Now, in many instances, women are in a position to have their children taken care of by relatives or friends. On the other hand, in a period where there is in-migration to an area and movements of people around the country for industry, it is apparent that these families go to communities where they do not have the resources of families and friends to take on the care of their children. So, they find themselves in a position where if the women in the families are to go to work they must seek some place where the children can be taken care of in the period. This is obvious to you. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 1952 approximately one and one quarter million extra workers will have to be drawn into the labor market. The largest proportion will have to come from women and again, as I pointed out, a substantial proportion of all the women who will be employed to increase production will be women with children. Mr. DENTON. You think the labor supply is critical and yet you want to encourage women with children to work. Dr. ELIOT. I do not think any of us want to have women with children go to work. They should take care of their children at home. That is the most desirable situation. But as I understand this act that Congress has passed, it is primarily for the sake of caring for the children of women who, as the industrial situation increases-as the defense effort increases-when these mothers feel they must go to work, we really need to do something about the children where that is true. Mr. DENTON. I know of three places in my district which are potential critical areas and they complain of unemployment right now. Perhaps when the defense effort gets father along it will not be that way. Ďr. ELIOT. Recent information we have had from about 12 or 13 areas, when we add up the reports of the numbers of children on the waiting list from these areas, tell us there are anywhere from 1,800 to 2,000 children whose families would like to have an opportunity to place the children in order that the women might accept employment in this defense period. The total of that Miss Arnold, who is with me, can give you. She has information from Indianapolis, Congressman Denton. If the amount of money suggested by Mr. Miles were made available all told that would provide for approximately 4,500 children. We know from these 13, 14, or 15 areas that there are now 2,000 children on the waiting list for such care. We would give our undivided attention to determining whether facilities that now exist are being fully used. That would seem to be our first responsibility under the terms of the act itself. We must use the facilities that are available. It would be uneconomical to undertake to establish new Under the act it is clear that both public and nonprofit voluntary facilities would be utilized in those areas. We do not expect at this time to have need for much construction. That certainly, I think, is not necessary. The need, however, to utilize more effectively the facilities that do exist where there are voluntary agencies or public agencies is, I think, extremely important. ones. I wonder if Miss Arnold could give a little information with regard to some of those areas for which we have specific information? Mr. FOGARTY. What will these women contribute to the care? Dr. ELIOT. Under the Lanham Act, the experience was that they contributed about 33 percent of the total cost. This time we believe that half of it will come from the local community, approximately 40 percent of this half from the families themselves. Mr. FOGARTY. How do you get them to contribute to the cost of this care? Dr. ELIOT. I anticipate going at this job in this way: We would expect the local community to make a survey of its needs. We would expect that to be set forth in a plan. We would expect that all facilities that exist today would be shown in that plan and how the community, as a whole, proposed to utilize them. We would then expect that community to establish, as part of its plan, a system of a sliding scale of payment for the services. That is the customary way of getting this day care. Some families pay for care. Some pay more than others depending on the income of the family. The question might well be asked as to whether these families could not pay the full cost of care. That question is often asked until it becomes clear that the income of women is not too high-it is not high enough to pay the cost of safe care for these children. For instance, we know that in 1951, for women who are working in manufacturing establishments the average weekly wage was about $40. The average care of a child in a day-care center would be between two and three dollars per day. For the young child it is a little more than for the older child. Under the Lanham Act experience it was less. Under current experience the care of a preschool child may run as high as $3 a day. When a mother must pay $3 a day for 5 days a week, with one child that is $15. If there are two children it would be $30 out of $40 income. The question then would arise, how could she take care of rent and expenses at home if she was the sole breadwinner. If not, the question would arise: Is it worth while for the mother to go to work, to leave the home and sacrifice what it means when she is only going to have $12 extra per week to spend? Mr. DENTON. What is going through my mind is this: The situation is different from World War II. This is not an all-out mobilization. It is probably of longer duration than World War II. But what I have in mind is that in these defense places where there is a husband and wife; and the man is making good wages, there are places where there are critical areas. Is it a good policy for the