As an example of the kind of project Pennsylvania could put into action and press to completion within the allotted deadline in this bill, I want to discuss the Pennsylvania plan for area technical schools.

This is a proposed system of schools similar to those already constructed in Williamsport and Bucks County designed to give Pennsylvania students and workers superior instruction in the skills they need to seek employment in modern industry.

The preliminary program drawn up by the State department of public instruction calls for construction of 10 area technical schoolsall but one of them in areas qualifying under ARA as economically distressed.

The schools are essential to the Pennsylvania education system but they are also a necessary part of our statewide effort to retrain adult workers and place them in gainful employment. The estimated cost of constructing and equipping each school would be $12 million. Since nearly all of them will be located in areas of economic distress, the local school districts are unable to meet the burden of constructing and equipping them alone. It is our belief, therefore, that the acceleration of public works programs proposed by this legislation could be most profitably and logically applied to construction of this school system in Pennsylvania.

The need for improved technical training in public schools grows with each passing year. Modern industry, the kind of industry that grows with time, developing new products and meeting new demands, needs a far more skilled and intellectually trained worker than ever before. The area technical schools, with equipment for training in electronics, chemicals, design and other advanced skills, represent a major advance.

In addition to this continuing need for education of our young people, we will have the persistent demand for reeducation for workers whose specialized skills have become obsolete. We estimate that, within 3 years, the demand for such retraining will reach as high as 50,000 persons.

Our vocational educational departments are bursting at the seams and we believe construction of area technical schools offers the best solution to the growing problems of matching educational offering with technological demands.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. Pennsylvania does not favor the public works bills now before this committee because the program would offer us a handout.

We approve of this proposal because we feel that there is much work to be done-work that needs to be done.

There is a wide variety of projects that will benefit the citizens of our own State and this entire Nation. They are not projects to "make work." They are not being "taken off the shelf" to prime pumps or shuffle statistics. They are necessary programs of public work designed for the good of the public.

We are not asking the Federal Government to build monuments or memorials; we are not seeking favors or charity.

We believe that the public works program proposed by the President is an essential investment in the sound future of this Nation. If we can build the public projects our State and Nation should have and, at the same time, relieve the pressures of persistent unem

ployment, we will be fulfilling the basic requirements of our democratic system.

The men who founded this country, Washington and Jefferson, Adams and Ben Franklin, recognized the need for conserving its

resources.

It is our belief that this public works program is, in essence, a program for conserving the greatest of those resources, the manpower and the initiative that lie at the root of all that America has done that is enduring and worthwhile.

Gentlemen, I have with me Mr. Ralph Widner, the assistant director of the State Planning Commission of Pennsylvania, and Walter Giesey, executive secretary.

And if there are any questions you might want us to answer we will be happy to do so.

Mr. FALLON. Governor, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for such a fine statement.

I want to further congratulate you for the very fine job you have done in accelerating your road program in Pennsylvania.

It has been my good fortune to visit up there with you on a number of occasions, and I have found that your road program is probably as far advanced as you could possibly have it at the present rate that you are getting money.

Are there any questions on my right?

Mr. BLATNIK. No questions, Mr. Chairman, but I should like to join the Chair in expressing appreciation to the Governor for taking time out from his very, very heavy schedule to help us to present this case, and also for helping those of us who have struggled and wrestled with this frustrating problem to try to keep our men and women in productive work, and I think we are on the right track.

The time has come to come to grips with this rather than wait until we are in another recession again.

I want to commend you, Governor, for a very impressive and a very moving statement and also commend you for your assistance. Thank

you.

Mr. FALLON. Any other questions?

Mr. CLARK. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. FALLON. Mr. Clark.

Mr. CLARK. I won't take much time in asking any questions, but I want to thank Governor Lawrence for appearing and giving us such a fine statement, and I know you have to be leaving for NASA very shortly, Governor-in fact, you are late already. I thank you. Mr. FALLON. Any questions?

Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, I have a question.

Mr. FALLON. Mr. Cramer.

Mr. CRAMER. Governor, I respect your tight schedule, but it appears that all the witnesses we have before us lately have tight schedules and, therefore, our interrogation has been quite limited, and I, too, want to congratulate the State of Pennsylvania for taking as much State initiative as it has in these programs.

it.

But I would caution you, and I would ask a question concerning

This $600 million program provides only, for this fiscal year, $25 million, and Pennsylvania is limited to 12 percent of that much, which would be about $3 million.

Pennsylvania would be limited to 122 percent of the $350 million in the next fiscal year. That is a year away, and if Pennsylvania got 122 percent of that, it would get about $13 million as a maximum. It is quite doubtful that any given State would reach the maximum. And if that were done, based upon estimates as to how many employees might be affected and the fact that you spent $38 million in 1958, and only a mild economic upturn resulted and only a decline of 15 percent in your unemployment it would lead to the conclusion that the best possible relief that you could expect out of this bill would be an employment increase possibly, if you got the maximum amount in the second year, of about 10 percent of your unemployed or about 50,000.

Now, I trust do not look at this bill as an answer to your prob

you

lems because it is not.

Governor LAWRENCE. I do not think you are going to solve the whole economic problem in America by this bill, by any means. ButMr. CRAMER. Nor in the State of Pennsylvania?

Governor LAWRENCE. Well, or in the State of Pennsylvania, but we are interested in getting jobs for people.

We preside over a State as large as Pennsylvania and we are faced with the problems that we have, with the maladjustment of life in many areas also.

For instance, in the mining areas you find that the coal industry is down and you find big, able-bodied coal miners willing to work, anxious to work, and yet they cannot get a job, and you get tons of mail, and you get mail daily, from people appealing to you to do something to relieve their distress.

We reach out for anything that we can do to relieve that situation. Now, with our PIDA program, that I mentioned here, we recognize the fact that maybe there we have just scraped the surface, but we did, by our figures, help to bring in new industry, help to expand industry which was there, to the extent that our figures show that we have created 32,000 jobs.

Mr. CRAMER. That is a long-range solution, is it not?

I mean there is the long-range approach, and this approach of public works pump priming, particularly in the amount suggested for Pennsylvania alone, would be peanuts, would not not?

This is a peanuts public works bill as it relates to situations like Pennsylvania. You suggested that 51 of your 67 counties are distressed areas, eligible for ARA.

If you got $43 million that would be about $850,000 a county.
Now, that is peanuts, compared to the problem, is it not?

Governor LAWRENCE. Surely, it is peanuts compared with the problem, but it is helpful in the problem.

It is one of the things that we feel that will help us move a lot of these projects that communities cannot move themselves.

Mr. CRAMFR. Oh, yes, and you are also limited, you realize, to projects that must be finished within a year.

So these public works projects, that you are talking aboutGovernor LAWRENCE. No, I am not talking about anything except projects that will be finished within the provisions of the act, within

a year.

Mr. CRAMER. You indicate that you are in the process of doing a lot of large public works.

Governor LAWRENCE. Oh, yes, we are doing our share of it. Yes. We are doing a lot of things in the State.

We probably have the biggest roadbuilding program of any State in the Union, and probably the biggest that Pennsylvania has ever undertaken. So

Mr. CRAMER. Do you not agree though that if this unemployment situation, through public works, is going to be accomplished to the extent that it will be effective in meeting what obviously is the unemployment problem in Pennsylvania, even on a short-range basis, that the far more effective approach would be for the President to accelerate some of the billions of dollars expendable in presently authorized programs that, as a matter of fact, has been deterred by the Presidential order in January to all departments to cut back?

Would that not be far more effective to get the job done, for instance, in community facilities loans and grants?

They stated before this committee that there was $500 million of unobligated funds for grants and loans to local communities for public facilities.

