Mr. HARDING. Mr. Perrin was an assistant director in charge of one of our staff offices until he moved up to become the Acting Deputy Director.

The CHAIRMAN. He is the Acting Deputy Director?

Mr. HARDING. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a prepared statement, have you not, Mr. Harding?

Mr. HARDING. I do, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. You may read it.

Mr. HARDING. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I welcome this opportunity to present the views of the Office of Economic Opportunity on the demonstration grant to the Woodlawn Organization on Chicago's South Side. Two basic issues are before us:

(1) Should the Federal Government try to salvage the hardcore alienated youth in our city slums; and

(2) Was the Chicago pilot project a responsible attempt to get at this problem?

I feel the answer is "Yes," in both cases.

Senator MUNDT. Mr. Harding, we will be going into the Wilmington situation, too. It seems to me there are three issues before us instead of two.

I don't know whether you have it in your paper or not but I assume you are prepared to testify in that connection regarding what the hearings have disclosed so far.

Mr. HARDING. Yes, Senator Mundt.

My statement was prepared in connection with the Woodlawn project only. We are prepared to testify in connection with the Delaware project and that is primarily the reason I wanted Mr. Perrin here this morning.

Mr. Perrin has been following this for our office over the last several months and is more familiar with the details than I am. But we are prepared on that subject. My remarks here, however, are limited to the Woodlawn Organization.

Senator MUNDT. Would you include, then, under the umbrella of "yes," also the Wilmington project?

Mr. HARDING. Yes, sir; I would include it as a responsible effort to get at the problem of alienated youth.

We hear much these days about the crisis in our cities. Probably the single-most explosive element in that crisis is the problem of jobless, out-of-school and gang youth. The urban teenage poor-black and white-seem to have been completely cut off from the American mainstream. Underschooled, unemployed or unemployable, and recently exhibiting violent responses to these conditions, they pose a serious problem for all Americans. The size of this problem is staggering. Presently in the United States, there are approximately 4 million Negro youth, age 15 to 24. By 1975, their number will rise by 1.6 million, a 40.1percent increase. Youth from this population have the highest unemployment rate in the Nation, the largest incidence of broken families, the steepest proportionate crime rates, the poorest capacity for armed services acceptance, and-most tragically-the most dismal prospect

for decent, rewarding lives. For these and other reasons they are alienated, angry, militant, and antisocial.

Senator MUNDT. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Senator MUNDT. In the preceding page you say, "The urban teenage poor, black and white," et cetera.

Now you have given us the statistics for the Negro youth. Can you give us the comparable statistics for the white youth in the same areas under somewhat similar conditions?

Mr. HARDING. I cannot give you the figures off the top of my head, Senator Mundt. But I will be happy to supply those figures for the record on a comparable basis.

(The information supplied by OEO in answer to the preceding question follows:)

On page 5728, Senator Mundt requests corresponding data for white urban youth in poverty similar to that given in Mr. Harding's statement for poor Negro urban youth. I should point out that the figures furnished in Mr. Harding's statement are quoted from the Kerner Commission Report, which unfortunately speaks only of non-white poor urban youth with respect to crime, unemployment, military rejection and broken families. So with any convenient comparability statistics lacking, the best answer we are able to give Senator Mundt is to cite the most recent Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area Census figures, a 1965 survey of white urban youth between 14 and 21, never married, and living below the poverty level in cities of 50,000 population or more. In 1965, there were 305,000 such youth in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

Senator MUNDT. If you present it on that basis you should balance it out by giving the statistics for the white youth also.

Mr. HARDING. Yes, sir.

The reason I shifted from the problem of the white to the problem of the black is because we are dealing with the TWO situations, with exclusively a black population.

In our view, the Federal Government must take responsibility, in cooperation with State and local institutions, for reaching these youth and redirecting them toward our society.

Not only must the Federal Government act, it must act daringly and creatively. It must be willing to take responsible chances. Traditional measures by established social and Government institutions apparently have met with little success. The ranks of alienated youth have swelled, not diminished-the degree of alienation has increased-not decreased and we see the results almost daily in the incidents-large and smallinvolving teenage violence in our cities.

