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Two men by house.-What a thrill it is for a family to move into a new house like this . . .

Man in kitchen.-And for the wife to have a new modern kitchen like this. Lady drawing water from faucet.-And to have all the good clean water you want simply by turning the tap.

New expensive home.-Some houses ranging from $70-$80,000 are being built in the area. Rural lots with 100 feet of frontage on the water line now sell for $1.000 or more.

New home.-The Farmers Home Administration finances homes like this.
New home. And this . . .

New home and red car.—And this with loans varying from $7,000 to $12,000.
Lady at organ.-The homes are designed for comfortable living.

Exterior of home.-We find that rural families take considerable pride in their homes. Homes increase in value after families landscape.

Family by new home.-Roosevelt Martin and his family just moved into this home. They are now seeding grass and landscaping it. The Warren County Extension. Service furnishes families technical assistance on landscaping and interior decorating.

Famliy in living room.-The Martin home was financed with a $7,700 Farmers Home Administration loan. Payments run $45 a month.

Little girl in kitchen.-Both Mr. and Mrs. Martin work-but on different shifts at the Century Electric Company. They have an annual income of $5,900. A new home with modern kitchen makes Mrs. Martin's household tasks much easier. Their children have an opportunity to grow up in a wholesome home environment.

Three people by house. This retired couple, pictured on the left, he is 70 years old-recently acquired this previously occupied house with a $7,000 FHA loan. FHA loans to finance the purchase of second-hand homes were made possible by a 1966 legislative change in the Rural Housing Act.

Couple by new home.-Mr. and Mrs. Fred Maynard financed this new home with a $5,000 FHA senior citizens rural housing loan. Payments run $30 a month. He is a cook at the Warren County VFW Club. His wife is a retired school teacher.

Farmer and tobacco.-Mr. A. D. Gillispie is still farming today, only because he is able to obtain good water piped to his farm.

Farmer with cows.-He needs plenty of water for his dairy operation. Four men in field.-The Farmers Home Administration made Mr. Gillispie a $19,200 farm ownership loan in 1961 to buy his 100-acre farm, an operating loan to buy cows and equipment, and a rural housing loan to build a new home.

Seven persons on porch.—The Agricultural Stabilization Conservation Service helped the Gillispies with cost-share in seeding and fertilizing permanent pasture and draining low land; the Soil Conservation Service assisted in laying out two ponds and technical assistance on land drainage, and the County Extension Service assisted in the selection of dairy cows, breeding and feeding the herd and keeping an account of each cow's production by milk testing through the Dairy Herd Improvement Association.

Couple in kitchen.-Electricity and telephone for the Gillispies are provided by local rural electric co-ops.

Man and boy milking cows.-Ernest L. Bost, age 34, young farmer finds good water an absolute necessity in carrying out his dairy operation.

Cow in dairy parlor.-He milks 50 cows-receives some help from his four children. His wife died last year from a blood clot.

Two men in milk room.—Mr. Bost has called on all the agricultural agencies in Warren County. He used FHA rural housing loan funds to build a modest house and dairy barn, a farm ownership loan to enlarge his farm and pipe in water and an operating loan to buy cows and equipment. The Soil Conservation Service developed a land-use plan and assisted in laying out the fields on contour. The Agricultural Conservation and Stabilization Service furnished cost-sharing on pasture improvement. The County Agent helped in selection of dairy cattle and the dairy breeding and feeding program.

Man and hoe.-Robert L. Leftwich obtained an Economic Opportunity Loan of $270 from the FHA in January 1966 to clear land, fence and seed pasture and establish a small hog operation.

Two men in the field.-This year he is growing two acres of pepper. They will return about $700-an important supplement to his $2,600 earned as a county

highway department employee. The Warren County Technical Action Panel succeeded in obtaining a 200-acre contract to grow peppers. Small acreages are being grown by several low-income families in the county. The Warren County Extension Service has furnished considerable help and technical assistance on this project.

Two persons on porch.-Mrs. Ora Walker received a $300 FHA economic opportunity loan in November 1965, to purchase a sewing machine and help establish a small sewing room adjoining the family's 100-year old house.

Lady with sewing machine.-Her husband, age 80, is blind. Mrs. Walker earns about $400 a year by sewing and receives $1,000 annually from other sources.

Two persons by wood pile.-If the Farmers Home Administration could make small housing grants, families like the Walkers would stand to benefit. Their old home has no modern convenience except electricity. Water has to be hauled, there is an outside privy, and fuel for heating and cooking comes from the old wood pile.

Four persons in room.-Through coordinated work of the Technical Action Panel, many additional services of local, state and federal agencies are being funneled into Warren County. This low-income needy family is stricken with tuberculosis and five of the children are afflicted with impetigo (open sores caused by poor sanitation). Mrs. York, Warren County health nurse, checks temperature of young boy, age 5. The family exists on welfare and a $220 monthly social security pension.

