March 22, 1962 (4)

Senators will note that three of the five poll tax States are singled out in this statement. At no place in the report is there any charge that the poll tax is used in the other two poll tax States as a discriminatory prerequisite to voting. The present era has been appropriately called the age of conformity by many commentators on national trends. New studies of this tendency to sameness come to our attention practically every day. In this age of rapid communications and travel, when the many facets of our economy and our political and social life are so closely interrelated, there is a grave danger that we will lose the diversity that was such a significant factor in the growth of our national character. We are extending this same tendency to conformity to the very foundation of our governmental system when we attempt to eliminate a right which the States have enjoyed since the founding of the Republic. -

The abolition of the poll tax will be only another step. In a short time the Senate will be asked to consider a bill establishing a uniform test for literacy. If the Congress accepts the philosophy that the States should no longer have the right, written into the Constitution, to establish qualifications for voters, there is no reason why a constitutional amendment, or even a statute, cannot be passed establishing uniform requirements for residency, or any other qualification for voting. Once the door is opened and the precedent has been set, there is nothing to stop the movement.

The issues involved here were well stated by Robert G. Storey, former dean of Southern Methodist University Law School, who is Vice Chairman of the Civil Rights Commission. In the recent Commission report on voting he said:

Proposals to alter longstanding FederalState relationships such as that incorporated in the Federal Constitution, declaring that the qualifications of electors shall be left to the several States, should not be made unless there is no alternative method to correct an existing evil. Such is not the case today.

The Federal Government has sufficient authority under the Constitution and the existing framework of laws to enable it effectively to deal with denials of the ri g ht to ship. vote by reason of race, color, religion, and national origin.

If the Congress wants to homogenize the States, this is a step in that direction.

During this critical period in the Nation's history, unity is needed more than ever. By unity I mean a strong consensus of national effort in solving some of the critical problems which face us both at home and abroad. I do not mean uniformity with the connotation of mediocrity and adjustment to the lowest common denominator. The pending issue is one which tends to divide us and divert our attention from the real problems that must be faced during this session of Congress. This is an issue of no practical consequence to the Nation, and it is a tragedy that the Senate is forced to waste valuable time on such a question. The future of democratic governments will in the long run be determined by the ability of their citizens to make wise decisions, not by the mere act of casting a ballot by every adult in the Nation. Hitler rolled up an almost unanimous vote of approval from the German people, and the Communist Party candidates do it today in Russia and the satellites.

And I suppose the same could be said of some of the more underdeveloped nations, so far as the mere numbers of voters is concerned. The mere existence of the right to vote in no way guarantees a democratic system.

The Nation's Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the importance of education in a democracy. It strikes me education is of far more importance to the quality of government than is unfettered universal suffrage.

George Washington wrote:

Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of human happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours, it is proportionately essential.

Thomas Jefferson also had a unique understanding of the necessity for an educated and informed citizenry in a free society. Jefferson correctly said: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

He was as proud of his role in founding the University of Virginia as of his authorship of the Declaration of · Independence.

God has not ordained that our form of government will succeed; nor is there any evidence from history to support the thesis that democracy is a natural form me." of society. Our form of government is the product of great human effort. It was created by our forefathers with the realization that man is potentially good, but also potentially a beast. Wise actions by our people will always be needed to keep the beast from seizing control. Through education we strive to bring out the good in our young people and to cultivate in them a desire to preserve and protect the values of our society. A good education is basic to good citizenship. exercise of the right to vote by one who is incapable of weigh i ng the issues and making a rational decision does not contribute to the ultimate survival of this Nation. I can think of nothing better calculated to hasten our downfall than the casting of a ballot by a person who does not have the intellectual capacity to vote wisely . James Madison once said:

Popular government without popular educ at ion is a prolog to a farce or tragedy.

The problem of education for citizenship was well stated in a comment by a noted scholar which appeared in a magazine some months ago. He said, in effect, that if he exercised his right to vote as carefully and thoughtfully as a citizen in a democracy should, he would spend all his time studying the candidates and the issues. This is a fair commentary on the awesome responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy in this complex and everchanging world.

The frustrations of the· cold war and the general complexity of life today prompt our people to look for easy solutions to complex problems. It is difficult f-or the shallow thinker to resist the impulse to believe those who have a knack for making complex problems seem simple. The apparent widespread interest in organizations such as the John Birch Society is symptomatic of a natural desire to find an easy answer to the difficult problems facing our Nation and the world. To blame all our difficulties on the Communists is simple enough to do.

It is much harder to face reality and to accept the world we live in, and then do something constructive to make it more to our liking. We can blame the Communists for our troubles from now until doomsday, but this will not contribute to the solution of our problems. A genuinely educated citizenry will not be deluded by crackpots and demagogs from within, or by alien doctrines from without. In the long run, the quality of our educational system and the intellectual capacity of our citizens will determine how well our heritage is enriched and preserved.

A short time ago I came across a very interesting essay by Harry D. Gideonse, president of Brooklyn College and for- . mer president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. In this essay, Dr. Gideonse gave a very lucid explanation of the need for education in a free society. His comments on the meaning of freedom are particularly pertinent at this time when there is a growing tendency for the individual to look at a public issue with the attitude of "what is in it for I am taking the lib e rty of quoting exten s ively from this essay for the information and enlightenment of my colleagues. Dr. Gideonse wrote:

The greatest single cause of our confusion in the discussion of a national philosophy of education for citizenship in a free society lies in the fact that we no longer understand our own tradition. Our liberals and progressives talk of freedom as if individual rights can be separated from the common disciplines which free men must accept if a free society is to be sufficiently strong to m a ke its gu a rantee of rights meaningful. Our relaxed grip on the fundamental principles of free society is perhaps the greatest single cause of our weakness as we confront an ideological alternative in which every social and cultural activity is directly related to a dogmatic faitb.

