man of our committee, Dr. Ira N. Gabrielson is out of the city but he wishes the subcommittee to know of his support and general association with the remarks that follow. Mr. Chairman, we support S. 2958 because of the declared purposes which state, (1) the continuing and serious need to refurbish and rehabilitate our natural resources, and (2) to accomplish this purpose by using men who have been unemployed over an extended period of time. Often the simple logic seems to become tortured in the complex structure of our Government and economy. In the instant case men are out of work, many for a long period of time. By the same token, the rehabilitation that needs to be done in behalf of our country's natural resources has such a backlog, as to stagger the imagination. It would seem obvious that if men are out of work but much work needs to be done that the solution would be simple. Unfortunately, the problems of achieving this are so complex as to frustrate the many efforts that have been made heretofore to resolve them. May I say at the outset that S. 2958 is not the perfect solution. This will not solve the unemployment problem. This will not complete the task of all the necessary activities needed to conserve our resources. We suggest this awareness on our part in order that we may not have to defend the measure because we implied that this bill is a final solution to the many problems that we face. This bill authorizes an appropriation of $1 billion a year. We are sure that serious objections will be raised because of the amount of expenditures authorized. We are equally sure that it is not adequate to complete the task of the necessary resource management or the satisfactory solution of unemployment. It does, however, move in that direction. It will be a significant help in the necessary efforts we must make in the very near future in behalf of our natural resources. It will indeed offer jobs to those who do not now have them. It is on this simple basis that we plead our case. For some inexplicable reason expenditures for conservation have often been postponable. Since the depression there have been a series of postponementsall for very excellent reasons. For example, World War II saw us draw heavily upon our natural resources without undue concern about their shape and posture for the future. Postponement was made again during the movement from a wartime to a peacetime footing. The Korean conflict caused further postponement. The extended debate of the 1950's of fiscal responsibility found expenditures for natural resources to be one of the sacrifices necessary in achieving that goal. Concomitantly, the ascendency of large military budgets, the race for space, and atomic energy were all more attractive in the immediate sense than was the problem of appropriate natural resources management. During that time resources were being used. Their use is obvious when one stops to consider that with the exception of the human bodies in this room, every item that clothes us, every stick of furniture, every part of the building may have been fashioned from the hand of man but the natural resources had to be available for him to accomplish any of these results. The day of reckoning is probably not a given point of time and does not occur with the finality that some generally consider, but the concept of the inevitable appears quite clear. We recognize the importance of maintaining capital in the private sector of our economy with a care and passion that is admirable. No businessman would fritter away his company's resources on an individual whim or caprice. No company official would refuse to spend money that was necessary to maintain his plant and equipment. No responsible private executive would act in this fashion for he would be removed for gross inefficiency. Where companies as a whole have failed to maintain their overall efficiency, and especially their capital investment, they have reaped the whirlwind of this folly. Where the public is concerned, however, there has been only a growing awareness in the most recent years of the consequences of our failures to take prudent action in restoring, where possible, the renewable resources that we have at our disposal. Unfortunately, it was not until imminent disaster was apparent in many areas before we finally got cracking and did something about it. Our recreational needs skyrocketed beyond any statistical prediction or beyond any demographer's projection. Local, State, and Federal governments were not in a position to meet this need effectively. An awareness is beginning and we are now seeing the erosion of our natural resources and the importance in reversing the trend. Also, we are finally approaching the point of understanding that if recreational needs are to be met we are going to have to spend money. Appropriations have increased to some extent. States and localities, struggling with needs over a previous decade of postponement, did their best but the actions of all have admittedly fallen tragically short. Recently, serious efforts have been made to save a part of the seashores for recreation, to establish some additions to the national park system, to make it possible for private recreation to take place on former croplands, and the Senate will shortly entertain a new measure, based in part on a pay as you go method of financing, to further land acquisitions