I cannot testify on something that I do not know anything about. Therefore, I submit that it is unreasonable to ask us to pass judgment upon a bill of 50 pages, that was introduced last Monday, and, as I understand, of which prints were only available the day before yesterday. The only thing I know about that bill is that the bill, in my judgment, is the voice of Esau, but the hand is the hand of Jacob. Otherwise, this bill which is supposed to come from the Federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation is, in fact, nothing of the kind, but rather was drafted by the National Rehabilitation Association, who "let the cat out of the bag" in their own testimony before this committee the other day in stating that they knew all about it; knew all about the bill prior to the introduction of it.

I am sorry that I am not one of those that is able to see everything and know everything. Let me address myself to this subject first.

That organization has used Government officials, in my judgment, in such a manner that this committee should know of it. Anyone has the right to protest against or act in favor of any bill anywhere. But I seriously doubt the propriety of Mr. Oliver Kincannon, the present press chief of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, on this past Monday and Tuesday, going to witnesses on this bill of mine and telling them not to testify for that bill. I say, Mr. Chairman, that is wrong, because, if a Government official will do that to an outside bill, that could happen to any one of you here. I want the committee to take notice of that. Of course, this is nothing new. The Rehabilitation Association, composed of State officials of rehabilitation agencies, pull such tricks very often.

I am in a rather peculiar position, gentlemen, as author or as one of the three authors of the original act of 30 years ago.

These gentlemen are on the pay roll today because of bills which I drafted and succeeded in getting Congress, in my humble way, to approve. In other words, I am here not exactly as a tyro at this game. The first Vocational Training Act of June 2, 1920, was put on the books by the late Arthur Holder and N. P. Alifas, and myself. And from that legislation all subsequent legislation in this field has stemmed.

Next, I am the author of the National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. As your chairman knows, with his help and that of Bob Ramspeck, we succeeded in getting the House to approve the establishment of the Committee on Aid to the Physically Handicapped, of which your distinguished chairman was head for 2 years, and he has probably heard more about the handicapped than any man in the history of this country.

I organized the President's Committee on National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week while serving as special consultant on handicapped affairs to the late Secretary of Labor. And, as I say, I am also president of an organization which has handicapped members in every State. I feel, then, as I have said, that I am not exactly a tyro. And, with all due respect to these other gentlemen, I wish to point out another thing.

Those who have been proponents of opposition bills are all on Federal or State pay rolls. The public interest in this matter is represented by outside organizations. Certainly no one can say that I could compel the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the American Council on Education, or any of the

various eminent and distinguished witnesses who have appeared before this committee to come here and testify for this bill; and, unless they had a knowledge of this matter and believed in this bill, they would not be here.

Mr. Chairman, I am just a country boy myself and I cannot keep up with these city slickers. But, when you were sitting 3 years ago, you heard one example of how smart they are. You heard a very strong statement in opposition to the bill then pending (H. R. 5206), submitted in the name of Gen. Graves B. Erskine, who was then Retraining and Reemployment Administrator and a few months later, in discussing the bill with the general, he said to me, "I have never read it."

That statement was submitted by one of those rehabilitation experts, a State director himself. Of course, we go a little further. I have in my hand here the National Rehabilitation News of July 1942. I shall not burden the record by reading all of it, but I maintain that this organization, the National Rehabilitation Association, has never had any ideas in this field in its life, ideas of its own. I submit that they have never pioneered, executed, or developed any national program for the physically handicapped people. Not only that, but they are very anxious to come along and expropriate anybody else's work. Indeed, they calmly endeavor to take over to themselves the National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week.

While I am on the subject, I may say that we have a very peculiar situation today. We have the officials of one Federal agency, and State directors-wonderful pals-testify before your committee that the Marines have landed and have the situation in hand; no changes are necessary; and, if there are any such that are necessary, there are only those changes that they suggest. In no place in their testimony has there been shown any evidence that any handicapped person, aside from those on Federal or State pay rolls, were consulted about their bill at all. And, Mr. Chairman, I was amazed that Mr. Barrett, president of the National Rehabilitation Asssciation, in testifying before the committee on Wednesday, in answer to your questioning, stated that their association approved the plans and work of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation in toto, and that there had been and is close cooperation between it and them. That is very strange, Mr. Chairman, because Mr. Barrett and other officers of the National Rehabilitation Association have sat in my office on a number of occasions the past year and a half and have damned the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and its Director, Mr. Shortley, from hell to breakfast. It is indeed passing strange that suddenly they all become bosom friends. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, the advisability of this committee sending the officers of the National Rehabilitation Association to Europe, where their undoubted talents for peace making and conciliation are badly needed to compose the troubled affairs of warring nations and elements.

