The actual lack of job opportunities in rural areas coupled with declining industrial bases require a threefold job development approach: (a) job creation through economic development and expansion; (b) geographical mobility to centers of employment both within and outside the area; and (c) a high support program of technical assistance to employers in the area.

The guidelines for entry into rural Neighborhood Youth Corps projects should be made more flexible by re-defining the term "disadvantaged" to give equal weight to low income, geographical isolation, and to social isolation whatever its source.

The rural Neighborhood Youth Corps program project can operate most successfully if it is structured as a means to supplement the weak rural educational systems rather than to rely upon the schools for leadership in the Neighborhood Youth Corps program. It is essential that more effort be directed toward providing vocational counseling that is appropriate for rural-to-urban migration. This counseling should be coupled with a functioning system for job placements. Lastly, the administrative concepts of the rural Neighborhood Youth Corps program should be modified to include cooperation between Neighborhood Youth Corps projects in the rural communities and Neighborhood Youth Corps projects in adjacent urban growth centers.

D. Special Programs for Non-Employable Youth

The experience of

youth-work programs has revealed the existence of a group of youth who are unlikely to be employed in the private sector of todays economy. It is possible that these youth may be trained more effectively in work programs modified to establish a semi-protested work situation for a considerable period of time--four or five years, longer if necessary.

The work situation would offer non-employable youth an opportunity to engage in a variety of jobs within the community which they can respect and which have obvious utility. Trainees would be assigned to work crews since they are largely incapable of accepting individual assignments. This kind of a program would make little effort to simulate a business environment or to insist upon conformity to norms which govern behaviour in business situations.

In other respects the proposed program would be family and community center. It would seek improvement of the youth's over-all social adjustment and enhancement of his capability for social living. This means that the youth would have to be understood, that the problems he experiences as a member of a family or other social group would require treatment as well as those he manifests in the work situation. means would be provided for dealing directly with the youth's family, his peer group, and other groups which affects him adversely.

The

We stress the enhancement of the social adjustment of currently non-employable youth because it is clear that employment will not become a realistic goal for them until they improve in their ability to cope with their problems and needs in various other areas.

Further education for non-employable youth should be related to= modest and realistic but useful goals. These youth should be taught how to make better use of their leisure time, how to budget and spend their money more efficiently, how to use and enjoy the community's resources, how to develop their interests, how to prepare for marriage and family living, how to exercise their rights and obligations as citizens of a community.

A program of this nature will in time enable many youth to qualify

appropriate employment if the job market remains stable or expands. A program for non-employable youth should not be considered merely as an adjunct to Neighborhood Youth Corps, in spite of some similarity in service. There are many significant differences between these programs in immediate objectives, enrollees methodology, staff qualification, and duration of program. These differences plus the fact youth-work programs already have the heavy burden of training the vastly greater number of potentially employable disadvantaged youth, lead us to recommend that this program be established as a new and independent service within the framework of the community-action program.

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Senator NELSON. Thank you very much gentlemen. Our next witness is on the rural manpower program, Clifford Ingram, executive director, L.B.J. & C. Development Corps., Monterey, Tenn.

You may proceed to present your testimony as you desire.

STATEMENT OF CLIFFORD INGRAM, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, L.B.J. & C. DEVELOPMENT CORP., MONTEREY, TENN.

Mr. INGRAM. I don't know what has happened to my fellow countrymen. There was supposed to have been one here from upper Michigan and one from West Virginia. That is a long way off for a country boy. Maybe they got lost trying to get here. I am sorry they are not here. I don't want to take advantage of my fellow officers in NACD, but something happened this morning that I think perfectly illustrates the problems of rural America, and I am going to have to take advantage of them.

In the introductions, you know that it was spelled out that the officials of NACD would make presentations and then CEP and then lastly, rural America.

Senator NELSON. The reason for that is that I represent rural America here on this committee.

