There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

heeded in Congress, the White House, the statehouse, or city hall.

HIGHLY DESIRABLE LEGISLATION The House Veterans' Affairs Committee has begun hearings on S. 9, the so-called cold war GI bill. This measure has already been approved by the Senate and there appears to be little doubt that it will also receive the approval of the House of Representatives.

We can see no objection to the passage of this measure. There seems to be little doubt

that the legislation would be of great value not only to the men serving in the armed services but also to the economic position of

the Nation as well.

It should be remembered that this is not bonus legislation but purely a measure calling for readjustment for those veterans who are forced to forgo their civilian occupations and enter into military service. Approximately 40 percent of those eligible for service are called up, which means that the other 60 percent of the Nation's youth is unemcumbered by service and has the opportunity to forge ahead in their chosen occupations.

The original GI bill enacted in 1944 has been universally acclaimed as one of the most farsighted veteran program ever adopted in the history of our Nation.

Under the provisions of that legislation, later amended to include Korean veterans, nearly 11 million former GI's received education and training which highly increased their productiveness and their incomes. It has been estimated that the cost of this program ran to nearly $19 billion but the returns have far exceeded thus far the original cost and our Government stands to reap benefits from it for years to come.

Another feature of the original GI bill is that it developed hundreds of thousands of doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, who through their abilities and knowledge have greatly aided this Nation in its highly complicated space programs.

In view of the foregoing facts it is simply inconceivable that the administration, the Department of Defense and most particularly the VA are opposed to these benefits which would directly aid military personnel fighting in defense of America and the Nation as well.

CONSUMER PROTECTION: ALL
TALK-NO ACTION

Mrs. NEUBERGER. Mr. President, the Christian Science Monitor for August 26 carries a timely article on consumer legislation.

Mr. Robert Cahn, Monitor correspondent, has summarized the existing lack of enthusiasm to do anything about the consumers' pocketbook.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article "Consumer Bills in Doldrums" be printed in the RECORD following my remarks.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

even getting to the floor of either House this session.

The truth-in-packaging law needs two votes it does not now have to get out of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Truth-in-lending is stymied in the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, where the chairman has not scheduled hearings.

And an omnibus consumer law with special emphasis on safeguarding food and drug production and sales is making snaillike progress in the House of Representalike progress in the House of Representatives.

For 3 years in a row, the publicly stated needs of the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to hire an additional 400 inspectors have to hire an additional 400 inspectors have been rejected by the Bureau of the Budget. been rejected by the Bureau of the Budget.

EDUCATION STRESSED

State legislatures have passed little consumer legislation. A few Governors-notably of California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut-have appointed boards or special assistants to help consumers.

In most communities, the politicians have ignored the consumer. The principal efforts to correct consumer abuses have been made by women's clubs, labor unions, and civic organizations.

However, concerted programs to help the low-income consumer are now underway in several large cities, with financial support from the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity.

The Johnson administration's interest has been centered in the area of increasing benefits to consumers in general, rather than in protection for the individual consumer or help for him at the marketplace.

Thus income tax reduction and elimination of some excise taxes, housing legislation of some excise taxes, housing legislation, increased social security benefits, hospital and medical medical benefits, curbing of increases in utility rates, and other price stabilization moves have been the administration's principal consumer objectives.

Twenty months ago, Mr. Johnson appointed Esther Peterson as his Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs. He sent a strong consumer message to Congress in 1964 (but not in 1965). And last June he appointed a President's Consumer Advisory Council of civilians, experts to advise the Government and protect consumer interests.

26, 1965]

CONSUMER BILLS IN DOLDRUMS

(By Robert Cahn)

WASHINGTON.—Is enough being done to assist and protect the American consumer? Although some strides are being made, supporters of new consumer legislation say that the voice of the consumer is too weak and unorganized to make itself heard or CXI-1479

Manufacturers and retailers generally oppose the packaging and labeling bill on the grounds that existing legislation is adequate, that the new bill would impose standardization controls over private enterprise, and that it would actually result in higher costs because of lessening of competitive enterprise.

BILLS SUPPORTED

Banks and loan companies, retailers, manufacturers and industry organizations oppose the truth-in-lending bill on the basic

assumption that existing laws are adequate and that fraudulent practices should be corrected by better enforcement of present laws.

The loudest and most persistent voice for the consumer in the House of Representatives is LENORE SULLIVAN, Democrat, of Missouri. Since 1961, Mrs. SULLIVAN has introduced in every Congress an omnibus consumer bill.

The legislation, Mrs. SULLIVAN says, would correct all of the inadequacies and close all the loopholes in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

SUPPORT URGED

Among the bill's features are provisions for protesting the safety of all cosmetics and protesting of all therapeutic devices for safety and efficacy. It also provides for tighter regulation of food and drugs, comprehensive factory food inspection, and sets safeguards to prevent fraud and deception in packaging and labeling.

"Congress is like the accelerator of your car-that is, very sensitive to pressure," says Mrs. SULLIVAN.