Government to go in and try to encourage women to work when their husbands are making good money? Dr. ELIOT. I do not think we are going to encourage women to work. What it does provide for is an opportunity for that woman to go to work with a certain degree of peace of mind if she must go to work. Mr. DENTON. I can see a very good thing in Indianapolis. We people have to go to work. I can see a need for it. I could not see women going down to the Savannah River district. Dr. ELIOT. The Savannah River district is one of the areas where we would not know how much need there would be for this particular type of service. There are other areas where the need is much more apparent than that one. Mr. MILES. I would like to add a comment on that. I would not want to have the impression that we believe day-care facilities are needed in each and every one of the prospective areas which you have on the list before you. There will be a great many of these areas which definitely will not need any day-care facilities or service. But there will be some of them some proportion which are definitely crowded, where this problem of unemployment you speak of does not exist and where the alternative will really be between making day-care facilities available for women who want to work or bringing in additional workers from outside and providing some additional housing for them. It is that sort of a situation that we feel ought to be taken care of. Dr. DEARING. Mr. Chairman, may I also refer to a situation where there is a particular short labor supply, namely, nursing. One source the greatest source of readily available supply is in married women who are trained nurses who have left the nursing profession, and there is a substantial amount of activity to encourage this group to come back into the nursing field because there are not enough to go around. We give them refresher courses to bring them up to date. If these married women with children try to pitch in-and there is no other way to meet the problem-that is an example of a group which we just have to have and have to draw upon regardless of the social implications of women with families working. Dr. ELIOT. And there is one other group I would like to speak of. That is young married women with no children who when, during World War II, worked as unmarried women in other defense plantsin airplane plants particularly. At this time we have some information that these industries are seeking these young married women because they were trained for certain types of jobs and they need them back. They are taking them on again. I suppose that is done because they know these workers best and they want them to come back and in many cases I believe the young married woman was interested in her job and she may want to go back and help out for a period of time. Some of the airplane industries that have facilities available are offering them the jobs that they had before. Mr. FOGARTY. Thank you, Dr. Eliot. You are now Chief of the Children's Bureau and you are taking Miss Lenroot's place. When did you take it? Dr. ELIOT. On the 4th of September. Mr. FOGARTY. We are very happy to see you back in this country again. Dr. ELIOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Miss ARNOLD. We are having evidence of more women going into industry. We were warned of that by the Department of Labor last spring when they said they would take in women in the fall and more rapidly in the first of the year. At that time for the most part the women were 35 years of age and older. That meant they had older children. But they said they would begin to take younger women in the fall and from the evidence we have, that is beginning to happen. We made this brief canvass of these areas and we found that in many of them the day-care facilities are building up pretty long waiting lists. One day-care center reported it is turning away 10 children a month. In another city five reported an increase in attendence of 24 percent since last August and an increase since January of 20 percent. They also say these figures do not show the real need because the word gets around that the center is turning many people away and many who would apply are not applying. The communities are becoming quite concerned. Several communities lack care for children of Negro workers. Some say the high fees are a deterrent. The facilities built up under the Lanham Act disappeared rapidly after the war so that now the facilities in these communities are mostly voluntary agencies or centers operated for profit in a commercial sense. These are charging very high fees and many of them have really low standards of care so the States and communities are becoming quite concerned about these low standards of care. SALARIES AND EXPENSES Mr. FOGARTY. Now, Mr. Miles, you have an estimate of $500,000 for salaries and expenses. Will you give us the breakdown on that and the number of positions in Washington and in the field? How many positions will that take care of altogether in Washington and in the field? Mr. MILES. One hundred and twelve positions with an average employment of 62. I think there may be an error on the green sheets. We show an average employment of 72. We would like to correct that and show that the lapse figure is 50 and the average employment for the year, 62. The number of positions would be 112. PERSONNEL REQUEST Mr. FOGARTY. I think you had better put in the recrod at this time pages 3, 6, 7, and 8 giving the breakdown of the employees in the field. and in Washington. Mr. MILES. Would you like to have a greater detailed breakdown of them? Mr. FOGARTY. Isn't this the same thing? Mr. MILES. It provides an estimate by organizational units. (The matter referred to is as follows:) |