The Bureau of the Budget advises that there is no objection to the submission of this report. Sincerely yours, E. T. BENSON. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, Hon. LISTER HILL, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, Wahington, D.C., May 11, 1959. Chairman, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, DEAR SENATOR HILL: Your committee has requested a report on S. 812, a bill "To authorize the establishment of a Youth Conservation Corps to provide healthful outdoor training and employment for young men and to advance the conservation, development, and management of national resources of timber, soil, and range, and of recreational areas." We recommend that the bill be not enacted. The bill would establish in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare an agency called the Youth Conservation Corps, and an advisory committee consisting of representatives of four Bureaus of this Department and two Bureaus of the Department of Agriculture, plus a chairman from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Youth Conservation Corps is authorized (1) to enroll not more than 150,000 unmarried male citizens of the United States who are of good health and character and who are between the ages of 16 and 23, and (2) to enter into agreements with the Federal agencies that are responsible for conserving, developing, and managing the natural resources of the Nation providing for the use of the enrollees of the corps in carrying out the programs of those agencies. The enrollees would function under the immediate supervision of the Federal agencies concerned and would carry out programs planned by those agencies. The purposes of the bill are (1) to provide for healthful training and employment of young men, (2) to provide immediate work opportunities for unemployed young men, and (3) to accelerate the Federal conservation programs. We believe these are objectives that may be realized, to the extent warranted by circumstances, within the framework of existing conservation programs. The appropriations authorized for the program are $1,125 million for the first 3 years, and indefinite amounts thereafter. We believe that an acceleration of existing Federal conservation programs at a cost of more than $1 billion over a 3-year period is neither necessary nor advisable. The appropriations for those programs should be handled in accordance with the usual budgetary procedures. In view of our recommendation against enactment of the bill, we shall not comment at this time on the advisability of establishing a new Federal agency to administer the proposed program in a department that is not responsible for the major conservation programs that would be affectd. The Bureau of the Budget has advised us that there is no objection to the submission of this report to your committee. Sincerely yours, ELMER F. Bennett, Acting Secretary of the Interior. DEPARTMENT OF Hon. LISTER HILL, HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE, Chairman, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, May 19, 1959. DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: This letter is in response to your request of February 5, 1959, for a report on S. 812, a bill "To authorize the establishment of a Youth Conservation Corps to provide healthful outdoor training and employment for young men and to advance the conservation, development, and management of national resources of timber, soil, and range, and of recreational areas." The bill would authorize the establishment in this Department of a Youth Conservation Commission and a Youth Conservation Corps, the corps not to exceed a total of 150,000 unmarried male citizens between the ages of 17 and 23. An annual appropriation of $375 million would be authorized for the current and the 2 succeeding fiscal years and such sums as may be necessary thereafter. The proposed Youth Conservation Corps would be similar in composition, objectives, and direction to the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930's and early 1940's except that it would apparently be under civilian rather than military direction. The principal objectives of the bill are (1) to provide the opportunity for healthful training and employment of young men in carrying out programs of conservation of natural resources, (2) to provide immediate work opportunities for certain unemployed men and Indians living in areas remote from major centers of population and public works construction, and (3) to enable the Federal agencies charged with the responsibility of developing natural resources to accelerate their program plans. In essence, the Youth Conservation Corps contemplated by this bill is a proposal to recreate a corps along the lines of the Civilian Conservation Corps which was in existence during the nationwide depression of the thirties. The Civilian Conservation Corps unquestionably served a very useful purpose at that time. The situation today, however, is far from comparable to that existing during the thirties, and a different approach is needed. We believe that our efforts and resources should be concentrated on increasing the educational opportunities for our youth, on the use of available vocational educational funds in such a manner as to open up new opportunities for employment, on assuring that youth who are ready for and seeking employment are afforded adequate opportunity to become employed in available jobs for which they are suited, and on the enactment of the Area Assistance Act of 1959 (S. 1064) recommended by the administration. S. 1064 proposes a coordinated program for helping areas of substantial and persistent