tion than in all the rest of the world put together. Can we not conclude from this that our educational facilities are good enough, at least until this present crisis is over, to warrant the Federal Government keeping out till more normal times come?

The various reasons given in section 2 in this attempted build-up of the bill as necessary to national defense are "the shifting of population due to the exigencies of national defense"-which in its very nature is temporary; "the time required to add new property developments to local tax rolls"—which is even more temporary; "the children of migratory workers"-another temporary situation. How do we know but what those who migrated from one place to another will tomorrow pass on to a third place? Yet to meet these temporary needs it is proposed that the Government set up a permanent bureau and a permanent annual appropriation of $300,000,000. I can assure you that will not make sense to the taxpayers of this country. justification is wholly insufficient.

Another part of the build-up is that because of

The

the burdens already imposed upon property taxes from which public schools are largely supported, State and local school jurisdictions in many cases are unable to provide adequate educational opportunity in the areas adjacent to defense activities and industries.

I readily agree that the tax burdens now imposed on real property are not only grievous burdens but they are in many cases so excessive that we are now in the process of destroying all values in real estate. This can be seen both in the cities and in the country. Countless thousands of men have lost their homes and their farms because of these very burdens. Is not this fact a reason why no such burden as this should be superimposed upon those now existing?

The $300,000,000 a year voted by this bill would in all probability be but a beginning. That is the invariable history of Government bureaus. And since the bulk of this $300,000,000 would have to come in large part from the very people who are the owners of the hard pressed real estate, is that not one more reason why this measure should not be passed?

Section 2 declares it

to be the policy of the Congress to assist in providing adequate educational facilities for children in localities affected by the influx of population due to the exigencies of national defense, and to provide for the equalization of educational opportunities of all children in need of action to that end, especially for children residing in rural areas, children residing on Federal properties and reservations, and the children of migratory workers insofar as grants-in-aid are sufficient to do so.

It would be hard to phrase a more vague proposal. Pass a law like this and set up another Government bureau and you will have one more rat hole down which the savings of the thrifty people of the United States would be thrown.

Senator, if I understood your comment when one of the others was speaking, you asked if the cost of this could not be imposed on the manufacturers who had the war contracts in those neighborhoods. Did I get that right?

Senator ELLENDER. No; the people, the employees. The point is this: If the Federal Government should move into a locality and provide living facilities such as homes, and so forth, that property could not be taxed. Then would it not be feasible to tax the employees? In other words, if those employees were living in a locality

and owned their homes, why, their homes would be taxed so as to educate the children of that locality.

Mr. HART. I see.

Senator ELLENDER. Now the fact that they are living on Government property, or property in which the Government has put up the facilities at its own expense, it strikes me that something ought to be worked out whereby the employees themselves should be taxed in some measure so as to pay these expenses.

Mr. HART. That suggested the thought that occurred to me. I did not get quite what you said. Since this is largely temporary, since we remember many cases where plants were built in the World War only to become vacant afterward and everything died down, why could not the situation created by reason of the influx of these people, who will be there maybe a year, 2, 3, 4, 5 years but not probably much after that. Why could not a plan be devised whereby their education could be taken cae of and a part of the cost collected from the manufacturers in the contracting price, a part perhaps collected from the employees who supposedly would be getting good wages, thereby adopting your suggestion, and possibly a part of it stood by the locality that would presumably benefit by the increased industrial activity, keeping it on a temporary basis, rather than setting up a great Federal power for a permanent proposal?

Senator ELLENDER. Of course that refers only to one phase of the problem, that is to the defense problem, and my question, of course, was in that direction only, but not on the other phases of the bill. Mr. HART. Senator, it seems to me a particularly mischievous provision in this bill is in section 6 (b) where it is provided that—

The funds appropriated under the authorization of this act shall be allotted only to those States which, during the fiscal year preceding the fiscal year for which the apportionment is made, have provided from State revenues for all public elementary and secondary school purposes a total not less than the total amount spent for such purposes in the fiscal year ended in 1940.

One exception is made, and that is in the case of an act of God or other circumstances beyond the control of the State.

Senator ELLENDER. What is vicious about that?