Freedom, however, is rooted in the responsibility of men as men, and not merely as specialized splinters of men. In our specialized pursuit of the development of free · ee society we may easily drift into so intense a splintering of the tot a l personality in which free society is anchored and rooted, that the quality of individual responsibility may vanish as the fruits of our specialization increase.

The American conception of freedom is not merely the selfish expression of whim. It is not merely self-expression. Freedom is self-control as contrasted with control by others. The cultivation of inner directedness is therefore the core of the educational problem of a free society. The sources of responsibility are not cultivated by drift, nor by the pervasive advertising in press, radio, and television that promotes an everincreasing diversity of material wants, nor by a journalistic overemphasis on news which is defined as the unusual, the pathic or the exceptional, nor by a sport page's systematic confusion of the reading public's ability to distinguish among commercial sports, spectator values and an educational interest in · students who play ra t her than in athletes who register. Neither are they clarified by .a view of freedom that stresses the removal of inhibitions, because the very essence of civilized society is defined by the presence of an appropriate selection of inhibitions, and this is merely another way of saying that freedom i-s self-<()ontrol.

The sense of responsibility from which this self-.control is to spring is rooted in a disciplined life of mind .as wen as of emotion, a balanced grasp of frequently conflicting values; it is rooted in a sensible; realistic picture (to which reason and intellect can contribute) of the nature of man. The nature of man is not just intellect. Some of the biggest swine in human history have been great intellects. Some of the weakest spots in Western free society are due to excess! ve preoccupation with intellect, with analysis . and it is healthy to recognize this in the face of the fact that the great achievements of Western society also are rooted in the cultivation of intellect and reason.

The hazard is in lopsidedness. The hazard is in doing only one thirg and letting -the rest go by drift. For if the rest goes by drift, the man on horseback may come along to exploit this drift. Whether he is a demagog from the right or one from the left makes no difference-the consequences to the freedom are just as serious in the one case as in the other. Typically, he is an expert in exploiting undisciplined emotion. And when it comes to that kind of challenge in a period in which national survival is at stake, you can trust the expert in the exploitation of emotion, whose only rationality consists in his rational · exploitation of the irrational in man, to winunless there is a systematic strengthening of the subjective factor in free society by the use of education in all of its broad ramifications.

Now, in the matter of free government we can look the whole world in the face. Whatever they may say abroad about immature, young America, our written Constitution is the oldest one by a wide margin now operating in the world, and it was not written on the basis of a philosophy of faith in man. It was written on the basis of a realistic conception of the nature of man, wholly aware of the fact that man is potentially good-that's why we trusted ourselves with free Government institutions-but also deeply aware of the fact that man who is potentially good is also potentially a beast. Therefore, we would not trust the Government we set up with unqualified power. Therefore, we established governmental institutions that separated power and dispersed control. The reason we separated power and dispersed control is that we did not trust man with unqualified power, power that was not dispersed. In other words, we had a realistic theory of the nature of man. We saw him not just as mind, but we saw him as potentially evil in character; we saw even the potentially angelic element in man as, under the trust of complete power, most vulnerable indeed to the temptations and the lusts for power that bring out the bestial.

The Greeks had, as they often did, a word for it. The word "idiot" as we use it today describes, technically, a. type of feebleminded person and, popularly, a person who is very stupid and incapable of intellectual effort, one who has an idiotic way of doing things. The Greek word, of course, meant something very different, although it is the word from which we drew ours. The Greeks used the word "idiot" for a. man who might have very keen analytical capacity, who might be a scholar, but who had no interest in the whole of things. The Greek idiot was an altogether private man. He had no public spirit, as we might express it. He had no awareness of his being part of a larger whole. In that sense, we can say that the American college and - university, with all of its specialists . who know only one thing and are very little interested in the total impact of all these separate things on the whole of the young personality for which they are responsible, contains-in the original Greek use of the term-a larger percentage of idiots than the population of the country as a whole. And the whole of public life is full of idiocy in the Greek sense of the term, because all of public life is rooted in the assumption that the determining :"act of all public policy is its bearing on the pursuit of higher standards of material living. This is taken for granted on the right as well as on the left . Presidential candidates differ in the United States not in their acceptance of this objective, but in methods of achieving that objective. Some Democrats will say that we can achieve it with a little more public action, some Republicans with a little less public action, but they will all agree that the purpose should be the increase of material standards of living. But increasing material standards of living implies more specialization, more division of labor, more conveyor-belt, doing-just-one-thing-all-thetime action, because that's the way in which analytical man has demonstrated that he can increase material returns per individual involved in production.

If there is anything to the picture I have presented here, it will be observed that the implications of the public drive toward in­ - creased productivity, toward applied science and technology, toward specialized, conveyor-belt production, is a. sharper drive toward increasingly specialized use of only a small part of man's whole personal · endowment. The danger of increasing unawareness of the need for cultivating the whole of a balanced human personality is implicit in the temptation to increase vocat i on a l and specialized pressures directly related to economic as well as to defense needs.

Historically and mor a lly we know that freedom is anchored in a realistic view of the nature of responsible man, and in his nature as a whole. And this has challenging educational implications especially in a time in which family, church and community have in varying ways lost a good deal of their effectiveness as educational agencies. Man has a body as well as a mind, man has glands as well as a brain, and free man has a need for disciplined emotions as well as for a disciplined mind. It may be a fatal gap in our total defense of free society to overlook the role of disciplined emotion, trained imagination, the signific a nce of rhythm, tradition and ceremony, the cultivation of the subjective and the valuational in our exclusive pursuit of intellectually and economically productive byproducts of specialized competence.

There is great peril in a blind continuation of present educational tendencies to serve ex i sting vocational needs in our rapidly shifting economic order. Automation and modern scientific developments have given a special urgency to Woodrow Wilson's warning more than 50 years ago that "the man of special skill can be changed into an unskilled laborer overnight." If public education is to be genuinely in the Nation's service it should be deeply concerned with the erosion of community values and all the other unplanned and unintended cultural byproducts of the proliferating variety of economic and technical interests which are part of the mainstream of our economic life. We should increasingly think of education as concerned with the total of the formative influences that are brought to bear on our youth by the American community. The content of formal education should be modified in accordance with observable shifts in the formative impact of other social activities such as those of the church, the family and the increasingly more significant influence of competitive advertising in the press, in the movies, in radio and in television.

