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Show Illiteracy in America TT HASNT BEEN PUBLICIZED, but the census takers have unearthed un-earthed the shocking fact that 10 million American adults cannot read or write. Yet congress, willing to spend billions to train young men for war has bottled up the 300 million dollar aid-to-education bill to train young men and women for peace. Georgia's Democratic Congressman Congress-man Don Wheeler has been begging for 218 of his house mates to sign a discharge petition to force the federal aid-to-education bill out of the education and labor committee where it has been salted away by the G.O.P. leadership. But he has not been able to scrape up more than 43 names! Meanwhile, literacy in the United States has sunk to an alarming low probably lower than Russia. What the public also doesn't realize is that the nation's 10 million illiterates over 24 years old are not southern Negroes, but many of them native-born whites. Official statistics statis-tics show that 4,200,000 adults, who cannot read or write, are whites born in this country. Another An-other 3,100,000 are foreign-born whites, whereas only 2,700,000 are Negroes. The remaining handful are Latin Americans and Orientals Orien-tals by birth. Furthermore, illiteracy isn't found exclusively in the South. For example, more than one million illiterate adults live in New York, another 696,000 in Pennsylvania and 462,000 in Illinois. However, 36 per cent of Louisiana's total population popula-tion cannot read or write. During the war, draft boards weeded out 350,000 young men who could sign their name only with an X. Of these, 150,000 were physically physi-cally fit to serve in the army but were disqualified because of lack of education a loss to the country of approximately 15 divisions. Yet house leaders are not willing to spend a few million dollars on a bill already passed by the senate and which again would make America Amer-ica the most enlightened nation in the world. Veterans Housing BiEl MICHIGAN'S CONGRESSMAN JESSE WOLCOTT, who has been bottling up the housing bill, thought he would show he was not anti-veteran anti-veteran by calling two witnesses to speak for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He did this despite the fact that ; he had a telegram in his pocket ! officially repudiating the two witnesses. wit-nesses. Signed by Merle Hopper, Michigan VFW commander, the telegram read: "George Lyle and Arthur Greig purported to represent Michigan department VFW on housing at your committee hearings. No one but myself is authorized to speak for VFW in Michigan on any sub-, ject before congress." Deliberately ignoring this protest pro-test from the VFW commander, Wolcott in effect deceived the public by putting Greig and Lyle on the stand to denounce low-cost low-cost housing for war vets. He also failed to mention that Greig and Lyle for a long time have been playing hand-in-glove with the real-estate lobby in Detroit However, Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana, himself a veteran, vet-eran, did not let Wolcott get away with this. He asked Lyle if the national VFW was for public housing. hous-ing. Knowing the answer was "Yes," Wolcott had the nerve to interrupt Boggs. But the Louisianan persisted: "I insist on an answer to my question as to whether the national na-tional VFW has indorsed this bill-yes bill-yes or no." Lyle finally had to admit that the Veterans of Foreign Wars favored fa-vored passage of the housing bill and that he and Greig were speaking speak-ing only for themselves. Chairman Wolcott looked very sick. Army-Navy Unification THE GREATEST ARGUMENT in favor of army-navy unification was pooling of supplies. It was estimated that the taxpayers could be saved a lot of money if the army and navy bought their supplies sup-plies together instead of bidding against each other. However, Secretary of Defense Forrestal, supposedly a businessman, business-man, hasn't even accomplished this despite the fact that he knew from recent war experiences how great this waste was. The waste that has resulted from this lack of uniformity is astronomical. For example, 30 million dollars worth of tubes were purchased by the army In 1942 enough to last for 10 years. Yet the following week another order was placed for 60 million dollars worth of tubes because the army had to stock different types. As a result, army warehouses ware-houses overflowed with tubes that varied only slightly from each other, maybe no more than a prong spaced differently. |