Now, here they say this:

The National Rehabilitation Association, as proud of it as we are, has gone along somewhat in the background during its approximately two decades of existence. Ask any industrialist, merchant, banker, clergyman, educator, or the man in the street if he is familiar with our association. Nine times out of ten the reply will be, "Never heard of it."

I would like for the chairman to see that because in that they calmly take credit for the Handicapped Week, with which they had nothing to do.

I might say that when I organized the President's Committee the association fought the Committee tooth and nail. That is the fact. They opposed the President Committee on the National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week, and they did everything that they could do to throw a rock in its path.

I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, that I have to descend to such tactics. because such is not my usual way. I think this has been unfairly handled. I submit that it is unreasonable. I am not going to attempt to confuse the committee any further. I sympathize with you.

I can say that we were called in here, according to the committee, to testify on H. R. 3095, and instead we are asked to testify on four or five bills that none of us know anything about. I say that is wrong, and under the circumstances I would be fully justified in asking permission to discuss the Atlantic Charter, the ECA appropriations, the Taft-Hartley Act, and other such matters.

The National Rehabilitation Association, in my judgment, is something like Vice President Barkley's story about the quack doctor who was called to the bedside of an ailing farmer, and after the while the quack admitted that he could not cure the farmer's disease but he boasted, "I am powerfully good on fits. I will throw the patient into a fit and then I will cure him of that."

So, they are going to throw the patient into a fit and cure the patient of a fit.

Mr. Chairman, the issue before this committee is plain-what is the best means to set up a program for the physically handicapped in this country? What is the best means that the Congress can exercise? Four hundred members want to do something for the handicapped. It is not a question of any aversions on your part; but, rather, what is the best thing to do?

I can go back 35 years in this business and tell you one thing: That the same people who have come in in opposition to this bill came in in opposition to establishing a handicapped program 30 years ago. Today they want to defend the status quo. Today everything is all right if it is their baby, or all wrong if it is anybody else's baby. I still say, Mr. Chairman, in the light of their own failure to develop any program, and the figures will bear me out-and if I am not mistaken Mr. Wier has shown much interest in the placement of the handicapped-can I say, with no false modesty, that 75 percent of the policy today respecting the placement of the handicapped was developed by me. I am the author of a model plan on the employment of the physically handicapped as well as the mentally handicapped, which is used as a standard in many of the employment services throughout the United States.

Yet, a few things happened yesterday that astounded me. One was that we heard testimony from Mr. Ewing to the effect that placement was not in this picture.

Mr. Chairman, you well know that until we applied the hypodermic, the adrenalin shot, there was not much placement of handicapped people in the war. It was due to you and Bob Ramspeck and myself. We are more responsible for that than anyone else.

Before the war we ran along with 8,000, 9,000, or 10,000 people being rehabilitated yearly. That was tops. We came along and we throw this whole handicapped program into sharp relief by taking it away from the charity people. You should put it where it belongs, on an economic basis.

Mr. Chairman, you cannot ignore this ever-increasing segment of our population. It is all well and good for these rehabilitation boys to talk about backlogs. How ridiculous. Every age produces its own quota of handicapped. We will never catch up because it is not reasonable.

Now, we have jumped up rehabilitation, as I say, for two reasons: Industry found out it could employ handicapped people. Then it was up to us to find a safe means of showing how the job and the handicapped man or woman could be fitted together. Well, I wrote the original formula which set up that investigation, and I used the Civil Service Commission as the whipping boy because it was the largest employer in the country.