Mr. CARLSON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I will yield for a question.

Mr. CARLSON. I wish to inquire of the Senator from Arkansas if he is quoting the views on education of someone else; or are they his own views? Personally I think it is a very fine statement.

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I am reading from a statement by Dr. Harry D. Gideonse, president of Brooklyn College, and former president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. I shall comment on his observations in a few moments.

I continue to quote from Dr. Gideonse:

There is a sense in which freedom will ultimately be preserved or lost in this Nation's educational establishments. No amount of technological productivity and no increase of professional military proficiency can overcome the vital fact that the effectiveness of a nation's total performance in the world community will be finally determined by the disciplined will and purpose of its youth, and by their commitment to and their experience with the values of free men and women. These qualities are not byproducts of specialized or vocation a l scholarship, and they are not supplied by a program of supplementary _ verbal indoctrination as if they could be finally added to the program of instruction much in the manner in which a fudge sauce is poured over a dish of lee cream.

That ends the quotation from Dr. Gideonse's essay.

Mr. CARLSON. Mr. President, will the Senator from Arkansas yield?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield for a question.

Mr. CARLSON : I should like to inquire again who Dr. Gideonse is and what his background in the educational field is.

Mr. FULBRIGHT. He is president of Brooklyn College. He is a distinguished scholar. I met him some time ago. He has been a leading educator in this country for a number of years and has always taken a very enlightened interest in public affairs, which not all academic people do. But I think he was especially qualified to comment upon the subject. One of the reasons why-and I shall refer to it later-! believe it is especially appropriate here is that we are spending hours, as we do every year, and days, and sometimes weeks, arguing about a matter such as the poll tax, which I think, as I have already stated, has no real, significant impact upon our democracy. Yet we have been unable to pass in Congress-although the Senate has passed it four times-a bill to aid education. Members of Congress who are interested in improving the quality of our democratic processes can help bring it about through better education, just as Dr. Gideonse has stated. I have already quoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to the same effect. They were all quite aware of it.

While it is not a time for pessimism, it is not difficult to see that there is need for improvement in the functioning of our democratic system. This need will not be met by eliminating the poll tax. My point is, as it is also Dr. Gideonse's, that if we are going to do anything about it, the obvious, clear, and fundamental way is to do something about the quality of education in this country.

Mr. CARLSON. Would not. the Senator from Arkansas agree that so long as we are discussing the poll tax issue, we are at least not enacting legislation which might not be in the public interest of this country, and that this might give us a little breathing spell to think about it?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I must agree with the Senator from Kansas that in view of the rather unjustified and unwarranted measures, in my view, that have been passed time and time again, there is something in what the Senator says, although I am not sure that we would be passing something that would do more harm to the country than the measure under discussion. The particular measure we are discussing affects the educational system in my State. The money derived from the poll tax in Arkansas is devoted to the public schools. I represent a materially poor State. It is a much poorer State than the State represented by the Senator from Kansas. Approximately $600,000, the amount taken in by the poll tax in the traditional way, is devoted to school purposes. There has been no complaint about it. The people in my State submitted this question to a referendum some 6 years ago. It was done to find out what they thought about it. The question was whether they wished to repeal it. They voted by a very large majority to retain it. Ordinarily when the people have an opportunity to repeal a tax, 9 times out of 10 they will vote to repeal it, no matter what the tax is.

I believe the Senator will agree with me that taxing is not one of the most popular functions of government. In this case the people of my State voted to keep the tax as it was. It is a tax from which a substantial amount of money is derived for the schools. I do not like to include the Senate in this statement, because in my opinion the Senate has performed very well on aid to education. It has passed an aid to education bill four times. It passed a good education bill last year. So I do not believe that we in the Senate should bear any blame. We passed such a measure four times. The other body has failed each time. It has always been able to tie it up or kill it. In the light of that action it seems the height of absurdity and indefensible to deprive a State that needs the money, as does mine, of this source of revenue. If we are not going to get the kind of assistance we ought to have from the Federal Government, we ought not to deprive the State of the right to collect taxes from its own people.

If the Members of this body sincerely want to improve our society and make our Government more effective in the long pull, we should be discussing the status of our educational system and what can be done about it rather than this emotional issue which will have no bearing on the success or failure of our democracy. I received a letter a day or so ago from Mr. C. C. Stuart, Arkansas City, Ark., who is president of the county school supervisors association in my State. I quote this letter for the information of the Senate:

DESHA COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION,

Arkansas City, Ark., March 17, 1962.

Re poll tax bill.

Hon. J. W. FULBRIGHT,

U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.

DEAR SIR: The county school administrators of Arkansas requested me, as their president, to express to you our hope that the school funds lost by this legislation, should it pass, will be replaced by some form of amendment.

It has been our experience that election rights are not affected by our poll tax requirements.

We take this opportunity to express to you our deepest appreciation for the support you have given to securing a wider financial support for our schools in Arkansas.

Yours truly,

C. C. STUART,

President, Arkansas County School

Supervisors Association.

I believe that the very least that the sponsors of the amendment should do is to join to it a provision providing for the . States the money that they will lose by the passage of the amendment. In our case it approximates $600,000.

I hope the senior Senator from Florida [Mr. HoLLAND], if he intends to press the amendment, and the other 67 sponsors, will support an amendment making up to the State of Arkansas the money that it will be deprived of by adoption of this proposal.

I believe that Mr. Stuart makes a very tion. good point. He suggests that some form of amendment should be added. I have been thinking about what kind of amendment can be offered under the present parliamentary situation. It is a rather difficult problem, when we have before us a bill creating a memorial for Alexander Hamilton, and the proposed constitutional amendment will be offered as a substitute. Under the circumstances I am not quite certain how I could go about adding a provision which would replace the $600,000 which will be taken away from the schools of my State. I would solicit some advice from my colleagues as to how we might make up this loss.