"Women, especially, need to become aware of the deficiencies in our basic consumer laws and should write their congressional delegation."

She is optimistic that the consumer legislation will get through eventually. But she thinks it could be speeded if the White House would back the legislation now before Congress with written messages and active support.

In the Senate, MAURINE B. NEUBERGER carries on a consumer interest that won fame 15 years ago in the Oregon House of Representatives.

COMMITTEE PROPOSED

At that time she dramatized efforts to repeal a law banning the sale of colored oleomargarine by bringing a mixing bowl and a pound of margarine to a crowded Agriculture Committee session.

She tied on an apron and proceeded to demonstrate what a messy and time-consuming job it was to blend a pellet of coloring into an unappealing white block of margarine. The law, incidentally, was repealed.

In addition to her present role as one of the leading backers of truth-in-packaging and truth-in-lending bills, Senator NEUBERGER is urging the establishment of a select committee of Congress for consumer problems.

She hopes to hold hearings soon on this idea and thus focus more citizen attention on consumer problems.

Despite the lack of action in Congress, Mrs. NEUBERGER says the introduction of the bills has already brought much voluntary progress among business firms.

Another longtime advocate of consumer interest is Illinois Democratic Senator PAUL H. DOUGLAS. Before coming to the Senate 30 years ago he was a member of the Consumer Roosevelt. Today Mr. DOUGLAS is the leading Advisory Board appointed by President sponsor of the truth-in-lending bill.

"The basic purpose of the bill is to require that anyone who lends money or extends credit must supply the would-be borrower or credit user with a statement of the total finance charge in dollars and cents; and a statement of the finance charge in terms of a true annual rate on the outstanding unpaid balance," Senator DOUGLAS says.

He adds that the bill does not attempt to regulate or control the rate of interest or cost of credit. It would enable the typical consumer to compare the cost of credit from various sources and make an intelligent decision.

SAVINGS ESTIMATED

The Senator believes that billions of dollars are drained from the pockets of consumers by excessive interest charges.

shouldn't be afraid of the truth."

"All I am asking is that the borrower know the truth about the charges," he says. "One Senator PHILIP A. HART estimates the fair packaging and labeling bill he has sponsored could save the average consumer $250 a year. "The new proliferation of package weights, sizes, shapes, and their often noninformative labels has played havoc with our traditional system of weights and measures," Senator HART says.

"The package has, in effect, replaced the live salesman," he adds. "Without standards for comparison, the average buyer has found it almost impossible to judge accurately the prices of competing products as a first step to making a rationale choice between them." George P. Larrick, Commissioner of Food and Drugs, believes that present laws are inadequate in protecting the consumer. He says that better controls are needed over patent medicines and in the labeling and sale of cosmetics. The number of inspectors available to check on drug manufacture also is sufficient only for occasional spot checks.

COMPLAINTS AIRED

Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Paul Rand Dixon takes the position that Congress will pass new consumer

legislation when the need is conclusively

demonstrated.

He has recently called on all Commission personnel to intensify their efforts to prevent unfair and deceptive acts and practices in commerce and to protect the honest businessmen from unscrupulous competitors. And in Washington, the FTC has opened an office to receive consumer complaints.

The FTC is handicapped by having to prosecute on a case-by-case basis, with frequent legal delays. While a case is in litigation, the questionable practice continues. And even when a case is decided against a firm engaging in fraudulent advertising or practices, there is no redress for people who

have been bilked.

POOR AFFECTED

The consumers affected most by deceptive packaging and pricing, unethical business practices, or excessive interest and carrying charges are the poor.

They have little opportunity for comparative shopping, are frequently susceptible to high-pressure sales tactics, and know little of their legal rights.

They spend most of their meager income on consumer products. And, by force of circumstances, they frequently become in

volved in dealings with loan sharks.

The term "consumer" includes the wealthy, middle class, and poor, industrialist, and laborer, lobbyist, and politician. The consumer is everybody, and so far has had no common interest and no effective lobby working for passage of legislation.

Middle class consumers, for the most

part, may talk about consumer problems while at dinner or at social gatherings. But in the current affluent society, they are rarely moved to do anything about it.

STEEL SETTLEMENT FAIR AND
REASONABLE

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, the steel industry has signed a new labor contract which should be enthusiastically greeted by every American. This contract gives labor a fair and reasonable share of the industry's rising prosperity. It gives management a contract it can live with while continuing to operate profitably and in such a manner as to contribute to the continued economic stability of the country.

Before the ink was dry on this excellent agreement, however, some of our

newspaper editorialists were already denying the value of what has been achieved. Several have alleged that the wage increases and fringe benefits incorporated in the agreement would violate the Government's wage-price guidelines, and thus contribute to inflation. It is worth noting that this view is not shared by any of the distinguished economists who devised those guidelines.

The President's Council of Economic Advisers, in fact, points out that the settlement, averaged over a period of 39 months, amounts to an average annual increase in labor costs of 3.2 percent. This is the exact allowable wage increase for all American industry spelled out by the existing price-wage guidelines.

