knot of regulations and red tape which have demonstrably crippled Indian inițiative and prevented Indian tribes from developing viable economies. We should bear in mind that so far each cure-all "solution of the Indian problem” which has been tried-the removal policy of the 1830's, the attack on tribalism by alloting land to individual Indians in the 1880's, and the termination policy of the 1950's-have resulted in loss of Indian land; in greater red tape and bookkeeping by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, increasing the cost to the government rather than decreasing it; and in increased dependency of Indians on non-Indians. The policy of looking for the magic key which will force Indians to assimilate into non-Indian society and lose their separate cultural identity has not worked: neither the goals of the non-Indian majority (to solve the "Indian problem" and relieve the federal government of its special obligation to its Indian citizens) nor the goals of the Indian people (generally to live happy, fulfilled lives as they define happiness and fulfillment) have been achieved.

The experience of reservation Indians has been instructive in positive ways as well as negative. Reservation Indians constitute one of the few rural groups which have maintained a land base and which have retained societies based on utilization of their corporate land base. They have been inhbited unnecessarily in their use of their land base and in the exercise of local initiative within their reservation communities, since the Bureau of Indian Affairs has held the veto power over many major areas of community life, including the use of capital resources. Reservation self-government has been very limited, and tribal leadership is still in the process of trying to establish viable democratic forms of government over twenty years after the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act, which made formal provision for limited local self-government.

What can be done in the local community dependent on the reservation land base when decisions are in the hands of local Indian citizens has been demonstrated by the accomplishments in a few short months of community action programs on Indian reservations. It is generally acknowledged that the most suecessful community action programs in the nation have been on Indian reservations, and Sargent Shriver has pointed out that local self-help and cooperation are among the basic values of most Indian groups, in spite of the fact that they have had little opportunity to exercise these values since the establishment of the reservation system.

In view of this experience the Bureau of Indian Affairs is to be highly commended for its new policy of delegating as much authority as possible to Indian Tribal Councils, of contracting with Tribal Councils whenever possible to provide community services rather than providing services directly as it has done traditionally, and of emphasizing community development and greatly enhanced educational opportunities. If reservation communities are allowed to exercise true self-determination and to plan and implement the programs they feel they need, while their independent land base is protected against further encroachment, great strides should be possible in overcoming the poverty which has been endemic on most Indian reservations for years. We hope the Bureau of Indian Affairs will be given sufficient appropriations by Congress to implement the reforms they are now planning.

CONCLUSION

In summary we would say that single uncoordinated pop shots at the problem of rural poverty may salve consciences but they leave the basic issues untouched. The full integration of rural people into the economic life of this nation as equals with their urban and industrial counterparts in terms of rights and benefits is essential. Rural citizens should have the same opportunities and services as urban and industrial citizens. They should not be denied the resources and the freedom to live and work, how and where they will. Only then will forced migration be ended and the quality of both urban and rural areas raised.

In attacking poverty, there is still the underlying belief on the part of far too many people that people are poor because of their own inadequacies. So we design programs to remove these inadequacies. Our experience indicates that if we are to have a great or good society we must so restructure our society and its institutions as to meet the needs and aspirations of people rather than continue to try and change people to fit the needs and capabilities of the institutions we have created.

Mr. RESNICK. Mr. Mansfield?

STATEMENT OF JACK P. MANSFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF UNEMPLOYED YOUTH, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity of coming here today. In the eyes and the words of the romantics and the poets and the hearts of all of us who come from rural America, the spacious open lands, majestic rising mountains, and the endlessly flowing waters represent probably the greatest asset that our Nation has. Yet ironically, these attributes spell for countless millions, instead of assets, isolation, handicap, and deprivation.

The problems of rural development which face our Nation are devastating in their immensity and we recognize it would be impossible to begin to discuss in any detail but a few of these. We would like to focus the committee's concern on certain issues which we feel need primary attention, because of their far-reaching implications and our particular interest and experience.

