Senator TOWER. The next witness is Miss Margaret Berry, National Federation of Settlement and Neighborhood Centers.

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Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, before Miss Berry testifies, may welcome Miss Berry to the subcommittee and commend her to the Chair. And also to state that I am, myself, a product of a settlement, University Settlement on Eldridge and Irvington Streets in lower Manhattan, and can testify to the excellence of their work and considering the dedicated output of the settlement workers which Miss Berry will speak of before the subcommittee the attention and the respect to which their recommendations are entitled.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARGARET BERRY, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENT AND NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS

Miss BERRY. Thank you.

Senator TOWER. Thank you for coming this morning, and we will now hear your testimony.

Miss BERRY. Thank you very much, Senator.

Before we begin, I should say University Settlement is the oldest settlement in the United States. We are very proud of this as our very first and proud of our Senator.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you.

Miss BERRY. My name is Margaret Berry, and I am the executive director of the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, 226 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y. Our federation is composed of 264 affiliates, which operate 356 neighborhood centers in 88 cities in 31 States and the District of Columbia.

I wish to speak in favor of the bill, as authorized by the annual meeting of the federation of May 18, 1963. We have a particular interest in S. 1321 both because our work is concentrated in deprived urban areas, and because as voluntary agencies we applaud this attempt to develop an additional concept of full-time voluntary service. The plight of the millions of Americans who do not share in the general prosperity needs no further elaboration. In the slum areas of large and small cities we see compounded the problems of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, ill health, poor education and lack of job skills needed in an increasingly automated economy. Rural Americans continue to come into the cities, poorly prepared for the job market there, and bewildered by city life. Even those who have found some measure of adjustment to city life are torn from tenuous moorings as our inner cities are rebuilt, and thousands of families face relocation.

A city neighborhood is the living situation in which all the special problems appear, not neatly isolated, but compounded and aggravating each other. In one neighborhood we can find simultaneously a concentration of poor elderly people, minority group families-even including Indians from the reservation-struggling for acceptance and a livelihood, school dropouts, and physical and mental health problems. One neighborhood provides the whole cross section.

Can National Service Corpsmen perform useful tasks, and will their services be welcomed? I can give an unqualified "yes" to this question on behalf of settlement and neighborhood centers. When we asked our members, we received immediate responses from 56 agencies

located in 30 cities. They outlined specific projects that would require the services of 308 corpsmen. Agencies in New York City were polled separately by our city federation, the United Neighborhood Houses. Together these 38 agencies developed 13 projects, which could utilize 551 corpsmen.

Let me illustrate with one response from San Antonio. Here, an agency which serves a low-income Spanish-speaking area requested four corpsmen. One would be used to supervise the literacy program, manned by volunteers. The San Antonio Literacy Council is working on the total county program for the estimated 60,000 illiterate, but concentrated service is needed in this area. Another worker would develop the program for school dropouts. Two would carry out a comprehensive neighborhood health survey which the director of public health and the director of the new teaching hospital consider to be essential. For 10 years this neighborhood center has been the place where health resources and needs meet comfortably-through its medical, dental, well body, immunization, and cancer detection clinics. It provides the link between rural people, accustomed to folk medicine, and the public health and hospital resources, visiting nurses, and specialized health agencies. Now, to make most effective use of the new city hospital, the center needs skilled and sensitive manpower to carry out the comprehensive survey. This pilot survey would then be used to plan improved services for the whole city.

I think this illustration answers the question of whether the small number of corpsmen would be effective in the face of the enormous problems outlined. It seems to us that if the projects are carefully selected to provide a concentration of extra help in a strategic place and time, they can have great influence in spite of their small size. You may be interested in the kind of help which our 56 responding agencies thought could be utilized immediately and effectively. These projects are really ready to go, under the guidance of people who are already known and accepted as good neighbors. The proposals fell into four main categories.