Family and nurse in front of house.-The Farmers Home Administration is attempting to work out a small loan to make the family's house more habitableput in closets, install window screens, build front and back steps. Also FHA is processing a small EO loan to help the family establish a small turkey-raising enterprise.

Boy in garage.-Gary Atchley, age 19, a high school drop out, is a recent Job Corps graduate from Camp Attebury, Indiana. His father is dead. With skills learned during 72 months of schooling with the Job Corps, Gary obtained work as a mechanic at the Puckett Motor Company in McMinnville. Now he is able to help his mother support his two younger brothers and three sisters. Mrs. Atchley receives about $300 monthly from Social Security and a small pension. The family lives in a modest home financed in 1962 with a $8,500 FHA rural housing loan.

WARREN COUNTY SUMMARY OF PROGRESS

Franklin Blue, Warren County native and mayor of McMinnville, the county seat and trading center, recently summed up the progress brought about by USDA programs. “I think that FHA water systems and other USDA programs are having a tremendous overall effect on Warren County and its development. We didn't have water on our farm when I was a boy and I think back now as to how it would have been a paradise for my mother and father.

"We-in McMinnville-are just as interested in what goes on in the rural communities of our county as we are concerned about developments here in town. We are happy to have been able to provide the water for the FHA systems. We want every family in every home in Warren County to have all the good water they need."

1. A total of $1,424,000 in FHA loan funds plus $174.750 in customer contributions (tap fees) have been used to establish five rural water systems with 133 miles of water lines serving 1,426 customers (6,930 rural people).

In addition, a $300,000 loan by the Department of Housing and Urban Development financed a 30-mile system serving 300 customers. All rural water loans in Warren County have been made since March 1963.

2. All schools in the county outside the city of McMinnville are served by a treated water supply from one of the six systems.

3. Warren County now has a water line on every major highway leading out of town and several of the secondary roads.

4. Four new industrial plants have been constructed in rural areas and a fifth large plant with 1,500 jobs is being negotiated.

5. Seventeen small businesses have been started.

6. Over 300 new rural homes costing $3.5 million have been built. Nearly 500 houses have been remodeled at an expenditure of $50,000.

7. Nearly $1 million in community building improvements include a church, post office, public school addition, two recreation centers, college addition, technical school, and elementary school.

8. The State of Tennessee has purchased a $500,000 tract near Rock Island for a new park.

9. Farmers as members of the Warren County Soil Conservation Districtin 1966 stocked 67 farm ponds with fish, established 9,425 feet of diversion terraces and 33 acres of grassed waterways, built 4,685 feet of drainage ditches and improved 1,000 feet of stream channel, laid 5,000 feet of tile, built 74 additional farm ponds, carried out approved management practices on nearly 6,500 acres of pasture and hayland, and administered many other soil and water development and conservation practices.

10. Working with their local farm forester, farmers planted 2,700 acres of trees.

11. Warren County farmers received some $540,000 in Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation funds in 1966. Cost-share funds were earned for carrying out many different types of approved water development and soil conservation practices.

Mr. RESNICK. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I think that you are to be congratulated and commended for an outstanding statement. I think that this statement that you have prepared goes into every phase of the problems and suggested solutions to the problems. I do not think that you left out very much. I hope that the hearings, as they evolve, probe these dark corners and see where the legislation can be developed to encourage and help the Department and the other Government agencies in bringing rural America to a parity of living with our urban

areas.

I have legislation which I introduced in the last session of Congress, my rural renaissance bill. I plan to reintroduce it again this year after the hearings are finished and we see what comes out and what additional changes are needed. While these hearings are not for specific legislation, I am sure that some legislation-hopefully legislation or amendments will grow from this.

I would like to ask a couple of questions on one area that you touched upon briefly, and that is the role that the States can play in these programs. I believe you said that one of the problems is with State legislature where they meet only once every 2 years and it makes it difficult for the local governments to get the Federal assistance they require.

I think you also pointed out that the rural areas, and I certainly find this to be true in my constituency, just do not have the money and the talent and they do not have, you might say, the money to get the talent to take advantage of the available Federal programs.

I would like to ask, What are the States doing? I mean, are they making a conscious effort to help rural America? Do they have any specific person whose job it is to assist the rural communities of their States?

Mr. FREEMAN. Well, there is no uniform pattern throughout the Nation. There are relatively few States that have anyone designated per se in connection with the rural areas as such. Most States today now have an office or a person designated as a coordinator with the Federal Government, to work with the Federal Government in connection with all programs that go into that particular State. But, to my knowledge, there is not any State-I could be wrong on this, I have never specifically checked-I do not think there is any State that has anyone designated as such to give primary concern and to be a gadfly where rural America is concerned. And, I think that this is something that perhaps ought to be done in those States.

