possible under the provisions of section 1 of the bill. Furthermore, it is contrary to the intentions of anybody I have ever known in Congress that would support Federal aid.

Some opponents of Federal aid have said that we would have a Federal bureaucracy dictating the contents of the curriculum. Such action is specifically forbidden by this bill and I don't know of anybody connected with the Federal Government who wants to take that prerogative from the State. And, as a matter of fact, I doubt seriously that Congress has the power to do it, regardless of how much money it appropriates for education because under the tenth amendment to the Constitution there is no specific delegation of power to the Congress to control education.

It has been frequently held by the courts that the Federal Government can appropriate money to support services and agencies it cannot control-in fact has no constitutional power to control.

Furthermore, we have demonstrated that we still have an election in this country.

I remember one statement that Senator Pat Harrison made, and remember he was one of the original authors of this type of legislation. He said he had been in Congress for 30 years and he had never known a Member of Congress who would admit that he would vote for a bill to take the control of education away from the States and that those who said that that would happen were questioning the motives of people who had spent years studying the question and who were devoted to the question of States' rights. And certainly no man ever sat in the United States Senate who was more wholeheartedly a States' righter than Senator Pat Harrison. I leave that to Senator Ellender and Senator Hill.

Senator SMITH. I would like to ask you, Is there any danger of the Commissioner of Education exercising control over the schools through the power to promulgate these rules and regulations?

Dr. DAWSON. I think, Senator Smith, the answer to that question is this: The Commissioner of Education certainly could not make any rules and regulations that conflict with the terms of the act itself, could not impose any of the prohibitions included in section 1.

That question has been considered by committees in former sessions of the Congress, I know, in executive session, because at least on three occasions I have been called in for consultation on that question.

At one time the proposition was made that the provision in what is now section 12 of the present bill should be stricken because it might carry some danger of control of education. I remember distinctly and I think Senator Hill, perhaps, will remember also, that Senator La Follette said that it doesn't make any difference whether the provision in what is now section 12 of the present bill is left in or out of the bill, that in the natural course of events the United States Commissioner of Education would have to write instructions for the guid-, ance of the persons who were to receive the money and disburse it to school authorities. In other words, in that respect the necessary protection against control is in the bill itself. If you left out section 12 the Commissioner would still have the power to do what is necessary and what the judicial branch of the Government would approve. I don't see any danger in it for that reason.

Senator SMITH. Yes. I thought it might help to get your interpretation in the record.

Dr. DAWSON. Yes. I am glad you brought up the question, Senator. Well, in short, on this matter of Federal control of education, I think the American people can in the long run have as much or as little of it as they want. If they wanted a lot, it would be possible to amend the Constitution. On the other hand, we have had a long history of Federal aid to education, running back to 1802, at least, when Congress first made available the land grants to the States; the lands were sold and the moneys were used for the support of education. You had recited to you other types of Federal legislation aiding education. I shall not repeat it.

I want to point this out though: The only time any control, either by way of agreement or otherwise, has come into any Federal legislation, is because the Congress wrote it into the bill. I think nobody can examine the record and dispute that. So it is a matter of what Congress would want-even the degree of control that we might have. Then, too, you will remember that the American school system is more nearly locally made and locally controlled than any other school system in the world. It is controlled by 115,000 local boards of education elected by the people. And those who think that the Federal Government because it might put up as much as 7 percent of the cost of education in this country could seize the control of education show a willful lack of understanding of the dynamics of American democracy that rests with the citizens of this country.

Senator HILL. Well, what you are saying is that the people back in the States, to whom our State school systems belong, are the same people who elect the Congressmen and the Senators; isn't that true? Dr. DAWSON. Yes, sir.

Senator HILL. The Congressmen and Senators are not elected by one set of people and another set of people do not own and control the State school system; isn't that true?

