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is that the first 4 years are the crucial period, particularly today, in light of the fact that the expanding profit-sharing programs, the early retirement system, which calls for 20-year retirement, the two for one vacation schedule are making this life more and more attractive.

I think once the lad completes 4 years of service, his vested interests in all of these fringe benefits are going to contribute greatly to his continuing at sea.

I think if we can get him over that 3- to 4-year hump, we are going to have some real career men. I can see this in people returning to sea, who have been ashore for 3 or 4 years, and realize that there is a lot to be gained by pursuing this profession.

Mr. HATHAWAY. Of course, the more attractive it becomes, the less need there is for the Keith provision.

I agree that they ought to stay in service for a 3- or 4-year period, but I can envision administrative headaches.

Captain BURKE. I can understand your attitude in that, Mr. Hathaway. I am just probably imbued with the spirit of the Keith bill and perhaps motivated by the fact that I have seen constant criticism.

I testified before the Payne committee in 1955, and at that time mentioned that we were under constant criticism by outside forces who continued to represent that our boys do not go to sea, and our figures do not show that.

I have worked very closely with Maine and Massachusetts, and our boys do go to sea, and stay at sea.

Mr. HATHAWAY. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. Mr. Watkins.

Mr. WATKINS. Mr. Chairman.

Captain, how many students would you take in the first portion, Mr. Keith's bill?

Mr. Keith is not here, and I don't want to start picking up his plea for his bill, but maybe his is important. It is important to him. How many students would come in?

You represent these various academies here. How many students all over the country would the Keith bill apply to?

Captain BURKE. This is my avocation, of course, and not my profession. I am not directly associated with the academy.

I would endeavor to answer this by saying that we did take in 120 students this year, give or take a few, and I think Maine is in the vicinity of 200. Kings Point probably is 300. California is probably 90, Texas is 30.

Mr. WATKINS. What is the approximate total?

Captain BURKE. Well, I have to estimate probably 700.

Mr. WATKINS. 700. That might give us something to work on.

Captain BURKE. That is a ball park figure.

Mr. WATKINS. Of course, I don't expect you to separate the Hathaway bill and Keith bill. I can see that you are going to try to collect both. You would take Mr. Keith's bill, if you could get it.

You would think the academies would deserve both, if they can get them?

Captain BURKE. I think the consensus of the national council, which represents the scintilla of alumni representation of graduates of the different academies, had the attitude that the merging of these

two bills in the outline that I related in points 1 and 2 is in the best interests of the public and the maritime academies.

Mr. WATKINS. I have no further questions.

Thank you.

Mr. DOWNING. Thank you, Captain Burke, for appearing before this committee, and that organization with 500 years of marine experience is quite impressive.

Captain BURKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOWNING. It is entitled to good consideration.

Thank you for appearing.

The committee will adjourn, to meet tomorrow morning to hear two witnesses.

(Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Thursday, October 23, 1969.)

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The subcommitte met at 10:20 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Thomas N. Downing (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Mr. DOWNING. The committee will come to order.

This morning we will resume our hearings on H.R. 8785 and H.R. 8328. Our first witness this morning will be our distinguished colleague from California, the Honorable Robert L. Leggett.

Congressman, it is a pleasure to have you with us this morning. STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT L. LEGGETT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. LEGGETT. Very good, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure for me to be here and testify before this important subcommittee of our Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee.

Many of us have been concerned about maritime education for a number of years. In fact, last year when austerity threatened to desecrate the support of students in State academies, why, I rallied the entire California delegation and we coauthored the Hathaway bill to increase support to set the $600 as a minimum rather than as a maximum contribution to local State students.

Mr. DOWNING. Let me interrupt you at this point. I think this bill and your testimony is extremely timely because this morning at 10 o'clock President Nixon is going to announce a brand new program which is designed to give us 30 ships a year for the next 10 years, and nobody thinks about the manpower that is necessary to run these ships.

So that I think the coincidence of these hearings is extremely important.

Mr. LEGGETT. I think that is right.

I am going to allude to some things in the second page of my testimony concerning the total magnitude of our merchant marine effort with our current effort and the projected effort by myself in a bill that I have contemplated and also that would indirectly tie into what the President is going to say very shortly. I understand his program calls for 30 ships a year; 300 new ships, and the idea that these ships would be fast, capable, cheap to operate, and would

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incorporate a number of technological improvements and we would be able to build them cheaper, which would lead to a reduction of CDS and make us more competitive worldwide.