To deny this interpretation requires some rather fancy statistical footwork. some rather fancy statistical footwork. Most of those who allege the wage increases to be inflationary calculate the new wage levels as though they extended only over the 35 months covered by the contract. The truth is, however, that The truth is, however, that the last steel contract expired on May 1 of this year. At that time, steelworkers were given an interim increase of 112 cents an hour as a sort of downpayment cents an hour as a sort of downpayment on the wage increase to be finally negotiated. Thus, those who wish to calculate on the basis of 35 months ought to subtract the 112 cents from the cost of that settlement. This would mean that

just before signing of the new settlement, average compensation in the steel industry was about $4.53 an hour, and that the new wage agreement adds about 362 cents an hour. Thus calculated, the percentage increase would come out to much less than 3 percent.

What some of the critics do, on the contrary, is to credit the 112 cents to the period after signing of the new agreement, and then say that there has agreement, and then say that there has been a 3.6-percent annual increase based on the wages that were being paid last April.

None of this statistical sleight of hand should mislead us about the true character of the settlement. For myself, I agree with the Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers that the only sensible approach is to treat this as a 39 months' settlement which has a total labor cost increase of about 48 cents an hour as compared to the wages being paid when the last contract expired. On this basis, which as I

say is the only sensible one, the increased labor cost in the steel industry matches exactly the administration's guideline figure of 3.2 percent.

This means that the wage increase is not inflationary. It means that nothing in the settlement is calculated to launch a new price-wage spiral. It means that we are guaranteed 3 more years of labor peace in our most basic industry. And it means that all this has been achieved on a basis that is just and fair to all concerned.

While the steel negotiations were in progress, the President urged negotiators on both sides to consider not only their own interests, but the interests of the Nation as well. They responded with reasonableness and patriotism to the President's request, and by so doing, spared their country from a disastrous

shutdown which would have harmed the lives of millions of Americans. No at

tempts to obscure the magnitude of their achievement can diminish the debt we owe them for their patriotic and selfless contribution to our national welfare.

THE GREAT POVERTY SNAFU Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, during the recent debate in the Senate on H.R. 8283, the Economic Opportunity Act Amendments of 1965, I pointed out that although the purpose of our antipoverty programs is to help the poor people, much of the funds for these programs are going to the poor by the way of the politicians with the unfortunate and unintended result that the latter are skimming as much of the cream from the milk as they can. An illuminating article in the September 1965 edition of the Greater Philadelphia magazine, which describes the mobilization for and the opening skirmishes of Philadelphia's war against poverty offers some vivid illustrations of the point I made. I ask unanimous consent that this article, by S. H. Kristal, be printed in the RECORD. There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

[From Greater Philadelphia magazine, September 1965]

THE GREAT POVERTY SNAFU

(By S. H. Kristal)

Pop went the flashbulbs, teeth glittered in effervescent smiles, and beads of sweat glistened in the unnatural white-hot glare of the klieg lights. Silently the mechanical retina of the television eye scanned the scene, recording for the home screen the headquarters of the Nation's first poor people's election.

Excitement effused through the normally dingy room on the third floor of city hall annex. Pasted on dusty buff-colored walls and pinned to clumsy, wooden easels were long strips of paper bearing the names of the 354 candidates. An ever-changing scribble of numbers raced across the once empty columns.

Puffed up by the occasion, election work

ers from the city's 48 poor people's polling places rushed about delivering returns. Eagerly the crowd-women in faded cotton shirts-hung over the shoulders of the elecdresses, men in short-sleeved, open-necked tion-night clerks as they scratched in the latest figures on the tally sheets.

Reporters from the farthest reaches of the Luce empire rubbed shoulders with local

newshawks as each, in search of a story, jostled through the swarm of candidates, workers and well-wishers.

"Housing is the first thing I'm going to suggest," said Mrs. Eunice H. Gale who was running strong out of J district in West Philadelphia.

"Housing, yes," echoed Mrs. Mary Rocco, one of the 12 winning candidates in D district just to the east of the North Philadelphia Jungle, "but also recreation centers." reporting E district jumped up and down with excitement when she discovered she had been elected. Then with the disappointed grimace of a real pol she said dolefully, "Wouldn't you know. The TV men have already gone home."

Another North Philly candidate from late

"It was," recalled Health and Welfare Willy Landruth, with maternal enthusiasm, Council's society public relations woman, "just like a real election."

The much-publicized poll this past spring did more than simulate a genuine electoral

process, it salvaged, at least temporarily, the Tate poverty program and along with it the reputation of the Tate administration. Polling the poor was the mayor's last desperate claim stake in the poverty field. Until the idea was filed, he had panned little but fool's gold. In the 9 months between the time the Federal money started to flow and the time Philadelphia was able to get its first sizable swallow, the city had suffered a series of humiliating rebuffs. Gone irretrievably was Philadelphia's reputation as a leader among cities.

