segment of the people unfortunately distressed to a greater extent than they would have been had they been included under that law. Mr. NEAL. That is right.

Mr. RICH. Now, the question would be, if that were granted, if the ones who did not have a job, they would still be worse off?

Mr. NEAL. That is it exactly.

Mr. RICH. So that there are great problems confronting us in trying to handle this legislation.

Mr. NEAL. I think that is the most hopeful sign, that is, that we recognize this as a problem, and we want to get at the bottom of the problem, and then our legislation is intelligent.

We pass the legislation to help solve the problem, and we must recognize then that industrialization temporarily makes a group of people in a population not needed during that period of readjustment. Mr. RICH. I have always heard much about your institution, and I think that you are doing a great work in the South.

Mr. NEAL. Thank you, sir.

Mr. RICH. And for the benefit of our country.

Mr. NEAL. Thank you.

Mr. HUBER. Doctor, I have been familiar with the plight of the Negro and the other groups in the cities, and the low-income groups, and while I knew there was this distress in the South, I did not realize it was as acute as you have outlined it. I do not know that I have ever known a Negro farmer in the North. I am not saying that there

are not some.

Mr. NEAL. There are very few.

Mr. HUBER. I do not believe I have ever seen a Negro hired hand on a farm in the North, so you pose a problem here that is new to me, being a city dweller.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Come out to my district some time, and I will introduce you to some.

Mr. HUBER. Negro farmers?

Mr. BUCHANAN. Yes.

Mr. HUBER. Are they not very few, though?

Mr. BUCHANAN. No; quite a large number, in mining and other industrial pursuits.

Senator SPARKMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. NEAL. Thank you, sir.

Senator SPARKMAN. Now, we have Dr. Ellen Winston, commissioner for public welfare in North Carolina, and vice president, American Public Welfare Association.

Dr. Winston, we are very glad to have you with us. ceed in your own way.

You just pro

STATEMENT OF ELLEN B. WINSTON, COMMISSIONER FOR PUBLIC WELFARE, NORTH CAROLINA; VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION

Mrs. WINSTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate very much the opportunity of meeting with this committee, and I would like to talk actually about a group that drops down below the one that Dr. Neal has just been discussing with you, the families which have practically nothing in the way of economic opportunity as the result of their own resources.

We have not brought along statistical data because you have the very fine reports of your own committee, which give you income distributions and that sort of thing. Rather, we would like to bring to your attention some of the details as to how people actually try to get along when they do not have adequate incomes.

The material comes very largely from North Carolina sources, but it can be regarded as typical of low-income families throughout the South.

In the material I am particularly emphasizing children, because the kind of opportunity which we afford to children will very largely determine whether or not they can become economically self-supporting as they become adults.

We have recently been working in our State on a survey of the nutrition in our lowest-income group, what happens to children when there is not enough money going into the home to provide a minimum living.

We at the present time are giving an average grant through our program of aid to dependent children of $15 per month per child. We want to know what effect that has upon those children, and how the family manages to get along.

For example, we have one situation in which there is a family with five children. The father is paralyzed and unable to work, so that there are seven people in the group, five children and two adults.

At the present time, they are trying to live on $99 a month, to cover all of their needs. They economize by eating two meals a day. There is no milk for the children, practically no fruit and vegetables. They spend their food money for starchy items, grits, rice, corn meal, white flour.

We have another family, again with a father who is incapacitated. Here we have two children. We have $65 for two adults and both children. Both children are victims of infantile paralysis; the 7-yearold still weighs 46 pounds.

This family, too, manages to get along, depending mainly on flour. When the children are hungry between meals, they are given biscuits. They have nothing that would correspond to an adequate diet. Mr. BUCHANAN. Pardon me for interrupting you, are these all State funds?

