meet the increasing requests and demands of respective communities and counties in vocational agricultural work. As evidence of this statement may I submit that the Wisconsin State Legislature, on January 27, 1937, passed a joint resolution urging Congress to allocate to the several States the entire appropriation authorized by the George-Deen Act for vocational education. The Governor of Nebraska recommended to the State legislature for the full appropriation of State vocational funds to match the full amount of Federal funds available under the George-Deen Act. The Pennsylvania State Council of Education has registered an official request for the full amount authorized under the George-Deen Act. Between 80 and 90 vocational school buildings have been constructed during the past few months in the State of Arkansas, largely by the W. P. A. Administration and in order to meet the increasing demands for vocational education training. Authorities were acting on the assumption that Congress would make available the total appropriation called for under the George-Deen Act. Approximately 500 official applications for the establishment of vocational courses and departments have been received by the State department of education in Georgia within the past year. These official applications come from local school districts, from local boards of education, and from superintendents of education who are prepared to proceed with the program, acting of course on the assumption that the full appropriation would be available under the George-Deen Act. As an illustration of the general need for these funds submitted by an average State, that of the State of Missouri, may I submit that there are 200 high schools which do not now have vocational agricultural departments, but which are eligible for such courses? Sixtytwo schools in Missouri have requested assistance in establishing Vocational-education programs. They are on the waiting list pending the availability of these funds. According to information submitted by the vocational division of the State department of education, $56,000 is needed to add 62 new departments of vocational agriculture, this amount to be used for payment of teachers. Twenty-one thousand dollars is needed to add extra teachers with large enrollments; $21,000 is needed to reimburse teachers for part-time and evening-school classes; $22,000 is needed to apply on travel allowance of teachers in attendance upon special teacher-training courses and also in visiting communities to assist in organizing vocational programs. An additional $21,000 is needed to increase salaries of the present teaching force to give them a respectable income. A total amount of $141,000 is therefore needed by the State of Missouri if the State is to meet the demands and requests for the vocational-education program. What is true of the State of Missouri is true of a great many other States and numbers of the States could be cited along with Missouri. Many of the States are in much greater need than the State of Missouri. I have on file in my office figures submitted by various State educational authorities showing the need for this appropriation. Some of the States are as follows: Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Maine, Oregon, Utah, North Carolina, and others. 139751-37-pt. 2-5 Mr. Chairman, may I submit that in my judgment no funds appropriated by Congress have yielded greater dividends to the taxpayers and the public generally than that appropriated for vocational education, including training in home economics, the trades and industries. Enrollments in vocational-education classes in agriculture, trade and industry, and home economics reached a peak of 1,249,189 during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1935. This was an increase of more than 130,000 over the previous years. The increase is divided as follows: Agriculture, 40,622; trade and industry, 51,924; and home economics, 37,503. The increases are based on a total enrollment of 329,983 persons in agricultural courses, 537,983 in trade and industrial courses, and 381,224 in home-economics courses. State boards of vocational education, in their respective reports to the Office of Vocational Education, reveal many interesting and illuminating facts with reference to the rapid and valuable progress being made in this work. Briefly, vocational education has functioned as follows: Training the unemployed worker how to get back into employment. By providing occupational adjustment training to keep the unemployed worker employed. As an illustration, in 1934, 100,000 adult farmers, 140,000 trade and industrial workers, and 129,000 women in the home were enrolled in evening classes for instruction along the lines of their daily employment. This was done to assist them in adjusting themselves to a rapidly changing work environment. By administering apprentice training for the unemployed boy and girl. By enrolling the unemployed worker in regular vocational courses. By organizing special vocational courses for the unemployed. By assisting the unemployed worker to find himself and then help him find a job. By training the unemployed worker in his or her specific line of work. By protecting the occupational morale of unemployed workers during unemployment. By promoting agricultural