EFFECT OF FEDERAL PROGRAMS ON RURAL AMERICA TUESDAY, JULY 11, 1967 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON RURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 1:35 p.m., in room 1302, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Joseph Y. Resnick (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Resnick, Nichols, Mathias, and Zwach. Also present: Martha Hannah, subcommittee clerk. Mr. RESNICK. The Rural Development Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture will now come to order. The first witness will be Hon. Howard Bertsch, Administrator of the Farmers Home Administration, Department of Agriculture. At this point, I would like to put into the record the testimony of Gov. Philip H. Hoff of the State of Vermont, and the statement of August H. Vanden Bosche, Coral Gables, Fla., executive director of the Florida Council on Human Relations. (The statements above referred to follow :) STATEMENT OF GOVERNOR PHILIP H. HOFF, STATE OF VERMONT We in Vermont are undergoing a cultural and economic metamorphosis that, while by no means unique, is perhaps more apparent in our State than in others. Our transition from a pastoral, agrarian climate to a more urban-oriented culture began 35 years ago when the nation's economy was at its nadir. It began with the abandonment of marginally operated farms and the migration, both to the cities and out of the State, by the children of these farmers. The consolidation of farms has continued unabated with rural landowners now parceling off their holdings to ski areas and vacation resorts. A land boom, of vest pocket proportions, exists in many areas of our State, but this prosperity has failed to filter down to our rural poor. When the larger landowners sell or speculate with their holdings, taking land out of production or diminishing their dairy herds, the impact is most severely felt by farm workers and their families. The welfare concepts of what has come to be called the Puritan Ethic are still evident in Vermont; not in the form of statutes or public policies, but rather in more insiduous, covert manifestations. Welfare in Vermont mirrored the Medieval settlement laws of England. In the last century, for example, a common method of disposing of the poor was to auction them off before the assembled citizens of the town. Whoever would ask the lowest fee for their maintenance would be given the pauper in questions and the town would pay the bidder the weekly fee agreed upon. Until the 1930's when the Federal government began to assist in the support of the poor, Vermont legislation, at least conceptually, was altered very little. The laws governing the poor visited considerable authority with the overseer of the poor and left to his discretion the manner and amount of assistance a needy person was to receive. The administration of local welfare by the overseer of the poor will cease in Vermont on July 1, when it is absorbed by the State Department of Social Welfare. But, significantly, the homogeneous nature of our rural population and the centuries old stigma of being "on the town" are vestigially apparent today. And the "Culture of Poverty" described by Oscar Lewis as haunting families in Puerto Rico and New York, is also very much in evidence here. Generations of families live literally with the mark of Cain. They are powerless to wrest themselves from the poverty and attendant social and physical miseries that were visited upon their parents. Children are forced to drop out of school to help support a household whose single and uniform attribute seems to be the ability to proliferate. This new system also will enable us to increase our federal welfare aid by more than a million dollars under revisions of the Social Security Act. But, an additional possibility might be opened to Vermont which could enable us to do much more. I have long advocated that our State be utilized as a laboratory by the Office of Economic Opportunity. The "Culture of Poverty" which is so prevalent in our cities exists to a comparable and measurable degree in Vermont. But, the ancillary political problems-particularly in the area of civil rights do not. Our OEO programs have not been operative for a sufficient length of time to determine their degree of effectiveness or penetration. There can be no doubt that they are a substantial factor, but the extent of their impact cannot, as yet, be assessed. I am not, in any way, suggesting a re-evaluation of priorities in the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. Nor am I advancing the extremely crass sugges tion that Vermont be tendered beneficial treatment because of our paucity of Negro people. What I am suggesting in advocating this laboratory approach is that OEO programs can be more effectively administered and their results more accurately assessed because of the unique nature of our rural poverty programs and problems. We have, I am convinced, what a social scientist would regard as a near perfect control group; ethnically, religiously, economically and culturally. It is more