Dr. DAWSON. Yes, sir. Here are some of the States that appropriate substantial percentages of money for the support of education. They are fair indications of the extent to which the State controls the school system. The Senator from Missouri here, who has been the Governor of the State of Missouri, has a right substantial State school fund, and I am sure he would agree that the people in the State department of education in Jefferson are not very successful in trying to control education. The State of New York appropriates somewhere around $150,000,000 a year for education and does not have any high degree of State control of education. I visited schools all over the State of New York. They are highly independent, subject to local boards of education. The whole history of State support denies the very argument made by the opposition on this point.

Senator HILL. Isn't this true: The worst that could possibly happen under this bill is that if the Federal Government were, through the Congress or through the United States Commissioner of Education, seeking to exercise some power, even if the Congress sought to impose some control that the State did not wish, all the State would have to do would be to say, "We won't take your money," isn't that right? Dr. DAWSON. That is right.

Senator HILL. For a State to say, "We won't take any money under this bill," that would be the worst that could happen?

Dr. DAWSON. Yes. The Supreme Court has said that.

Senator HILL. There is certainly no power within the Federal Government, and nothing in the bill, to force any State to take this money; isn't that true?

Dr. DAWSON. I agree.

Senator HILL. If the State felt some condition was being imposed, the worst thing that could happen would be that the State would not take the money.

Dr. DAWSON. Yes. Correct.

I might add this, the thing that threatens to produce the loss of local control of education is the lack of resources to maintain a program needed by the children and the youth of the country. If we have Federal control of education, it will be because of conditions, economic and social, that have been permitted to develop in this country, and it won't make one whit of difference whether the Federal Government pays a thin dime for education or not. If conditions arise such as we might imagine, the Federal Government could take all the schools anyway. They wouldn't have to spend money to do it. Senator AIKEN. In what way do you mean?

Dr. DAWSON. Suppose we should have 15 or 20 million people unemployed and we were unable to provide jobs for them, or suppose that we should decide to neglect the rights and privileges of 15,000,000 veterans, and that many of them became stranded economically, it is easy to imagine that anything might happen. If we should adopt some form of fascism or nazism, the first thing that would happen would be the seizure of education. That is what has happened in every country that has gone totalitarian. The best protection against such possibility is adequate expenditure for education so that every American youth is equipped to compete in the economic world and to believe in and defend our democratic way of life.

Senator AIKEN. Dr. Dawson, in a good many rural communities of the country there are no high schools; isn't that correct?

Dr. DAWSON. That is correct.

Senator AIKEN. And the local town or unit of government will send those high-school students to private or semiprivate schools?

Dr. DAWSON. Yes, sir.

Senator AIKEN. Is this bill so worded that it would permit money to be spent for that purpose? I know in my own town we send a good many pupils to private and semiprivate schools.

Dr. DAWSON. I am thoroughly acquainted with the situation you have in mind, Senator, because I have visited schools in every section of Maine and Vermont, and I understand exactly how they do it, how they furnish high-school facilities. These academies many times were established before the Revolutionary War. Most of them are independent and nonsectarian. They have perpetuating boards.

Senator AIKEN. A lot of them are private in name only.

Dr. DAWSON. Yes; a lot are private in name only. Your town sends children over to a private academy and the State reimburses the academy in the form of cash.

I would call your attention to section 5, paragraph (D), page 7, of the bill [reading]:

No provision of this Act shall be construed to delimit a State in its definition of its program of public education: Provided, That the funds paid to a State under this Act shall be expended only by public agencies and under public control.

73384-45-pt. 1—11

In short, the money received under this bill would be expended through the State department of education as State school funds are now expended.

I interpret this provision to be such as to take care of the situation you have mentioned, and I might as well say at the same time, a situation such as there is in Senator Ellender's State and in Senator Chavez's State, with respect to textbooks. In Louisiana the State buys the textbooks. It retains the title to them. It lets the students use them, whether they are in public or private schools, but it does not give anybody any textbooks, and this is wholly under the control of the State department of education and the parish boards of education. Isn't that correct, Senator?

Senator ELLENDER. That is right.

Senator AIKEN. I think that covers it. I wanted to hear you say that you thought it covered the situation.

