aid to education, S. 717 is the most inclusive, the most radical, very dangerous to our liberties, in its reactionary aspects, and certainly the most vague in the powers it sets up to allocate Federal funds for education.

It is inclusive in that it covers every facility for education, perhaps real property, and in this it would interfere with the rights of the States in locating school buildings where Federal appropriations are used by the State.

It is radical in that it would make direct gifts of money for education.

It is dangerous to our liberties in that it would establish the reactionary policy of supporting sectarian schools.

It is vague and ambiguous as has been shown by the many questions that have been raised as to its meaning in vital particulars by members of this committee.

It purports, as a motive for its introduction, to aid the public schools,, whereas such is already provided for in S. 181 upon which hearings have been concluded.

The proponents of S. 717 would take advantage of the sentiment in behalf of Federal aid to public schools to press Congress for aid to all nonpublic schools from the nursery and kindergarten through the junior college.

According to the Statistical Survey of Education by the United States Office of Education the total number of such schools reporting in 1940-41 was 12,727. Of this number, 1,102 were nonsectarian, 1,576 were Protestant, and 10,049 were Roman Catholic. I submit tables of the data for the record as exhibit A.

(Exhibit A is as follows:)

EXHIBIT A.-RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION OR CONTROL OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS

TABLE 3.-Enrollment in private elementary and secondary schools, by religious affiliation or control, 1940–41

1 U. S. Office of Education, Statistical Summary of Education, 1941-42, 194 p. 12.

Mr. ROGERS. The proposed aid to nonpublic schools included everything from health programs, reading material, visual aids, school books, libraries, transportation, and other facilities. The bill would involve the Federal Government in $100,000,000 expenditure for such items but also for the payment of sums aggregating $150,000,000 directly to parents of persons of the age of 14 and 15 who are in regular attendance at public and at nonpublic schools, and directly to pupils in regular attendance at such schools who have attained the age of 16 but have not attained the age of 21.

Of course, the bill would include aid to needy public-school pupils and to local public-school systems, else there would be little probability of its even being considered by this committee.

S. 717 raises the whole question as to the relative efficacy of sectarian schools and public schools in lessening crime and instilling moral lessons in the minds of the pupils, and the wisdom on other grounds of aiding such schools from public taxation.

The bill sets up a National Board of Apportionment whose broad discretionary powers are such, with their vague wording, as to establish a dangerous Federal control over many phases of education with subtle undefined advantages accruing to nonpublic schools.

The dangerous features and radical implications of the bill are many. They include the following:

A. Power of the board to interfere with certain administrative acts of the public-school systems of the States through the manipulation of Federal appropriations.

Under section 6, for example, such interference would extend to any act of Congress appropriating funds to be used in the location and construction of school buildings. If such funds were used jointly with State funds this power to interfere would involve the meddling of the board with purely State prerogatives. Appropriations of the kind that come under the Lanham Act would be a signficant illustration of this point.

B. Federal aid to nonpublic schools would greatly strengthen the growing system of sectarian schools now operating in competition with public schools. Such competition increased by Federal aid would be a constant menace to the expansion and efficient administration of the latter.

Religious leaders would then be able to force many more parents to send their children to the sectarian schools on the grounds of Federal approval of such schools.

C. The bill creates a permanent status wherein sectarian schools would become, among the nonpublic schools, the principal beneficiaries of Federal aid. Such a status would utimately destroy not only the free independent character of our public schools but would establish in our national life an interdependence of state and church.

D. The radical proposal in S. 717 to aid sectarian schools from funds raised by public taxes would put in reverse an American tradition of over a century and a half of complete separation of church and state.

E. This dangerous and reactionary departure from our tradition disregards and sets at naught the principles recited in Madison's Memorial of 1784 to the voters of Virginia, and the same principles

which were affirmed later by Thomas Jefferson in his celebrated Act for Religious Freedom in the Legislature of Virginia.

These are the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson inscribed on a panel on the walls of the memorial room of the Thomas Jefferson National Memorial:

Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion. No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise, suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief. But all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.