self contained, for example, than the population of Appalachia. There are no "generation gaps" such as those found in the rural South. They are less mobile than the rural poor of the Plain States; they are more accessible than the Indian families of the Mountain States. In short, as a self-contained, single OEO unit, the federal programs undertaken here could be most measurably effective while, at the same time, functioning as a prototypical and possibly establishing guidelines for other areas of the country where problems may be more complex. In the areas of education, Vermont is proceeding apace with the consolidation of its rural school systems; a program that has seen the marked increase of educational efficiency. We have achieved demonstrable success in raising the scholastic levels and aspirations of our rural populace. Our problems evolve around the widely dissembled nature of our school population, particularly in the northern part of Vermont. Coupled with the sparse population in our northern tier is a genuine language problem. Many of our people in this area are of French-Canadian extraction and are persons for whom English is, in actuality, a foreign or second language. While many of these children do not come from disadvantaged families per se, their difficulties in assimilation threaten to place them outside the educational mainstream. It is not unusual, for example, particularly in our smaller schools, to find a second or third grade pupil who is failing simply because he or she cannot speak English. Ideally, these children should be taught English as a foreign language. But, existing techniques, which, in turn, are dictated by finances, prohibit this. If our federal educational allotments were more substantial and more flexible, we could implement team teaching techniques, perhaps outside of the physical school environment, to bridge this linguistic gap. We simply do not now have funds to conduct experiments of this nature. Vermont's Head Start Program has proven partially successful, particularly in the allied areas of health and welfare. But, the follow-up efforts in education, have been inadequate. Head Start, as it now is constituted, is not reaching many of the people who need it most. I would be remiss if I did not extend my compliments for several of the federal programs that are working particularly well in Vermont. Chief among these is the Small Business Administration. Both financial and management assistance have increased substantially in the past 30 months. Both the dollar value and the quality of this assistance are producing meaningful results in our State's economy. In the past year our state SBA office doubled its personnel but more than doubled its loan factor. The additional people enabled Vermont's SBA to furnish greater service to its accounts. Our SCORE program is another facet of the SBA with which we have had considerable success. Vermont is fortunate in having a number of retired executives and many of them are eager to assist our state businessmen. You may be interested to learn that it is not unusual in a given month to find Vermont's processed SBA loans equal to those of much more populace states. Our experience with the Manpower Retraining Program has been rewarding, although to a somewhat lesser degree. The administrators of this program in Vermont have found that funds are allocated rather arbitrarily and that this has hindered the potential effectiveness. For example, in fiscal 67, we were allotted almost $400,000 for our retraining programs. We were able to immediately commit our quota for institutional projects, but only 25 percent of our allotment for on-the-job-training. We did not utilize $150,000 of our on-the-job-training allocations, but we could have used all of this in institutional programs. We feel that categorical grants in this area are working to our detriment. We would wish to be free to decide ourselves whether funds should be utilized for institutional or on-the-job-training projects. We feel that we are in the best position to assess our own needs and, consequently, our own priorities within basic national objectives. We are most enthusiastic about the Great Society programs. These social and economic endeavors have breathed new life and new spirit into Vermont and her people. The depth of penetration is increasing daily and, in a small state such as ours, the impact of this penetration is readily evident. But, while we applaud the philosophy, we must join with others in questioning the administration. You have given us the tools, we ask only that you provide the lubrication to utilize these tools most effectively. If you allow us to determine our own priorities and to structure our programs within more flexible federal guidelines, we can, in turn, promise an optimum return on what I believe is the greatest human investment made in the history of civilization. STATEMENT OF AUGUST H. VANDEN BOSCHE, FLORIDA COORDINATING COMMITTEE FOR FARM WORKERS, AND THE FLORIDA COUNCIL ON HUMAN RELATIONS My name is August H. Vanden Bosche. I am the Executive Director of the Florida Council on Human Relations, a private, non-profit membership organization of some 2500 members in twenty chapters in all areas of Florida. The purpose of the Florida Council is to devise, develop, and publicize techniques and programs of youth and adult education to counteract prejudice and discrimination based on racial, religious, nationality or ethnic group membership. Also, I serve as the chairman of the Florida Cordinating Committee for Farm Workers, a coalition of organizations dedicated to assisting farm workers secure their basic rights and dignity. The Coordinating Committee is composed of the following groups: The American Friends Service Committee The Community Action Fund The Diocese of Miami Human Relations Board The Florida Christian Migrant Ministry The Florida Citizens Committee on Agricultural Labor The Florida Council on Human Relations Industrial Union Dept., AFL-CIO N.A.A.C.P.-State Conference of Branches I would like to submit the following statement on behalf of the Coordinating Committee for Farm Workers and the Florida Council on Human Relations. I. THE CONDITION OF MIGRANT AND SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS IN FLORIDA In Florida, over 100,000 seasonal farm workers and migrants pick and pack the fruits and vegetables which symbolize the "abundant harvest" of present American affluence. Yet, as strangers and sojourners, many workers live in substandard shacks with inadequate water and bad sanitation, are clad in cast-offs, and travel from place to place in rickety, unsafe cars, trucks and buses. They are underfed, undereducated, overworked, and often deprived of medical care and welfare services. For the most part, migrant workers in agriculture are unorganized and usually have no minimum-wage protections, workmen's compensation, or unemployment insurance. At the end of the season "up the road" they return to their home base in Florida with little or nothing saved from their precarious, low-paid and back-breaking jobs. This is so even though wives and children in many cases also work in the fields. The condition of these farm workers in Florida is morally, economically, physi cally and socially intolerable, exhibiting the following characteristics: A. Wages If figured by social security records (annual) If figured by statistical analysis of the United States (annual). B. Health conditions $1,035 500 $698-1,379 1. Farm workers continue to exhibit high rates of disease and sickness incomprehensible in Modern 20th Century America. For example, in one of Florida's smallest counties 100% of all migrant children between the ages of 0 and 16 years have parasitic diseases, 43% of these also have skin diseases and 96% of them under 5 years suffer from diarrhea. 2. The above figures only apply to those who have been examined. Authorities estimate that only 1% of the Florida farm workers have had a physical examination in the last ten years, if at all. 3. Disabling work-related accidents (among those reported) total just under 10% of the total number of workers, and in the reported number of work-related fatalities the figures are 41⁄2 times the number reported in the mining industry. 4. Infant mortality is significantly higher. In one area over one third of the migrant births reported were delivered by midwives outside of hospitals, and without a physician present. Of the numbers of unreported births, many occur in buses, trucks, or at "the end of the row." A farm worker's infant has a very poor chance to live and enjoy life. C. Education Studies demonstrate the pathetic state of education among the farm workers. where the average adult has an educational level of less than 6 years. Fewer than 1% of farm workers finish high school, and it is the rare individual who has ever entered college. D. Housing Housing conditions are in such a deplorable state that "new" 1966 farm family housing is an 8 x 16 wooden shack without electricity or toilet facilities, and other housing is inadequate, dirty, unsafe, and expensive ($10 to $15 per week is the most frequent rate). Collier County (Immokalee) last July adopted a progressive standard for migrant housing stating that no quarters can be smaller than 8 x 8, and that all units must have electricity. Still, there is no provision for individual toilet and bathing facilities, and only a "portable water supply," which means a faucet from which the farm worker can fill a pail and carry it to the house. Collier County is the County where last year alone, fires destroyed 175 beds in 7 camps with 4 deaths and the destruction of 13 buildings. E. Sanitation Sanitation conditions are so basically deplorable that privies are almost totally lacking in the fields, and drinking water is contaminated by sewage. The Florida Health Project Reports state that in one county there were more health violations than privies. One can only imagine the alternatives available to the field worker who must labor from dawn to dusk where there are neither toilet facilities or facilities for hand-washing. |