Mr. CARLSON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield for a question.

Mr. CARLSON. I am wondering whether the Senator from Arkansas could inform us if we are again to consider the Stella School bill, which I know is still on the calendar.

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I do not know. I get the Senator's point. We find ourselves in a similar parliamentary situation.

I note that the Senator from Florida has returned to the Chamber. I have read a letter from the president of the Arkansas County School Supervisors Association, which reads as follows:

DESHA COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION,

Arkansas City, Ark,. March 17, 1962.

Re poll tax bill.

Hon. J. W. FULBRIGHT,

U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.

DEAR Sm: The county school administrators of Arkansas requested me, as their president, to express to you our hope that the school funds lost by this legislation, should it pass, will be replaced by some form of amendment.

It has been our experience that election rights are not affected by our poll tax requirements.

We take this opportunity to express to you our deepest appreciation for the support you have given to securing a wider financial support for our schools in Arkansas.

Yours truly,

C. C. STUART,

President, Arkansas County School

Supervisors Association.

I have just said that the complex parliamentary situation is bothering me a little. I believe that in all fairness the Senator from Florida, being the principal sponsor of the resolution, ought to find a way to help me discover how to replace the $600,000 of which his amendment, if it is adopted, will deprive our school system. We are not a rich tion. State, like the great State of Florida, which siphons most of its accumulated wealth from all of the other States.

We are very hard up for money for schools. I hope the Senator will give consideration to finding a way by amendment to replace the $600,000 which will be taken from the Arkansas schools if his proposal is enacted.

Mr. HOLLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator from Arkansas yield for a question?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield for a ques­

Mr. HOLLAND. Does not the Senator know that the enactment of this amendment and its ratification by the States would not interfere in the slightest with the present law of Arkansas or with the present collection of the poll tax in Arkansas? Does he not know that the only result of the adoption of the amendment would be to lift the requirement of poll tax payments as a prerequisite for voting for electors for President and Vice President and for Senators and Members of the House of Representatives? Does he not know that his great State of Arkansas could still have its poll tax; that its people could still pay it; that its teachers could still get it; and that the requirement of the poll tax payment, so far as this measure is concerned, could still exist with reference to voting for Governor and all other State, county, and local offices? Does not the Senator from Arkansas know that?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I know that; but before the Senator came into the Chamber, I said the people of Arkansas had voted on this question. It was submitted in the form of an initiated amendment only 6 years ago. It was one of the few instances I can recall in which the people are asked if they wish to continue a tax upon themselves or to do away with it. The people voted by a large majority to continue the tax.

I agree that it would always be possible to adopt some other tax or try to get the revenue in some other way. But to abolish the poll tax would cause difficulties. Its abolition through the passage of this measure would upset a traditional way to raise revenue for schools. Arkansas does not have, as many States I have mentioned do have, a provision by which a person can be put in jail if he does not pay the poll tax. As I understand the law in Vermont and New Hampshire, if a person does not pay the ~oil tax there, he can be put in jail. That is a very effective way of increasing tax collections.

If a person in Arkansas does not pay the poll tax, no one will come around to attach his property, arrest him, or put him in jail. In Arkansas a person who does not pay is left alone. The payment of the poll tax is voluntary. One does not have to pay it unless he wishes to vote. I was surprised to learn in my research that one could be put in jail in some New England States for not paying the poll tax.

Mr. HOLLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator from Arkansas yield for another question?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield for a ques­

Mr. HOLLAND. Does not the Senator know that the proposed amendment which the Senator from Florida hopes he will have an opportunity to offer does not affect in the slightest the right of the State of Arkansas, under its present poll-tax law, to continue to collect the poll tax and to continue to require . re the payment of a poll _ tax . as a condition for voting for State, county, and local offices? Does not the Senator think it is almost unkind of him to allow the official in Arkansas who has written him to believe that this amendment really affects him in that way at all?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. If I understand what the Senator from Florida is saying, it is that if the proposed amendment were enacted, it would have no effect whatever upon the operation of the Arkansas poll tax since payment of a poll tax could still be made a prerequisite to voting for State and local officials. However, voting for Federal officials is one of the greatest incentives to voting, as the Senator from Florida well knows. The Senator can look at the record of the payment of the Arkansas poll tax in national elections and learn that the income from that tax is always substantially higher-and I am sure it is higher in other States-in the presidental election years.

The poll tax provides a substantial sum for the school fund. I think the proposal to abolish the poll tax is an attempt to intervene in the affairs of Arkansas and deprive us of that amount of revenue.

Mr. HOLLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator further yield for a question?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield for a question.

Mr. HOLLAND. Does not the Senator recall that while he was speaking the other day in response to questions asked by the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. EASTLAND] and the Senator from Alabama [Mr. HILL], it was made abundantly clear that it was not elections for presidential and other national offices that brought out the heavy votes, but elections for courthouse candidates, local candidates, and State candidates that resulted in heavy turnouts? Does he not recall that it was in those years that the poll-tax receipts were the heaviest? Does not the Senator remember that?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I do not think that is entirely true. Very often in special county races that is true. But the situation varies from year to year. Some elections are held with very little interest; but at another time the issues and the candidates stimulate a large turnout. In Arkansas, there is always a heavy vote in the general election in a presidential election year.

My State is a little different from the Senator's State, as all States are different. Thank God they are not all the same. Arkansas does not have as many Republicans as does the Senator's State of Florida; but we still have a good number of them. They get busy and vote in large numbers in a national election. They do not vote in such large numbers in what we call strictly local elections. But every 4 years, when the presidential election is held, the Republicans turn out in threateningly larger numbers. Recently they came pretty close to winning-too close for comfort. In any case, they vote in very large numbers in presidential election years.

The Civil Rights Commission has not found any evidence that the poll tax is used as a discriminatory device. Certainly that is true in my State.