Mr. RESNICK. I know there is a growing tendency of the States to have somebody here in Washington to look after the State's interests.

I know even some of the larger cities now are having lobbyists or representatives right here in Washington to take care of their interests. I just wondered who speaks for the rural areas. I know they cannot afford to send somebody down themselves.

Mr. FREEMAN. I think no one, as such. The committee might be interested in getting a report on the visits to the respective States. Governor Bryant now has visited, and there has been a member of my staff with him, with each State I think, in the Nation or every State where its Governor indicated he wished them to come and they spent a day meeting with the State officials reviewing FederalState and such, but in reading the reports on these, I repeat, I know of no instance where there has been a man that has been designated for the rural areas as a specific responsibility. Rather, the States seem to be tooling up with machinery whereby they can have adequate liaison with the Federal Government.

There is a pulling and tugging, as you are well aware, between the States and the local government. In many places the cities protest programs going through the State government where they have been dealt with directly rather than through the State government. This has not concerned us so much in the Department because most of our programs go through and with the State governments or with elected local officials. But, in some of those cases also we deal directly. So, the pattern is not a uniform one.

Mr. RESNICK. Mr. Secretary, I am also very glad that in your report the vast majority of the effort that you discussed was the revitalization, the retraining to get more jobs, get more industries, to put farming on a profitable basis. You did not dwell too long on welfare and the problems that it brings up. And, I am sure that there will be other officials who will come in and discuss that more fully.

I would like to bring to your attention, though, under that heading, the New York Times magazine section of June 4, 1967, an article by a Robert Sherrill and the title is "It Isn't True That Nobody Starves in America."

In the article he makes a very strong case that there are great difficulties in rural America in just feeding needy Americans. He documents their cases in many places. It is an area that I am a bit familiar with. I got invloved with it about 18 months ago.

The article pretty well says the blame is on your shoulders, on the shoulders of the Department of Agriculture. It does feel that this is strictly your responsibility. I just wonder what your response would be, what your feeling is in this very crucial area.

Mr. FREEMAN. It is a crucial area. It is one that deeply concerns me. There are hungry people in this country at the same time that there is surplus food in this country. An unmet need and unused capacity are intolerable and we need to bend every effort to see to it that every American has a full and adequate and nutritious diet.

Now, doing that in a country with a Federal Government, with local administration, is not simple. The problem is a poverty problem rather than a food problem. There is plenty of food and adequate resources made available by the Congress to the Department of Agriculture to reach every person in every State in the Nation. If the States and the local governments are prepared to put programs into effect, the Depart

ment of Agriculture is ready, willing, anxious, and eager to make them available.

Mr. RESNICK. If I may interrupt you at that point, Mr. Secretary, in other words, it is your position, then, that the food is available. There are adequate funds to purchase the food to make it available. The bottleneck, as it were, lies in the distribution and getting it to the people who need it.

Mr. FREEMAN. Exactly. And where there has been, may I say, first of all, the willingness and the leadership of the States to institute programs, to administer either the distribution of food itself or a food stamp plan.

Now, as the article points out, and I think that it is unfair to single out in this problem the State of Mississippi, for Mississippi is one of only six States in the Nation that has either a food stamp plan or a distribution program in every single county. Mississippi is distributing more food and reaching more people than the State of New York, than your State, if you will. So, there is a real effort.

There are some other States where the use of Government food programs has been extremely slow and the problem now becomes one în a number of areas around the country where local people have not responded as to whether the Federal Government, which we have done in a few limited instances, is prepared to go in and to run a program to make food available. Now, that is one problem.

Now, the second problem to which we need to direct attention is the real operation of the program itself. The mere fact that there is a direct distribution program or there is a food stamp program does not mean that every citizen that needs it knows of that program, a place for that program, or knows how to use the food in that program. We are analyzing a survey of 300 families in the State of Mississippi, because attention has been particularly focused there, reviewing these families, many of whom are listed as no-income families, and determining what their situation is. And we find, for example, in a good many instances these are people that do not even know there is a food stamp program. They have not yet reached the communication of that fact. In some places they do not even know there is a direct distribution program and that the foods can be made available. And in many of these instances, when they do get the food, the preparation of that food and anything close to a balanced diet is limited because of their own lack of knowledge and their own lack of facilities.

So, this is not only a food problem. This is a nutrition problem. Basically, there should be available in every area in the United States where there are hungry people a program where they can get adequate food, and we have two programs. We have adequate resources. We have adequate food. And the problem now is one of the administrative machinery instituted in the local counties and that requires the States as well, to administer it in such a fashion that it truly reaches the people who need it. Then thirdly, of course, is the problem of helping those same people so that their nutritional standards will be elevated by the proper use of the food that is made available.

So, this is not the kind of a challenge that one merely pushes a button and suddenly accomplishes. It is a big and complex and involved

matter.

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