torted values. Our confusion can be illustrated by an unanswered question. Are we more concerned with the size, power, and wealth of our society, or with creating a more just society? The failure to pursue justice is not only a moral default. Without it, social tensions will grow and the recurring turbulence in the streets will persist despite disapproval or repressive action. Even more, a withered sense of justice in an expanding society leads to corruption of the lives of all Americans. All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

THE URBAN POOR

Is there evil in America today? Not in the sense of the systematic physical extermination of a people but in the sense of the destruction of hope, after the raising of expectations, the forced separation of the poor, whether black or white, from the rest of society, the confinement to poverty and squalor of millions of Americans. To be born a Negro in an American city, for most of us, means to be "under" the main stratum of our society-to be underemployed, or unemployed, or underpaid; to be undereducated and ill housed; to face illness and perhaps death, undercared for; to face a life of little hope, entrapped by both

color and need.

American cities are not the City of God nor the City of Man. They contain the residues of exploitation, of waste, of neglect, of indifference. The poor and the discriminated huddle in the big cities-the poorhouses of the welfare state-while affluent America displays its new gadgets in the crisp homes of suburbia. Will we move to provide a moral balance in American life and give priority to the disinherited? Or shall we continue our token attention?

Despite the shift from agriculture to industry and the decline in the share of national income going to rent, interest, and dividends, the share of the economic pie going to the bottom 20 percent of American families has not changed since World War II. This is because of increasing inequality in wages, the heavy incidence of unemployment among Negroes and other minority groups and the failure of social security and welfare payments to keep up with the rising demands of society.

The rising affluence of America has benefited the better-off more than the poor and discriminated. Our income record is acceptable only if we wish to tolerate a society in which the richest fifth of the population is 10 times as rich as the poorest fifth, and in which the average Negro earns half as much as his white counterpart.

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS IN CITY SCHOOLS

In education, the picture is also tragic. In big cities the school achievement of Negroes and other disadvantaged groups has lagged far behind that of middle-class populations and there has been an actual decline of achievement among the disadvantaged with the passage of the school years.

The problems of education in the early school years pursue the student in the later years. Less than 5 percent of all college students are Negro, even though Negroes are more than 11 percent of the collegeage population. College education increasingly becomes the key to a secure, decent, well-paid job. It is not enough to aim for reducing dropouts among the poor-the school experience must be made hospitable and effective enough so that the discriminated youngsters go on to college.

GOALS ARE TOO LOW

The sorry record of income, public service, education, indicates that we are not doing enough. A major reason for our failures is that we aim too low. Our goal is not to bring the discriminated up to a limited, particular level, but to reduce the gap between them and the rest of American society. As standards of life rise for affluent Americans, we cannot peg the poor at the old levels of "subsistence." For example, the $3,000 poverty line, set too low to begin with, must not only be adjusted for changes in the cost of living-which in any case tend to underestimate the more rapid increase in the costs of the poor in the present inflationary period-but for changes in the average standard of living of all America. We are dealing with issues of inequality, of relative standing. This is true whether we have in mind the conditions of cities in relation to suburbs, or the poor in relation to the rest of society.

One explanation of the poor educational results of Negro and other center city children alleges that there is something basically wrong with the educational capacities of these children. But how can we be confident of this when we have not given these youth an equal opportunity at a decent education?

SUMMARY OF THE METROPOLITAN STUDIES PROGRAM

Consider these facts from the important investigation of the Metropolitan Studies Program of Syracuse University: In 1962, suburbs spent $145 more per pupil than did the central cities. Even more disturbing is the sad fact that in 1957 the differences in educational expenditures between big city and suburb were very small; since then, the disparities have grown. Furthermore, the cities are discriminated against-the suburbs receive $40 more per pupil in State aid than did the cities. As the Carnegie Quarterly, fall 1966, summarizes the study:

The point is that the nation is devoting many more resources to educating suburban children than city children. We are spending much more money to educate the children of the well-off than the children of the poor, even though the educational needs of poor children are far greater than those of affluent children. Clearly, the Carnegie summary is accurate in stating that:

To achieve the substance rather than merely the theoretical form of equal educational opportunity requires the application of unequal resources; more, rather than less to the students from poor homes.

The values of the marketplace supersede the goals of social justice. We narrowly define economic cost and ignore social costs, as with the air pollution of the city. We rely on the unseen hand of economic growth to do the task of social justice. The theme of "efficiency" overwhelms the need for equity.

REBALANCE NATIONAL PRIORITIES

We need a rebalancing of our national priorities. As the Carnegie Quarterly issue that I have quoted declares:

A great deal of (money) is spent in this country every day, for education and for housing, freeways, war, national parks, liquor, cosmetics, advertising, and a lot of other things.

It is a question of the allocation of money, which means the establishing of priorities.

Instead of joyfully committing ourselves to the war on poverty, a grudging parsimonious allocation of resources is measured out as if we feared to overkill. In contrast, the exploration of space engages not only our enthusiasm but our patriotism. Developing it as a global race, we have intensified its inherent drama and brought its adventure into every living room, nursery, shop and office. No such fervor nor exhileration attends the war on poverty. There is impatience with its problems, indifference toward its progress, and pronounced hostility toward its errors. Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, and from which none presently can benefit, while the densely populated slums are allocated miniscule appropriations. With the continuation of these strange values in a few years we can be assured that we will set a man on the moon and with an adequate telescope he will be able to see the slum on earth with their intensified congestion, decay, and turbulence. On what scale of values is this a program of progress?

