Dr. STUDEBAKER. No. We are out of many fields of education that we ought to be in.

Mr. RICH. Do you get into politics?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Not a bit.

Mr. RICH. You spoke here this morning of having a school of government in certain groups. Are you developing anything in the line of political activities?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. No. Our point there was that in our Division of Higher Education, which deals with colleges and universities in the country, which in turn attempt, with some success, of course, to prepare people for public service, we should have a section, two or three people at least, with some small funds for printing and travel, to do the research and promotion work in the field of education for public service.

Mr. RICH. In Washington here at the present time you have the American University which has a course in political science, have you not?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Yes.

Mr. RICH. You have George Washington University, and, I think, Catholic University and Georgetown. I think they all have courses of study along that line, do they not?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Yes. But what we ought to be doing is to study the ways in which institutions throughout the country are preparing people for public service, their problems, ascertain the success that they are achieving; issue publications that inform the whole Nation, and especially those engaged in the profession of training people for public service, how to improve it. În other words, we would do in that field what we do for agriculture.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. You have no thought in your mind, then, of trying to bring in any study under Government jurisdiction?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Not at all. It is research and service that we should provide.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. If you ever took the step of making it mandatory or compulsory on any Štate to take part in even one simple thing in perfecting the Government, wouldn't that be a step in that direction? Dr. STUDEBAKER. It would.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. So I think that you must be very careful.
Dr. STUDEBAKER. We are.

EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CONNECTION WITH CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS PROGRAM

I must say, Mr. Congressman, that after 2 years of experience as Commissioner of Education, my answer to your question as to whether we are engaged in politics, is that I have been very much pleased with the attitude of all the people around Washington with respect to our particular office. I want to cite just one illustration, and I could give

many.

The President set up the C. C. C. camp educational program, under which the United States Office of Education has to approve the appointment of the men engaged in educational work in the camps. Therefore the recommendations from the corps area officers of the C. C. C. camp organization for appointment of camp educational advisers all come to my desk, and I have to approve them.

I have approved about 3,000 of them, and I want to say that in the 2 years I have not experienced a single instance of pressure from any source, from any Congressman, or from any Senator or any one else, to make any particular appointments.

Mr. RICH. How do you get your list?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. They come up from the district advisers through the corps area advisers.

Mr. RICH. Do you mean the district officers?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. No. The corps-area advisers in the Army. There are nine corps-area advisers.

Mr. RICH. Do the Army officers present those to you?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. No. In each corps-area office there is an educational man.

Mr. RICH. Do you appoint him?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Yes.

Mr. RICH. Where do you get the appointment? From somebody that you know?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. There are only nine of those. Most of them have been in from the beginning. Some men have been selected out of the ranks below.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Do they have to take a civil-service examination for those positions?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. NO.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. How do you ascertain the quality of their knowledge and experience?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. There are form records that they must fill out showing their history and their recommendations. They are all college men.

EDUCATION IN PRISONS

STATEMENT OF HOWARD B. GILL, SECRETARY, ASSOCIATION OF STATES SIGNATORY TO THE INTERSTATE PRISON COMPACT

Mr. RICH. On Saturday Mr. Gill came into my office and wanted to talk to me about education. I said that there was no use taiking to me, because he would have to talk to the whole committee, and he would have to talk to you first. I said if he wanted to, he could go and talk to Dr. Studebaker first, and then come in to the commattée hearing.

He is here, and I don't know exactly what his program is. I don't know how much time he wants to take. But I would like, with the permission of the members of the committee, and with your approval, to let him have a few minutes.

Dr. STUDEBAKER I have no objection. In fact, Mr. Gill and I have worked in the same conferences concerning this program. Mr. RICH. I will ask Mr Gill to be as brief as he can

Mr. Gu... I represent the Committee on Education of the American Prison Association, and am secretary of the Interstate Committee on Prison Compacts

I have here a long statement, but I won't read it I will just try to touch on a few of the high spots, because I realize that perhaps I have the hardest job

Mr. RICH May I say that if your speech gives the details of what you are interested in, you may file it with the committee.

Mr. GILL. Thank you very much. I realize that I have perhaps the hardest job of any one who has stood before you today, because I am coming to support a proposal to add something to this budget. I know this year it is going to be a very difficult thing to do that. But I believe that there are reasons which are unusual enough to warrant this being given some consideration.

There are two sides to this whole crime problem. One, of course, deals with the prisoners, the criminals, who are in the prisons. One deals with the boys, the ones who are potential criminals.

Right now, as far as prisons are concerned, we are in a very bad way. There are in the prisons, the State prisons of the country, about 150,000 prisoners, of whom 100,000 are idle. That has been due partly to pressure, but in large part to restrictive Federal and State laws that have been passed in the last few years which have practically changed the character of our prisons from industrial institutions into something else.

In fact, we estimate that within a year there will be only six States in the Union outside of the Midwestern States that will be selling prison products on the open market.

That puts upon the prisons a tremendous problem, because we must do something with these 100,000 idle prisoners. We cannot turn them back into industry, because that is out of the window, not only for Congress, but the Supreme Court in its decision in January held that the sale of prison products on the open market was an evil. That settles it so far as the prison men are concerned.

There is just one fact that I want to quote from this memorandum. In the 41 State prisons, out of a total number of approximately. 41,000 prisoners we have only enough industrial products for State use, and so on, to employ 8,000 prisoners. Of the remaining 33,000 possibly 10,000 could probably be assigned to maintenance operations and 1,000 to repairs. The rest of them would be idle.

Studies made by one emergency Federal agency indicate that developments for State use might possibly employ between 25 and 30 thousand of these prisoners, leaving between 60 and 70 thousand for whom no work can be found.