Mr. INGRAM. Senator, I didn't know that, but there is a point I want to make, Is there any reason to wonder why they are called people left behind? It is both rural America and urban America, and it is a common problem, and I feel very strongly that the problem in urban America cannot be solved until it is solved in rural America. We lost 22 percent of our population in a 14-county area between 1950 and 1960, and they went to the urban areas.

The area I come from is part of Appalachia. The largest county has a population of 30,000. The smallest county has 4,000 people.

Part of it is being industrialized at a faster rate than the rest of the Nation. Part of it never will be. Part is Republican, part is Democratic. Some of the oldtimers in my area, as you probably know, this was a fiercely independent area, and still is, during the Civil War days. They don't talk about fighting for the Union side. They talk about fighting for the Republican side.

It is the land of Cordell Hull, and the land of Sergeant York. Both were born and reared in this section.

We have operated manpower projects since the summer of 1966, including OJT, NCC, Mainstream, and CEP.

the

Senator, in the summer of 1967, we completed the first year, and as you will recall. We prepared a little certificate of graduation for about 80 mountain men. This was sent to your office. You signed these. They were presented to these men in little county towns by mayors, and I checked up on these to see what had happened to them a day or two ago when I found out I was coming here, and I thought you would like to know that some of them have been framed and put on the walls of little mountain shacks. Some of them have been placed in the Bibles, and some of them stored in old trunks as treasured bits of information, or awards that have come to these

men.

I don't have a prepared statement. What I would like to do is give you a few of the problems of rural Appalachia, and especially the section I come from.

We will list these quickly. I don't think they need comment. I think they are probably self-evident.

One of the major problems we have is too many people and no jobs. The employment rate is as high as 11 percent in some of our counties. The general area is about 7.5.

Many of the new industries in the areas pay $1.60 an hour, a subsistence wage.

No. 3, the labor unions in our area are weak, or nonexistent. We have some weak unions in one county. Therefore, the result is the workers have no bargaining power.

No. 4, a mountaineer likes to have work. He doesn't cotton to assembly line factory work. There are a lot of attitudes that hinder employment.

If he doesn't like his boss, he will quit. He wants to hunt and fish. He wants to attend family reunions. He takes off when he wants to. No. 6, transportation is a problem. Many times we have been able to secure a job for a man 25 miles away from the hollow in which he lives, and on $1.60 an hour, he cannot operate a car and go back and forth.

Mobility is a problem. He doesn't want to sell his shack and move to the city and be lodged in the ghetto. He is afraid of it. He resents outsiders coming in to solve his problems.

Appalachia has a closed culture, and there is still a lot of clannishness in the mountains.

No. 9, your employment security statistics really don't reflect unemployment in our section. Out of 1,100 CEP enrollees this year, we checked to see how many had ever appeared on an ES statistic. Only 50 percent had. The other 50 percent had never appeared on the employment security statistics.

Our resources are too scanty, and the needs are so great that we haven't accomplished very much. In some instances, we have been able to raise a man's educational level from the first grade to the sixth grade, but what have you done when you have gone only this far?

There are about 1,500 small subsistence farmers in each of our counties who desperately need a supplement to their income and don't have it.

The educational level is about five grades below that of the Nation. We have a lack of skills. Many of our unemployed people are ex-coal miners, ex-lumberjacks and these skills are no longer salable.

Next, there is a health problem. Fifty-two percent of our youth are rejected for military service.

Now, I would like to suggest some needs or solutions to some of the problems in rural America, especially Appalachia. First of all, the mountaineer must be involved in the decision as to the solutions. If he is not, he would assume no responsibility for what may be offered him.

No. 2, there is a desperate need for-I don't know what you would call it but some sort of extensive prevocational training to introduce him to the world of work, and to teach him work habits and to change some attitudes he has.

No. 3, there is an absolute, unconditional, desperate need, and whatever you want to call it, for the Government to be the employer of last resort in rural Appalachia.