THE WASTE OF WAR

In still another area the expenditure of resources knows no restraints here, our abundance is fully recognized and enthusiastically squandered. This is the waste of war. While the antipoverty program is cautiously initiated, zealously supervised, and evaluated for immediate results, billions are liberally expended for ill-considered warfare. The recently revealed misestimate of the war budget amounts to $10 billion for a single year. The error alone is more than five times the amount committed to antipoverty programs.

The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures, we will lose in our decaying cities. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home-they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Beyond the advantage of diverting huge resources for constructive social goals, ending the war would give impetus to significant disarmament agreements. With the resources accruing from termination of the war, arms race, and excessive space races, the elimination of all poverty could become an immediate national reality. At present the war on poverty is not even a battle, it is scarcely a skirmish.

Poverty, urban problems, and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession. When it is not our security that is at stake, but questionable and vague commitments to reactionary regimes, values disintegrate into foolish and adolescent slogans.

The chaos of the cities, the persistence of poverty, the degenerating of our national prestige throughout the world are compelling arguments for achieving peace agreements.

AFFIRMATIVE EFFORTS TO ELIMINATE POVERTY NEEDED

It is essential to prevent the blight of poverty by assuring jobs and income for all. Chronic poverty destroys capacities. Small efforts later to alleviate the plight of the poor are insufficient to restore abilities and repair damage. We need a conscious and strong policy to prevent poverty.

We do much too little to assure decent, secure employment. And then we castigate the unemployed and underemployed for being misfits and ne'er-do-wells. We still assume that unemployment usually results from personal defects; our solutions, therefore, largely tend to be personal and individual. We need to take quite a different view of the causes and cures of the economic misfortunes of the Negro and the poor and to aim at establishing income security.

NEW APPROACHES TO EMPLOYMENT

The general economic expansion of recent years has benefited relatively little the Negro, the poor, and the unskilled. Indeed, with respect to Negro youth, the appalling facts disclose that the more prosperity rises, the faster do they sink. In October of 1965 the unemployment rate for nonwhite youth was 16.7 percent. A year later it was 19.7 percent. While unemployment for Negro youth rose by almost 20 percent in 1 year, for white youth, it declined from 8.9 percent to 8.5 percent. We need an intensive and passionate effort to adapt employment for the neglected who are forced to the end of the employment line and whose number seldom comes up.

We need a vast expansion of public services and facilities along the line suggested by the freedom budget of A. Philip Randolph, with assurances that construction employment will deliberately aim at the hiring of the poor and Negroes. Beyond that, we need human service employment so that nonprofessionals can help provide the desperately needed services in the ghetto of education and social welfare. And there must be channels built so that nonprofessionals can be upgraded into full professionals. We must avoid a new color line of black nonprofessionals and white professionals. Universities should adapt to the needs of nonprofessionals and develop second chances at credentials.

JOB TRAINING IS NOT ENOUGH

The cry has been for "training." But there has not been any guarantee of employment for those trained. All too frequently, training has been a cruel hoax on the poor and Negroes, as the trained are not placed on jobs and are shifted to other training programs or allowed to drift in the limbo of the irregular marginal economy which provides a shadow substance for all too many. Private employers have not adequately accepted their social responsibility to hire Negroes. The emphasis should not be on "creaming" the high-skilled Negroes, but on developing the low skilled. Employers should be subsidized to meet the barrier to the secure economy. The employment programs should be built around the idea of "employment first-training later." The alienation of many youth is the other side of society's neglect of and anger at them. While they are not reported in the statistics of the unemployed, they are casualties of the indifferent society. They

70-960 0-67—pt. 14- -7

are rootless in the big society. We pay attention to them only when their anger explodes. Their summers of violence follow the winters. of our neglect. Sprinklers on fire hydrants may cool the hot pavements of the city streets but not the anger of our neglected youth.

RAISE MINIMUM WAGES

Thirty percent of poor families are headed by individuals who work full time. A decent income from work should be assured all Americans. We act slowly to put an adequate floor under wages because we believe that there is a rational, economic basis for the wages that people receive. Yet the spread of wages for different jobs is much greater in the United States than in other western countries. We tend to accept these differences in rewards as either natural or necessary, but economists assure me that it is very difficult to account for wage differences in a systematic manner. Nevertheless, critics of a higher minimum wage are always raising the specter of the destruction of jobs. So far, this has not happened-perhaps because we have moved so slowly to raise the minimum wage floor. To raise minimum wages to levels that would enable a man to support his family with dignity might result in the loss of some jobs. It is my feeling that the jobs that would disappear would be worth losing. One decent job in the family might be more salutary than two or three marginal ones. We are not asking that everyone be made rich by congressional action-we are, however, maintaining that even within accepted boundaries, we can do more by way of equitable income distribution.

For the past years we have sought to reduce poverty at discount prices and we have at best created a creaking, unstable structure.

A multiplicity of legislative enactments have addressed themselves to facets of racial discrimination and poverty without abolishing either of them. Many of us who have led movements for these reforms have centered our criticism on their narrow scope. We have proposed larger and broader programs in the same general direction in the hope that if the net is made larger it would embrace more.

However, we may now have reached a point at which a change of direction toward a new concept holds a surer promise of solution.

INDIRECT, PIECEMEAL ATTACK ON POVERTY INADEQUATE

Our past thinking has proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils: Lack of education restricting job opportunities; poor housing which stultified home life and suppressed initiative; fragile family relationships which distorted personality development. The logic of this approach suggested that each of these causes be attacked, one by one. Hence, a housing program to transform living conditions, improved educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create better personal adjustments were designed. In combination, these measures were intended to remove the causes of poverty. While none of these remedies in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage-the programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at similar rates of development. Housing measures fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies. They have been piecemeal. Educational reforms have been even more slug