Dr. DAWSON. I think it is essential to get that into the record. Senator AIKEN. This matter came up when we had the bill before us last year or the year before, and it is quite important.

Dr. DAWSON. Yes.

Now, one other comment before going to the apportionment provision of this bill. In saying this I, perhaps, may overlap some other testimony that has already come or which will come, and I shall dwell on it very briefly.

I think that the Federal interest in education of all-American youth is sufficiently justified for the Government to pay a part of the cost of education of all children, whether they are in California, New York, Mississippi, South Carolina, Podunk, or what not. I have two good reasons for that.

In the first place, even in normal times 25 percent of the American population live in States other than those in which they were born and reared. Some States have 57 percent of their population coming from other States. There is no section of this country that can avoid the penalty of educational neglect.

Now, certainly the National Government has an interest in the general welfare and in the national defense. Those things are mentioned in the Constitution. And the Government from its earliest days has been engaged in spending money to promote general welfare, even to supporting services which it has not constitutional power or right to control. The matter of national defense is wholly a power in the hands of Congress, unless it should happen to delegate some of it to the States.

The general welfare can be measured only in terms of the welfare of human beings, the citizens of the United States. I don't know of any interpretation of general welfare that would be worth talking about except as it is made in terms of how the economic, social, spiritual, physical, moral lives of the citizens are affected. So far as the national defense is concerned there would be no national defense without our human resources.

We have demonstrated that we can go to some favorable location for an industry and build a gigantic industry within the course of a few months that was not dreamed of before, because we have the engineering skill to do it and the natural resources. But you cannot take the human resources of the United States and in 90 days or 6

months make it the kind of fighting material you need for a total war. The time to start with the improvement of the human resources of the people of the United States is even with prenatal care, in early childhood, and in a satisfactory elementary education and secondary education, universally available to everybody according to American standards of equity and of good education.

Now, last Wednesday I was chairman of a conference which met at the National Education Association, a conference which I and my colleagues convened. In that conference were representatives of 11 Government agencies concerned either directly or indirectly with the educational welfare of veterans, and there were 13 private agencies, many of whom have been represented in this hearing, interested in the problem also. You will have evidence on this.

I was astounded in October 1943 to hear a Member of the United States Senate debate with one of his colleagues the question of whether the million men who have been rejected from military service because of lack of educational opportunities were morons. can't imagine how he could have been reelected had the information: gotten out and the veterans could have voted. These boys are not

morons.

I

It was brought out in this conference that of a military population estimated at 15,000,000 by the time this war is over there will be 525,000 persons who have been in the service without having had a fourth-grade education. There will be 1,400,000 whose schooling terminated between the fourth and the eighth grades. There will be another 5,000,000 whose schooling terminated between the eighth grade and high school graduation. This leaves about 5,000,000 who have at least finished high school and may have had some college.

We hear a lot of talk by these private agencies or these Government agencies about how to get educational facilities for the 5,000,000 in the upper education level who have the training to go on to college, but scarcely anybody says anything about the 663 percent who have been denied the educational opportunities they should have had before they went into the armed services and how they are going to get educational facilities to qualify under the GI bill.

A man who is as illiterate as can be, who does not know B from bulls-foot, is entitled to $50 a month and to have his tuition paid for education. But the question is where he is going to get it.

I am speaking for the 12,000,000 rural children of the United States. If we have to divide funds, which are already inadequate in most of the rural sections of America where there are 31 percent of the children and from 9 to 12 percent of the income, then we will lower the educational standard of the present youth in order to accommodate the veterans, and that is not going to suit the veterans either. For that reason the funds asked for in S. 181 are needed.

Now, this bill provides, as you have been told, for two distinct types of appropriations. One is an emergeny feature to try to take care of the situation with respect to teachers' salaries. You have had enough evidence offered here to convince anybody that the schools are unable to compete with Government and industry in paying high enough salaries to retain adequately trained teaching personnel, except in cases like that of the Negro woman, who said here this morning that although she could make more money working in a canning factory in