adjustment to the maladjusted farmer. By safeguarding the health, morale, and welfare of the unemployed worker's family. By educating the homemaker as a buyer-consumer for the family. By organizing live-at-home programs for rural families. By teaching the homemaker to make over rather than buy new when he has not the money. By vocationally rehabilitating the physically disabled unemployed. As an illustration, in 1934, more than 8,000 permanently disabled and generally unemployed dependent workers in their respective fields of endeavor were vocationally rehabilitated and placed in employment in lines of work that they could do. By cooperating with agencies of public and private relief. By cooperating with Civilian Conservation Corps camps for the unadjusted youth. By cooperation in programs of rural rehabilitation. Here more than 80,000 F. F. A. farm boys-that is, Future Farmers of America— have taken vocational agricultural courses and have, therefore, participated in the rehabilitation and readjustment of their farm-family problems. By cooperating with transit bureaus and elimination of vagrancy. By cooperating with subsistence-homestead communities. By teaching and training in part-time classes adult and young men in trades and industry in order to meet the changing conditions brought about by eliminating of sweatshops, shorter hours, etc. By teaching, through the extension service, adult farmers the importance of readjustment necessitated by overproduction of farm products and low prices. Evidence presented by a State instructor of vocational education at the hearings disclosed that in one rural community, where vocational education has been taught for the past several years, in 1935 the citizens of the community canned approximately 50,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables and 270 beef cattle, all of which was consumed in the community and none of it was shipped outside of the county. The testimony disclosed that not a person in that community had been on relief during the past 3 or 4 years. Other similar and most interesting facts and conditions supporting the value and benefits of vocational education were submitted to the committee. A perusal of the hearings will disclose many illuminating and interesting reasons why the vocational-education program should not only be continued, but should be broadened as provided for in H. R. 12120. In 1934, 555 State directors, supervisors, and teacher-trainers for Vocational education and 169 State supervisors and case workers for Vocational rehabilitation were employed. Vocational teaching staff's of local communities included 8,677 teachers of evening classes, and 13,186 all-day school teachers, and 5,093 teachers of part-time classes. Vocational-teacher training institutions enrolled 15,962 pupils in teacher-training courses taught by 790 teachers. No group of citizens has rendered a greater service or done more toward combating the depression than these excellent vocational teachers. Now, gentlemen, may I make it clear that I realize Congress cannot appropriate all the money contained in the requests and demands of various persons, organizations, and so forth. No one realizes more than I do that shortly excessive spending and appropriating of public funds by the Congress must be curtailed. An individual cannot continue to spend twice as much as he earns, neither can the Federal Government continue to spend annually twice the amount of its income. But let me point out to you that no money, in my opinion, spent by the Federal Government, has done more and is doing more to reestablish our people in agricultural work and in industrial work than that which has been done by our vocational education program. It therefore occurs to me, in the light of all the facts, figures, and evidence which I have submitted and which has been submitted by other witnesses appearing before your committee, that the full amount authorized under the George-Deen Act is absolutely necessary to carry on this important work. I therefore ask you to appropriate the $14,200,000 called for under the George-Deen Act. In addition to Mr. Cox, Mr. Tarver, and Mr. Brown, my colleagues. from Georgia who have appeared before your committee today, Mr. Pace, Mr. Owen and Mr. Peterson have been here, but on account of urgent business before other committees they could not remain. I am requested to state that Mr. Vinson and all other members of my State delegation are 100 percent for the authorization in the George Deen Act. STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL A. REED, A REPRESENTATIVE I CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK Mr. REED. Mr. Chairman, I am very much interested in an subject of vocational education, and I have been for quite a years. It is a great pleasure to come here and speak to you get. know you are all vitally interested in the subject of ed „eati question whether I can add anything to what has been ... any more light on this subject than has already been ti.r by the very able speeches which have been made here today In looking over these documents here I became very mus ti in the information they contain. I noticed that down in the Georgia 500 applications have been made from districts for t lishment of vocational schools. These 500 application were the State board