The need for special concern relative to (1) manpower and employment problems, (2) economic development, (3) transportation, (4) migratory and seasonal farmworkers, and (5) certain Federal services operating in rural areas, we respectfully submit to your attention. The positive effects of manpower programs in the rural southeast are easily enumerated. There are those who have been trained and as a result, now have a skill where before they had none; and there is the very real benefit that the outside money has brought to the area in general and to the vocational schools in particular.

But one is forced to concede that manpower training programs have not served the needs of poor people who have employment problems and live in rural or mountain areas. Vocational training programs have often reached the most reachable and most trainable for jobs that do not exist in the rural areas. The programs have not included acceptable ways, in the minds of the enrollees, to get them to places where these jobs exist. Currently, commuting is unrealistic and relocation creates new problems. Men and women who had not been able to find work were led to believe that through the manpower legislation and training programs real help was available. But training for training's sake, or as a holding operation for the idle, or the use of the training allowance money to help poor people survive the winterall have served only to convince rural people that training programs don't lead to jobs. These are temporary solutions to the need for money, but they don't lead to meaningful employment. Therefore, the effect of operating vocational training in this manner has been to confuse the objectives and increase the level of frustration.

The manpower planning process the planning process is most troubling. Much time and effort is expended; yet we have little of value to show for it. The planning process should allow for broadest possible participation, much of it on the local level where the problems are most real and solutions either work or do not work. Currently planning is highly centralized, occurring at the national or State level

82-388-67- -53

within the Departments of Labor, and Health, Education, and Welfare mainly. Packaged programs centrally designed with an urban bias, strangely, are then prescribed across the board. But these imposed programs are having little effect on the area. Manpower development and employment programs have to be tied to community concerns and needs. The local community must be involved in the determination of what its problems are and what solutions are acceptable and feasible. Planning-that is, setting goals and determining use of resources-must involve the total community.

Coordination-lack of coordination among the manpower programs under many different Federal agencies has resulted in a fractured approach which fails to meet the multiple and interrelated needs of the rural poor. One of the impassable obstacles to the successful planning and operation of local manpower programs is the pervasive and persistent conflict among Federal agencies and their regional, State, and local counterparts and between Federal, State and local authorities. The struggle which is waged for control of these programs occurs at every level. In the end, however, it is the local program which constitutes both the prize and the battleground of the contending agencies. Interagency conflict has had the most negative effects on the quality and the cost of local manpower development services. During the initial period of program planning these disputes have diverted the precious time and energy of all parties from the more important tasks of program development. Administrative compromise, concessions and attention to bureaucratic prerogatives and priorities rather than program excellence are too often required to initiate a local manpower program. Ultimately it is the needy person who bears the cost of this senseless struggle.

Greater structural unification of authority and responsibility appears to be the most effective way of reducing the unconscionable waste which is characteristic of the present situation. There is likewise an imperative need to insure that provisions for flexibility, innovation, and resident participation are clearly built into any unified structure. We believe that such unification would produce significant improvement in goal definition, particularly of a long-term character, in simpler and more consistent procedures, in the development of greater capabilities in program assessment and technical assistance, in more efficient program administration, in closer relationships with related programs in such fields as health, welfare, and economic development, and in other functional areas which seem extraordinarily difficult to achieve now.

Nevertheless, candor compels us to admit that we have no made-toorder plan for implementing this suggestion. In our view, there is no single Federal agency which now is sufficiently free of bureaucratic control or free of concepts and procedures which are inimical to the manpower development of the disadvantaged. We cannot identify any existing Federal agency which is sufficiently oriented operationally to the needs of the disadvantaged and whose procedures permit the flexibility and innovation required to meet the complex employment needs of the disadvantaged.

At this point, we are not sure what in the program area of skill training will work in rural areas since so little experimentation has been

permitted. Seemingly, however, rural people respond more to work or job-centered manpower development programs than they do to institutional training centered ones. The hard core have very complicated training problems that the vocational schools have not been set up to deal with. The techniques that work well in teaching young people of high school age are not the techniques needed to teach older men who are being retrained. The vocational schools have not been able to give the individual attention, supportive services and remedial education necessary to make the hard core unemployed employable. But once the individual, because of work experience, sees the need for and is motivated to take advantage of institutional training, then his participation has meaning. This reality of a job as an integral part of a manpower development program not only helps to destroy the conviction on the part of the poor that the programs are only a temporary hustle but helps them to understand and identify with the real employment goals.

