but which provided constructive, long-range direction and training, intended permanently to improve the veteran's economic status in terms of income, job prospects, and homeownership; his whole status as a civilian for a fuller life. This new approach has been completely successful, as we all know by looking at the results of the veterans' education and training assistance program and the home loan assistance program. The results and success of these programs are legend throughout our land and the Halls of Congress. I cannot refrain from commenting on the success of those laws because I am firmly convinced that it was good legislation then and it is good legislation now, and I am inclined to agree with Senator Sparkman that it is one of the very best programs-if not the best program, ever provided by the United States, and I do not mean only for veterans alone, but I mean for the entire country. Mr. Chairman, I have some charts here that will help illustrate this very briefly. Here is a reproduction of a drawing that appeared in the American Legion Magazine for June of 1955, with a brief showing of what had happened under the World War II GI bill. This was too early for the Korean GI bill to be in effect. Under Public Law 346, the World War II GI bill, there had been produced by June of 1955, under that bill, 2,200,000 college students. I want to commend this committee at this point on the fine research it does, and its fine publications. On the subcommittee on the Senate side we get the publications, but you know, being well versed in veterans' affairs, that of our total of over 31 million veterans in the history of America, about 151⁄2 million were veterans of World War II. Of that 152 million veterans, approximately 7,800,000 took education training under the World War II GI bill, and of that 7,800,000 who took the schooling or training, 29 percent went to college and the other 71 percent took on-the-job training of some type, or business college training or correspondence courses or high school. However, only 50 percent of the 1512 million went to school. Now when the GI's of the Korean conflict came along, again 50 percent took advantage of the training although they were much younger than the veterans of World War II. It was thought that the percentage going to school would be much higher. As I say, again the percentage who went to school under the Korean bill was about 50 percent, but the schools that they went to changed, to the extent that where 29 percent of the World War II veterans went to college, 51 percent of the Korean veterans who took the training went to college, on-the-job industrial training, on-thefarm training, and all other types, and also to finish high school. Going back to the World War II GI bill, of this 7,800,000 veterans who took educational training under it, 2,200,000 were college students, 450,000 went into communications, 380,000 into highly technical construction workers, 100,000 lawyers, 63,000 doctors, 180,000 mechanics, 238,000 schoolteachers, 75,000 farmers, and 145,000 engineers. Under the homebuilding part of the bill there were 4 million homes constructed, furnishing that many homes for Americans, and also that much employment to the people who built the homes, and that much employment to the people who built the appliances that go into the homes. This was one of the greatest stimuli to the postwar economy we have known, and it kept our gross national product up to 1952 to about 42 percent a year as against 22 percent a year gross product increase since 1952, with a resulting economic lag. Now, Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out here, briefly, the tremendous lag-and this is well known publicly-in the output of engineers and scientists in our country as compared to the people behind the Iron Curtain. We did not have this lag when the GI bill was in its heyday, because these young men who served in the armed services dealt with radar and electronics equipment and the number who go to college and take scientific training after they get out is much higher than the number who take scientific training from civilian life. I also want to point out the teacher shortage, 150,000 schoolteachers, is alleviated somewhat by the number of teachers turned out, but, in addition, there were turned out, and this is not shown in the chart, about 110,000 medical technicians serving in the laboratories, or medical nurses who serve, in other words, at the right hand of the doctors, and we have a shortage of medical personnel in this country. In 1958 we graduated 7,000 medical doctors. Russia graduated 16,000 medical doctors in the same year. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am not urging this just because of the educational lag in this country, as a means to stopping that alone, but I intend to point out here why these veterans are in a special class and that they are among a group whose educational opportunity is gone without the aid of this bill, and whereas the schools are opened, all of them, the grammar schools and high schools and colleges, to those who have not suffered this detriment of having more than 2 years pulled out of their civilian life. Mr. Chairman, I would like to place in the record at this time a copy of this chart. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be placed in the record. Senator YARBOROUGH. Now, Mr. Chairman, I would like, briefly, to refer to a few other charts. This is a chart based on a Bureau of the Census report, up to 1955. It shows the occupational distribution of veterans in 1955, and before they entered the Armed Forces. The black lines are the employment in 1955 and the white are preservice employment. At the bottom of the scale we have the service workers and laborers, and just above the bottom are the operatives and semiskilled workers. It will be noted that of these veterans before they entered and took this training, 44.6 were service workers, common workers, or semiskilled workers. At that time you had the professional and managerial class, including farmers, plus the craftsmen and foremen, and you had there 14 plus 12, or 26 percent. Now, after they had been in the service and had taken veterans' training, you had, in the professional and managerial class, 28 percent, and among the craftsman class, foremen and kindred types of workers, you had 21.5 percent, or 482 percent pooled into these two highest pay brackets in our country, as a result of that training. In other words, the training and education enabled the veterans to lift themselves from the lower pay brackets to the highest pay brackets of our income scale. Mr. Chairman, I ask permission to place a copy of that chart in the record at this point. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that may be placed in the record. (The chart referred to follows:) |