Four separate poverty plans were paraded down to Washington before approval was finally granted. Each new plan was heralded with great fanfare. Officials scurried back and forth to the Capitol with the regularity of commuters and the sureness of purpose of conditioned laboratory mice. With each failure city hall news releases waxed rosier while, privately, executive tempers grew shorter.

In the words of one prominent city hall figure, "The poverty fiasco is a classic example of the way Jim Tate operates. I guess you could call it government by tantrum. The sad truth is that the present Philadelphia city government is barely able to carry out old programs and is completely incapable of creating new ones."

Because it took the Tate administration almost a year to set up a program acceptable to the Federal authorities, the city fell far behind in the race for a billion dollars in poverty prizes. Money was handed out on a first-come, first-serve basis. Between October 1964 and April 1965, Philadelphia received less than $500,000 while much smaller cities such as Pittsburgh garnered $7.7 million, Washington, D.C., was awarded $4 million, and St. Louis received $3 million.

Despite the high-sounding words of squarejawed solemn-miened professional do-gooder Charles F. McNeil, then city poverty braintruster and head of the superboard of private local agencies, the health and welfare council, said that he had faith "that there is leadership amongst the poor." The elections were meant less as a door opener to the affluent life for the mass of the city's impoverished, than as a key to unlock the valve to Federal funds.

A month after the balloting, Sargent Shriver announced that Philadelphia had finally been awarded $5.9 million for a variety of antipoverty projects, many of which, on close examination, turn out to be oriented toward the politicians rather than the poor.

POVERTY PROFILE

Despite the ludicrous scramble for money, jobs, and power conducted by the politicians and the leading professional Negroes, poverty in Philadelphia is no laughing matter. Nor, despite the talk of city leaders, is it just the black man's burden, although the entire thrust of whatever programs that exist is directed toward the Negro (or, to be more accurate, the Negro vote).

One Philadelphia family in five lives on less than $3,000 per year. Of the 142,000 impoverished households, less than 60,000 are Negro. But, white or black, being poor in the affluent 1960's means more than having a limited income. It often means growing up in a broken home, in a rat-infested, overcrowded house with inadequate heat and plumbing, eating a starchy diet, and wearing fourth-hand clothing. It means being unemployed or underemployed and ill educated. To be poor is to be twice as susceptible to tuberculosis and four times as prone to psychosis. It means to have more children and be less able to care for them. It means to live tragically, less well, and for a shorter time than the rest of America. Above all to be poor is to be without hope.

"I wish for the Lord to come to us soon," a toothless, age-shrunken crone muttered

as she sat forlornly on the eroded, stained stoop of a ramshackle house in North Philadelphia. "I hope when He comes He takes us all at once, then there won't be anybody left to grieve."

The poverty act was conceived as a radical remedy for the malignancy of want which afflicts 40 million Americans. Goaded into developing a new prescription by the civil rights revolution, whose followers constitute one-third of the Nation's poor, the Johnson administration abandoned the palliatives of the dole and came up with what it expects to be a possible cure. The miracle drug is money. In essence, the poverty act was conceived as a sugar daddy for an infinite variety of educational, vocational, and self-help

schemes.

Categorically, the law states that its purpose is to stimulate the poor into mobilizing their own resources. "Programs," it says, should be "developed, conducted, and administered with maximum feasible participation of the residents of the areas and the members of the groups served." In other words operations are to be performed with the poor not on them.

BATTLE PLAN

In the war against poverty, grand strategy is planned in OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity) headquarters in Washington. The choice of tactics is left to the discretion of local community action commanders. But before financial ammunition is issued, local organizations must pass Federal muster.

Community agencies come in three basic varieties: Municipal governments in mufti (such as those fielded by Detroit and Chicago); foundation structures (similar to those in New Haven and Boston); and nonprofit corporations (which operate in Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh).

Philadelphia tried all three gambits and failed to capture Federal approbation. It was only after a year of bloody internecine warfare that a poverty beachhead was established here.

Tate's first approach to the poor man's pot of gold was a direct assault. In the spring of 1964, months before the passage of the Poverty Act, he set up something called Human Renewal, generaled by his managing director, Fred Corleto. The task force, 11 of whose 13 members were city officials, was only a paper plan. Its purpose was to simulate a strategic posture against poverty and to act as the mayor's pocket for Washington money. Tate intended to use his Federal allowance to finance existent municipal departments. Welfare Commissioner Randolph Wise, a round-faced man whose character and countenance have been lined by years of dealing with the problems and frustrations of human misery, said on April 26, 1964, "The city has already built a program in the past 11 years to fight the problems of poverty."

Washington saw through through the shabby camouflage. OEO suggested that the PCCA (Philadelphia Council for Community Advancement, the Ford Foundation's allpurpose remedy to cure North Philadelphia poverty) run the Quaker City show. Federal experts were much taken at that time with Ford's gray areas study concept. Ford Foundation people in New Haven and Boston actually sat in on the writing of the Poverty Act.