unemployment, through various kinds of financial and technical assistance, to achieve lasting improvement and decrease economic vulnerability by the establishment of stable and diversified local economies, coupled with the necessary vocational training (or retraining) to enable those without work to take advantage of the new employment opportunities thus created. For these reasons we are unable to recommend enactment of the bill from the point of view of the program interests of this Department. The Bureau of the Budget advises that it perceives no objection to the submission of this report to your committee. Sincerely yours, ARTHUR S. FLEMMING, Secretary. Hon. LISTER HILL, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, BUREAU OF THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C., May 18, 1959. Chairman, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: This letter is in response to your request of February 5, 1959, for a report on S. 812, "To authorize the establishment of a Youth Conservation Corps to provide healthful outdoor training and employment for young men and to advance the conservation, development, and management of national resources of timber, soil, and range, and of recreational areas." The Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of Agriculture, in the reports they are making to your committee on this bill, recommend against its enactment for the reasons set out therein. The Bureau of the Budget concurs with the foregoing departments in recommending that this measure not be enacted. Sincerely yours, PHILLIP S. HUGHES, Assistant Director for Legislative Reference. Senator RANDOLPH. The members of this special subcommittee are Senators Clark and Yarborough for the majority—I join those two members and, for the minority, Senators Dirksen and Cooper. The five members of the subcommittee have expressed an intense interest in this subject. The impact for good in the building of human and natural resources was expressed effectively by the original Civilian Conservation Corps, a program which extended over a number of years during the serious depression of the 1930's. It is a privilege to chair these hearings on this proposed legislation. I militantly supported and voted for the Civilian Conservation Corps Act when I was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. President Franklin Roosevelt had first initiated the plan and placed it in an Executive order in 1933. There is general awareness of the important part that the CCC program played in the economic recovery from the terrifying depression, and of the human progress under the authority of that act. It was a program which had a wide appeal. Today, as we begin hearings on Senate 812, the proposal for a modern counterpart of CCC, we will hear first from the principal sponsor of the bill, the author of the legislation, the distinguished senior Senator from Minnesota, Senator Hubert Humphrey. The testimony given will be supplemented later by other members of the U.S. Senate. Then we will hear from persons who had close association with the original CCC program, following which there will be at least 2 more days of general and, we believe, expert testimony, and possibly a day next week. Senator Humphrey, it is a privilege to have you as the first witness on this important measure. There is constantly coming from your energy those proposals and those programs which are of intense interest not alone to your colleagues but to the citizenry of the United States. We realize this proposal is a creative action in which you are joined by other members of the Senate. STATEMENT OF HON. HUBERT HUMPHREY, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA Senator HUMPHREY. Thank you very much, Senator Randolph. I have a prepared statement to which I shall refer in my testimony, but I shall take the liberty from time to time of digressing to develop certain thoughts that I have relating to this proposed legislation. I am testifying, as you have indicated, Mr. Chairman, on S. 812, a bill to authorize the establishment of a Youth Conservation Corps to provide healthful outdoor training and employment for young men and to advance the conservation, development, and management of national resources of timber, soil, and range, and of recreational areas. I know that much of the testimony that I shall give this morning in behalf of our proposal-and I say our proposal because you, sir, as chairman of the subcommittee, are one of the main cosponsors of the proposal-and were instrumental in the passage of the original Civilian Conservation Corps legislation of the 1930's. I know you are intimately familiar with the fine work of the CCC and the need to take up once again the great work of that corps, and I want to pay tribute to you, Senator Randolph, for your leadership of many years in the conservation field and the field of youth welfare. I cannot think of any two fields of endeavor that are of more importance to the Nation right now than a continuing and abiding interest in our young people, on the one hand, and a keen and persevering interest in the conservation of our great natural resources, on the other. These truly represent the strength of the Nation. The youth conservation corps proposal addresses itself to two major national needs the need on the part of our society to find a constructive outlet for the energies of many scores of thousands of young men who are not going on to professional training and who have difficulties in finding employment during their middle and late teens. Any parent that has been blessed with teenagers knows what I mean when I say "have difficulties in finding employment during