sort of a wrong-way carpetbagger, although my mother's people were from that part of the country; when I graduated from the University of Virginia I went back to grandpa. The only other alternative was to go on relief at that time.

(1) It is intended to confine this statement to three points: First, political implications of federally aided public assistance programs; second, simplification and clarification of rules of the game; and, third, problems with HEW, common to all States, not just New York's difficulties.

(2) When he walked out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention had completed the greatest document ever put together by the brain of man (except the Bible), Benjamin Franklin

was asked, "What have you given the people?" He replied, "A Republic, if they can keep it."

You have heard testimony during these hearings to the effect that a democracy has an obligation to assure all persons in the Nation full opportunity for family life, healthful living, and so on, ad nauseam. In the first place the United States is not a democracy and never was intended to be. No democracy that has come and gone throughout history has survived as long as this Republic-I hope it is still a republic.

A republic, as I understand it, is a government of, by, and for the people, composed of their elected representatives protected from the clamor of the moment so that decisions may be based upon full information with a view to the long-range public interest, not simply shortrange largesse. We should thank God for the wisdom of men like Edmund Randolph, John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, the Clintons of New York, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Al Smith, and yes, the chairman of this Finance Committee. Such men established, and have tried and are trying to protect, our system of checks and balances. Today Uncle Sam is writing so many checks he is losing his balance.

The second fallacy of the testimony above referred to is that more and more of our citizens who should know better, want to make Congress a tool for all their personal desires to do good and to uplift or downgrade everybody to the mediocrity their aims have gone so far already in achieving. These bleeding hearts have no grasp of the fundamental fact that a sound currency is the greatest domestic protection to the wage earner, the farmer, the office girl, and people trying to live on their savings and insurance policies. They seldom offer practical suggestions as to how their starry-eyed dreams can be achieved because they forget that every person is an individual.

(3) Certainly this committee is aware that statements here by spokesmen for the American Public Welfare Association, National Association of Social Workers, and other organized welfare pressure groups do not represent the views of the public as a whole. A start must be made to administer welfare in the interest of deserving needy people and of the general public, not just for certain social theorists and their chronic relief "clients."

We may think slavery has disappeared from America. No, sir. The dogmatic nonsense that has become accepted social welfare doctrine is making slaves of thousands of people today-slaves in the prison of pauperism. One can work his way up from poverty but paupers lose all hope; and such a lost person is no less a slave than are the captives paying tribute to the arrogant despots of big labor who rule just as selfishly as did big business prior to President Taft.

(4) My interest in welfare springs from the fact that public assistance as it has evolved today is the perfect example of a problem, one of the many that has arisen in our country, from our failure to heed the teachings of history and the wisdom implicit in the Constitution of the United States. Also, I am concerned in this age of change, shifting population, automation, that deserving persons in need are restored quickly to self-support, not allowed to languish in the slavery of pauperism, as Mr. Walker pointed out, is not the situation in many large cities. The trouble is not so much the objectives but how they

are being achieved, or rather, not achieved in proportion to the money and the man-hours spent.

(5) Elected public officials too often are leery of "getting into" welfare. They believe it is a morass with no political future and that the pressure groups will brand them as men callous to Ma and the kids. I got into welfare back in 1949, the second year I was in Albany. Some constituents had come to me with stories that I simply didn't believe at first, but when I looked into it I found they were true. The ridiculous situations involved were largely out of the control of the county and State governments, but emanated from doctrinaire theories of the then Federal Security Agency. Local officials had surrendered too much responsibility, as they so ofen do when the Central Government gets into the act, down to the dotting of "i's" and crossing of "t's".

My election pluralities increased after I became identified with efforts to restore a sound welfare system. Among my best supporters are the large number of welfare administrators and social workers who think the dogma of their self-appointed spokesmen is hogwash. Just ask almost any taxi driver, cop, factory worker, stenographer, farmer, or other earner what they think of welfare, especially those that know something about it and are willing to tell the truth like Mr. Horwitz and Mrs. Walker and Mr. Amend; the way it is today, with its uniform statewide standards largely ignoring the individual differences and needs of people and spending tax money like crazy.

