a hundred other innovations we have devised to help local communities shape their own destinies. But I won't. Rather, I would like to close tonight with what seems to me the essence of this problem of what must be done if we are to invent a future, rather than inherit the leftovers of another age. If you will bear with me a moment, I would like to read a short quotation from a talk by Jim Rouse-developer of the new town of Columbia, Md.-who, at our symposium on rural/urban balance last year, summed it up rather well. I really think this is the essence, basically an attitude that is so important. He said: The prevailing mood of the meeting, although one of urgency and yearning to move ahead, was really one of disbelief-disbelief that aything was really going to happen. This is a prevailing mood in America today. I expect, if we were honest with ourselves, that it is a prevailing mood even of this meeting. I wonder, as you have listened to the identification once again of the problems . . . and the bright hopes and solutions and possibilities, and as you see clearly the possibility the certainty, really-that this kind of society does not have to be, that it is beneath the dignity and capacity and legitimate expectancy of America— I wonder if you would not admit that you really do not expect to see anything significant happen about it. This, to me, is the most devastating fact about America today, that people have come to look upon the problems of the urban environment, however they are identified, as battles to be fought rather than victories to be won. We talk in terms "of the need for," not "how to do it." There is missing from the American mentality, attitude, and spirit the conviction that we will transform the American city, the conviction that we have the capacity, the resources, and determination to do it-and that we will-not in 100 years or 50 years or in 40 years, but in a decade. Perhaps that is even the mood of this meeting tonight-I do not know. But I hope not. For I believe that the fragile web of civilization we have constructed in this Nation-which, after all, depends on intangibles, on mutual trust, on a dedication, if you will, to commonly shared ideals, even on what Lincoln called the "mystic chords of memory"--I believe this web is too fragile a thing to contain the stresses and strains that it will be subject to if the Nation continues on its present course. It will rend and tear apart, and the flames that many of us wit nessed as firsthand this spring are but a harbinger of worse to come unless drastic, immediate, and pervasive changes are made. And yet this is not the overriding reason that change should be made. Rural-urban balance offers no quick, easy solutions to the alienation, despair, and violence that now infect every one of our major cities. The reason is much more fundamental than this. It is, simply, that what we are building in megalopolis is unworthy of us as a people. Paralysis in local government, confusion in the many-layered State-Federal system, is simply unworthy of a people who devised the most enduring political document in history, the Constitution, and who innovated the land grant colleges, the TVA, the New Deal, and a thousand and one other new responses to meet the problems of previous ages. An America benighted by formless suburban sprawl, cancerous with decaying inner city ghettos, impacted with too many people in too little space, is simply unworthy of a Nation that swept across 3,000 miles of wilderness, subdued it and built a civilization on it that has conferred more bounty on more of its people than any other. An America whose streams are polluted, whose air is befouled, whose vision, for many, is confined by the ghetto wall, this kind of an America is simply unworthy of a people who have the technology, the money, and the will to send men to the moon. A poet wrote a few years ago: We cannot see the stars anymore; Those infinite spaces. The open road leads but to the used car lot. Is this to be the American condition? So let me close by asking a question of each one of you. Is an America built to human scale, human values-where every American has a choice of where he would raise his family-where jobs, first-class housing, education, and public facilities are evenly distributed over the land; is this kind of America possible? Is this so wild a dream? I hope, and I pray, it is not. Let us make it otherwise, for it can be done. Thank you and good night. Dr. EVANS. With those thoughtful and though-provoking contributions to this conference-some 2 years ago, a Negro poet, standing in the exact spot in which I am standing now, from our sister institution, Langston University, made a comment which I have never forgotten. He said: There is nothing great in the world except man, there is nothing great about man except his mind, and there is nothing great about his mind except the ideas which emerge from it. Secretary Freeman, I think the manner in which you epitomized that though and the essential accuracy of my introductory comments, I think were amply demonstrated by the round of applause that you did in fact make a real contribution to the thought of this conference. I think we are all better for your having come by tonight. Thank you very kindly. (Whereupon the conference recessed, to reconvene at 9 a.m., Saturday, May 18, 1968.) NATIONAL MANPOWER CONFERENCE SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1968 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT RESEARCH, Stillwater, Okla. The Conference counsel met, pursuant to recess, at 9 a.m. in the Student Union Theater, Senator Fred R. Harris presiding. Present: Senator Harris. Also present: Dr. Steven Ebbin, staff director. Senator HARRIS. The Conference will be in order. I read a letter yesterday from the President of the United States. Today I am pleased to have received a telegram from the Vice President of the United States which says: MESSAGE TO THE CONFERENCE FROM THE VICE PRESIDENT Rural to Urban Population Shift-the subject of your discussions-is a movement that strikes especially at young people. About half of all poor youth now reside in rural areas. More than 200,000 young people will move to the cities this year alone. They will move in search of opportunities denied them in rural America-the opportunities for a good education and a good job. Existing services for rural youth are inadequate both in serving rural youth where they now live and in easing their move from the countryside to the city. While our cities are gaining in population an increasing number of Americans would actually prefer to live in rural areas. A recent Gallup poll for example shows that twothirds of the people residing in our central cities would not be living there if they had a choice. This is the challenge of your Conference, finding ways to provide all Americans with a choice, a freedom of movement. If we can meet that challenge, we shall also move closer to a better life for rural Americans and a subsiding of the anguish of life in our inner cities. As Chairman of the President's Council on Youth Opportunity, I hope that your Conference will help provide answers to how rural youth might be better served today and in the future. HUBERT H. HUMPHREY. We begin this morning on the subject of "Proposed Plans for Action-Suggested Approaches for Dealing With the Problem." First this morning we have a panel on labor, business, and education. Our first speaker, Mr. Woodrow Ginsburg, director of research, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO. Biographical Sketch: Woodrow Ginsburg Director of research, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO; executive board member, Industrial Relations Research Association; former research director for the United Automobile Workers and, earlier, for the United Rubber Workers; staff service with several Federal agencies including the War Labor Board, the Wage Stabilization Board, and the Department of Commerce and with the European Productivity Agency. 96-624-68-9 STATEMENT OF WOODROW GINSBURG, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, INDUSTRIAL UNION DEPARTMENT, AFL-CIO Mr. GINSBURG. Thank you. We heard a lot yesterday about some of the basic problems we face on the question of rural-urban migration. Today I note the program calls for prescriptions and legislative action. Prescribing programs for meeting some of these needs has been occupying the energies of many groups of outstanding American citizens during the last few years. A series of reports has been issued that would fill several library shelves. The many recommendations they contain are both comprehensive in scope and extremely detailed in many specific areas. But there is a long road-as we all know who have been associated with the preperations of any of those reports-between the issuance of the final document with the brief flush of publicity that attends its presentation to the President, a Cabinet officer, or the public generally, and the implementing of those proposals. Even when Commissions express widespread agreement on what they call a paramount need and the basic legislative measures or private actions required to meet it, in all too many instances these recommendations have not been followed. I am referring primarily to reports from a number of prestigious groups during the past 2 years alone-Automation Commission, the Advisory Council on Public Welfare, the White House Conference on Civil Rights, the National Crime Commission, the Food and Fiber Commission, the Rural Poverty Commission, the Urban Coalition, and most recently, the Civil Disorders Commission. Key ideas have flowed from these reports and have been discussed far more vigorously than before. In only a very instances have legislative bills been prepared; and unfortunately the positive results have been minimal. Obviously our national problems are complex and deep rooted, and so interrelated that no single remedy, no single recommendation, no single solution can hope to solve them. As a matter of fact, I am quite impressed with the very titles that are attached to this conference-it is at the same time a national manpower conference, a rural-urban migration conference, and from what I heard yesterday, a conference emphasizing civil disorders, the race question. discrimination, government compliance, and many other aspects of basic social and economic issues. In short, these problems are so interrelated that trying to prescribe any simple solution seems completely out of place. But yet we feel there is much we can do now, much we have the capacity to do now, both in terms of our present tools and in terms of our economic resources, that would make a significant difference in shaping our future. We in the labor movement have never been reluctant to pass resolutions suggesting proposals on how to meet some of our problems. Those of you who see the resolutions adopted at our national conventions, when some 125 international unions adopt over 100 separate proposals and programs, note that there is scarcely an issue that confronts America on which some international union or the international unions combined do not take a policy position. These resolutions are not only policy-setting documents. They serve as educational instruments for our union membership in the legislative arena, as a basis of much |