S. 717 flaunts the social and political maxims that sectarian schools supported from general taxation retard the progress of man.

F. The bill utterly disregards the declaration of Congress following its pernicious error in appropriating funds for Indian schools, which stated it to be the settled policy of the Government thereafter to make no appropriation whatever for education in the interest of any sectarian schools.

G. S. 717 ignores the principles in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Reuben Quick Bear v. Leupp (210 U. S. 50, 1908). This decision held that the general appropriations acts of 1895, 1896, and 1897 forbid contracts for the education of Indians in sectarian schools out of public funds raised by general taxation from persons of all creeds and faiths or of no faith."

H. Through trustees and the functions of the National Board of Apportionment the bill openly and boldly circumvents the provisions in practically all State constitutions against giving support to sectarian schools from funds raised by public taxation.

To open the United States Treasury to sectarian schools would not only abrogate the effect of such State provisions but would by subterfuge strike at the very heart of the first clause of the first amendment of the Federal Constitution, and indirectly at the whole Bill of Rights itself, for when religious liberty ceases to animate national life of a people political liberty with all that it implies gradually succumbs to the dogmatic concepts of the dominant religion.

I. The bill defines "nonpublic schools" as

any school not operated for profit which complies with the minimum educational requirements of the state.

Under this definition all the sectarian schools of the country, nearly five-sixths of which are Roman Catholic, would qualify despite the fact that such schools prosper and are maintained largely by exacting tuition from parents of pupils and are substantial auxiliaries to their respective church denominations.

J. Since nearly five-sixths of the nonpublic schools of a sectarian character in this country are maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, S. 717 would appear to accord with the requirements of the late Pope Pius XI, who, in his encyclical under date of December 13, 1929, declared:

That it is the duty of the state to help the church maintain its religious schools by aid from public funds, and equally the duty of all Catholics, as an act of religion, to demand that the state perform this duty.

I now quote the following extracts from editorial comments in the New York Times and the New York Telegram for January 13 and 14, 1930, on the encyclical above mentioned. The New York Times stated:

The Pope's encyclical sounds a note that will startle Americans, for it assails an institution dearest to them-the public school-without which it is hardly conceivable that democracy could long exist. As was said only yesterday by a critical authority, despite its shortcomings and mistakes, the public school has already contributed to society more than all other agencies combined. Under its tuitions not only are the elemental lessons which the race has learned taught to children of diverse traditions, racial qualities, and religious faiths, but these children have been, prepared to live together as citizens in a selfgoverning state. If the declaration of the encyclical were scrupulously obeyed by those to whom it is addressed, the public school would be emptied of all its Catholic pupils except as the bishop in his discretion in special circumstances may permit them to remain. The language of the encyclical is:

"We, therefore, confirm our previous declarations and sacred canons forbidding Catholic children to attend anti-Catholic, neutral or mixed schools, by the latter being meant those schools open equally to Catholics or non-Catholics."

If other churches were to make like claim-that is, that "the educative mission belongs preeminently" to them for their children—and were to lay like inhibitions, the very foundations of this Republic would be disturbed.

One wonders whether he [the Pope], with all his wisdom, does not know with what civic fervor Catholics and Protestants, Jews and gentiles, alike unite to support what he calls "neutrals" or "mixed" schools.

This concludes my quotation from the New York Times.

The New York Telegram of Tuesday, January 14, 1930, commented, in part, as follows, on the Pope's encyclical:

Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and there can be no religious freedom where any church or group of churches dominates the entire educational system.

In the name of the same freedom we have the public school, supported by general taxation, and to which children of all denominations or no denominations are welcome. In those schools the teaching of religion is barred.

It is the Pope's conception that the church should predominate in educational matters.

It is our conception that the church, no matter of what denomination, should be left out of the educational system except for the schools it actually maintains. K. The enactment of S. 717 would be a powerful lever in the hands of sectarian interests to force the States and communities to separate the school taxes paid by these interests from the general school taxes and turn them over to their schools.