I think it important that we plan to have qualified people to run these rather sophisticated new ships. I don't think we ought to fool ourselves into thinking that we are going to be radically expanding the number of men that we are going to have working on these ships.

As a practical matter, these new ships are going to take the place of one or two of the old ones eventually, and we are going to have a real problem of technological unemployment. But I think that we have to plan for a viable future capable merchant marine.

I delivered remarks on the occasion of the graduation of the Maritime Academy back at Vallejo earlier this year, and at this time I would like to refer to those remarks particularly. I said:

Admiral Williamson, distinguished board of governors, faculty. midshipmen, and proud parents. It is my real pleasure to accept Admiral Williamson's invitation to come from Washington and be with you here today to celebrate the graduation of this ambitious looking group of new naval and merchant marine officers. You men are part of 413 officers programed to graduate this year from State academy schools all over the Nation.

I don't have to tell you gentlemen that the Congress of the United States is not as proud of the U.S. merchant marine as it would like to be. The fault lies partially with the Congress. The Great Society extends to every area apparently but merchant shipping, and I must confess that Federal support for this great maritime school does not give me any particular pride either. In 1959, when we had an enrollment of 220 and a fairly sound dollar, the State of California contributed $365,000

For the support of the school—

and the Federal Government contributed $218,000.

I might state that in addition to that there has been an average annual expenditure for ship repair and improvement of about $65,000. Now, 10 years later, with somewhat inflated dollars, the Federal Government is still contributing $218,000, enrollments are up 15 percent and the State of California has nearly doubled its $365,000 investment.

I believe you have a table of exactly what our expenditures are at the academy pursuant to the request of counsel.

Total Federal costs this year for maritime schools nationally will be a static $2 million, and I know you students have raised your level of contribution from $405 a year to $750 a year, which it has been for the last 10 years in spite of the fact that we have had a 29-percent increase in cost of living in the past 6 years, and we have raised our level of contribution from $405 to $750 per year, and that is the amount that the students contribute.

I pointed out that we had this problem last year that led to our jointly introducing the Hathaway bill, and I believe that 21 Democratic members of the California delegation joined in the introduction of that bill which had two purposes, No. 1, to increase the figure of student support and also to increase the direct contribution to the State.

The legislation languished in committee until the present time, and I commented on that.

I pointed out that with the President proposing to keep spending $192.9 billion, taking advantage of $3 billion of cuts that he programed. I really didn't see how we were going to get out of our rather static morass.

We have this year received, I think, $120,000 to effect a substantial refurbishing of our student ship, the Golden Bear, so that we are very appreciative to the Maritime Administration for that effort.

I talked to the students a little about maritime costs and sometimes these get a little bit burlesque and we think we are doing probably less than we are. I think it is probably well to go over those and recognize that at the present time we are spending about $704 million a year directly or indirectly for maritime and merchant marine support.

If the Nixon program goes into effect, which I call the Leggett program, and I am sure some of us call it the Garmatz program, or the Downing program, the net effect is to build about 30 ships a year to try to take advantage of technological improvement, and we have to plug in an extra $2 million in the CDS, construction differential subsidy, program.

I think we could programmatically pay that to the shipyards rather than the operators and get some benefits of mass discounts.

Those figures break down so that the ODS is about $170 million and nobody suggests that we do much with that, not even the administration.

The passenger differential for operating would slide down because we can't be competitive with passenger traffic by ships worldwide. We have to face that.

Then we beef up our construction differential for the construction of cargo-carrying ships about $200 million, to the $350 million level. I note that the administration doesn't talk about money at all, but talks about ships. This is what the have to talk about, and I am going to be very interested to find out how they stay within the framework of their static budget limitations and still move to the 30-ship-a-year level.

In addition to that we have the seamen public health service benefits, and the merchant marine academies which, as you can see, is a very slight $611⁄2 million.

That includes the full support for the Kings Point Academy.

We had hoped to move ahead with administration, $10 million, and research about $5 million.

Indirect assistance, that many of us don't realize we give, is the cargo preference, which is worth about $135 million a year according to figures given me by the Treasury Department. Required DOD passenger bookings is $72 million. The reserve funds are $11 million, and if we expand the reserve funds to the nonsubsidized current lines, that might move to about $21 million, as we point out in columns 2 and 3, and cabotage for our coastwise traffic is about $125 million.

So that in total we are spending now $700 million, and the amount we spend for education is merely $612 million.

I point up these figures at this time merely so that the committee will not be too mesmerized by the horrendous amount that we are spending for maritime education. It is a very paltry amount, considering the

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