What the national poverty savants did not know was that Ford had flopped monumentally in Philadelphia and was contemplating an exacuation of its forces here. Tate, seemingly unaware of the precariousness of PCCA's position, obligingly placed the reins of Philadelphia's poverty program in Ford's faltering grasp and simultaneously issued an invitation to 100 local civil groups to submit proposals. It was the mayor's hope that PCCA would not only dream up acceptable projects but would ante up the matching

funds. Ten percent of the requested grant is required to be supplied locally before the Government will release its own money.

FALLOUT

This new award of power made in July 1964, set the NAACP's silk-suited, cigarsmoking Duce, Cecil Moore, to howling.

"The PCCA," he barked, "has no grass roots among the poor. The law (then in the process of being written) would demand that the poor be involved."

PCCA, already mortally wounded by earlier Moore attacks, not only refused to finance the mayor's war on poverty but had already reduced its staff from 35 to 9. To fill the breach, the Human Services Committee, PCCA's cover name, was restaffed by 12 city agencies. Its new chairman was an old face-city welfare boss Randy Wise.

In September, the word came from Washington. Applications for grants under the new law were to be filed immediately. The mayor issued his own misinterpretation.

The poor, the word went through city hall, were to be on the payroll by election time.

Ideas gathered by the Human Services Committee from 73 civic agencies and a variety of city departments were presented to the mayor's newly reconstructed task force (which was actually his cabinet). The best suggestions were eliminated. The remainder were emasculated.

Applications were then thrown together in slap-dash haste and forwarded to Washington. "It was," recalls one city staffer who had been in the middle of the frantic flurry, "absolutely "absolutely unbelievable-not so much the chaos as the incredible stupidity at the top."

In October the blow fell. All of the mayor's anti-poverty requests were refused. In Philadelphia only Rev. Leon Sullivan's Opportunities Industrialization Center received Federal recognition. Sullivan's successful application for a quarter of a million dollars was made independently of the city programs.1

Humiliated, first by the perversion and then the rejection of their plans, the human services committee rebelled. The longtime formerly effective local welfare professionals wanted assurances that future recommendations they made would not be destroyed or distorted. Wise, supported by not-too-gentle hints from Washington, suggested a shift in command.

In exchange for a promise of reformation, Washington gave tentative approval to selected city requests amounting to $1.5 million. One grant was to go to the board of education to provide needy high school students with 10 hours work a week A second grant was earmarked for the city administration. As a token of good faith $105,000 was advanced to the mayor's committee. But

1 The Reverend, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a pencil thin moustache, a matinee-idol profile and a stagey personality, once served as an assistant pastor to ADAM CLAYTON POWELL. The ablest of the city's 400 Negro ministers, Sullivan with $300,000 from the Ford Foundation, the chamber of commerce and assorted well wishers put together a prize training program. In a reconverted police station at 19th and Oxford, he set to work teaching the poor how to talk, dress, apply for a job and hold it.

Washington brass warned that Philadelphia's community action would have to be revamped before more money would be released.

The hesitation on the Potomac was created by the amount of static picked up by OEO officials. The noise was largely generated by those who had been omitted from the mayor's original task force.

"The poverty bill," explained an official on the scene from the beginning, "provided an open invitation to any private group to go to Washington and present a better idea. Many local people needled Shriver and raised a good deal of hob."

LABOR REVOLT

was

At this juncture a new front was opened in the mayor's battle, if not in the poverty war itself. Appalled by Tate's failure, the Philadelphia AFL-CIO Council decided to move into the breach. An alliance formed by the labor council, the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action, a reformminded outfit with a built-in bias against the mayor), a newly created "indigenous" Negro group called the ICCI (Intra-Community Councils Inc.) and a scattering of other contentious associations. The insurgents proposed that the local war against poverty be commanded by a citizens' junta, in the form of a nonprofit corporation. The rebel cry, swiped from Cecil Moore, was that the mayor's poverty army failed to include representatives of the poor. The insurrectionists, pointing to the ICCI, claimed the poor were in their camp.

It was a disingenuous maneuver in the fight over the poverty spoils. The ICCI, although ostensibly headed by Mary Richardson, a self-described ex-gang girl who lives in North Philadelphia, was actually created by Mattie Humphries and Isiah Crippins.

Mattie Humphries is a well-educated and handsome middle-class Negro woman who served as job counselor for the almost defunct PCCA. When the tide of Ford money receded she was left high and dry. In order to sail once more on the sea of poverty she helped launch the ICCI.

Isaiah Crippins is a small man with a dazzling array of teeth and expression of a nervous ferret. Many people believe he was acting as cat's paw for Cecil Moore when he helped form the ICCI. The organization was to be used as a smoke screen behind which Moore could move into the poverty field and take the play away from the mayor. It was during these maneuvers that Cecil was going around town desperately trying to get people to think up poverty programs that he could

use.