Mrs. WINSTON. No. The second family that I have referred to has $20 a month from certain resources coming into the family; they receive an aid-to-dependent-children grant of $45 from local, State, and Federal funds. That is a pattern, of course, that is very common in the South, to have the local government participate in taking care of such families.

Senator SPARKMAN. It would not be 50 percent Federal?

Mrs. WINSTON. It will be better than 50 percent Federal because these grants are so low that we are down in the lower matching level. Mr. HUBER. While you are on that $99 a month family, that is five children.

Mrs. WINSTON. Five children.

Mr. HUBER. And the paralyzed father and mother. They get $15 for each child. Are those dependent children?

Mrs. WINSTON. We happen to be paying in our State, which is fairly characteristic throughout the low-income States, an amount which runs around $15 per child.

That does not mean that the grant could not be higher.

In this particular county, due to limitations of State and local funds, we are not paying a grant to this particular family, or any other family, which would take full advantage of the matching that might be available.

Mr. RICH. You mean the State of North Carolina does not do that? Mrs. WINSTON. Right.

Mr. RICH. Why not?

Mrs. WINSTON. Because we are a low-income State. We are making increasing efforts to provide for low-income families, but there has not been enough money under the present financing to take care up to the limit of all programs.

Mr. RICH. You are from the State of-what State?

Mrs. WINSTON, North Carolina.

Mr. RICH. North Carolina? It pays into the Federal Government more taxes-I think it ranks about third, does it not, or fourth in paying taxes to the Federal Government?

Mrs. WINSTON. As a result of our tobacco-tax money, we rank very high.

Mr. RICH. That is right.

Mrs. WINSTON. We do not get back in proportion to what we pay in. Mr. RICH. In other words, when you pay in a dollar, what proportionate share do you get back?

Mrs. WINSTON. I am afraid I do not know that figure.

Mr. RICH. In Pennsylvania we get back about 11 percent. If we pay in $1, we get back about 11 percent in the assessment of the expenditures of the country as a whole, and I wondered what it would be from the State of North Carolina.

Mrs. WINSTON. I am sorry. I do not know that total percentage. Mr. RICH. I am just asking for information.

Mr. HUBER. I was told some time ago that North Carolina could not be considered as a southern State because there were more people employed in its tobacco factories, in the tobacco fields and factoriesthere are more people in industry that in agriculture.

Mrs. WINSTON. We are approximately now 70 percent rural, which means that

Mr. HUBER. In population?

Mrs. WINSTON (continuing). Two out of three of our people are living either on farms or in rural nonfarm areas.

Mr. HUBER. How does that compare in general with other States? Mrs. WINSTON. We are very high in our rural population.

Mr. HUBER. Very high; all right.

Mr. RICH. In your industries, your industries are all rated very high in the payment of wages; are they not?

Mrs. WINSTON. No; we are not.

Mr. RICH. What industries-do not pick any individual companywhat do you manufacture that you do not have a high salary rate for? Mrs. WINSTON. The textile industry is characteristically known as a fairly low income industry, although, of course, we have had wages going up there, as you have had in the textile industry in Pennsylvania, and in the New England States, but you are familiar with the figures on average income.

Mr. RICH. They vary; but industrial figures, as long as they are doing interstate business, have been high the country over, and I was

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wondering whether-do you have more industry that does intrastate business or interstate business?

Mrs. WINSTON. Our industry would be very largely interstate business because we have emphasis on cigarette factories and other types of tobacco processing; our textile industry; our furniture industry is a rapidly expanding industry.

Mr. RICH. I see.

Senator SPARKMAN. Dr. Winston, I believe in connection with the textile industry, you made the statement that the textile industry was a low-pay industry. I suppose that is true if you compare it with some of the high-grade industries, highly skilled work; but my recollection is that the average textile wage is probably a little in excess of a dollar an hour.

Mrs. WINSTON. It depends on your basis of comparison, Senator. Senator SPARKMAN. I know; I understand that is the average.