Manpower training programs like most educational programs tend to become very structured. In rural areas the need for flexibility is acute. But regulations, eligibility requirements, and program procedures take a front seat to the needs and the situation of the client. Programs are frequently designed to meet manpower agency needs without adequate consideration of the needs of unemployed persons who are to be served by the programs. The result is that these programs fail to be relevant to the problems and needs of the chronically unemployed. The MDTA and its amendments, many of which were in response to findings of the experimentation and demonstration projects funded by the Department of Labor, reflect the urban world. We have not dealt with the uniquenesses of rural employment problems. In brief, some of the problems unique to rural areas are:

1. Only a limited number of jobs vacant in the immediate geographic area-usually with a disproportionately large labor supply. 2. The variety of occupations in demand in the immediate area is usually restricted.

3. Mobility is restricted because of the expense, because of the undesirable residential areas into which families must move, and because of lack of job security which the disadvantaged worker must face even with job offers in other locations.

4. Development of jobs on any large scale usually requires coordination with the creation or expansion of industry.

5. Deficiencies in health, education, and occupational sophistication are related to inadequate public services in rural areas in health, education, and welfare. The overall development of the rural labor force is tied to the upgrading of agency services in rural areas generally.

The lack of jobs in rural areas is puzzling when you consider the unmet need. With so much to be done in the construction of public facilities and in improving public services and education, the work is there to be done. We must find some way of paying for it. At this point in our history it seems imperative to combine direct public employment with economic development. The improvement of the living standard that is produced by direct employment programs has a very positive effect on the economic development effort as facilities, roads,

and community services are improved. Economic development, will ultimately decrease the need for direct public employment. At this point we must decide on our direction in job development and job creation before we can design meaningful manpower programs.

It is sufficient to say that experience indicates that welfare and manpower programs should not be confused. Manpower programs should be reserved to meet employment goals.

Lack of priority on rural manpower-the priority placed upon the development of manpower programs in rural areas is clearly seen in the fact that despite massive numbers of unemployed and underemployed rural farm workers, according to the Manpower Report of the President only 3 percent of those trained under the MDTA came from this population.

Half of the poverty in America is found in rural areas, although various Federal agencies place the figure at 42 or 48 or 40 percent. While bureaucrats quibble over percentage points, thousands of Americans are starving and the teeming ghettos of our urban areas are being fed the migration of tens of thousands of unemployed persons seeking vainly to escape the open air prisons of rural deprivation. Because there has been a trend away from the smaller family farm toward the large commercial farm in the United States-largely be cause of national economic policy which aids the development of the large agribusiness industry at the cost of hardship to the small farmers and their families-Federal manpower agencies have tended to ignore rural manpower problems on the supposition that a rural population will almost vanish in the United States. The fact that many families are being squeezed out of full-time farming does not mean that they all move away from rural areas immediately. And the fact that Federal agencies prefer to ignore rural employment problems does not mean that there will not be a rural population for decades to come or that this population is happy with unemployment and family deprivation.

Although there is virtually total agreement that economic development is primary to rural development, there is seemingly a basic disagreement as to whom the beneficiaries of economic development should be.

It is appropriate to ask: "Are we trying to develop areas, cities, towns, lakes, sewers, or people?"

The development, if it is to be real, must be for people and the approach must fit this goal and the goal must be defined."

Economic development must aid people. There seems to be injustice in the present model of economic development which assists merchants. landowners, and certain large corporations to gain benefits in the form of profits, while a few poor people get jobs paying a minimum wage or less.

The premise of the depressed area concept is that these areas can never become self-sufficient. The irony of this premise is that most of these areas, the Appalachian coal fields, the Mesabi iron range, and the Mississippi Delta were once sources of great wealth. Today, they are depressed because that wealth left the area without leaving behind any appreciable benefit and at the cost of depleted natural resources.

!