cluded from the scope and benefits of this bill. Do you think it is fair?

Mr. TAYLOR. Yes; I think it is fair. This is a comprehensive program that was worked out by Federal-State cooperation. It covers a large area—an area where there is a real need. I think we need to face this problem today. In other sections there are other problems which we need to face tomorrow.

Mr. CLEVELAND. I refer to sections that have precisely the same problem as your district: the agricultural revolution and mountainous terrain. The same problems you have so elequently portrayed in your exceptionally fine statement.

Do you really think it is fair to leave out sections that way? Do you really think so?

Mr. TAYLOR. When a bill taking care of some other section comes before us, I would certainly give it serious and sincere consideration, Mr. CLEVELAND. Thank you.

Mr. JONES. In that connection, you had an opportunity to vote for an appropriation of $5 million to make a survey of the New England States water resources. You did not think that was so provincial that it inhibited you for voting against it.

Mr. TAYLOR. I was glad to support a program of that type. As Congressman Henderson just pointed out, as a member of the House Interior Committee we are continually working on development programs for the Western States. We are going to deal with water resources which is a great problem out there. That affects only one section of the country, but as we develop our Nation we have to study the needs of each section and face them.

Mr. CLEVELAND. I recognize what you say, and I also recognize what the chairman has said, but the fact is that this is a comprehensive bill that seeks to strengthen these disadvantaged rural mountain areas. It is the first time that anybody can tell me when legislation such as this has been so completely sectional, but when by mere expansion of the terms of the act other areas, almost identically situated, could be treated under the act. For example, rivers and harbors legislation obviously has to be confined to those States that have rivers and harbors. Although it is true that we had a study of New England water systems, we have also had studies of the water systems in all other parts of the country. You, yourself, say that the guts of this bill is the development of access roads. But we have never had a national highway bill that has built highways in one part of the country and not others. It has always been fairly distributed throughout the Natilon. This is the point I am trying to make.

Mr. JONES. If the gentleman would yield, I appreciate the fact that seems to be the central theme of all your interrogation of the witnesses, Mr. Cleveland, but I think there is no historian who has examined the historic development of our country, who claims that is a discredit to the argument and has never been accepted by this country. We have to meet it by leaps and bounds.

If your community is in the distress area, that is a concern for all of us.

Mr. CLEVELAND. What I am pointing out, Mr. Chairman, is that there are several sections of my district and I am sure several sections of other districts in this country that badly and seriously need develop

ment roads and access roads. I do not think it is fair to have highways built in one section where highways similarly built in the other sections of the country would help economic development.

Mr. JONES. How are you going to take the measurement of priorities for a road in Alabama as compared with the necessity of a road in Harlem? You figure that one out, then you have it down to the zero point. Then we do not do anything for anybody.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, we have discussed this basic philosophy at some length here in the course of these sessions and I respect the gentleman's convictions. But in addition to all of the other programs which we have pointed out from time to time which are regional in their application, I think the gentleman could regard the agriculture program of the Nation as being regional in its application. Not only do crop supports, for example, apply to certain stipulated crops, the very requirement in that program that in order to qualify for crop supports one must have established a history of growing those crops absolutely freezes that program and prevents its application to any other area.

Mr. CLEVELAND. Would the gentleman yield right there?
Mr. WRIGHT. Surely.

Mr. CLEVELAND. Any agricultural program that I am familiar with still treats agriculture as a national problem and any farm that is raising that particular product anywhere in the Nation gets substantially equal treatment. They are national programs. Because all of the wheat farming may be in the West and all the cotton farming may be in the South does not change the point I am trying to make, which is equal and fair treatment between the several States on those programs that can be applied equally and fairly among the several States.

I want to come back to this point again before I yield. I think what bothers me the most about this is that here we are in the Public Works Committee, where year after year we have developed the highway system of this Nation, of which we are tremendously proud and which has worked out formulas for the distribution of the Federal highway dollar throughout this broad Nation of ours as nearly equally and fairly as possible, and here we have a program which, as this witness has said, is really a roadbuilding program, but in which we are not being equal and fair to the several States in this program.

Mr. WRIGHT. If I might simply say to the gentleman, the Bureau of Reclamation program does not apply fairly and equally. It applies to stipulated States. I have some others that I would like to mention because this is nothing new. The Bureau of Reclamation program applies to 17 States. The Tennessee Valley Authority program applies to a stipulated area of our country. At the time it was installed that area was our great distress area in the United States. Just as today Appalachia is manifestly our great distress area. You could make that charge against any one of dozens of programs that the Federal Government has authorized and passed. I have voted for those programs as I am sure the gentleman has.

The gentleman mentions distressed areas in his own section. Mr. CLEVELAND. I was not here when they voted for the TVA.

Mr. WRIGHT. When accelerated public works was up he would have had a chance to vote for his own area. I do not know whether the gentleman voted for that or not. It is his business. I did, although my district does not qualify for it, because I felt it was a national problem. Where the strength and fiber and vitality of little isolated pockets scattered throughout the country or one whole region centralized in one section of the country, retards and holds back the economic growth of the whole Nation, I think it is a national problem. I think Appalachia is a national problem.

Mr. JONES. If you will yield, Mr. Cleveland, last year you voted for a bill, Public Law 88, of August 13, for the enactment of the Federal Highway Act which provided for $33 million for forest highways which go to a particular area.

You voted for forest development roads for $85 million which were peculiar to the West. You voted for public lands development roads and trails of $2 million, and $2 million for the next fiscal period.

No. 5, you voted for park roads and trails of $23 million. Those were in various States and not in all of them. You voted for parkways of $11 million, and those $11 million were to be expanded in about nine States. You voted for Indian reservation roads and bridges to the tune of $18 million. Then you voted for the public lands highways of $7 million.