Threatened by defeat in Washington and insurrection in Philadelphia, Tate went on the offensive. He ordered City Solicitor Edward Bauer to quash the rebellion. Obligingly, Bauer issued an opinion which stated that the formation of a nonprofit community action corporation unconnected with city hall would be illegal. Bauer made this ruling despite the fact that just such corporations were running successful poverty programs in Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh.

Tate then turned his attention to the political front. To defend himself against sudden death at the hands of Democratic city committee assassins, the mayor determined to use the poverty program to build and enhance his own political power.

Brushing aside commitments to place poverty workers under civil service, the mayor handed over the right to awards jobs to the Democratic members of city council. Appointments were cleared through Rogers, the mayor's administrative assistant. DONKEY SERENADE

Tom

"It finally dawned on Tate that not having a poverty program had political implications," an insider explained. "In the beginning he didn't think it was important. After all he was schooled entirely in politics and

he never heard anything about poverty in the wards. Jim Clark (former finance chairman of Democratic city committee and the real power behind the throne until his death in 1962) didn't tell him about it. Frank Smith, now the power on the throne, didn't push. So how was he to know?"

Following the advice of Welfare Commissioner Wise, Tate replaced the much-abused, overworked, and underinstructed city aids on the Human Services Committee with a spate of Health and Welfare Council representatives.

At Wise's urging, Robert Hilkert, then president of health and welfare and vice president of the Federal Reserve bank, took over the chairmanship of a racially and religiously balanced committee of prestigious Negroes, Jews, Catholics, and WASPS.

It was this committee which developed the structure of Philadelphia's community action agency which was christened the Philadelphia Anti-Poverty Action Committee (known as PAAC for short). According to the organization chart, PAAC was to have 30 members. Twelve were to be representatives of selected community organizations.2

The mayor received five free choices. The president judge of county court was also put on the committee. The poor were to get the remaining 12 seats, which were elective. Corleto was again designated temporary chairman and the mayor preserved the right to choose the executive director.

Early in February, a contingent of city hall's brighter lights went to Washington to present the Philadelphia hybrid. Puzzled by an animal that was part public, part private, part elective, and all political, Washington nevertheless gave its approval.

It was now up to the mayor to select an executive director. Said one insider, "I can tell you and I might as well. If the mayor had immediately appointed an executive director or even an acting director in December when Randy Wise offered his resignation, this job would not have gone up for grabs. But Tate developed a fixation. It had to be a Negro."

GHETTO POLITICS

Tate's fixation was actually a politician's realistic evaluation. The fuel that spins the wheels of the Democratic organization is supplied by Negro votes. Without this solid support the mayor would have lost the last election. Tate failed to obtain a majority of the white votes cast in 1963. He was elected because as much as 83 percent of the vote in some Negro wards went Democratic.

As a riposte to rumors rife in Democratic city committee circles that Frank Smith plans to dump his honor by opposing Tate for reelection in 1967, it has become necessary for the mayor to construct his own political machine. The only available building blocks are Negro votes. The only source of jobs to buy these votes is in the poverty program. Obviously the director of PAAC had to be a Negro. The question: Which Negro?

The choice lay between the candidate of the Negro ministerial-political establishment, Charles Bowser, and Cecil Moore's candidate, Isaiah Crippins. The battle between the two raged from late December to mid-April. First one side, then the other would seem to have the inside track. At one point Tate sent a list of names to Sargent Shriver asking him to decide. Washington was amused but refused. Tate then offered his own compro

2 The Catholic Archiocese of Philadelphia, the chamber of commerce, CORE, Delaware Valley Settlement Alliance, Federation of Jewish Agencies, Greater Philadelphia Movement, Health and Welfare Council, NAACP, the board of education, the AFL-CIO Council, the Philadelphia Council of Churches, and the Urban League.

3 He selected Patrick J. Stanton, Charles Gerhard, Samuel F. Evans, Pascual Martinez, and Fred Corleto.

mise selection, Richard Edwards. Edwards had been appointed by Tate as a deputy police commissioner and served briefly until he flunked his civil service test. The policeman candidate was hooted down by both factors of the Negro community.

At last the administration Negroes-the Reverend William Gray, Councilman Thomas McIntosh and Congressman Nix-won out. Charles Bowser was appointed director at $17,250 a year.

Bowser is a short, quiet young man whose major claim to political reward appears to be his continual residence in North Philadelphia from his birth in 1930 to the present. A lawyer, a Boy Scout, an Elk, and a veteran, Bowser is a graduate of Temple University and active in the Bright Hope Baptist Church run by politically powerful Rev. William Gray.

Bowser was brought into public life by Dilworth who appointed him to the police advisory board. "The thing to remember about Bowser," said a Washington-paid OEO specialist, "is that he's a good boy."

Isaiah Crippins was awarded second prize by the ingenious solution of creating a new post-general counsel. Lawyer Bowser could have Lawyer Crippins as his attorney. Manpower commissioner and former official city booster, Paul B. (Burt) Hartenstein was put on as training director to do the work.