I predict that the poll tax States will be called upon to institute a new source of revenue if the proposed amendment is enacted. Something different will have to be done. I do not know what the solution will be, but it will necessary to raise more money. It will be necessary to have another tax, or else to do without the revenue which is now being received.

As I see it, the poll tax does no harm to our democracy or to voting in the States . At the same time, it provides a substantial sum of money for our educational system.

I do not wish to repeat it, because I do not for a moment want to reiterate my argument. However, I have already described the same situation in Texas. The $1.75 poll tax in Texas goes to the schools.

Mr. President, Mr. Stuart, in his letter, has pointed out one of the major considerations which has in:fluenced my attitude toward this proposed amendment. I certainly agree with him that Congress should, lf it approves this proposal, enact some measure which would replace the school revenues which will be lost in Arkansas and other polltax States by the adoption of this amendment. Of course, I hope that Congress will go much further and will approve a realistic general Federal . aid to education proposal at this session. In spite of the substantial majority which approved the Federal aid to education bill in the Senate last year, as evidenced by the 49 to 34 vote, the House of Representatives appears to be hopelessly bogged down, and the outlook for final passage of a bill this session is rather dim.

Mr. HOLLAND. Mr. President, will the Senator from Arkansas yield for a question?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield for a question.

Mr. HOLLAND. Did the Senator give any thought to the financial question when he so kindly joined with the Senator from Florida in introducing this amendment in the 82d Congress, the 83d Congress, and the 84th Congress, over a period of 6 years, during which he evidently thought the amendment would be good for his State and for the whole Nation?

Mr. FULBRIGHT. I certainly gave thought to this aspect of the question. In practically every measure that comes before the Senate there are some plusses and some minuses. Nevertheless, if it were to be done, I thought then that this was a better method than to accomplish it by mere approval of a statute. It would do much less violence to the Constitution.

Mr. President, I believe that before the Senator from Florida entered the Chamber, I had made the point that even "though we are faced with an overwhelming majority-as apparently we are, at least judging from the number of sponsors of this proposal-in favor of the proposal now under discussion-at least . the Senator from Florida is proposing to follow the constitutional method by · which this matter could be changed in contrast to proposing that the change be made by means of an ordinary statute. As he knows, several former sponsors of the Senator's proposal were faced with the alternative of either sponsoring and supporting a proposed constitutional amendment or having a statute passed to abolish the tax. Such a statute would clearly be unconstitutional.

Of course, having so little respect for recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, we did not wish to take the chance of hoping that the Supreme Court would declare such a statute unconstitutional, although it clearly would be.

However, today all we are faced with is a proposed constitutional amendment. Of course, if the Senator from Florida has the good sense to withdraw or drop his proposal-and I think he should do so-and if the Senate were then to proceed to the consideration of a bill dealing with this subject, I would oppose the bill, too.

At any rate, I am trying to point out that the real danger to our democracy is not the poll tax which is imposed in only five States. Instead, the real danger lies in our general neglect, as a nation, of education over the past 50 years.

I am sure the Senator from Florida has no idea how difficult it is to find new tax funds in a State as poor as my State is. The other day I read that lots at Cape Canaveral or at Cocoa Beach, or at some other place in that area, which 15 years ago sold for $10 each, are now selling for $50,000, or some such figure. I am sure the Senator from Florida knows all about those matters. In Florida, the money is pouring in so rapidly and in such great quantities that the people there have difficulty finding places or ways to spend it. However, that is not at all the case in Arkansas; and it would be a blow to our schools to be deprived of this revenue.

So I hope the Senator from Florida will give sympathetic consideration to some way to replace or make up for the loss of the funds which enactment of . the constitutional amendment he proposes would force upon my State. At least, I solicit his sympathetic consideration in that connection.

Mr. President, the Congress should be concerned with the quality of the electorate; but the failure to pass a Federalaid bill over all of these years that such a bill had been considered indicates that this concern is not very deep. Admiral Rickover, the father of the atomic submarine, and one of the Nation's most incisive commentators on our educational system, in a speech in Chicago last October made some very cogent comments on education in a democracy. Mr. President, Admiral Rickover is, I believe, one of the few persons for whom the Congress itself intervened and, we might say, overrode the military brass, by conferring upon him a great honor; and that action was entirely nonpartisan, and was an innate, instinctive recognition by Congress of his great ability. In the speech which Admiral Rickover made last October in Chicago he said:

I suggest that political education should consist of a carefully planned course of studies in history, government, geography, economics and literature, continuing through elementary and secondary school and designed to awaken youth to an appreciation of the value of democracy and of its meaning . Children who are familiar with the tr a gic story of mankind's long and bitter struggle for political freedom, so rarely crowned with success, are not likely to take their privileges for granted. They will recognize them for the priceless heritage they are and wish to pass them on to future generations. These studies also help youth shed the childish notion that one can go through life demanding rights without recognizing the necessity of giving something in return. A child takes his first step toward political maturity when he understands that in the adult world right and obligation are correlative ideas. The next step is to rise above infantile dreams that look upon government as a cow that magically produces milk without being appropriately nourished. In reality all public disbursements come out of the pockets of the people. The account will be balanced either in a fair and orderly way through taxes or in a cruel and inequitable way through inflat i on.

The student will have attained full political maturity when he realizes that he is personally responsible for making democracy work; that he has no alibi if his country is badly governed; when he overcomes the myopia that afflicts persons who are wholly centered on self; when he attains the longrange vision that lets him see that the national interest is part and parc e l of his own personal interest. There can be no real conflict between national and private interest when sovereignty is vested in the people. Only badly educated voters willingly turn their nation into a weak pressure group state.

Mr. President, that passage brings to mind what is likely to be the next step if this misbegotten measure is passedand that is to try to establish a uniform literacy test for voting. I think the entire passage I have read just now from the speech made by Admiral Rickover has considerable pertinence to that issue. And the passage of the measure now being urged upon us would amount to the removal of a further link in our constitutional system, which has served . us quite well.