I just say I do not know that consistency is always a virtue, but the point is that you cannot very well just localize these problems and say that since they are not universal, we cannot do anything about them. Mr. CLEVELAND. Mr. Chairman, it is true that I voted for those appropriations but every single one of those appropriations

Mr. JONES. You voted for these authorizations.

Mr. CLEVELAND. I voted for the authorization and voted for the appropriations, too, but the thread that binds all of those together and the reason why that is not inconsistent with my position here is that those were for roads and bridges on a nationally owned land of the Government of the United States and the tax dollar that is paid by citizens of the United States goes into land owned by the citizens of the United States.

I do not think there is anything inconsistent in voting on those appropriations, and my objection is to this bill's unfair and preferential treatment.

Mr. JONES. It helps the economy of an area.

Mr. CLEVELAND. It was on Federal property owned by all the citizens of the United States. It is not where it is located that counts.

Mr. JONES. The highways and parkways were acquired by the Federal Government. They paid for those. You voted for the extension of the Skyline, the Mississippi driveway. Those things are not any different from what we are trying to do here.

Mr. BALDWIN. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we get on with the hearings.

Mr. JONES. I do, too, Mr. Baldwin.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JONES. We are pleased also to have with us this morning the Honorable Tim Lee Carter of Kentucky.

Dr. Carter, it is a pleasure to have you, please.

STATEMENT OF HON. TIM LEE CARTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF KENTUCKY

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, ladies, and gentlemen.

I appreciate the opportunity afforded me to appear here today since I happen to come from the heart of the Appalachian area. All 20 of my counties are in this depressed area. I think you can readily understand my interest-my extreme interest-in this problem. We have seen this developed over a period of years. In 1910-just that late-Harlan County in Kentucky first became a coal mining area. At that time, the population of Harlan County was 10,000. Within a period of 30 years, the population had grown to 70,000. Due to automation, and due to competition from oil, gas, and other means of heating, Harlan County and other mining counties of this area became depressed areas. Thousands of people were out of work and are still out of work.

The population of Harlan County has dropped from 70,000 to approximately 40,000. The mines are still undergoing automation. More people are thrown out of work daily. This county does need help. I feel the whole area which mines, and also has difficulty at the present time with its railroads, needs help, too. This section of southern Kentucky has been neglected a little bit as far as our highway system is concerned. At the present time, there are only two small areas in which highways are being built. We have very few A class roads. To be in Harlan County, and to travel those roads where thousands upon thousands of tons of coal go out each day by truck, we see the roads are terribly inadequate to carry those loads of coal. We see so many people who are impoverished and are living under unsanitary conditions. We realize, from this, the necessity of this bill.

We feel that the bill should not be concentrated on one particular area. Certainly, we think the highway system should be included and should be improved the parkways and interstate highways which Kentucky has had. This district only has a very few miles. We need more of those to open this area up.

We have made some small beginnings in the Federal aid to education in our trade-and-industry schools. I must say that these schools are performing a wonderful function. Boys and girls, trained in these schools, are in demand. People who have been out of jobs, because of automation, and so on, are retrained.

Again, they are able to get new jobs. I think that is another arm which is adequately covered or partly covered by the present bill. Another area to which I want to commend the proponents of this bill is that of sanitation. Certainly I think we should have a chance to have better water facilities, sewage disposal plants in this area and, again, health facilities. Diagnostic and treatment centers should be provided in this area.

Mr. JONES. Doctor, in that connection, I would like to call your attention on page 16 of the bill, section 202, and sections (b) and (c), which provides for the construction of regional hospitals and health facilities.

Mr. CARTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. I am quite sure you have given particular thought to those sections of the bill, being a physician. We would certainly welcome your comments on those. If you do not have a copy of the bill, the clerk will give you one.

Mr. CARTER. I have one. I introduced this as a companion bill in the House, sir. I want to commend Senator Cooper, our senior Senator from Kentucky, and Senator Randolph for their part in the bill. Also the part which has to do with improving our roads and streams so far as conservation practices are concerned. I certainly want to commend them on that. Again I feel that, since much of this area is in the Cumberland Forest area and is owned by the Federal Government-in some counties as much as 95 percent being owned by the Federal Government-the aid on strip mining which is under question, due to the amendment of Governor Lausche, certainly I think we should have that aid in these particular areas. To see the devastation wrought by the hand of man is almost beyond comprehension. To see your streams filled up, and floods resulting from that, is serious. I am 100 percent for this bill. It could be improved a little, as far as making it possible for us to have better water facilities and better sewage disposal and so on.

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the gentlemen of this committee.

Mr. JONES. It is a pleasure to have you, sir.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, sir.

Mr. JONES. Are there any questions?

Mr. BALDWIN. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say that Mr. Carter is a new Member of the House this year so this is, undoubtedly, one of his first presentations before a committee. I want to commend him for the excellent manner in which he has presented the case for his constituents.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, sir.

Mr. CRAMER. I, too, am glad to welcome you to the Public Works Committee and know you will probably be back again from time to time.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you.

Mr. JONES. We are exceedingly pleased that you have come by today to give us your views on this bill.

Mr. JONES. Our next witness will be our colleague, the Honorable Charles McC. Mathias, Jr.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES MCC. MATHIAS, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Mr. MATHIAS. Mr. Chairman, the bill before the committee today is of vast importance to America. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the bill by having introduced H.R. 2996. Millions of our citizens. live in the Appalachian region and millions more have their roots in this land of mountains and valleys of great natural resources, of scenic wonder, of a proud, determined people.

Part of Appalachia lies within my congressional district so I speak with a personal and proud familiarity about it. The three westernmost counties of Maryland, representing 1,600 square miles and a population of nearly 200,000 comprises that part of the Appalachian region it is my pleasure to represent.