Because of the baneful effects of a dominant sectarianism in education such action would ultimately destroy our popular government. The passage of the pending bill would be the entering wedge to such a result.

Senator JOHNSON. Let me ask you one question. Do you know whether or not any State has contributed any money to these schools? Mr. ROGERS. I do not know of any State that has, Mr. Chairman. S. 717 is vague and uncertain as to the disposition of its appropriations, the power of its Board, and the complicated if not devious sources of information upon which it is presumed to act. Aside from this observation such a Board would be, naturally, subject to great pressures from both public and nonpublic schools.

In fact, the pressure would start with the appointment of the members of the Board and the several trustees. Then, each group would contend for the most it could get and thus give rise to much wrangling.

Moreover, the fight between the two kinds of nonpublic schools, sectarian and nonsectarian would be always tense, to say nothing of a like feeling that would arise as between the various religious denominations for their respective shares of the funds. All of this will throw religion and education into State and National politics with that acrimony and vindictive jealousy that always characterizes such issues. This was the experience of the State of New York over 100 years ago.

Mr. Chairman, in this connection I should like to place in the record the following excerpts from an article by Arvid J. Burke, which was published in New York State Education. The article is well-documented under the title "Development of Educational Policy in New York State," with some 50 references. Mr. Burke stated:

1813-42-THE COMMON SCHOOL PRINCIPLE IS EXTENDED TO NEW YORK CITY

Between 1813 and 1842 New York State had to choose between two radically different educational policies, the civil common schools which had been established up-State by the law of 1812 or the publicly financed private and denominational elementary schools which had been continued in New York City under the law of 1813.

Certain factors made it almost inevitable that New York City would seek to be exempted from the law of 1812. Aristocratic and conservativé leaders educated in King's, or Columbia Coliege, were satisfied with private schools for the property classes who in their opinion were the only citizens entitled to participate in Government. The religious denominations and voluntary societies were anxious to carry on the British tradition of charity schools for paupers. Among those maintaining charity schools were the Free School Society, Orphan Asylum Society, Society of the Economical School, African Free School, Christ's Church, First Presbyterian Church, Scotch Presbyterian Church, Reformed Dutch Church, Methodist Episcopal Church, United German Lutheran Church, German Reformed Church, First Baptist Church, Bethel Baptist Church, Congregational Church, Moravian Church, Roman Catholic Benevolent Society, Episcopal Charity School, St. Peter's Church Free School, and St. Patrick's Cathedral Free School. The patrons of privately controlled pauper schools opposed the law. Over 18 petitions from religious denominations and voluntary associations in New York City asked that the city be exempted from the law. They wanted State aid for schools under their own control.

The denominational and private charity school interests in New York City succeeded in having the city exempted from the law of 1812. According to a law passed in 1813 that portion of the school fund received by the city and county of New York should be apportioned and paid to the trustees of the Free School Society of New York (the Public School Society), the Orphan Asylum Society, the Society of the Economical School, the African Free School, and such incorporated religious societies in the city as supported, or should establish charity schools who might apply for the same; but such funds were to be used only for payments of teachers' salaries.

It was not long before an intense rivalry arose among the various voluntary associations and religious denominations over the division of the school fund. Beginning with the Bethel Baptist Church controversy in 1821 and ending with the Roman Catholic controversy in 1842 this struggle kept the New York City council and the State legislature in turmoil.

The controversy between the Free School Society and the Bethel Baptist Church after 1821 brought into the open the implication of this policy, and many citizens began to ask whether or not the policy had not been a mistake. Attention was called to the competition for pupils in order to increase State aid, the policy of having teachers return part of their salaries to the organization, the building of competing schools in the same neighborhood, the emphasis on indoctrination instead of promoting common understanding and purposes, the difficulty of maintaining any kind of standards, the building of schools by general taxation, the property rights to which were vested in private corporations, the increasing number of groups seeking State aid for schools, and the impossibility 73384-45-pt. 2-32