for recreation at the local, State, and Federal level. Yes, we are now starting to move and already some say we are moving too fast. This attitude, in our judgment, if it prevails will be a sadly augury indeed for the future. We are faced with almost 30 years of postponement and lack of concern for the overall natural resource base in this country. You cannot fall behind almost every year for 30 years and except to catch up in a year or perhaps in a decade, nor can you expect to catch up without incurring the necessary expense. Another part of the thinking that concerns many of us is the failure to distinguish in public expenditures between money spent on capital improvements or investment, and money spent on immediately consumable items. In the case of private business, the Treasury Department refuse to allow any business to consider a significant capital expenditure as a cost for any one year. Private accounting would not write off a significant capital expense except on a prorated basis for the period that the capital good was expected to last. Alas, no such important distinctions exist in our present Federal structure. Moneys that are expended for a park which may exist for time immemorial or any other public investment are considered no different from the Secretary's pencil budget to the gasoline in a Government automobile. Perhaps it is this serious omission in our Federal budgetary and accounting procedure that places us in such near disaster from time to time in making prudent public investments that are so necessary to our total and continued health. Perhaps this is why the waters of our country became contaminated with pollution from our cities and our industries before effective programs were undertaken to provide for clean water. Perhaps this is why we have arrived at an attitude that a dollar spent privately for any purpose is always superior to and desired over any moneys spent publicly. Unless we conclude that there can be good and bad public expenditures, as well as good and bad private expenditures, then we shall make very little inroad in placing our natural resources in the posture to serve an expanding and demanding population. We cited at the outset that S. 2958 which seeks to assault the problem of our natural resources at the local, State, and Federal level shall not be the total answer to the total problem. We doubt if there is a single answer or a single program that can be contained in one bill that will provide the ready answer and solution to all of these complex problems. I have taken the liberty of appending, at the conclusion of my statement, a brief analysis made by the Technical Review Staff of the Secretary of the Interior in 1963 that gives some dimension to the type of activities that are so desperately required in just the several areas of the Interior Department, which is not inclusive of the total Federal responsibility. It has been roughly estimated that the States have a considerably larger backlog than is indicated here. I include this information not as a definitive list but rather as an indication of the effort that must take place. Backlog of work to be done on Interior lands-Continued (5) Bureau of Indian Affairs: 7,444 320 PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOSEPH A. BEIRNE, PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO This statement is presented on behalf of the 380,000 workers in the communications industry represented by the Communications Workers of America, AFLCIO. In commenting on this legislation, it is difficult to add to the overwhelming evidence already presented in previous committee hearings in support of similar bills concerning conservation and employment. Of significance at this time is the recent signing of the wilderness preservation bill, S. 4, and the land and water conservation bill, H.R. 3846. Their enactment will place an even greater demand upon our States and Federal Government to supply the manpower needed to effect the programs which are set forth in these bills. There is a paradox between the manpower shortage in conservation, expansion and preservation of our natural resources programs and the current high rate of unemployment experienced throughout the United States. While recent studies have shown that the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961 and the Public Works Acceleration Act of 1962 have made possible programs of local redevelopment, retraining and public works which should contribute greatly to a solution of the unemployment problem in many areas, the program with its present scope cannot hope to reach out and aid those people living in many rural and depressed areas. Something is needed to give employment opportunities to those people who cannot be readily relocated and/or retrained. That something is the expansion of a program along the lines of the accelerated public works program-namely the Human and Resource Conservation Act of 1964. The major roadblocks to the inauguration of the program which this bill proposes are many. They are the same ones which blocked the recently enacted wilderness preservation bill for 10 years of dispute, debate, and finally, compromise. In addition there will be the uphill battle against public apathy to both the problem of unemployment and conservation of our natural resources as well as the age old objections regarding the cost of such