THE URBAN CRISIS: *an analysis

* an answer

The growth of the American population has increased sharply-from several hundred thousand a year in the 1930s to an average yearly rise of 2.7 million since World War II. Moreover, the number of people in rural areas has been declining, while metropolitan area growth has been booming. Each year, the population of America's metropolitan areas grows by over 3 million, the size of a very large city.

Under the impact of the technological revolution in agriculture, employment in farming has droppedit fell 3.2 million between 1950 and 1966. Hundreds of thousands of farmers, farm workers and their families several million people-have been leaving the rural areas in search of jobs and homes in the cities.

Many of those who seek their future in the cities are Negroes. Between 1940 and 1967, probably about 4 million Negroes moved from the South-primarily rural areas to the cities of the North and West. In 1960, according to the Department of Labor, about 40 percent to nearly 50 percent of the Negro population of 10 major northern and western cities was born in the South.

The Department of Labor estimates that almost 1.5 million Negroes left the South in 1950-1960, following a similar migration of 1.6 million Negroes in the wartime decade, 1940-1950. This historic migration is continuing at about that rate in the 1960s.

For the country as a whole, the proportion of Negroes in city populations rose from less than 10 percent in 1940 to over 20 percent in 1965. In most of the large northern and western cities the rise was greater.

All of the new migrants to America's cities of the past quarter of a century-whites and Negroes, Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans-have faced the difficulties of adjusting to a new and strange environment. But these difficulties have been especially harsh for Negroes.

The Negro migrants to the cities of the past quarter of a century have brought with them a history of slavery, segregation, lack of education and, frequently, poor health, as well as suspicion of government authorities. On coming to the cities of the North and the West, the new migrants have faced the discriminatory practices of those areas, lack of adequate housing and the impact of automation on job opportunities for uneducated, unskilled workers.

The northern and western cities are suffering, in part, from the social ills and delinquencies of the South-including color bars in private, state and local government employment; backward standards of education, vocational training and public welfare gener

THE AFL-CIO EXECUTIVE COUNCIL adopted at its September 1967 meeting a major policy statement on the urban crisis containing a 10-point program keyed both to immediate and long-range needs. The program is based on this background paper prepared by the Federation's Economic Policy Committee containing a detailed analysis and recom mendations.

ally, with particularly low standards for Negroes and Mexican Americans; social patterns to enforce the dependency of both poor whites and Negroes.

Since World War II and particularly since the early 1950s, the spread of automation has been reducing the number of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs that require little or no education or training. The types of jobs that helped to adjust previous generations of foreign immigrants and rural American migrants to America's urban areas have not been expanding.

In ghetto areas in the cities, about 10 percent to 15 percent of the adult men and about 40 percent to 50 percent of out-of-school teenagers (including an estimate of those usually not counted by the Labor Department) are unemployed. In addition, a Labor Department survey of slum areas in November 1966 found that nearly 7 percent of those with jobs were employed only part-time, although they wanted fulltime work, and 20 percent of those working full-time earned less than $60 a week. This same Labor Department survey found that nearly 40 percent of the families and unrelated individuals in big city slum areas earn less than $3,000 a year.

However, it costs about $7,000, at present prices, to maintain a modest standard of living, including a few amenities but no luxuries, for a family of four in America's metropolitan areas-more for a larger family and less for a smaller family. Elimination of the amenities would result in a cost of about $5,000 to maintain a minimum decent standard of living for a family of four in our urban areas-scaled up and down for different family sizes.

Yet government reports indicate that probably about 20 percent of the population, within city limits, earn less than the amount necessary for a minimum decent standard of living. Within ghetto areas, perhaps 60

percent to 70 percent or more of the families are in that category. The result is badly overcrowded housing, inadequate diet, poor medical care, few books and magazines for about 20 percent of city families and about 60 to 70 percent of those who live in ghetto slums.

The hardcore slum areas continue to deteriorate. People with jobs, some skills and some regular incomes have been moving out. They are replaced with new migrants from the rural South-adding to the remaining lowest-income families, the jobless, the aged and fatherless families.

A large proportion of these slum residents depend on welfare payments, often to mothers with dependent children and no father present. The Labor Department survey of November 1966 found that 30 percent of the population of East Harlem, 30 percent of the Watts population, 40 percent of the BedfordStuyvesant children and 25 percent of the adults receive welfare payments. Moreover, the lack of adequate child-care facilities in slum areas is a barrier to employment for women with children.

Trapped by a history of degradation and the recent impact of automation, these new migrants to the city are also trapped by the unavailability of low-andmoderate cost housing, as well as by discrimination against colored peoples.

The peak home construction year before World War II was 1925. From 1926 to 1945, a period of 20 years, home-building was in a slump. It wasn't until 1946 that the 1925-level of housing starts was reached.

Since 1945, the ups and downs of residential construction have followed conditions in the money market -interest rates and availability of money. Normal