For this reason, in June of last year a group of prison officials and others met with the Commissioner of Education to see what could be done from his office to help out on this problem. We found in the Office of Education, specialists in elementary education, secondary education, adult education, Negro education, vocational education, and all of that, but none of them are particularly directed toward the problem of crime or criminals.

As a result of that conference it was suggested that there be set up in the Office of Education a service for the education of criminals and for the prevention of crime, which would help to direct these specialists in other work toward this problem of crime prevention.

So much for this formal situation background.

You have today pointed out that the big program, of course, is not to increase the Budget, but to try to balance the Budget; and the question which is interesting me is, How can we justify adding even so modest an appropriation as $50,000 to this Budget under these circumstances?

Well, all I can do is perhaps this: Outside of the emergency appro priations it is my understanding that about 80 or 83 percent of the money spent by the Government is spent for war, past, present, or

future. No one begrudges that money. It is necessary for the defense of the country, especially if we are to keep out of the situation that seems to be so popular in other nations.

But haven't we in this crime situation just as important a problem or a crisis on our hands as we have when we are trying to keep out of war? In other words, we have a situation which is in a small way a civil war as far as crime is concerned

I believe, in other words, that if we can justify 80 to 85 percent of the Government appropriations for the protection of the country from foreign invasion, we can justify $50,000 of that enormous Government bill to help prevent internal war or to help us take care of the men who have been broken in the fight with crime.

Mr. RICH. May I ask just one question: If you had an appropriation of $50,000, would that work in conjunction with the crime studies that you were speaking of this morning?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. Yes. You remember, I had a chart showing certain services which are not present in the Office of Education, but which because of these large modern social problems ought to be pres ent there; and the one Mr. Gill presents is one of them.

Mr. RICH. You would try to teach us that we would not have the criminals in the institutions if possible, and the educational advantages that you would give to the people to prohibit men from becoming criminals?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. There are two sides to the problem. As one of the sides we ought to be at work studying as carefully as we do any other field of education the problem of education in these penal institutions.

Mr. RICH. Mr. Gill is talking about educating the men who are already in the institutions.

Dr. STUDEBAKER. They are the ones that I am speaking of.

Mr. RICH. Could you subdivide that work up with the statement that Mr. Gill proposed so that we might make a combination of the two both in and out of prison, so that we could make an appropriation of some sort for that purpose?

Dr. STUDEBAKER. I think that the reason Mr. Gill is here is because we not only had that conference last spring in my office that he mentioned, but I made a speech before the American Prison Association at Chicago in September, in which I told its members what I though could be done in the way of specific services through education to prevent crime and to help to educate prisoners who are in the penal institutions. I would be glad to file a copy of that speech if you care for it.

Mr. RICH. If you and Mr. Gill want to make a joint statement on that, we would be glad to have it for consideration.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. I want to make this statement: The commissioner of correction of the State of New York, who was once the police commissioner, communicated to me that he is very much in favor of this appropriation.

But I want to correct you. I think that you made a mistake. You said that 85 percent of all the money spent by our Government went for national defense. That is not true. You have the wrong figure there.

Mr. GILL. Perhaps it has been changed. Those used to be the figures a few years ago.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Far from it now.

We do spend a lot of money,

of course, on national defense; but not 85 percent.

Mr. GILL. I think that the program that I am talking of is on all fours with the program that Mr. Studebaker has in mind. It has two sides, and one is the education of the man in the prison.

Mr. RICH. If you have any statement to present, we shall be glad to have it.

Mr. JOHNSON. Let me ask you this: I am very much interested in the subject matter, but isn't it a fact that now such a program is in a limited way in practice in the penal institutions?

For example, up in Southwestern Reformatory at El Reno, which happens to be in the district that I represent in Congress, they have a very modern Federal reformatory. I visited that reformatory on two or three occasions, and I found a school going on in a dozen different rooms. The teachers were largely, if not altogether, prisoners. But I had assumed that it was in cooperation and conjunction with some department of the Government here in Washington; and I am wondering if your department has had anything to do with that.

Dr. STUDEBAKER. No; we do not. As far as I have been able to find out, there isn't anything that is being done in that field to make continuous studies of the way to improve the education of criminals. Mr. FITZPATRICK. That would include State and Federal? Dr. STUDEBAKER. That is right.

Mr. GILL. But in the Federal institutions we have perhaps the best educational program of any of the prisons. But I am speaking particularly of those in the States in which we have a woeful lack of education; and in many of the institutions they have no education whatever.

I talked to the Director of Prisons, Mr. Bennett, the other day; and he said he would be very glad if he could cooperate with Dr. Studebaker and with the people in the States so that the States will have the benefit of the practices that are being carried on now in the Federal institutions.

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 1937.

GOVERNMENT IN THE TERRITORIES

TERRITORY OF ALASKA

STATEMENTS OF E. K. BURLEW, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT AND BUDGET OFFICER; DR. ERNEST H. GRUENING, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF TERRITORIES AND ISLAND POSSESSIONS; AND PAUL W. GORDON, SUPERVISOR OF ALASKAN AFFAIRS, DIVISION OF TERRITORIES AND ISLAND POSSESSIONS; AND COL. O. F. OHLSON, GENERAL MANAGER, ALASKA RAILROAD

GENERAL STATEMENT

The CHAIRMAN. If there are no further questions on this item, gentlemen, we will proceed to Alaska. Mr. Gordon, do you want to make a general statement to the committee explanatory of the situation concerning the appropriation?

Mr. GORDON. I believe Dr. Gruening will do that, Mr. Chairman.