In his speech, Admiral Rickover continued as follows:

Our schools are much concerned with developing democratic and friendly attitudes in children and familiarizing them with parliamentary procedure; this is all to the good. But it is even more important to develop in them an attitude combining firm devotion to basic political principles, with flexibility toward means for attaining them. If we want to preserve our political principles, we must periodically reexamine and bring up to date the machinery through which these principles are put into effect.

Any program of political education for our children must keep in mind that the public virtues we must . nurture in American youth are on the one hand self-reliance and independence of spirit, on the other hand readiness to cooperate, to accept the verdict of the polls, and if it goes against you, to act as a loyal opposition. Central to our concept of a free society is the autonomous individual who uses government as a means whereby he joins with fellow citizens in the pursuit of common ends. Government is not an alien "they" to him. He cannot indulge in the luxury of blaming what they do, for sovereignty is vested in him and it is he who has voted into offi.ce the men who govern him.

Nor should he fear or mistrust his Government for · it is the only agency in his society over which he has effective control, and this is as true of Federal as of local or State government. There should be no conflict in his mind between the dependence of government on his consent and the power of government to enforce the law. He must obey the laws. If he deems them unjust, he is free to combine with like-minded citizens and elect men who will change bad laws. He must submit to being governed by persons who have been entrusted with legislative, executive, or judicial powers of government, but he reserves the right to scrutinize their performance and to criticize it in public.

This right to scrutinize and criticize extends to all agencies of government, including tax-supported public schools and univ e rsities. Educators sometimes forget that they are public offi.cials, as when they deride criticism or claim that only professional educators have a right to judge the performance of the school. In our free society no public agency may demand to be exempt from public judgment. Were this not so, our liberties would soon vanish. Citizens in free societies safeguard their freedom in private life by their very participation in public life. The people themselves are the guardians of their several inalienable rights, each citizen being in truth the keeper of his brother's liberties. The Nation's business is the business of every one of us. It is our right and duty to talk on public issues after we have examined them and thought about them to our best ab111ty. Schools that provide life or group adjustment instead of genuine education, people and institutions who attempt to degrade free, self-determining citizens into conforming organization men and vilify critics of the status quo--whether they know it or not, they all ' are busily at work eroding the very foundations of our free society. Mr. President, there is a pres s ing need for improvement at all levels of our educational system. In May of last year in the Senate I made some remarks on the Federal aid to · education bill, which I wish to recall :

Our p e ople must not only be trained in ever increasingly diffi.cult technical skills, but also in the development of those human traits which make up the political, economic, and social man. It is not enough if our scientists are experts in their technical field but know nothing outside and beyond their specialty. The degree of development in technical skills will not be the factor that determines our future. Our society's future will be molded by our success in creating self-discipline in our young people and imbuing them with an understanding of American traditions and institutions. According to Herbert Spencer, the overall obj e ct of education is the development of character. The quality of the character developed by our educational system in turn determines our natio n al character.

The need for an educated citizenry is more crucial today than ever before. The world has entered an era of great instability filled with both dangers and promises. Great changes are taking place daily which are shaping the future world which our children will inherit. Remarkable advancements are being made in all fields of science-from the development of the power to split the atom to a cure for polio. Scientists have opened new vistas of knowledge which can be applied either to destroy civilization or to cure many of the problems of mankind. At the same time, our capacity for understanding and getting along peacefully in the world has not kept pace and-if anything-has deteriorated. Whether we use this fund of knowledge for mankind's benefit or his doom will, in large measure, be determined by . what kind of educational system we have. If our youth are to be equipped to cope with this complex world, we must improve our educat i onal system at all levels. It is not enough to educate them for adjustment to present conditions. They must be armed with knowledge which will enable them to shape and master the future.

Charles E. Silberman has summed up the requirements of a modern education system, as follows:

"To be practical, an education now must prepare a man for work that doesn't yet exist and whose nature can't even be imagined. This can be done only by teaching people how to learn, by giving them the kind of intellectual discipline and the depth of . understanding that will . enable them to apply man's accumulated wisdom to new conditions as they arise."

The demands on our educational system were never greater and, if they are to be met, we must have a drastic revision In our · sense of values.

In our society we must make sure that every individual has the means to develop his full intellectual potential. A quality education should be available to every boy and girl, whether he or she is from Arkansas or California. Waste in human resources is too costly in a democracy. The uneducated or undereducated man is not only incapable of being an effective participant in the democratic process, but al s o does not make his fair contribution to economic progress.

Education and economic progress go hand in hand. Each is essential to the other. Education more than any other factor raises the productivity of a nation-and nf the individual. Industry today is more depend­ . ent on educ a tion than ever before. Automation-and techno l ogical progress in general-dramatized the vulnerab111ty of the uneducated man to machine competition. In ord e r to meet the challenge of this new industrial era, our educational system must be revised and updated.

The makeup of our labor force is changing rapidly, reflecting new technological developments. Occupations requiring a high educational level are expanding · rapidly, while those requiring little education are contracting. The reasons for this trend were well stated by Dean Francis Chase of the University of Chicago when he said:

"The qualities essential to employability and productivity are coming closer and closer to the characteristics that have long been attributed to the educated person."

In 1910, considerable education was required of only a third of the labor force. This has now risen to one-half the labor force . The d a y is approaching rapidly when the man with only his energy to sell will have nothing to sell. Obviously, it would be a waste of time and money to give every young person a college education. But we can insure that every person has a chance, and is encouraged to develop his full intellectual capacity. If we do less, we shall be wasting the Nation's most valuable asset-the brainpower of its youth.

