Task of the Commission In the President's Executive Order No. 11306, the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty was charged with the following responsibilities: To make a comprehensive study and appraisal of the current economic situations and trends in American rural life, as they relate to the existence of income and community problems of rural areas, including problems of low income, the status of rural labor, including farm labor, unemployment and underemployment and retraining in usable skills; rural economic development and expanding opportunities; sources of additional rural employment; availability of land and other resources; adequacy of food, nutrition, housing, health, and cultural opportunities for rural families; the condition of children and youth in rural areas and their status in an expanding national economy; the impact of population and demographic changes, including rural migration; adequacy of rural community facilities and services; exploration of new and better means of eliminating the causes which perpetuate rural unemployment and underemployment, low income and poor facilities; and other related matters. To evaluate the means by which existing programs, policies, and activities relating to the economic status and community welfare of rural people may be coordinated or better directed or redirected to achieve the elimination of underemployment and low income of rural people and to obtain higher levels of community facilities and services. To develop recommendations for action by local, State or Federal governments or private enterprise as to the most efficient and promising means of providing opportunities for the rural population to share in American's abundance. Preface In the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 the Congress declared it to be the policy of the United States to obliterate poverty. Since that date, antipoverty programs of unusual scope and variety have been developed and put into effect by Federal, State, and local governments and by numerous private organizations representing business, labor, church, and other interested groups. Many of these programs have had a significant effect. A heavy burden of poverty remains, however. Most of the antipoverty effort has been aimed at urban poverty. Few of the new programs have had a major impact on rural America. Yet, as President Johnson indicated by his Executive order creating the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, the problem of poverty in rural areas is so acute as to require immediate and special attention. The heavy migration from rural America to the blighted areas of our major cities clearly shows how bad economic and social conditions are in rural areas. This Commission has assembled the facts of rural poverty and on the basis of these facts has made specific recommendations calling for major changes in our antipoverty programs. The Commission's objective is both to give immediate aid to the rural poor and to attack the causes of their poverty. Chapters 1 and 2 of this report focus sharply on current conditions in rural America and on the urgent need for action. The relationship between the poverty in our central cities and in rural areas is clearly established, and the Commission emphasizes the futility of attempts to solve the urban problem without comparable efforts to solve the rural problem. Chapters 3 through 14 examine specific rural problems-unemployment, health, education, housing, deteriorating communities, existing government programs and suggest both new programs and changes in current ones. The Commission's recommendations call for specific action by all units of government-local, State, and Federal-as well as by private groups and individual citizens. Before framing its recommendations the Commission obtained information from numerous sources, public and private. The first hand testimony of the rural poor was sought and obtained at public hearings. The Commission's staff assembled and analyzed data made available by numerous institutions, including Federal, State, and local agencies. Also members of the staff and leading authorities outside the staff conducted original research for the Commission. In three public hearings the Commission received oral testimony from 105 witnesses. In addition, many papers were submitted for the record. These hearings were conducted at Tucson, Ariz., on January 26 and 27, 1967, at Memphis, Tenn., on February 2 and 3, and at Washington, D.C., on February 15, 16, and 17. The Commission also heard testimony at Berea, Ky., on conditions in eastern Kentucky, and in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Verbatim transcripts of the hearings will be published. In addition, the Commission has made arrangements with some of the best qualified students of rural poverty in the United States to prepare 45 technical papers on specific aspects of the problem. Some of these background papers will be published later in a separate volume. In its meetings the Commission deliberated as a body to assess the facts of rural poverty and to arrive at its recommendations. The Commission was given detailed information on each facet of the rural problem. The recommendations in this report, accordingly, reflect the judgment of the members of the Commission. While some of the recommendations may not be applicable to all parts of the continental United States, and some are not applicable to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, it is believed that most of the recommendations can be applied nationwide. The Commission desires to express special appreciation for the excellent cooperation given by those individuals who served as liaison with departments and agencies of the Federal Government. The contribution made by the departments in providing the Commission with data and with information on current programs was particularly valuable. Summary This report is about a problem which many in the United States do not realize exists. The problem is rural poverty. It affects some 14 million Americans. Rural poverty is so widespread, and so acute, as to be a national disgrace, and its consequences have swept into our cities, violently. The urban riots during 1967 had their roots, in considerable part, in rural poverty. A high proportion of the people crowded into city slums today came there from rural slums. This fact alone makes clear how large a stake the people of this nation have in an attack on rural poverty. The total number of rural poor would be even larger than 14 million had not so many of them moved to the city. They made the move because they wanted a job and a decent place to live. Some have found them. Many have not. Many merely exchanged life in a rural slum for life in an urban slum, at exorbitant cost to themselves, to the cities, and to rural America as well. Even So, few migrants have returned to the rural areas they left. They have apparently concluded that bad as conditions are in an urban slum, they are worse in the rural slum they fled from. There is evidence in the pages of this report to support their conclusion. This Nation has been largely oblivious to these 14 million impoverished people left behind in rural America. Our programs for rural America are woefully out of date. Some of our rural programs, especially farm and vocational agriculture programs, are relics from