a program. The ever increasing pressures on natural resources can be expected to intensify throughout the next 10 years in the fact of our country's overall population growth, rising personal incomes, increased usage of automobiles, and more leisure time. By 1975 it is estimated that over 70 percent of the expected population of 226 million Americans will be living in metropolitan areas, personal family incomes will rise to an average level of $10,000 or more, the number of automobiles will exceed 120 million, and leisure time will be more pronounced as the shorter workweek, 4- to 5-week vacations and sabbaticals are Incorporated into our society. All of these factors will place an immediate demand on our society to increase far beyond present requirements those facilities for pure water and recreation. The Nation's water problems include assuring an adequate supply of water and, even more importantly, assuring regularity and purity of the supply. In the arid West the total water now available is inadequate for the demands anticipated from metropolitan growth, irrigation agriculture, and the industries consuming large quantities of water. In all areas, but especially in the Northeast, water pollution poses a growing problem. The danger of pollution becomes particularly severe in the seasons of low waterflow, seasons which generally coincide with the periods of maximum water use. Utilization of outdoor recreational facilities has been increasing more rapidly than the acquisition of additional acreage and facilities. Visits to national parks in the past 12 years have risen by over 200 percent. Their acreage has increased by 3 percent. The Outdoor Recreation Resources Commission reported in 1960 that the demand for State park facilities was at or above capacity in 30 to 60 percent of the areas they had surveyed. These changes plus a similar situation in city parks are responsible for what one authority in the field, Marion Clawson, refers to as "the crisis in outdoor recreation." Clawson's program for bridging the gap between utilization and available resources calls for a massive expansion of intermediate recreation areas-intermediate between user-oriented city parks and resourceoriented national parks. An adequate rate of expansion, Clawson suggests, would require the additional of 60 million acres of parkland primarily in State parks by the year 2000. To catch up with present and anticipated pressures on limited facilities, it would be desirable to acquire 3 million acres a year in the 1968-75 period to have land available for park development in the 1970's. Over Resources in America's Future, an outstanding research organization, anticipates a tripling of visits to national parks between 1960 and 1980. crowding has already diminished the natural attractiveness of many of our national parks. If we adopt as our standard maintaining the current number of annual visitors per acre of parkland, an additional 50 million acres would be needed by 1980 for the expected increase in visitors. This totals to 2.5 million acres a year. These facts with regard to future growth and usage of our natural resources could leave no doubt in any reasonable man's mind that by the year 2000 the American public will find it impossible to continue to be apathetic about the problem of natural resource conservation. President Johnson has recently pointed out the magnitude of the problem of unemployment and poverty in America. By setting an income of $3,000 as being borderline we find that nearly one-fifth of our Nation lives in unacceptable conditions. According to the available statistics for 1962, there were 9.3 million families, representing 35 million individuals, with family incomes of less than $3,000. Three million six hundred thousand of these families were headed by individuals who did not work at any time during the year. Of the remaining 5.7 million families, the heads of 1.5 million worked at part-time Jobs and the heads of 1.8 million worked at full-time jobs for less than 50 weeks. Out of the total of 9.3 million families there were 6 million people in families with income below $3,000 who were dependent on family heads unemployed for 5 weeks or more. Only 2.4 million of the family heads of these families worked full time. Thus we have some of the considerations involving the current poverty and unemployment crisis in America; working people, heads of families who are capable and willing to work but whose skills and/or geographical location make them unacceptable to the labor market. As to the cost of the program proposed by Senator Nelson, can it be measured only on the short run basis in the actual dollars and cents cost of the program? Or should it be measured by the long run and really secondary cost, of crime, and deprivation caused by lack of job opportunities, and apathetic, and defeatist attitudes about earning a living? And further, can the loss and erosion of our valuable timber and farmland, the pollution of our air and water, and the exploitation of our coastlines ever be measured? We think not. The debt we are paying now because of our past inaction in the areas of unemployment and conservation of our natural resources, cannot be measured in monetary terms alone. Even looking beyond the more immediate problem of loss and depletion of natural and human resources is the sense of futility we may eventually ex |