Youth Parade

Congress must pass the A. Y. A. Parlez Vous

Congress must pass the A. Y. A. Parlez Vous

Congress must pass the A. Y. A.

That's what all young people say Hinky

dinky parlez vous.

In Washington last week, this version of a 20-year-old War song was sung by 3,000 U. S. youths and maidens of about that age who congregated in the Capital to lobby for passage of the American Youth Act. Unimpressed by foreign crises, nationwide Recession or the advisability of attending to their homework, the "pilgrims" were in hope that a parade, attendance at Senate subcommittee hearings and their innocuous yodelings would persuade Congress to pass a bill of which the major intent is to provide part-time jobs for the youth of both sexes between 16 and 25.

Youth's pilgrimage to Washington last week was sponsored by the American Youth Congress which claims to be an amalgamation of some 32 U. S. youth organizations, to represent 15,000,000 U. S. citizens between 16 and 25. Actually, the A. Y. C. is composed mainly of the more militantly left-wing members of its subsidiary groups. Most articulate representative in Washington last week was Editor Vivian Liebman of the Vassar Miscellany News, who informed a Senate Subcommittee on Education & Labor, that "our future husbands will probably not graduate out of the fraternity into the flophouse. Vassar students are drawn from the wealthier 10% . . . but this cannot close our eyes to what is happening to the girls of the other 90%."

Sponsor of the A. Y. A., which would appropriate $500,000,000 to provide part-time jobs, finance vocational training, is Minnesota's amiable Ernest Lundeen, father of two children, who last week compared it to the Homestead Act of 1862. Said Mr. Lundeen:

"Under the Homestead Act of 1862, any boy could go to the West and acquire a home and a chance to earn a living for the mere asking. Today these opportunities are gone. We can no longer expand to the West. Hopes and aspirations of young America are piling up behind the dam of economic circumstances. No such economic barrier can long survive the pressure which increases with each rising hour. Let us open the floodgates to young America, by legislating this Homestead Act of 1938. The American Youth Act is the new frontier."

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