their middle and late teens." This is a difficult time for youngsters, and, what is more, these young men are bubbling over with energy. My plea to the Congress of the United States is a little less pontificating about the problems of our young people and a little more action on the part of Congress to give these young people a chance to do constructive work, which they will do and do well, as the Senator from West Virginia knows from his own experience in this legislative field. The second major need is to take up the great slack in the conservation of our natural resources. We know what the lag is in our conservation efforts. There have been studies made as to the tremendous backlog of conservation work that needs to be done. We know all about the problems, but we are a little short on the answers. We are running behind on conservation activity. In other words, exploitation of our reources is getting ahead of their replenishment. The testimony on this bill from professionals in the field of youth welfare and in the field of conservation will bear out my statement that such a corps of young men as herein outlined, a Youth Conservation Corps, would very nearly pay for itself in terms of increased timber productivity alone, not to mention the great benefits from the work of the corps in expanded outdoor recreational opportunities, soil and water conservation, wildlife conservation, and, above all, the conservation of the hopes and abilities of our young men. Mr. Chairman, I hope that when your colleagues review this record they will note that the reports of our Government agencies indicate that if we could put to work the number of men that are proposed in this bill we would be able nearly to pay for the costs of the entire program out of increased timber productivity. So, here is a human resource project that is self-liquidating in cost. I call to your attention the Program for the National Forests, a publication of the Department of Agriculture for April 1959, Miscellaneous Publication No. 794 of the Forest Service. There are many other statistical projects which indicate what would be done with this kind of a program. Therefore, I hope that the subcommittee will bring this fact out by questioning the Department of Agriculture and the National Forest Service, as I have mentioned here, with particular reference to the document referred to a moment ago, the recently published Program for the National Forests, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Miscellaneous Publication No. 794 of April 1959. Mr. Chairman, I should like to submit to the subcommittee a copy of this report for the subcommittee's attention. I call the subcommittee's attention particularly to page 25 of this pamphlet in which the Secretary of Agriculture states that direct financial revenues, through the short-term conservation program proposed by the Forest Service, can be doubled, to reach $210 million annually (see p. 251). I quote the Secretary further, as follows: By the year 2000 national forest timber sales should reach 21 billion boardfeet of sawtimber worth $350 million at 1958 prices. Note, Mr. Chairman, that the statement refers only to the timber in the national forests and indicates that by the year 2000 annual timber sales could, under an adequate conservation program, increase the annual income to the American taxpayer by $245 million over the current income; in other words, that much more revenue for the Federal Government. I go on to quote the Secretary on the same page: The capital value of the timber, forage, and lands of the national forest system will have increased by about a billion dollars as a result of the short-term conservation program. On page 15 of the pamphlet the Secretary lists the very great benefits in terms of reconstructing and rehabilitating the recreational facilities of the national forests, the development of new recreational facilities, the repair and reconstruction of dams and spillways, the revision and completion of wildlife habitat, management plans, and the stabilizing of streambanks and channel improvements. These benefits, I emphasize, are in addition to the direct cash benefits of increased timber sales. Mr. Chairman, another point which should be stressed is the factor of population growth and population explosion in this country-creating a desperate need for more outdoor recreational facilities for our people. The urbanization of the American community has placed a premium on the development of wholesome outdoor recreational facilities in public lands, both Federal and State. As a family man who has traveled around a great deal in this country visiting our national forests, visiting our national parks, I can say that, despite the efforts of the professionals in the National Park Service and the National Forest Service, we are running behind. I wonder how many Members of Congress have loaded their children into a station wagon and taken them out into these national parks. It is one thing to go down to a nice hotel in Miami, but it is another thing to get the kids into a station wagon and go out camping in one of these national parks and see how poorly the Government of the United States provides for its citizens, the average taxpayer? If you have a big bundle of greenbacks, you can go to a beautiful big hotel, but, Mr. Chairman, I want to tell you when you take four, five, and six little ones out on a camping trip and go into one of our great national parks, then you find out the inadequacy of our facilities. The Humphrey family has traveled in these national parks. We are not unusual, because the roads are glutted with cars trying to get 41258-59- -2 |