Prior to this last war the Commission only admitted handicapped people to some 365 jobs out of 6,800 jobs then in the classified service. Now, for the benefit of the committee, let me say that under its then rules the Commission could not have employed Thomas Edison, because he could not hear a watch tick at 15 feet, and they would not have employed John Milton to teach English, because he could not see. We could go on with thousands of illustrations. I went before the Commission and protested. They said, "This is precedent." I said, "Let's break tradition." With the help of some 55 Members of Congress-God bless you all-Mr. Chairman, we put a little heat on these reluctant agencies. You know how that is done, especially through appropriations, and they were asked pointed questions: "Do you mean to say that you are not going to give these handicapped people a break in the way of a job?"

Just about that time the representatives of rehabilitation went before Congress and said, "We have only 100,000 handicapped." Twelve years ago the Public Health Service made a survey which gave us the only figures we have today on the handicapped people, and there were 23,600,000, of whom 16,000,000 were in the categories outside of socialsecurity agencies.

I went down to my good friend Emmet O'Neal, who was chairman of the Subcommittee on Appropriations, and I said, "Emmet, it would do no harm for you to ask the boys to get together and agree on a lie. One says there are only 100,000 and the other says there are 23,000,000; so there is bound to be a slip somewhere." You see, they have persisted through all these years in looking at this thing through the small end of the telescope. They have minimized. They say, "Come up and see my etchings."

Mr. Chairman, this is not an etching; this handicapped problem is a panorama of human misery that affects a very large number of our citizens. It is up to this committee and the Congress to make it known that it will use its own judgment.

I hope that you will approve the principles of the bill which we have submitted. We have submitted it not to waste your time but to give you something concrete to work on. But we serve notice, as long as I live and God spares me, I will be back here knocking at the door.

Of course, the very peculiar problems of 28,000,000 handicapped people are not going to be solved by any nickel-and-dime method. They are not going to be solved except by special service. The blind set-up is a good illustration of that. There are two special services for the handicapped that prove the need for extending those to other groups of the handicapped. The blind and disabled veterans' employment service, may I say, has done a better job on the placement of handicapped veterans than any organization in the Federal or State Governments.

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When you come to this bill, there may be things in the bill which may not be understandable.

I think probably the biggest argument about this bill might really center on the question of alleged pensions. You have known me intimately, Mr. Chairman, since you came to Congress, and if I may be so bold I would like to have you answer one question-as long as you have known me, and we have been closely associated in this work, you have never under any circumstances considered me to be an advocate of pensions for the handicapped; have you?

Mr. KELLEY. Correct.

Mr. STRACHAN. Because my whole objective has been to devise a program that will get these people in a position to earn a living. I am proud of Handicapped Week. Why? Because I got the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make a break-down of the salaries and the wages that have been paid to handicapped people who were appointed under the operations of that week, and I will say, gentlemen, that when you passed that bill you bought the biggest bargain that you ever bought in your lives because, not counting this year at all, but for the previous 4 years, more than $500,000,000 in salaries or wages have been paid to handicapped people appointed under operations of the week, and more than $100,000,000 has been paid by those handicapped people in the form of taxes to Federal, State, and municipal governments. I think that kind of legislation makes sense, and I want to emphasize that the legislation that I am placing before you now is even a better buy. Why?

We can sit down here and pontificate endlessly about handicaps, but when we get right down to brass tacks the severely disabled-we have not touched them. I myself am 85 percent permanently disabled, and I have been told that I am not feasible for rehabilitation. Mr. Chairman, I will work any "consarned" member of the rehabilitation team into the ground today. There are many of us that are in the same position.

I know that you will remember having met at our convention Robert Cox, who had no legs. "Abbreviated Bob," he called himself. Well, he was, of course, unfeasible. But he had a business, a weaving business, and the joke of it is that the rehabilitation agency of the State of Michigan sent students to him to be rehabilitated. I think that is bringing coals to Newcastle for fair.

I could point out thousands of cases that I know of.

We find the so-called counselors. I think that I am a pretty smart guy in lots of ways, but I never made the mistake of thinking that I knew it all, and any man that presumes to play God is riding to a fall. One of these rehabilitation counselors in your own State told one of my members that she should never marry and she should never have any children and that she should never be, in any circumstances, any