The Federal Government sponsors over $17 billion worth of research and development on critical national problems-space, cancer, agriculture that is roughly 10 percent of the Federal budget. OEO's R. & D. budget is around $42 million-or approximately 2 percent of our total expenditures.

The CHAIRMAN. Forty-two million dollars would not be 2 percent of $17 billion, would it?

Mr. HARDING. No, sir; our budget is approximately $2 billion.
The CHAIRMAN. You are speaking of your budget?

Mr. HARDING. Yes, sir. Two percent of our budget goes for R. & D.
The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. HARDING. But we are also dealing with a critical problem—in this case, the problem of the disaffected poor youth, and it is in this context that the TWO project must be examined.

The point that I would like to establish, without any specific reference to the TWO project, is that that experimentation is as necessary in the social as it is in the physical sciences that OEO's effort in this regard is not out of line with the overall Federal picture; and, finally, that experimentation, by its very nature must contemplate failure as well as success.

As to the second issue--the propriety of OEO's involvement in the Chicago manpower demonstration-the authority to conduct research and pilot projects to develop new means of helping poor people get out of poverty has been part and parcel of OEO since its inception (sec. 232, formerly 207). Headstart, Neighborhood Health Centers, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, and Legal Services were first tested as demonstration projects under the same congressional authority.

OEO also has responsibility for operating juvenile delinquency programs. Since 1965 we have assumed responsibility for the operation of a dozen programs formerly administered by the Office of Juvenile Delinquency. The report of the Senate's Committee on Labor and Public Welfare on the Economic Opportunity Act Amendments of 1967 lists as an eligible activity of OEO "restorative services for juvenile delinquents and criminals."

Other sections of that same Senate report note with favor the juvenile delinquency control aspects of such projects as Job Corps and Neighborhood Youth Corps. It is clear that OEO would be remiss in performing its congressionally imposed duties if it did not develop programs to redirect the seriously antisocial youth.

Having pointed out the nature and magnitude of the problem along with the urgency of developing new solutions; and having established that authority for such experimental projects exists within OEO legislation; let me outline OEO's rationale in funding TWO and describe our experience to date.

TWO, The Woodlawn Organization, is an indigenous organization set up in 1961 by 100 religious, civic, and business groups in the city of Chicago. It has been described by Fortune magazine as "the most important and impressive experiment affecting Negroes anywhere in the United States." With its forward-looking community leadership, it has established a remarkable record in dealing successfully with the thorny problems facing the South Side of Chicago. We at OEO had known and respected Reverend Brazier, TWO's capable president, and his organization, for some time. So, when TWO applied for a pilot youth project to motivate, train, and place in jobs hard-core, male Woodlawn school dropouts-most of them gang members we took the opportunity to work with this organization and authorized a $927,341 grant on June 2, 1967. (It should be noted, however, that the actual OEO expenditures to TWO were approximately $760,000.) Considerable thought and discussion went into this project. OEÓ and TWO consulted with such authorities in the field as the Ford Foundation, staff members of the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, the President's Crime Commission, the National Institute of Mental Health, Raytheon Co., Encyclopedia Britannica, and Xerox. In addition, discussions were held with representatives of Mayor Daley, the Chicago police, and the Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity.

85-779 0-68-pt. 13- 4

After these consultations, the project was developed with the following goals:

To reach 800 hard-core male youth, many of whom had police records.

To provide basic literacy and math skills, employment orientation, and on-the-job training. It was anticipated that 500 would have successfully completed this program and moved into jobs.

To test whether the ghetto youth leadership under professional supervision could add to the success of the project by sharing in the planning and operation of the manpower program.

To test whether the gang structure would assist in shifting attitudes toward productive and responsible adult citizenship.

To test whether such a community-based and operated program will, in time, provide a link with established agencies and programs which are now distrusted by the youth.

As indicated, one of the major experimental goals was to test the use of youth leadership in the program. Hence, gang members were hired as recruiters, instructors and center chiefs. Gangs and nongang youth were enrolled with a training stipend consistent with the Illinois State Employment Service formula which is based on the Federal Manpower Development Training Act.

A fundamental assumption was that initially it is better to try to work with the already prominent and undeniably influential gang structure than it is to try to destroy it. The prevailing view with the Chicago police force, however, seems to be that the gang structure must be destroyed in order to work effectively with the youth. It appears that the conflict between these two approaches has been largely responsible for much of the controversy surrounding the project. Obviously, I am not prepared to state that our approach was "right" and the police philosophy was "wrong." The answer to that question could really only be ascertained by the results of the experimentation. I am convinced that it would have been extremely useful to have had some objective data on which to base future decisions in this extremely important area of concern.

It is my judgment that the conflict between these viewpoints has resulted in tensions within the community which preclude obtaining data to demonstrate the values of either proposition in this key area of experimentation.

In spite of all of the acknowledged problems with the experiment, there have been some positive results. Significant numbers of Woodlawn out-of-school youth were given an opportunity and an alternative for the first time in their lives. Several now have friends working in a factory, not just hanging around a street corner. More than 60— out of an initial placement of 100-are earning an honest wage averaging $2.25 an hour. Many of these youth appear to be breaking away from the heavy dependency on the gang simply because they are now working constructively at a job 8 hours a day rather than working destructively during that time within the gang.

On the other hand, our placement efforts have been unsatisfactory. We had hoped to place 500 and, to date, have been successful in only 100 cases. Efforts continue to place the remaining 400 youth, but it is clear that this is a much more difficult task than we had anticipated.

We have learned a great deal about this type of project. As we be came aware of problems in the early stage of the program's operations, we made appropriate changes. There were some weaknesses or gaps in the initial program design which we were unable to correct because circumstances and time made correction impossible, but we know more today about developing programs for hard-core youth than we did 1 year ago. We have learned where the pitfalls are, the kinds of conditions necessary to a successful program, and which techniques appear to be helpful.

These are the major lessons which we have learned:

1. We did not have a sufficiently high ratio of professionals to nonprofessionals. As a consequence, the project lacked the necessary dayto-day guidance. One reason for this was that the trainees proved to be at a considerably lower level of educational achievement than we had anticipated. Attempts were made to correct this vital deficiency midway in the operation, but because of the project's uncertain status, we were unable to attract qualified professionals.

2. The project should have had a more experimental basic educational component. This component should have been of greater intensity and should have been more functionally related to the world of work.

Senator MUNDT. Will you explain what you mean by that rather obtuse phrase?

Mr. HARDING. Our sociologist wrote that.

Senator MUNDT. A more experimental basic educational compo

nent.

Mr. HARDING. When you are trying to teach reading and math to a 17-year-old kid who has for one reason or another rejected that learning process at age 5 or 6, you have a quite different problem; an educator has a quite different problem before him.

There are some techniques that have been developed. One of them I think has been criticized during hearings before this committee, where we were attempting, for example, to use comic books in the educational process.

Now you walk into one of these classes and you see a bunch of kids looking at comic books and you can make an assumption that no educational process is going on, whereas in fact the theory is, and to some degree it has been demonstrated as proper, that you need first to attract this 17-year-old's attention.

So, you have to use these new and somewhat unique devices to get them over a hurdle which you do not have to have when you are dealing with a normal child at 5 or 6 and trying to teach him the same skills.

This is what we mean by experimental educational techniques.

3. Job orientation should have concentrated more on onsite visits to plants and companies to offer a realistic picture of the work world. The classroom is not an adequate location to explain the mechanics of entry-level employment. Work orientation also should have been better integrated with the educational element of the program.

4. The on-the-job training aspect of the project did not develop satisfactorily. The Chicago Urban League found it difficult to locate in-plant training slots for project youth. Consequently, the integra