Mr. WENNER. I think you may have to base it on that. I know you are alluding to the fact that the Office of Economic Opportunity has not been terribly constructive in this regard and has not always spelled out to the State what OEO wanted the State to do.

It has not always funded them with enough money.

But the States have always been there.

The States have always been able to do whatever they wished. There was nothing in the Economic Opportunity Act which prohibited the States from moving out with strong technical assistance and services of their own, and a few States did.

I think you have to look at this experience realistically. OEO did not hold back the States. Maybe they did not give them all the resources they wanted, but they did not hold them back from taking initiatives themselves.

Mr. PATRICELLI. Do you think it is possible for the States, considering the realities of the situation, to mount a strong and effective technical assistance operation if that is by and large their sole responsibility, or does that have to be coupled with some sort of grantmaking authority as well?

Are the States going to either be inclined to contribute their services in a technical assistance manner or be able to enforce or encourage implementation by local groups of guidelines established through technical assistance if they do not have some kind of grantmaking authority tied to it?

Mr. WENNER. I am afraid we are discussing an issue which has haunted us for the past 2 years; that you have to run something to be a part of the program.

I would hope that all of us would get away from this notion. If the State can't run a local poverty program, then it does not want to provide technical assistance.

That is a rhetorical statement.

Mr. PATRICELLI. I didn't say "run," but "have grantmaking authority."

Mr. ESSER. Again, we get into very fundamental problems of administration here. If every grant from the Federal Government for manpower and educational programs or any program has to sift through State body, and in coordinated, complex programs like manpower may sift through half a dozen State bodies before it gets to a community body. It becomes a terribly difficult administrative, coordinative problem.

We feel the strength of some of our best antipoverty programs these last few years have rested on the notion that local people, deciding their own programs, have developed their own capabilities, at the community level to solve their own problems.

This has been a lot of hard work. There has been obviously a lot of negotiations, peaceful and sometimes not always peaceful, but it has been at the community level that good antipoverty programs have been hammered out and their problems solved and a good administrative organization developed.

This, we think, is the lesson we should learn in manpower programs.

too.

Mr. PATRICELLI. One last question, Mr. Esser: S. 3239 makes a particular effort to develop new kinds of incentives and motivations in

community service employment programs so there are not the high levels of dropouts and early terminations that we have seen in the previous programs of this type.

You have alluded to one of these techniques, which is the local service company approach.

Do you think the other idea; that is, of giving successful participants in a community service employment program a preferred entry into a program such as on-the-job training or another program involving regular competitive employment makes some sense in this regard in motivation?

Mr. ESSER. Not having seen it work precisely that way, I would say this:

I think that any system of incentives, particularly if it has attached to it, the career ladders, and all others ideas we have in this area, should be tried.

I think that any ideas that are aimed at this problem might very well be tried. I think in experimenting and perhaps we need more money for research and experimentation-certainly the concept of a better chance and a quicker chance makes sense.

Senator CLARK. Thank you very much, Mr. Esser. You have been very helpful to us.

Mayor Walsh, would you come forward, please?

We will give Senator Javits, when he gets here, the opportunity to introduce you but I would like to expedite the hearing and move

ahead.

Mr. Gunther, I am a little bit concerned, having read Mayor Walsh's statement which is excellent, to know whether the U.S. Conference of Mayors has any enthusiasm for this legislation or is just going through the motions.

We are going to hear from Mayor Walsh but I wonder if you would respond to my concern that unlike the League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors does not feel very strongly that this type of legislation would be desirable to have passed at this session of Congress.

Mr. GUNTHER. We had hoped Mayor Barr of Pittsburgh would be able to come.

Senator CLARK. Yes, I was looking forward to hearing his views. Mr. GUNTHER. I think the record is pretty clear, Senator, from last fall and summer and this winter that the conference, the mayors in the conference have been very strong supporters of this manpower legislation.

I believe last summer through their iniative in the formation of the urban coalition and you and Senator Javits on the floor tried to get it in the bill. I know they worked very hard on it.

They got in touch with their Senators and made several calls even outside of their own States where they had contacts and where they thought it would help.

I know Mayor Barr called two or three Senators in the Republican Party whom he knew and they voted for your bill on the floor.

Unfortunately, we did not get quite enough votes for that.

Senator CLARK. I realize that and I appreciate everything Mayor Barr has done in this respect.

What I am specifically interested in getting is your categorical statement that your organization supports this legislation.

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Mr. GUNTHER. You have it. More than that the organization very strongly supports it and in January devoted most of its legislative meeting here to trying to visit people in support of it up here in Congress and went to see the President of the United States for an hour or two and all we talked about in there was the kind of legislation, tried to persuade the administration to change its mind and support it instead of staying either neutral or being against it.

In the lobby of the White House the President and all members of the executive committee, which included the Mayor of Philadelphia also, Mayor Tate, gave the press a statement saying among other items they discussed with the President was to try to persuade him to change his mind on this legislation now because it is urgent.

Senator CLARK. I am happy to hear that. Mayor Tate gave some splendid testimony the other day as a representative of the League of Cities.

Mayor Walsh, I would like to welcome you here.

We regret, I suppose as a result of the reaction in Baltimore to the tragedy of last night, that your colleague, Mayor D'Alesandro, felt it necessary to be there.

Mr. GUNTHER. He had a prepared statement and he asked your permission to file it.

Senator CLARK. We will be happy to have it printed in the record at this point.