Mr. President, it goes without saying that the primary responsibility for operation and administration of the schools must continue to remain with the State and local governments. This fact, however, do e s not detract from the need for more attention to education on the national level. In 1960 almost 21 percent of those taking the selective service mental test failed to pass. I am sorry to report that 47 percent of the young men from Arkansas failed this test. This is a shockingly high percentage. It indicates not only the need for a renewed effort nationally in the field of education, but also the tremendous job that must be done iri bringing the school systems of the underdeveloped states, such as Arkansas, up to a par with the national average. We have a long way to go in this country in bringing the educational level of our citizens up to where it should be in a representative form of government such as ours.

At this point I invite the attention of my colleagues to an interesting article which appeared in the May 7, 1961, issue of the Washington Post. This article, entitled "The Anatomy of Unemployment," clearly shows the relationship between lack of education and the unemployment problem. The subtitle, "Our Technology Outruns Education," is well chosen. Senators, especially those from the more industrialized States , will, I believe, be interested in some of the points brought out in this article. I read from the article :

THE ANATOMY OF UNEMPLOYMENT-OUR TECHNOLOGY OUTRUNS EDUCATION

(By Frank C. Porter)

In the play "Tobacco Road," Jeeter Lester let a handful of arid, wornout soil trickle through his fingers.

It was worthless land, he said-couldn't even grow turnips on it anymore. But it was his land, the land on which he had grown up and his daddy before him. Jeeter would be damned if he'd ever leave it.

If Jeeter Lester couldn't hoe turnips, anymore, what could he do? Operate a turret lathe, design missile parts, program a computer, manage a laundromat? No, none of these. He was too old to retrain for even the most simple semiskilled jobs. And even if he were younger, the training might not take.

Most of America ' s 4.9 million unemployed are not Jeeter Lesters. But for a great many of them, his quandary is theirs. And it illustrates the lack of human mobility and skills which underlie this Nation's chronic unemployment problem.

With most economists agreed that the recession bottomed out in February or March, the unemployment picture has brightened somewhat. The jobless total is down from 5.5 million 2 months ago and the unemployment rate of 6.8 percent is off slightly from the 6 . 9 percent recorded in the recession trough.

But no matter how bright the economic skies become , a hard core of substantial unemployment is expected to remain. After each of three preceding recessions, U . S. unemployment has leveled off on a progressively higher plateau-at approx i mately 2 . 5 percent of the labor force in 1952-53, at 3.8 in 1956-57, at about 4.7 in 1959-60.

The Kennedy administration has made unemployment countermeasures its first order of domestic business. But its approach a ch is two-pronged. Part of today's joblessness-but only part-has been caused by the economic downturn from which we are just emerging , it believes. The remainder is chronic and the result of longer term influences.

Idle workers can be broken down into a number of groups:

Unemployables , who for v a rious reasonsalcoholism , recurrent illness, laziness, a compulsion to punch every foreman on the nose-simply can't hold down a job for long. The so-called friction a lly unemployedmostly those workers who are between jobs. Cyclically unemployed-victims of the . business cycle who are let go when the consumer slows his buying p a ce and when inflated inventories call for production cutbacks. ·

Those affected by a shift in demand. As the public changes its buying habits-purchasing more boats and fewer automobiles, say-a particular industry may have to lay off employees permanently by the thousands. Those affected by a geographical shift. Textile firms, in pursuit of lower taxes and cheaper labor, deserted New England for the South, leaving thousands of unemployed in their wake .

The technologically unemployed.

The latter three factors are generally cons i dered responsible for the bulk of chronic or structural unemployment.

And of the three , the technological factor is the most disquieting. Experts disagree over automation. Some, notably labor economists, feel that it is bringing a net decrease in the number of jobs available to industrial workers. Others insist that it will create more jobs than it destroys.

But no one c a n argue against its current impact. In 1947 , for example, 649,000 production workers turned out 4.8 million motor veh i cles; last year 612 , 000 workers produced 7 . 9 million.

Ten years ago the steel industry needed 540 , 000 men to produce 96.8 million tons of raw steel; last year 99.3 million tons were turned out with only 462,000 workers.

Machines will eliminate some 4 million office and clerical jobs in the next 5 years, according to a report compiled by Representative ELMER J. HOLLAND, Democrat, Of Pennsylvania , for President Kennedy last FebruRobots which will displace thousands of a ss embly line and packaging workers are alr ea d y i n production. Computers run entire oil refineries and chemical plants with only a few men needed to handle the controls.

The vending machine industry has put its ingenuity to work developing devices that eliminate theater ticket sellers, parimutuel window operators, department store clerks, lunch counter personnel, cashiers, mutual fund salesmen, and a great many others.

Front loaders are eliminating the man with the shovel; mechanical crop pickers are displacing field hands; bootblacks are losing . going. out to mechanical shoe cleaners.

And yet, in the midst of all this, jobs go begging, go begging by the thousands.

A knowledgeable report by the Wall Street Journal last week told how the Illinois State Employment Service is having trouble filling eight clerical vacancies on its own staff. Its counterpart in Cleveland says it is unable to fill 1,000 jobs each month, mainly in the cler i cal and sales fields.

The motel industry is sounding an urgent call for at least 90,000 new employees during 1961.

The United States is short at least 250,000 auto mechanics and nobody is training anyone, the Good Car Keeping Institute complains, despite thousands of laid-off auto production workers who could easily be converted.

The f a st - growing computer services industry clamors for programers and is train­ . ing high school students to relieve the shortage. In the next decade, more than 200,000 more programers will be needed, it is estimated.

The same conditions obtain in a dozen fields: In teaching, in engineering, in top level executive positions, in sales.

The paradox is easily answerable. Most of today's unemployed are not qualified to fill the hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs. The Wall Street Journal offered statistics showing that the rate of unemployment among professional and technical personnel in March was only 1.6 percent, less than the amount usually attributed to frictional unemployment a.lone.

The rate among clerical personnel was 4.9 perc e nt ; among skilled workers , 9.1; the sem i skilled, 12.1; and unskilled workers, 19.1 percent. ·

This would tend to show that the chances of unemployment are inversely proportional to a worker's educational level.