an earlier era. They were developed in a period during which the welfare of farm families was equated with the well-being of rural communities and of all rural people. This no longer is so. They were developed without anticipating the vast changes in technology, and the consequences of this technology to rural pepole. Instead of combating low incomes of rural people, these programs have helped to create wealthy landowners while largely bypassing the rural poor. Most rural programs still do not take the speed and consequences of technological change into ac count. We have not yet adjusted to the fact that in the brief period of 15 years, from 1950 to 1965, new machines and new methods increased farm output in the United States by 45 percent--and reduced farm employment by 45 percent. Nor is there adequate awareness that during the next 15 years the need for farm labor will decline by another 45 percent. Changes like these on the farm are paralleled on a broader front throughout rural America, affecting many activities other than farming and touching many more rural people than those on farms. In contrast to the urban poor, the rural poor, notably the white, are not well organized, and have few spokesmen for bringing the Nation's attention to their problems. The more vocal and better organized urban poor gain most of the benefits of current antipoverty programs. Until the past few years, the Nation's major social welfare and labor legislation largely bypassed rural Americans, especially farmers and farmworkers. Farm people were excluded from the Social Security Act until the mid-1950's. Farmers, farmworkers, and workers in agriculturally related occupations are still excluded from other major labor legislation, including the unemployment insurance programs, the Labor-Mar.agement Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and most State workman's compensation acts. Because we have been oblivious of the rural poor, we have abetted both rural and urban poverty, for the two are closely linked through migration. The hour is late for taking a close look at rural poverty, gaining an understanding of its consequences, and developing programs for doing something about it. The Commission is unanimous in the conviction that effective programs for solving the problems of rural poverty will contribute to the solution of urban poverty as well. The facts of rural poverty are given in detail later in this report. They are summarized in the paragraphs that follow. Rural poverty in the United States has no geographic boundaries. It is acute in the South, but 69-133 73 pt. 5B 2 it is present and serious in the East, the West, and the North. Rural poverty is not limited to Negroes. It permeates all races and ethnic groups. Nor is poverty limited to the farm. Our farm population has declined until it is only a small fraction of our total rural population. Most of the rural poor do not live on farms. They live in the open country, in rural villages, and in small towns. Moreover, contrary to a common misconception, whites outnumber nonwhites among the rural poor by a wide margin. It is true, however, that an extremely high proportion of Negroes in the rural South and Indians on reservations are destitute. Hunger, even among children, does exist among the rural poor, as a group of physicians discovered recently in a visit to the rural South. They found Negro children not getting enough food to sustain life, and so disease ridden as to be beyond cure. Malnutrition is even more widespread. The evidence appears in bad diets and in diseases which often are a product of bad diets. Disease and premature death are startlingly high among the rural poor. Infant mortality, for instance, is far higher among the rural poor than among the least privileged group in urban areas. Chronic diseases also are common among both young and old. And medical and dental care is conspicuously absent. Unemployment and underemployment are major problems in rural America. The rate of unemployment nationally is about 4 percent. The rate in rural areas averages about 18 percent. Among farmworkers, a recent study discovered that underemployment runs as high as 37 percent. The rural poor have gone, and now go, to poor schools. One result is that more than 3 million rural adults are classified as illiterates. In both educational facilities and opportunities, the rural poor have been shortchanged. Most of the rural poor live in atrocious houses. One in every 13 houses in rural America is officially classified as unfit to live in. Many of the rural poor live in chronically depressed poverty-stricken rural communities. Most of the rural South is one vast poverty area. Indian reservations contain heavy concentrations of poverty. But there also are impoverished rural communities in the upper Great Lakes region, in New England, in Appalachia, in the Southwest, and in other sections. The community in rural poverty areas has all but disappeared as an effective institution. In the past the rural community performed the services needed by farmers and other rural people. Technological progress brought sharp declines in the manpower needs of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and mining. Other industries have not replaced the jobs lost, and they have supplied too few jobs for the young entries in the labor market. Larger towns and cities have taken over many of the economic and social functions of the villages and small towns. The changes in rural America have rendered obsolete many of the political boundaries to villages and counties. Thus these units operate on too small a scale to be practicable. Their tax base has eroded as their more able-bodied wage earners left for jobs elsewhere. In consequence the public services in the typical poor rural community are grossly inadequate in number, magnitude, and quality. Local government is no longer able to cope with local needs. As the communities ran downhill, they offered fewer and fewer opportunities for anyone to earn a living. The inadequately equipped young people left in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Those remaining behind have few resources with which to earn incomes adequate for a decent living and for revitalizing their communities. For all practical purposes, then, most of the 14 million people in our poverty areas are outside our market economy. So far as they are concerned, the dramatic economic growth of the United States might as well never have happened. It has brought them few rewards. They are on the outside looking in, and they need help. Congress and State legislatures from time to time have enacted many laws and appropriated large sums of money to aid the poverty stricken and to help rural America. Very little of the legislation or the money has helped the rural poor. Major farm legislation directed at commercial farms has been successful in helping farmers adjust supply to demand, but it has not helped farmers whose production is very small. And because the major social welfare and labor legislation has descriminated against rural people, many of the rural poor-farmers and farmworkers particularly-have been denied unemployment insurance, denied the right of collective bargaining, and denied the protection of workman's compensation laws. This Commission questions the wisdom of massive public efforts to improve the lot of the poor |