Mr. HART. It is this, sir: Regardless of the future condition of the taxpayers and from them we must get the money in the States and localities we can be certain that condition is probably going to be weakened in the next few years, but they must, nevertheless, spend, if they are to get a dollar out of this appropriation, they must spend, if I understand the bill, as much each year for education as they spent in 1940, if they wish to get it.

Senator ELLENDER. As I understand, one of the reasons for that provision is that when the Government does start spending the money that the States and localities will not lie down, that they will do as much as they are now doing. I think it is in your favor. That is, I would term it a protection, so that the local authorities would not lay down on the job and let Uncle Sam do it all.

Mr. HART. Just taking my own State of New York, we are now experiencing, after a prolonged increase in the number of children of school age in proportion to the population, we are experiencing now a dwindling school population. Now it is natural to suppose that that will be reflected at some time in the amount of money spent on education.

Senator ELLENDER. An interpretation of that formula would necessarily take account of such a condition as that. What it could be interpreted to mean, and I am sure would be interpreted to mean, is the amount spent on a certain number of pupils in that locality. In other words, if you had at one time 1,000 and it later on decreased to 800, if the locality could show that it was spending per capita as much on the 800 as on the 1,000 they would come within the purview of that limitation.

Mr. HART. In the State of New York, Senator, we do not think we can go on indefinitely spending $140 a year per capita on education. You can compare the figures for the different municipalities of the State and you will find variations running as much as 30 percent, even more, between communities where supposedly the education is just as good as it is in the other place.

We have made quite some study of education. One organization which has reported very accurately-I have never heard its figures challenged-reported figures on the comparative per pupil cost of education in several States, and it reports that the cost in the State of Indiana, for instance, is not much more than one-half of what it is in the State of New York, and yet the education is said to be as good there as it is with us. I happened to do my college work in the vicinity of Boston, many years ago, and I recall there were no schools better in the United States then, public or private, than the public schools in the vicinity of Boston. I have inquired and I am told that those public schools are as good today as they were then.

Now, I mention that for this reason, just showing how the costs vary. In the city of New York they are paying $10,000 a year to nearly all of the 50 high-school principals, all but 7 or 8 with respect to whom there are some special circumstances, and those same people with the same responsibility over in Boston are drawing $5,000.

Now, I tell of these discrepancies to show what a wide variation there is between the two. If any business concern had plants in different centers and its cost of production in one place was 50 percent more than in another it would want to know the reason why. It would have to do it because of competition.

I say to you, sir, that we taxpayers, when we find another State right nearby, with conditions more or less like ours, getting a given article at a lower cost by a great deal, we feel that certainly we should be in a position to bring our costs down to where those other costs I can assure you, sir, that the very condition of the taxpayers in this supposedly "rich State of New York" is such that we will be compelled to bring that condition about, if it can be done, otherwise we may not be able to pay our Federal taxes down here that you gentlemen impose upon us.

are.

Another thing, the taxpayers of New York State have long suffered by laws that require a school community to spend within a given school year all of the money it receives as aid for that year from the State as a condition to its getting the same amount allotted to it the following year. I have known of cases where school boards have been put to it to devise means of spending all the funds in hand by a given date.

A friend of mine, a member of a school board of a certain village, was called down on the 25th of June by the chairman of the board, who said, "We have got $17,000 of State-aid money in the bank. If

we do not get rid of that by June 30 midnight we will not get that State aid next year." And this board member abandoned his job for 5 days in order to make sure that all this money was spent by June 30. Otherwise the district could not have gotten its full quota of State aid the next year. That case I know about and can privately give you the name of the man who figured in it. It is symptomatic. There are plenty of things like that.

This of course has not merely discouraged, but has prohibited, the practicing of economy. So would this provision in this bill. Indeed this particular provision is an indication to me that the bill was drafted utterly without regard to the well being of the taxpayers who must furnish the money.

The passage of this bill would in time add greatly to the number of Federal employees. That number has already grown so great that a few more or less may not seem to matter. But if we continue at anything like the present rate of increase we will approach the time when it may be difficult for the Federal Government to collect the money merely to meet the Federal pay roll.