Cecil was not appeased. He decided that Crippins would have no part of such a sellout. Crippins, however, with a history of tax troubles, saw the offer in a different light. "The program in Philadelphia," he declared, "is larger than Mayor Tate, Charles Bowser or Isaiah W. Crippins." Rising above factionalism, he snapped up the $15,250 a year job without even so much as a by-your-leave from his erstwhile mentor, Cecil Moore. At the official swearing-in Judge Raymond Pace Alexander joined into the spirit of things by advising the new troika of poverty leaders to, "Play the game, fight hard, and get into those ghettoes."

Cecil blustered for a while about running his own slate of poor and taking over PAAC via the electoral process. Then he lost interest. Demonstration, not organization, is his strong point.

TO THE POLLS

During the interim when the two major Negro leadership groups were locked in battle for the executive directorship, the machinery of the famed poor people's election was being devised.

Twelve poverty districts were created along Each was traditional neighborhood lines. to be serviced by its own 12-member community council. The purpose of the election was to choose these 144 community council members. The council members in turn would choose their representative on the citywide PAAC board.

"Enthusiasm," McNeil said, "is built into the plan. The election aroused some initiative on the part of the people to get elected." The councils will hold down meetings, provide feedback to their neighborhoods as projects are approved and provide suggestions for programs. PAAC's job is to tap and test these ideas.

With the elections safely over and the 12 poor people's representatives chosen from among the 144 elected community council members, Philadelphia's poverty program was, at long last, set to roll.

Even before the ink had a chance to dry on the election returns, Bowser submitted a $14 million batch of requests to Washington. He did not even pretend that the poor had partaken in their development.

Of the $14 million asked for, $5.9 was granted. granted. The remaining proposals for $8.1 million were turned down as ill conceived and poorly worked out. In the main, they were unrelated old chestnuts that various city departments had been pushing unsuccessfully for years (such as a halfway house for newly released jailbirds).

Bowser announced that the reason for the refusal was "a shortage of Federal funds." That even he didn't believe his own propaganda was demonstrated when he quickly asked Washington to put $6 million in escrow until he could find someone, somewhere to concoct a way for the dough to be spent in Philadelphia.

TRIPLE PLAY

To date, $12.5 million in poverty funds has oozed into Philadelphia. This sum is equal to that spent annually by the city on recreation. It represents a 5-percent addition to the total municipal budget. The question is what, if any, benefits have been purchased with the inundation of cash?

Roughly one-third of the Federal allowance has gone into education. By far the largest and most important program is geared to preschool training and is run by the board of education. Head Start and Get Set are part of a nationwide effort to eliminate the first grade dropouts-the millions of children who start to fall behind from the first day they enter school.

Said Mrs. Cora Knowles who presided over a class of 15 at the Chester A. Arthur School at 20th and Christian during the summer, "It was all informal teaching. Through play we got the children to learn the things

middle class youngsters learn from their parents such as how to sit still, how to count, and, above all, how to ask questions.".

Although it is too early to evaluate the success of preschool training, when the time comes it will be possible to judge the concept of its merits. In the meantime, poverty moneys has enabled the board to nearly double its preschool program without taint of scandal or politics.

The second third of the bundle has been split between Leon Sullivan's flourishing job retraining center and a gaggle of health and welfare agencies' job-training programs. Sullivan, not connected in any way with the city, has come up with an exceptional program on his own. He was consequently

awarded $1.7 million and has expanded operations into training centers in West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia and Germantown. In addition, he set up a feeder plant where applicants waiting to enroll are taught basic English, deportment and dress. To insure that his graduates don't slip back into the sloth of despondency from which they have been lifted, Sullivan has hired a crackerjack team of job recruiters who place the newly trained.

The last third of the money has unfortunately gone into Tate-controlled projects. More ominous still is that all future grants will have to be okayed by His Honor.

The Tate cache has been spent on the topheavy political superstructure, PAAC, and on the scandalously run neighborhood youth corps and summer camp and work

programs.

Although there is much talk by PAAC people such as McNeil and Bowser about the role of the poor, the substance is, of necessity, of little consequence. So far, it has consisted of two polls, one taken by teenagers, the other by community council members, to ascertain what slum dwellers think they need.

The trouble with this approach is that it is largely fraudulent. When poor people state that they want better housing, or an overburdened, impoverished mother makes a plea for day-care centers, they haven't created a program and it is hypocritical and patronizing to pretend that they have.

FRONT MONEY

To finance this charade PAAC will spend $768,159 over the next year to pay staff salaries and operate its headquarters and 12 field offices.

In addition to the $47,750 allocated to Bowser, Crippins and Hartenstein, a $13,000 per annum lady director of Organization and Services and four community action co

ordinators are on the payroll at $9,000 each, a youth specialist draws down $9,114, a public relations assistant gets $10,250, an administrative assistant $8,250, a dozen social service officers receive $6,750, and assorted stenos, clerks, and typists are in the $4,500 bracket. In addition, PAAC tried to put its 144 election winners on the payroll at $100 a month until Washington blew the whistle.