of education. That took me back just 37 years I would just like to give you a little idea of what happened w first felt a keen interest in the subject of education. Thirty-seven years ago I was a young lawyer in a small town a man unknown to me at the time came in and wante whether he could retain me to look over some titles in r Georgia. I told him he could. He said, "When can you I said, "On the 2 o'clock train today." He said, "You are rutas mi He got the papers together, and we went down there. I had never been in that region before, and the county I w was Fannin County. I was looking over titles to a vast arty I did not know there were any people in the United States under the conditions I found there. It was very dithielt for rei find any one in that county who could read or write. I stopped at a very humble home. They were splendid p but desperately poor, and neither the father nor the read or write. They had a little girl about 12 years old, and she was as a.. as an angel. She had gone to school only a few weeks, ar-1 when the log schoolhouse in that locality happened to be opet, at teacher was there; which was not very often. In the evening I visited with the little girl and her paret "a parents expressed regret that they could neither read nor write I explained the opportunities which the children ha State and what it meant to them, and told them that ty find some way to give this little girl an education. A way was found. After a time she could write a very letter. She was bright and anxious to learn We corresponded for quite a number of years The e then had would be comparable to that of a child of about 7 og Svan in our part of the country. After a time we stopped corresponding, and the years wet. Then later, when I was in Rochester, N. Y, attet. : 2 happened to think of that little girl, but it did not oce up to be quite a number of years had slipped by, so I wrote her a szem as though she were still a child. In about 3 weeks I received a beautiful letter from her "I guess you forgot that time has been passing. I an. little Southern college, and I am going to graduate and be a te After she was graduated she dedicated her life to teaching people who had not had an opportunity to get an education, not only children, but adults. So, I resolved then and there, so far as I could, to do anything, or to use any influence that I could bring to bear that would improve conditions generally in the educational field in this country, not having an idea at that time that I would later be a Member of Congress. It happened that when I came to Congress I became a member of the Committee on Education, and finally I became the chairman of that committee. The Reed-George bill was a bill I introduced. I followed the work closely and with great satisfaction. I want you to know that my interest in education goes back many years. Another experience aroused my interest in vocational education. I was in Williamsport, Pa., before the Smith-Hughes Act was passed. There they had developed a system by which the student went to work in shops for 2 weeks and then went to school for 2 weeks. I became very much interested in that system. I was in that city for about 8 weeks, and I saw the marvelous work they were doing for the type of boy who finds his means of expression through his hands rather than along literary lines. Williamsport, because of this type of education, has developed into a fine industrial city. They have been able to bring industries there and over a period of years one group of boys after another has been developed to do much of the skilled work in those industrial plants. It has been brought out here that the agriculural field has been somewhat neglected. That is one of the tragedies. For years, under the Smith-Hughes Act, we were taking boys from the farms and educating them along industrial lines. There was nothing much to interest them in the farm work. Why? Because they were farming as their forebears had been doing for a century. No questions were asked except; "How did father and grandfather do the work", and the boy followed in their footsteps. The farm boy was not encouraged to experiment. Then I watched the work at Cornell University and I saw what the agricultural school was doing in what was called the "short-horn course" in the winter. I can take you to farms in my section today where the farmers who had technical training during the 8 weeks in the winter have not felt the depression. They know how to produce and they know how to market, and they learned these methods at Cornell. Now, we have some agricultural schools in my district, and numerous schools throughout the State of New York. It is an inspiring sight to go into those schools, especially when the fathers and sons meet, as they annually do, and see father and son sitting side by side discussing their farm problems together. It is a great comfort to a man on his farm who has made a pal of his boy to feel that the boy is anchored to the soil and that they are going on to live and work the old homestead together; that the boy will be right alongside of him and will remain there either on the old farm or some other farm in the neighborhood. We build up boys imbued with the American spirit in the localities where they live, as a result of constructive work of this character. |