The first includes the variety of programs which help youth in trouble-specific work with delinquent or delinquency-prone youth. Settlements have many workers employed in this kind of "reaching out" to gangs or unaffiliated youth. Their efforts could be augmented by mature and dedicated corpsmen.

Also, as youth unemployment has become increasingly critical, we have developed all kinds of beginning efforts cooperation with schools to augment instruction by remedial reading and tutoring, organizing parent groups, vocational clubs, part-time work projects, work with the employment service and public schools to stimulate apprenticeship and training projects.

A second set of projects were related to helping people improve their environment. In urban renewal areas it involved relocation of families, code enforcement, and other conservation and rehabilitation efforts. In others it included block organization for neighborhood improvement, neighborhood council formation, cooperative projects ranging from credit unions to the "Good Companions and Friendly Visitors" of Henry Street, 350 older people who act as interpreters, visitors to the sick and blind and lonely, and help in the neighborhood hospital. Helping others is often the most effective form of "self-help."

that

This leads to the third kind of project in which corpsmen could help service to the aged who are concentrated in low-rent areas, often living in single rooms, in deprivation and utter isolation. Proposals include hot lunch programs, augmented by other neighborly services, helping the old to maintain contact with health and welfare

resources.

Lastly come programs designed to help the dependent or multiproblem family to break out of the cycle of dependency and take steps to independent living. We are having success with the use of case aids, with homemaking and housekeeping demonstrations, and need to augment this service.

We can put corpsmen to work in our own cities in opportunities as real and dramatic as the Peace Corps finds overseas.

We do not believe that this new concept of full-time service will discourage the approximately 20 million volunteers who are the backbone of our voluntary agencies. The idea of citizens investing a year of their time in community service ought to dramatize and reinforce the concept of community service.

In fact, it seems to us that this is already part of the thinking of the American public. Just for example, I have the magazine here of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce in which an article is listed called "Chicago's Peace Corps, a Private Enterprise." It goes on to describe what volunteers are already doing in the settlement houses of Chicago. So it seems to us that the general public has already made this tie between the concept of the Service Corps and the whole idea of voluntary enterprise.

Our observation is that there is ready response to such an idea. The national federation has experimented in the past 2 years with four weekend conferences, designed to tell college students about neighborhood service; two have been held in Chicago, one in Nashville, and one in Cincinnati. Students from a radius of 200 miles have been notified; they have had to pay their own way, and two events were held in holiday time. Yet we have been able to accommodate only a small percentage of those who wanted to come. Two hundred applied for the first one held during Christmas vacation. We are convinced that many youths are idealistic, and are seeking opportunities. The Service Corps offers them a splendid way.

For many, this year of service might crystallize their vocational choices and lead them into service professions. In view of the shortage of full-time workers, to which the bill calls attention, we would like to see some provision for terminal scholarship funds for participants who wants to go on professionally to graduate schools of welfare, health, or education.

There is another point which we think should be considered. The success of the program will be determined-both for the community and the corpsmen-in the day-by-day work which is done. The corpsmen ought to have a satisfactory and educational opportunity in return for their gift of time and energy. Yet many of the agencies which might provide the most exciting tasks are so understaffed they cannot realistically release staff for supervision without dropping another part of their program. Therefore, we believe that the bill should allow for allocations to agencies where this is necessary to insure adequate on-the-job supervision.

Our favorable response to the idea of the Corps has been partially based on our observation of the Peace Corps, including the selection process and the preparatory training which have resulted in what seems to be a splendidly equipped group. We are assuming that similar standards of selection and training will apply for the National Service Corps.

The selection of projects will be of great importance, and it seems essential that clear criteria for selection be developed. We think that the functions of the Advisory Council named in the bill are broad and general and we are in agreement with the contention of the National Social Welfare Assembly that the Advisory Council should "advise and consult with the administrator and staff of the national service program in the development of all standards and policies. Projects selected should be subject to the Council's approval." The qualified citizens, both volunteer and professional, from the fields of welfare, health, and education should be brought into direct and responsible relationship to the Corps at the operational level.