Now, if the President issued an order to accelerate that, that could go into effect immediately in an unlimited amount.

Do you not think that would be a better solution?

Mr. WIDNER. Mr. Congressman, you have mentioned many points here that we have thought about a great deal.

Let's take the last one that you have mentioned. We have benefited very greatly from the Federal grants available for the construction of sewage treatment plants, thanks to Mr. Blatnick and

Mr. CRAMER. Thanks to the Congress.

Mr. WIDNER. Right. And this has been of a great benefit, and this State has establish a record of building more sewage treatment plants than any other State in the country, but we do have this problem.

A lot of the communities in our distressed counties cannot afford to build the sewage lines which the grants do not cover.

This bill would give us the opportunity to go in with a 50-percent Federal grant to start building those sewage lines.

You say we ought to concentrate more on the industrial develop

ment

Mr. CRAMER. Have you tried to get money through the Community Facilities Loans?

Mr. WIDNER. We are talking about counties that are just down on their backs. They do not have any money.

They feel that if they had some sort of Federal assistance, to the tune of what these bills would provide, they could come onMr. CRAMER. All right. So

Mr. WIDNER. Please allow me to finish.

Mr. FALLON. Please allow the witness to finish.

Mr. WIDNER. They feel that they could underwrite that portion that remains under these bills, but here is the thing to bear in mind: These communities right now have a difficult time attracting industry under our industrial development program simply because they do not have the sewage facilities.

Now, if we can provide the sewage lines and also the sewage treatment plants, through existing legislation, we feel we have gone a long way toward solving the problem.

Mr. CRAMER. You have legislation to do that.
Mr. WIDNER. Not to the sewage lines.

Mr. CRAMER. Oh, yes, through ARA. There is no question about it. They testified to that effect, that they have projects presently in being, some seven projects, for exactly that purpose, sewage disposal plants and sewage disposal lines.

Governor LAWRENCE. That is quite true.
Mr. CRAMER. So that is your remedy-

Mr. CLARK. That is not the whole remedy, and you know it.

Mr. CRAMER. Well, you are talking about helping to attract industry, and any public work helping to attract industry can be financed through area development.

Mr. CLARK. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. CRAMER. And they have got $500 million, they testified to, that has not been obligated.

They have obligated $1 million of a $90 million program for public works facilities to help attract industry.

Now, if that is what you need, is ARA giving Pennsylvania any assistance?

I have here the list of the projects. What are they doing for Pennsylvania? There is not a project on it for Pennsylvania.

Mr. CLARK. Well, Mr. Chairman, may I correct

Mr. CRAMER. There have been seven projects and not one in Pennsylvania.

Mr. CLARK. May I correct the record for the gentleman?

Mr. BLATNICK. Mr. Clark.

Mr. CLARK. I have one in my district that has been put through. So your record is not quite clear.

Mr. CRAMER. When was it approved?

Mr. CLARK. I want to correct the record on another matter, also, and that is that community facilities is not a grant, but is a loanMr.CRAMER. It is both.

Mr. CLARK. Program. I have never known

Mr. CRAMER. All right. Let's straighten this out.

Here is the official record given to me by Mr. Redmond Roach, liaison officer.

He was contacted yesterday, following the testimony of the director, Mr. Batt, and loans, under section 7, or authorized under ARA; grants, under section 8, or authorized under ARA. And here is what has been done, for the information of the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

This is from yesterday. This is the information they gave us yesterday. This is what Mr. Batt testified to when he was here, that there were seven projects totaling a little more than a million dollars. Mr. CLARK. That is area redevelopment, Mr. Cramer.

Mr. CRAMER. Here is the list.

Mr. CLARK. That is area redevelopment and not community facilities.

Mr. HARVEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CRAMER. Here is the list.

Less than a million dollars.

Gassville, Ark.: $31,000 loan and $129,000 grant, for a water system for a shirt manufacturer.

That is exactly what you are talking about.