Mrs. WINSTON. It has been going up, and that is one of the reasons when the minimum wage was raised that it did not particularly affect our State.

Senator SPARKMAN. Yes; that is true.

Mrs. WINSTON. Most of the people who were covered were already receiving above the new minimum.

Senator SPARKMAN. Yes; that is true.

I take it that the thing that makes North Carolina a low-income State in spite of its high, relatively high, degree of industrialization is the thing you pointed out, that 75 percent of your State is still rural.

Mrs. WINSTON. Yes; and we think that there should be a better balance between agriculture and industry.

Senator SPARKMAN. Yes.

Mrs. WINSTON. We have had a fairly rapid industrial development, as you know, in recent years.

Mr. RICH. Now, in your agriculture, you are a great tobacco State, are you not?

Mrs. WINSTON. Yes.

Mr. RICH. And are you not receiving exceptionally high prices for tobacco?

Mrs. WINSTON. Very good prices for tobacco.

Mr. RICH. What is it that is keeping you down and making you a low-income State? I thought North Carolina was one of the high industrial States, and also, if it is highly industrial, it certainly must be high in its income.

Mrs. WINSTON. You have, for one thing, in general, in agriculture some of the problems which were discussed by Dr. Neal, who preceded

me.

We have a large number of people who are living on very small farms. In certain sections of the State there is a great deal of farm family living, subsistence living. We also have had a very high proportion of children in North Carolina, which means many dependents in relation to the wage-earning population.

Mr. RICH. Do you find your largest families in the poorer groups? Mrs. WINSTON. Yes.

Mr. RICH. We find, in Pennsylvania, that the poorer the family the more children they have.

Mrs. WINSTON. There is certainly a direct relationship between size of a family and income, and size of family and educational level.

Mr. RICH. We ought to either have better regulation somehow, so that the more income a man's family has the more the number of children he has, and the less his income the less number of children, it seems to me. Is there any way we could regulate that? [Laughter.] Mrs. WINSTON. We have a number of organizations that are trying to promote that.

Mr. RICH. All right, proceed.

Mrs. WINSTON. We have another situation in which we have a mother with two children, an aged grandmother, who is ill, and is in the home. The mother has to leave very early in the morning; the school-age child in the family goes to school 5 days a week without breakfast.

In order for the mother to earn and help take care of her family she has to leave so early that she cannot provide the child with breakfast, and the grandmother is too ill to do so.

Mr. RICH. Where do your welfare workers come in in that?

Mrs. WINSTON. We believe that if the mother is trying to help support her family she should probably in this situation be encouraged to do so. We do not have adequate welfare services, although they have increased very rapidly in recent years.

Perhaps you would suggest that we place a large enough grant in that family so that the mother could remain at home and take care of her children throughout the day.

Mr. RICH. No, I am trying to get the idea of what you would do, and we will write in our report what we think we ought to do.

Mrs. WINSTON. We would ordinarily say that mothers should remain in the home when there are young children in order to meet the needs of those children.

I think this might interest you, Senator

Mr. RICH. Do not call me Senator. [Laughter.]

Mrs. WINSTON. The only two States that have more rural children than North Carolina are Pennsylvania and Texas.

We have another family which reflects the way in which some families are trying to meet low-income problems.

There was a son in the family, getting along very well in school, in the tenth grade. He left school the day after he became 16 to go to work in the mill.

Now, those are illustrative of the ways in which families are trying to eke out a living, and two illustrations of how they are trying to help themselves, one by the mother's going out of the home, one by the child's leaving school in order to bring in income.

We are, at the same time, concerned about the upper age level-our older persons who could not earn enough during their working years to provide for their old age.

Again and again we have illustrations of these older people who are making every effort to maintain an independent existence.

We have, for example, a 69-year-old to whom we are making now, through the public welfare program, a $34 grant each month.

Out of that he is paying $75 per year on a three-room box structure, which is so located that it is surrounded by water after a rain.