In the same connection, it seems essential that local communities be involved in the planning and that Corps projects be related to the local community services. Social planning councils are the instruments which have been created locally for setting priorities in service, and for examining relative community needs. These local planning instruments should be utilized by the Corps wherever possible.

In summary, there are many details of operation still to be worked out, details which will determine finally the soundness and usefulness of the Corps. The federation supports the general purpose of the bill and believes the Corps can be a very useful program.

Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Senator BURDICK. I am sorry, I only heard the last portion of your testimony so I will yield to Senator Tower.

Senator TOWER. I do not have any questions. I should just like again to thank you for taking the time and the effort to come and testify before this subcommittee this morning, Miss Berry. We appreciate your constructive suggestions. Thank you.

Miss BERRY. Thank you.

Senator BURDICK (presiding pro tempore). The subcommittee will be in recess until 2:15 this afternoon.

(Whereupon, at 11 a.m., the subcommittee recessed until 2:15 p.m. of the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

The subcommittee reconvened in room 1318, New Senate Office Building, pursuant to recess at 2:15 p.m., Senator Burdick presiding. Present: Senator Burdick (presiding).

Subcommittee staff members present: Harry Wilkinson, associate counsel; Woodruff Price, research assistant; George Denison, minority associate counsel; and Robert Locke, minority research assistant. Senator BURDICK. The first witness will be William Truitt of the National Farmers Union.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM TRUITT, NATIONAL FARMERS UNION

Mr. TRUITT. Mr. Chairman and members of this subcommittee, the Farmers Union is pleased indeed to appear before this distinguished

group in strong support of the bill now before you which would establish a National Service Corps.

The President's challenge to all Americans to ask what they can do for their country has had an initial answer in the exemplary support of the Peace Corps. However, for many Americans who have not been able to participate in such an expression of service, the paradox remains a desire to serve but no clear path to meaningful volun

i teer commitment.

There is a need for these people's services. We know that America has the highest standard of living the world has ever known. No other nation has done more to give its people an opportunity to live in comfort and self-respect. We have much of which to be proud.

Yet we know that much remains to be done. In the midst of our prosperity, there are pockets of great need. There are millions of people who live outside the mainstream of American opportunity. These people need and deserve help.

We face no greater national challenge than to help these people help themselves. Our Nation has a long history of volunteer service. There exists today, as there always has, a great reservoir of goodwillcitizens who want to use their talents and energies to help others less fortunate than themselves.

We need to offer guidelines to give more people useful outlets for their desire to serve. The best way to offer significant opportunities for service in the United States is to organize a National Corps. Such a Corps would help direct the great potential of volunteers to areas of human need made critical by the lack of sufficient numbers of persons to provide human services.

Farmers, of course, are just as concerned as their urban neighbors about the critical social needs of their areas. Therefore, the Farmers Union agreed at our New York convention to support any legislation which would do the five following things:

(1) Give national visibility to the value of all volunteer efforts; (2) On invitation, assist in supporting and enlarging local volunteer efforts;

(3) Provide technical assistance and clearinghouse information to those local communities seeking more effective volunteer programs; (4) Provide additional manpower addressed to the Nation's most pressing problems; and

(5) Provide an opportunity for significant numbers of our citizens to better understand the need of our people and thereby stimulate the recruitment of persons choosing careers in the helping professions.

Rural areas have specific needs and one of the greatest of these is the need of the migratory worker.

Migratory workers are among our most neglected citizens. Our 500,000 domestic migratory workers and their 1,500,000 dependents have been excluded from virtually all the benefits enjoyed by most Americans. The children are generally retarded 2 to 5 years behind their nontransient counterparts. Established schools cannot cope with the migrant child's transient pattern. The adults are unaware of normal health and dietary standards. Communicable diseases threaten every community through which these migrants travel. Economic instability is the pattern; their average annual wage is $911. Due to the transient nature of their existence no one has assumed the