Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, this third chart shows the occupational distribution of males 25 to 34 years of age, veterans and nonveterans, or a comparison between the veterans and nonveterans of World War II.

The charts are slightly different in percentage because this chart on your left hand shows the number of males employed in April of 1955 and the chart on your right hand shows those who worked at any time during the year ending October 1955.

The Census Bureau has taken two different censuses and they cover slightly different dates, so the percentages are not exactly the same. In this chart on your left, the hatched marks show the veterans of World War II and the dotted ones, the nonveterans of World War II. This shows what had happened to them by 1955. Now, I might point out that among the male nonveterans, and this is the same age group as the veterans-those are the best ages for military service, the young ones are the best-I might point out that among the nonservice veterans you had many people of high income who were building the submarines, the airplanes, and who were the atomic scientists working in our plants, and who were very high income people.

Now, in 1955, as a result of this training, these veterans had so bettered themselves, in this age bracket, those who did serve and those who were in the proper age to serve but were in critical trades, of those who were in the professional groups, 21 percent were the veterans and 14 percent the nonveterans.

So, by that time, due to this training, the veterans were making that much greater contribution to the country.

Now, as to the craftsmen, the foremen, et cetera, the veterans were 20 percent, outnumbering the nonveterans, and when we get down to the lowest scale of income, where you get to the common laborers, the nonveterans were then outnumbering the veterans. In other words, those who took the training were able to lift themselves out of the unskilled worker class, and moved themselves up to the semiskilled class.

Now this chart here shows all veterans on this side, the veterans who took the training and those who did not. You will recall that half did take the training and half did not take the training. Of the veterans who used the GI training, 44 percent of this age bracket who were in professional and managerial classes, 44 percent of the total here, of that, 31 percent had taken the training and 11 percent had

not.

So, of the veterans who rose into the managerial professional class, three out of four were ones who took the training and consequently got there by virtue of the GI training.

However, when you get to the bottom groups of your income scale, you see that those who took the training make up the smaller figure and those who did not take the training furnish the bulk of the veterans who stayed in the lower income bracket.

Mr. Chairman, I will ask permission to place this in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be placed in the record. (The charts referred to follow :)

1947

1948

1949 1950

1951 1952 1953

1954

1955

Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, the fourth from the last chart here, this is also a Bureau of the Census report on income, population report on income, and this is a chart that shows the median income of men 25 to 34 years of age, and that is considered the age bracket where most of your veterans come from, and this is from 1947 to

1955.

This was made up from the Bureau of Census population reports. The black lines are for the veterans and the hatched marks are for the nonveterans.

Now, in 1947 your nonveterans in this age bracket, and this is 10 years, this bracket here, the nonveterans had a higher income than the veterans. The nonveterans' income averaged across the country over $2,500 and the veterans' income was under $2,500.

Now, you can see what began to happen after the veterans came out of the service and took this training. By 1955 the average veteran of World War II was earning 31.4 percent more money per year than your average nonveteran in the same age bracket. And I want again to call the committee's attention to the fact that while the nonveteran included some who were physically disabled and could not serve, it also included the very highly paid workers in the aircraft industry, and the shipbuilding industry and in all the industries which built the machines of war and it included, of course, many scientific workers in the very high pay brackets, but despite that this GI training enabled the veterans to go ahead. That is why the Census Bureau has reported that this GI bill will pay for itself before 1970. On this GI bill of World War II, Mr. Chairman, we are not dealing with some giveaway as has been talked about. We are dealing here with a capital investment. When you train brains, you are making a capital investment in this country for your youth, and I think no country on this earth has better demonstrated that than West Germany after two world wars, and with the devastation of their country, which, with practically universal education, even earlier than we had it, up through high schools and now shooting at junior colleges, have built back, and this occurred after two devastating wars, but simply because of the higher degree of training they gave their people.

These two GI bills were two of the greatest things that I think happened in this country, in making up the educational lag that we would have otherwise had.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to discuss some special provisions of the bill and I do not want to take up too much time of the committee in doing it because I know there are other witnesses scheduled to testify before you, so I will condense this statement, Mr. Chairman, if I may, and file the entire statement with the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Senator.

Senator YARBOROUGH. There are a few basic departures that were made in the Senate from the Korean GI bill, with which the chairman and this committee are familiar, and that is, familiar with the GI bill.

This bill, as introduced, was patterned on the GI bill and the administrative provisions, including the method of direct payment of allowances for the veterans being identical with those contained in the Korean GI bill. I think the Korean GI bill is a fine bill because it worked out the bugs, so to speak, of the World War II legislation.

Whatever had not worked out well in the World War II bill, this committee worked out in the Korean GI bill, and we have followed the administrative provisions of the Korean GI bill here.

However, there are some departures:

(1) A loan feature which was put in and debated on the floor of the Senate, but which was not in the bill as introduced by the 26 sponsors of the bill.

I will refer to that a moment later.

(2) A Department of Defense amendment made in the committee, and that preserves the educational right of enlisted men during the period covered by a first reinlistment.

The Department of Defense contends that a man might be deterred from reenlisting if he had this opportunity to go to college after his first enlistment, so they wanted this provision put in there, to let the man take this benefit as to college training regardless of how long he stayed in the service.

It was the sense of the committee and the Senate that if he did, that would be an extra bonus after a full lifetime of service, and not a readjustment benefit for the veteran; so, in lieu of that, we put a provision in the bill that provided that the first reenlistment would not cut them off, and the man could see if he wanted to make a lifetime career of the military service.

(3) An amendment was proposed by the Veterans' Administration and made in committee to make the vocational rehabilitation training program a permanent program.

It was felt by the Veterans' Administration and by the Senate that, as regards the man who was disabled in the service, this vocational rehabilitation is a good thing for the country and our economy, and it has been made permanent, but with a tighter qualification standard for the cold war veteran. He has to have a greater percentage of disability than the Korean veteran.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to mention, for a moment, the Senate amendment on loans.

There was some publicity about that, the fact that it was changed into a loan provison. There was a loan amendment put in this bill on the floor of the Senate, but I want to point out that that amendment affects education at the college level only. The loan provision does not affect education at the high school level or in the case of onthe-job training of any kind, or vocational training or commercial college training. It affects only the college training and it would apply to the college training only after the first year.

Anybody that goes to college under the bill can go for the first year without reference to his grades. In brief, this loan provision provides that if a veteran falls below the top 50 percent of his class, then this grant is turned into a loan for the next school year, but it is inapplicable for the first year. In other words, he gets an opportunity to readjust himself and to learn how to make his grades, in his first year.

Then, for the second year, it would become a loan program if he falls below the top 50 percent at the end of the first year. However, if he can then pull himself back up later into the top half, then the loan is forgiven.