(6) After serving 10 years as chairman of welfare in our State senate-and, by the way, New York State has managed to get, we have 500,000 people on public assistance, and spend $500 million a year total tax money, State, Federal, and local, 70 percent of which goes to New York City-1960-61, I was handed the vast headache of conducting the first thorough investigation of public assistance at all levels that had been undertaken in many, many years in the heterogeneous State of New York. Our subcommittee report and recommendations were adopted in full by the temporary State commission on coordination of State activities (Little Hoover Commission) March 23, 1961. Proudly I can say that the nonpartisan State board of social welfare of which Mr. Amend who testified here this morning is chairman, the statutory head of the State welfare structure, has implemented or is implementing practically every one of our recommendations as far as they can without running afoul of HEW edicts. The board has available the broad experience, outlook, and ability of experts such as its counsel, Felix Infausto, and its deupty commissioner for finance, Bryon Hipple, who are observing here today. Myles B. Amend, who has testified here today, is chairman of the board and has given you their recommendations for technical changes in H.R. 10606 and relevant sections of the Social Security Act which, of course, Mr. Amend did not read in detail, but has handed them up to the committee and has indicated the willingness on the part of his staff to work with yours to work out the amendments.

Mr. Amend, a prominent Manhattan lawyer, is a man of broad experience but he persists in continuing to register as a Democrat. The New York City phase of our investigation-I just want to show you that this is a nonpartisan thing. The New York City phase of our investigation would not have succeeded except for the

rare perception, energy, and ability of Mrs. Cora T. Walker, our counsel for New York City. She also has testified here today. I am sure that Mr. Amend agrees that the recent progress his board has made is due in part to the powerful support and encouragement of at least one topflight State leader, Senator Walter J. Mahoney, of Buffalo, president pro tem and majority leader of the senate of New York. (7) In my opinion Governor Ribicoff is the best Secretary of HEW there has been since Uncle Sam got into the public assistance business back in 1936. He is a fresh breath of spring trying to overcome the depression-of-the-thirties thinking of his vast bureaucracy of 74,577 civil servants as of March 3 last.

His career people will not be able to do the snow job on Mr. Ribicoff that they did on his predecessors. I hope he has been able to inculcate into them the idea that the object of welfare should be restoration and rehabilitation, not the idolatry of pauperism or the glorification of indigence. Of course, New York has placed rehabilitation in the forefront for years. Under my sponsorship, a work relief program was established in the Dewey administration over strong opposition of certain powerful, unenlightened union leaders. It was vetoed in the succeeding administration and restored again in 1959. This, however, only applies to home relief, a non-Federal category. HEW wouldn't allow anyone receiving federally aided assistance to be put to work even with all the safeguards that our law spelled out. Mr. Ribicoff is trying to change that in this bill, to a certain degree, but I am afraid the work program under this bill will not be put into effect widely because it is so hedged about with conditions and restrictions.

For instance, as Mr. MacDougall mentioned the other day in testifying for the National Association of County Officers, if you have to have local prevailing wage in northern California, somebody to work out his relief, you would have to get $4 an hour, $3.50 an hour.

We believe minimum requirements should comply with the State minimum wage law or in case there is no minimum wage law, the Federal minimum wage law.

Secretary Ribicoff is also attempting to cut down the dead burden of administrative overhead by giving the States more latitude. He is trying to eliminate the paperwork entailed by all these categories, but I fear this heralds complete Federal control of public assistance, especially if temporary ADC is made permanent. Aid to dependent children was designed as a program for widows with children, and we are making it a supplement to unemployment insurance.

I hope that, personally that, this committee will delete the extension of that program from the bill and, in that respect, the New York State Catholic Charities wholeheartedly agrees.

Temporary ADC will result in the States unloading men and women hitherto on home relief, or general assistance (non-federally aided), on to TADC. They just get every possible person they can, and it is only natural on a category where they can get Federal aid.

Thus gradually the last of the strictly State administered public assistance programs will disappear. But here is a chance for the States to get more Federal money, so responsibility wanes in the face of that lure. Secretary Ribicoff also has embraced a concept which became the law of New York last year as a result of our commission's