Officials within the Kennedy administration have been discussing ways and means of training, retraining, and even relocating displaced workers. A concrete step was taken a few weeks ago when Labor Secretary Arthur J. Goldberg set up an Office of Automation and Manpower, one job of which would be to help relocate and retr a in workers for new jobs.

The task may be too monumental, however, for any single agency or even for the massed resources of the entire Federal Government. The root of the problem is in the very heart of our education a l system and in the aims and attitudes of 180 million Americans.

As the Wall Street Journal suggests, the problem of school dropouts is a major factor contributing to the serious shortage in specialized skills. Until recently, the dropout was considered the special province of the sociologist; now he has become the concern . of the economist.

The Labor Department estimates that of the 26 million persons from 14 to 24 entering the labor force in the 1960's, some 7.5 million or 30 percent will not have completed high school. And of these, 2.5 million won't even have a grade school education.

These 7.5 million youths will find jobs increasingly tough to come by . Most of the work they could have done a generation ago will not longer exist; much of it will be done by machine. Meanwhile, as many of them join the ranks of the unemployed, the need for qualified persons to design and build and run and program the machines will become more and more acute. Far from being just a sociological problem, the dropout will prove a drag on the Nation's economy and its potential for growth.

In essence, this Nation's technology has outrun its education. We have built a machine that promised to save us labor and create more leisure. Now we must work and think harder than ever before to keep it Mr. President, the retraining bill re­ .cently signed into law indicates that Congress is concerned about the human displacements caused by our growing technology. But it does not go to the root of the problem, which is education geared to meet the needs of a highly complex economy.

In recent weeks there has been much public discussion about school dropouts. A recent report by the Arkansas State Department of Education indicates that about 70 percent of the Arkansas students entering the first grade do not complete high school. This is a frightening situation which cannot help but act as an oppressive drag on Arkansas efforts to build a more prosperous economy.

The problems of meeting the demands on our educational system will get worse before they get better. The school age group since 1950 has grown twice as fast as the total population. Public school enrollment last fall reached a new high of 37.5 million and is expected to go up . bY more than 1 million next fall. President Kennedy, in his recent message on education, said that by 1970 the Nation must provide facilities for 14 million more elementary, secondary school, and college students.

In 1949 an estimated $5 billion was spent for public elementary and secondary education. This increased to almost $17 billion in the last school · year. Although expenditures have tripled in a little over 10 years, it is expected that more than $30 billion will be required in the 1968-69 school year just to maintain existing standards. The Rockefeller report on education pointed out that, in spite of the fact that educational expenditures are rising rapidly, the percent of gross national product devoted to education has remained relatively constant at about 3.5 percent since 1930. The net result has been that there is a smaller expenditure of the GNP per pupil proportionately today due to the rapid rise in enrollments. We still spend as much on tobacco and alcohol and over twice as much on purchase and operation of automobiles as we do on public elementary and secondary education. It would be interesting to know what historians several centuries from now will say about a nation that spends three times as much on its military establishment as on its public schools.

The status of teachers in our public schools is a national disgrace. They are woefully underpaid and overworked. It is not surprising, in view of the low status of teachers, that we have such serious difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified teachers. An Office of Education report stated that 89,700 or 6.1 percent of the teachers in public elementary and secondary schools did not meet full certification standards this year. It is surprising that the number is not larger, in view of our complacency toward the teaching profession. Until we give teachers true professional status and salaries commensurate with their positions, we cannot hope to attract the best talent available.

I have spent considerable time today discussing education because I firmly believe that this is a subject that should receive priority attention from the Congress this year, although there is little hope that it will be accorded this status. The question of whether or not five States are to be deprived of their right to levy a poll tax is an inconsequential issue in comparison to the Nation's educational problems. Although the Southern States, which are still suffering from the effects of the Civil War, need financial assistance for the schools more than any other section, there is still an obvious need for the improvement in the educational systems of the more prosperous States-particularly those in the North whose representatives in the Congress are so quick to find fault with the people from my section. There is a particularly urgent need to bring about better education in the North on the meaning of the Constitution.

The poll-tax issue is only a Trojan horse which will inevitably lead to demands for passage of other measures aimed at the South. We are already on notice that an effort will be made to abolish the poll tax by statute. In a few weeks the Senate will be confronted with a proposal to establish a uniform literacy test. No doubt a multitude of other unconstitutional and unwarranted measures designed to embarrass the people of the South and curry votes from minority groups in the North will be presented during the course of that debate.

I, for one, am weary of the meaningless ritual which so-called civil rights proponents force this body to go through every year. It is a waste of time, effort, and the taxpayers' money-and the public business suffers. But there seems to be no escaping this annual effort to purge the South of supposed evils and bad habits. I submit, Mr. President, that the people of the South are no more or no less pure at heart than citizens in any other section of our land. Every section of the Nation has its peculiar problems of human relations. But these problems cannot be solved by passage of a law but only through passage of time and a constantly improving educational system.

As I have said before, there is no evidence that the poll tax is used as a device ments. to prevent Negroes from voting. Even if it were used in this manner, the Federal Government has more than ample authority to protect the constitutional rights of any citizen who has been wronged. Even before passage of the voting rights laws of 1957 and 1960 there was a multitude of statutes on the books which were designed to guarantee enforcement of every individual's constitutional rights. Discrimination and bias cannot be legislated away. As long as human beings act like human beings there will be discrimination and bias. The Members of this body would do well to remember that we cannot legislate goodness.

In closing, I refer again to Dean Storey's comment in the recent report of the Civil Rights Commission on voting. He said:

Proposals to alter longstanding FederalState relationships such as that incorporated in the Federal Constitution, declaring that the qualifications of electors shall be left to the several States, should not be made unless there is no alternative method to correct an existing evil. Such is not the case today.

The Federal Government has sufficient authority under the Constitution and the existing framework of laws to enable it effectively to deal with denials of the right to vote by reason o1 race, color, religion, and national origin.

I hope that Members of the Senate will heed his advice.

Mr. President, I certainly hope the Senate will not consider the joint resolution.