Whether there should be a Department of Health, Education, and Security? In my opinion, yes; it is time that we provided for these basic human needs a charter commensurate with their status as components of the general welfare; it is time we recognized the right of the citizens to Cabinet representation in their essential character as individuals.

Whether it should be a coordinated department? Again I say "yes"; We would do well to follow the wise guidance of the professions concerned in focusing the department's services on the needs of the whole man.

And how to organize to achieve these results? Here, finally, I reiterate my conviction that the weight of past experience and present evidence alines the new department squarely with its 10 predecessors. It needs not only strength and stature, but flexibility to carry out the great task which the Congress will place in its hands.

Few proposals are launched with such universal good will and such readiness to understand and adjust differing views. This fact alone testifies to the wisdom and sincerity of the sponsors of legislation in this field, Senators Fulbright and Taft, and your good self, Mr. Chairman. I can assure you, in behalf of the Federal Security Agency, that we freely place all the lessons of our experience-the debits as well as the cerdits in our 8 years of joint endeavor-at your disposal.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask one question, Mr. Miller. Have you made any estimate as to the difference in cost of administering these functions as a department and as they are at present set up?

Mr. MILLER. No, Mr. Chairman, I have not personally, but I am glad to advise the Chairman and the committee that we have experienced and stable-minded people examining that question at the present moment, and perhaps not exactly with the possibility of an executive establishment, but to see what we can do (without lessening what we deem to be our effectiveness) in the way of a more economical job from the standpoint of personnel and money. These studies are under way in 14 different segments of our collective operations, and should be ready before too long for an exchange of viewpoint with you gentlemen here and members of the other branch of Congress.

I realize that the attentive and very good-natured members of the committee here will understand not only from their own experience in the management of State Government but also from what they know of the operations of the Federal Government, that there are many problems in the matter of determining where you would establishi, in either the Federal Security Agency or a new executive department, such organizations as I have mentioned here, with multiple colors and phases of their activities. These include units such as the important Food and Drug Administration, which does such a great job for the American people in keeping deteriorated food out of people's systems and in keeping off the market impure drugs, drugs that lack potency, administering health functions coupled with a very wide police authority which is imposed upon it by the Congress. What would you do with such an agency as that? You have got to determine where it can operate more efficiently and more economically and to the greater satisfaction of people, both commercial and consumers, and the Congress, whether by dividing the functions and

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putting them separately, say the health activities that relate to foods and drugs, in a health agency, or letting them work together, because it is truly an integrated though somewhat complex mosaic.

The same will be true also of rehabilitation. You have the very important Children's Bureau with a long history of effective service to the children of our country, dating back to 1912.

Those are considerations which lead us to confer with you as to whether we should have so rigid a structure with what is, in substance, three vertical departmental structures or establishments, within the department. This is all said with the utmost respect for this body and for the impulses and the sincerity with which the proposals which involve this question have been presented to the Congress.

The CHAIRMAN. In the event that the Under Secretary of Educa- ́ tion and the Under Secretary of Security each claims that the vocational rehabilitation program came under their department, as S. 140 is written would it give the Secretary the right to determine which of the Under Secretaries shall have this work in his department?

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, it would present the top executive with some very complex and difficult psychological as well as professional problems. I would not think any one of you gentlemen would want me to expand on that, considering your own problems and the authorities you have in the management of State governments, but I should like to add, if I may, that we have had no such contests in the Federal Security Agency, either before or after the passage of Reorganization Plan No. 2, which was approved by the Senate in July of last year. The most that I have had to meet was simple approaches from some of the newer organizations-new to us-that have come to us as a result of last summer's Reorganization Plan. We can see many reasons why some activity might well be moved into Health, or might well be moved into Social Security. We can also see some reasons why they should not be. Let us get to know each other a little better. Let us get our feet on the ground. Let us get greater familiarity with each other as to what we do and who does it, and then we will sit down before too long and examine those matters. That would have to be true in executive establishments, Mr. Chairman.

Senator O'CONOR. Mr. Miller, have you any apprehension over the placing of scientific and medical programs under a lay secretary?

Mr. MILLER. Have I any worries about that? I haven't a single one, Senator. The selection, of course, will have to be made with great consideration of the internal and external character and the psychological reflexes and interests of the individual to head up such an organization, but it has never occurred to me to believe that in all this broad land there could not be the right man chosen or a series of men chosen, just as I think we have been miraculously successful in the men who have been placed in charge of our important executive establishments, men of either political persuasion.

The CHAIRMAN. Inasmuch as the three Under Secretaries will be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate in the same way the Secretary is, would that give the Secretary as much control over the operations of his department as the Federal Security Administrator now has over the administration of the work coming under the Federal Security Administration?

Mr. MILLER. He would not have as much persuasive control, and that is the kind of control I would like to think of.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, we would be setting up four heads where one now exists?

지

Mr. MILLER. Yes, I think so, in my opinion. I would not sit here, gentlemen, and pretend, as I tried to indicate in my more formal remarks to you, that an important multilateral activity, of vital concern to the people and the Congress, could not be operated after a fashion under any of these measures. I think you have there considerations of talent, imagination, and the will to do. But it is plain to me that an experiment so vital and so important to people should be launched under the most promising possible circumstances, with no objection made on the part of any of us to the Congress laying out specifically what it expects the Secretary of such an establishment to do. But I think we should not be bound by too rigid vertical

channelization.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions? Thank you, Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. You have been extremely patient, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Miss Elizabeth Wickenden is our next witness. Will you state your representation, Miss Wickenden?

STATEMENT OF MISS ELIZABETH WICKENDEN, WASHINGTON, D. C., REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION

Miss WICKENDEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my name is Elizabeth_Wickenden. I am the Washington representative of the American Public Welfare Association.