Despite Bowser's brave public declaration, "If any committeeman or politician contacts me about any of these jobs, that person will not be hired," no candidate was selected who did not have political sponsorship and who had not been cleared by the mayor's patronage chief, Tom Rogers. It is significant that although half of the poor are white, only a handful of whites hold jobs in the program. PAAC is the Negro politicians pork barrel.

Proof, if further proof were needed, that Bowser and Co. care more about patronage than poverty was offered when they attacked the Little Neighborhood Schools. The LNS is a small nursery school started in North Philadelphia before PAAC was born. Technically it is a community action program. However, it received its meager $22,000 Federal grant independently of the city's program. This independence rankles. And when LNS had the temerity to make job appointments without clearing them through PAAC, Bowser struck back. In chorus with Chief Counsel Crippins he charged LNS with fiscal irregularities and demanded that Washington disinherit it. The demand was rejected. However, an OEO official did concede that although the Federal Government "reserves the right to aid any projects for the poor," he did not believe "that it would be necessary to bypass PAAC again."

The most notorious city poverty program is the Neighborhood Youth Corps, a project that purports to impart basic employment skills to failure-oriented youths between 16 and 21.

Contrary to the U.S. Department of Labor statement that there will be "no implica

tions of make work, handout or charity in Youth Corps jobs" and that "the corps will perform socially useful and necessary projects," most of the jobs provided do not call for the development of skills. In those instances where city agencies, like the housing authority attempted to develop genuine job-training programs, they were met with the implacable and politically powerful opposition of the labor unions.

One group of Neighborhood Youth Corps boys, at the suggestion of that master city administrator, Fred Corleto, is scraping old campaign handbills off of lampposts. Another bunch of boys is plucking weeds in Fairmont Park. Literally hundreds of Youth Corps girls have yet to receive assignment anywhere and are sitting around being trained by osmosis. Predictably, the dropout rate among the dropouts is high.

In an attempt to defend Youth Corps programing a welfare department higher-up said, "You can't give these kids anything but the most rudimentary tasks. You have to get them used to the idea of working and the simple discipline of just showing up."

Other critics wonder if monotonous, unskilled, make-work projects could ever instill discipline in anyone, let alone in kids who view the working world as square.

THE LINEUP

headed up the city's excellent Youth Con

Run by George Brown, who formerly

servation Corps, the Youth Corps has been staffed on a strictly political basis. results have been breathtaking. Instructing and counseling boys and girls with low scholastic aptitudes and lower aspirations have been some characters from the wards. Among the first 16 group leaders hired, 13 had arrest records. One group leader had a list of 14 separate charges including larceny and assault and battery with a knife, a second had eight charges against him, and a

third had a history of seven morals counts almost all of which were forcible sodomistic sex acts with minor males.

To make matters worse these same recruitment methods were used in hiring over 800 recreational leaders for the summer day and overnight camp projects. Hired as counselors were persons with records of fraudulent conversion, gambling on the highways and keeping and maintaining disorderly houses.

Also best left to the imaginations are the range of future programs to be dreamed up by the Povertyteers.

However, it does seem pretty safe to assume that until Philadelphia's poverty program is completely extracted from politics and patronage, the most likely gainers will not be the poor.

S. 938-THE RESOURCES AND

CONSERVATION ACT

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. President, in 1864, over a century ago, George Perkins Marsh, philologist, diplomat, and Congressman from Vermont, penned one of the most prophetic books ever written by an American, "Man and Nature." In it he wrote:

Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.

Congressman Marsh never saw a bulldozer, nor the asphalt and concrete cities of the 1960's, nor any of the numerous leviathans of technology with which enterprising 20th-century American man has learned to increase his effectiveness as a disturbing agent. Yet, a century ago, this scholar foresaw that the covering of the soil with houses and highways, the ruthless plowing of the land, the excessive logging of the forests, the damming of the rivers and streams, the poisoning of the atmosphere and waters would lead Americans toward a grim and anxious future.

Marsh's vision of conservation was what we might call whole. He saw man's fate interlocked not with just one feature of nature, but in relationship to climate, atmosphere, forests, rivers, land, and wildlife. While he did not have a kitchen faucet with hot and cold running water, nor air conditioning to control the temperature in his house, nor did he work or ride to work on miles of concrete, he never lost sight of the fact that man was a creature of nature-sustained by the air, fed by the soil, preserved by the waters of the planet, like other creatures of nature about him. Is it possible that today we have let our technology delude us into thinking that we are set apart from the rest of the earth's inhabitants?

Marsh articulated the philosophy of conservation. The professions and politics of conservation followed. The first professionals in resources and conservation emerged on the American scene at the beginning of the 20th century: foresters, ichthyologists, hydrologists, agronomists-and with their appearance, conservation developed into a science a science to become steadily more technical, more compartmentalized, and more alienated. Its tendency was to lose sight of the "whole view of what industrialized American man would do to the lush virgin continent to which this Nation so fortunately found itself the inheritor."