Section 13 (b) provides:

No political or civil rights or activities of any teacher or school administrator shall be restricted or affected in any way because of any financial benefit accruing to such teacher or administrator from funds appropriated pursuant to this Act.

As this committee may be aware, we in New York City are rapidly becoming acquainted with the widespread existence of Communist activities in the schools and free colleges of Greater New York. The Rapp-Coudert committee of the New York Legislature has in recent months brought to light the names of fifty or more members of the faculty of the city colleges alone who are or have been members of the Communist Party. The Council of the American Federation of Teachers, with which the so-called Teachers Union and the College Teachers Union of New York City are affiliated, has recommended to the general membership of the Federation that the charter of these two unions be annulled, the ground being the widespread Communist activity among the members of those two unions.

It makes no difference to me whether a subsersive activity is Communist, Nazi, or Facist. All are equally reprehensible to me. But the Rapp-Coudert committee in its report to the Legislature stated that while it had found a great deal of Communist activity it had found very little Nazi or Fascist activity. Yet if these words in section 13 (b) mean what they seem to mean, they would prohibit any State or locality from interfering in any way with a Communist or Fascist or Nazi teacher. They would nullify the efforts of any State or locality to protect itself against the stooges of Moscow who might be on the school pay rolls, as they now are, or very lately have been, on the school pay rolls in New York City. Why is this provision in this bill, Mr. Chairman? What purpose is it expected to serve? This leads me to a few remaining observations.

The text of this bill, it seems to me, is a complete failure as a statement in justification of the bill's existence. It is a great success if what is wanted is Federal control of a propaganda machine. I do not know who drew the bill but I cannot help feeling that some of those who had a hand in it have a far-reaching purpose. I am completely opposed to that purpose. I believe that education, involving as it does the relation between the child and the teacher, the parent

and the teacher, and indeed the parent and the child, is essential a local, almost domestic, relationship. It is extremely personal. To inject this Federal control, which I insist would be the result of this bill, would strike a blow at public education. Even assuming that it succeeded in bringing education to some children who do not now get it, or better education than they now get to others, I do not think that benefit, substantial as it would be, would anywhere near offset the harm that would be done to education throughout the United States.

I cannot and do not claim to speak about education in other States than in my own State of New York. But I do have some knowledge of what is going on in that State.

My work has taken me to every county in the State, most of them many times. Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt in his budget message of 1932 said that the fact that the per pupil cost of education had more than doubled in 10 years was "startling." Equally startling is the growing amount of educational machinery. So complicated is our State educational law that few understand it. Few are able to understand the intricate relationship between State and local educational authorities. This is bad enough as it is. But this bill would create additional machinery. If possible the educational machinery is to be gummed up still further. The increase would be not arithmetical but geometrical. You would have three different sets of educational authorities. The State would dictate to the locality and the national educational authorities, through giving or withholding money, would dictate to both. We are now spending more than $2,000,000,000 a year on education.

Prof. Harold Rugg, of Columbia University, said on page 231 of his book, The Great Technology, published in 1933:

A mammoth and creative program of educational reconstruction must be built. * * * This program will include: * the doubling, even quadrupling, of the national educational Budget.

Some people did not take him seriously. Since the country now spends over 2 billions a year on education, Professor Rugg would apparently not be disturbed by the spending of 4 or even 8 billions. I do not hesitate to predict, if this bill goes through, that within a few years we may be spending on education not $300,000,000 a year of Federal money but $3,000,000,000 a year.

It is the comment of intelligent men that one great fault with education is the devotion of too much time by the teaching profession to method and too little time to substance. The Educational Advisory Committee of the New York State Economic Council, made up of five nationally known educators, headed by Frank A. Spaulding, dean of Yale, and including such men as Henry W. Holmes, who was then dean of the Harvard School of Education, William S. Learned, of the Carnegie Foundation, Dr. Mann of the Council of Education, and A. B. Meredith of New York University, reported for us February 1, 1935, on an examination of the schools of the city of Niagara Falls, N. Y., which is considered a typical American city. This report itemized the following as some of the "items of weakness" that the committee had noticed.

Too much "teaching"; too little learning.

Too much class attendance; too little studying.