I think Mr. Miller has given you a good deal of the detail of this problem, and I will try to speak primarily from the point of view of the State-operating agencies in the welfare field. Our Association is an association of State and local welfare departments, administrators, board members, workers, all the way down the line to the local counties. We are, therefore, of course, interested in all phases of publicwelfare operation and administration, and very naturally have definite views about Federal-State relations, since that is the point at which we touch this problem primarily. I say "Federal-State" because the local relationship in this field goes through the State, as you well know, to the Federal Government, and therefore the State is the focus.

The CHAIRMAN. Miss Wickenden, are any private organizations members of the American Public Welfare Association?

Miss WICKENDEN. No; we are an association of public welfare people, although we do have some associate members of private groups, schools, libraries and others, who have a particular interest in the public welfare field. But the real heart of our membership is public, and ours is an official organization in the sense that departments belong as well as individuals.

The CHAIRMAN. Do most of the State departments of public welfare belong to your association?

Miss WICKENDEN. I believe they all belong to it.

We feel that the time has come when Federal responsibility for social security and the related programs affecting individual family and community welfare already enacted into law justify their representa

tion at the Cabinet level of Government. We feel that the progress already made under the two reorganization acts in bringing these functions together in the Federal Security Agency-and, incidentally, they are now all in the Federal Security Agency-at least, the ones that have been suggested for inclusion in the new Cabinet Departmentshould now be carried to its next logical step by giving that Agency the recognition, the stability and prestige of departmental status. In our opinion this can be accomplished most effectively through a short measure converting the Federal Security Agency into a Cabinet Department, such as S. 712, now under consideration by this committee. We are, of course, committed to the principle of primary responsibility on the part of States and their political subdivisions for the operation of welfare programs. I say that at the beginning because there may be some question as to why an organization that is principally concerned with States and localities should be urging a strengthening of the Federal agency.

It is true that while these operations and problems are carried out at the State and local level, there certainly is a growing recognition among our membership that the United States must consider these problems as a whole, and that there must be the leadership at the Federal level, and certain financial aid from the Federal level, which will make possible a Nation-wide program with adequate resources to meet the whole problem.

I think Mrs. Meyer in the articles that she has written and in the statement that she presented here earlier has made very clear in her reporting of actual community conditions what the need is in terms of this Federal, Nation-wide leadership. We, ourselves, in the association have formulated a 12-point platform of objectives for extension of Federal programs in this field, in which we stress the need for that leadership. However, there seems to be a great deal of con-fusion popularly, certainly not here, as to what this proposal for a Cabinet Department can actually do. Everybody has their ideas as to what should be done with respect to program development in the fields of education, health, and social security, and inevitably there is a great deal of difference of opinion with respect to these programs, as to whether the role of the Federal Government should be expanded or should be contracted or should be defined in certain particular ways. We agree that these are very important questions, but we do not think that all these controversial questions of program and policy are involved at all in this particular proposal of whether existing Federal programs should be administered through an independent agency of somewhat uncertain rank, or through an established department headed by a member of the President's Cabinet. It seems to us that everything points to the advantage of giving this Federal agency that regularized status, and bringing the point of view that is represented in that agency to the discussions within the President's Cabinet. However, confusion on this point does lead to two misconceptions. On the one hand, you get a group of people who talk as if when you create this department you immediately take care of all the problems that might exist. I read a book recently in which the problems of the modern world were discussed, war, fascism, juvenile delinquency, rising crime rate, and I looked over to the back to see what answer would be suggested for these problems, and what did I find? Create

a Cabinet Department of Health, Education, and Security. Of course, you can not do those things simply through the creation of a Cabinet Department.

On the other hand, you get a group of people who view this with great alarm, as if the Federal Government were about to take over a monopoly in all these fields, easing out the State and the voluntary groups, and imposing some sort of rigid dictatorship over the professions. That, also, is equally out of line with what can be done through a bill of this sort.

In our own field we Public Welfare people are firmly convinced that program legislation should spell out very clearly the basis of Federal, State, and voluntary relationships, and clearly delimit the scope of Federal authority. That is now done in the Social Security Act, and we have formulated certain proposals as to how that might be further done. We think, however, that to try to do that in a bill setting up a Cabinet Department just confuses the situation with respect to program legislation. For instance, you take this provision in S. 140 about cooperation with voluntary agencies, the States and localities, the Social Security Act spells out very clearly and specifically what those relationships should be. We think that to try to add other provisions in a bill that deals solely with departmental organizations would just confuse the situation in interpreting the Social Security Act.

For these reasons we feel that the simplest possible bill which would be subject to the least in the way of subsequent interpretation, setting up this Cabinet Department, transferring the functions of the Federal Security Agency with its present powers and present programs would be the best in this field. That seems to eliminate most of the controversy that exists, and to provide a simple basis on which pratcically everyone can agree.

I have seen one rather interesting example of that in the case of a committee of 25 national leaders in the field of health, education, and welfare, which was appointed under the joint sponsorship of the National Social Welfare Assembly, which is the central organization of public and private welfare organizations, and the American Council on Education, which has somewhat the same relationship in the field of education. You are going to hear testimony on the results of that committee's deliberations, and I will not try to anticipate it except to say that when those 25 people got together it looked at first as if they could not agree on any common program, but when they got through they did agree that this simple kind of a bill, translating the Security Agency into a Cabinet Department, would probably be the best, with one or two particular provisions which will be presented to you. We also favor that kind of a bill because we think that from the State point of view there is great advantage in having flexibility in the internal organization of the Federal agency.

We also question whether it is possible and practical-and this has been true at the State level, I think, as well as the Federal-to try to spell out in legislation the details of administrative organizational relationships. That seems to be largely an administrative problem which must be sufficiently flexible to permit meeting situations as they develop.