(The prepared statement of D'Alesandro follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THOMAS J. D'ALESANDRO III, MAYOR, BALTIMORE, MD.

Distinguished Members of the Senate, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to work with Mayor Walsh on the Conference of Mayor's Committee on Human Resources Development, because in Baltimore we regard the questions of employment and education as vital to the future of the cities.

I am happy to add my personal endorsement to the recommendations of the committee as presented to you by Mayor Walsh. As you know, this recommendation was adopted by the Executive Committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January.

Just 3 days ago I had the privilege of addressing a labor group here in Washington on the crisis in our cities. Throughout the question and answer period following my address, I was struck by the recurrence of two themes: jobs and education. These two subjects are finally getting the kind of attention from organizations, individuals, and legislators that they deserve.

In my speech, I discussed the steps we have taken in Baltimore in the area of employment and job training. I discussed in detail the moves we have made to cure this urban sickness, which is at the heart of many of the other social and economic ills that plague our city and American society. I pointed out that we have recruited business into a partnership with the city to provide jobs and job training for the chronically unemployed. I mentioned our job bank program that aims at placing 1,000 able-bodied workers from the poverty ghettos into jobs by June 1 and 5,000 by June 1 of next year. I mentioned the full-time staff assistant I appointed shortly after taking office to work exclusively in the

area of jobs and manpower development. I mentioned the cooperative effort being made by the city of Baltimore and the National Alliance of Businessmen in attracting hard-core unemployed workers into jobs and job training programs.

In addition to this, I made a plea for some innovations, which lend themselves directly to the legislation you are considering today.

We are met by many frustrations in the city of Baltimore, but none are more demoralizing than the twin frustrations of finding an answer to the chronic problem of young men between the ages of 16 and 18 who have dropped out of school, who have no work and who are potential threats to law and order, and the frustration of jobs left undone. Cleanup campaigns bog down because of insufficient manpower. If we could call upon a large manpower pool, I know we could begin to make repairs to vacant houses, demolish substandard structures and clean up the ghettos and keep them clean.

I believe something dramatic must be done.

I would like to see see some of the following recommendations implemented:

Raise the age for compulsory attendance in school from 16 to 18. If this proves unworkable, let us investigate the possibility of enlisting these youths for 2 years of intensive vocational training. The standard truance laws might be extended to this group to put teeth in such a measure.

Let Government provide jobs for those who cannot find work. Consolidate existing programs aimed at inner city improvements into an Urban Conservation Corps, which would not only provide jobs but upward mobility for these young men.

I'm aware that this is not a new idea, and that it may be considered as duplicating some existing programs. But, if we are going to solve this problem, we need to broaden programs such as the Job Corps and the Neighborhood Youth Corps, and make them relevant to the ghetto. We also need to do some further thinking about the way we can bring about change in attitudes-this might mean some kind of provision for enlistments.

As I outlined my idea of an Urban Conservation Corps, I saw it as a new way to provide training and jobs, as well as attacking the problems of the ghetto directly.

The corps might be organized around a cadre of professionals, including ex-servicemen especially NCO's, who are conversant with the problems these youths face and who can provide the leadership and authority symbols they need in their lives.

There ought to be 2-year enlistments; basic training which employs the best of the Army's nonmilitary physical, educational, and Vocational training; uniforms and rank, and a disciplinary system based upon infusing an esprit de corps rather than punishment for violating rules.

These are among the things I've been thinking about, and I hope you might consider.

There is no need of my repeating Mayor Walsh's statistics and the findings of the urban coalition on job possibilities in public service. The findings and statistics are well borne out in my city of Baltimore. By an all-out attack on chronic unemployment we could wipe out the

problem of the enormous numbers of able-bodied men who could be added to our work force, as this legislation is designed to do.

We call upon you to favorably report this emergency employment measure as rapidly as possible.

Senator CLARK. Mayor Walsh, you may either read your statement or summarize it as you see fit.

I know you are an expert witness.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM F. WALSH, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF SYRACUSE, N.Y., REPRESENTING THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS

Mr. WALSH. I am Mayor Walsh and I am appearing on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, an organization of some 600 cities with populations greater than 30,000 persons.

As a member of the Conference Committee on Human Resources Development, Senator, I can assure you the mayors conference supports your legislation.

In January of this year the executive committee of the conference of mayors called for a public service employment program to provide for 500,000 public service jobs immediately.

The emergency work and training programs pending before you will go far in reaching that objective.

While the 300,000 participants authorized by the program, on or before June 30, 1969, falls short of our immediate goal, the program is designed to create at least 2.4 million jobs in the public and private service during the next 4 years.

Let me add here, Mr. Chairman, that the conference of mayors takes heart in finding that two significant groups have called for a similar program.

In the exhaustive study released by the President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders this approach among others is recommended as a significant step in dealing with the crisis of the cities.

The Urban Coalition, whose chairman, John W. Gardner, former Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, appeared before you earlier this week, has also endorsed the approach taken by the emergency work and training program.

In developing the position of the conference of mayors on the need for a public service employment program supported by the Federal Government as proposed in this bill, we have been influenced by three major factors:

1. We have recognized the steady and continuing demand for public services from both local government and nonprofit public service institutions.

2. We have also noted the current fiscal inability of local government to expand and support these public services on the scale that is needed.

3. It has been our observation that public works programs, although vitally needed, can no longer generate the types and numbers of jobs that are appropriate to our hard-core and youth unemployment

situation.

I would like to make the following points from the latest Manpower Report from the Secretary of Labor: