Remember the "Forgotten"

God may love the common people, but unfortunately a sizable segment of the nation's population has been feeling exceptionally common and dangerously unloved. Last week the White House studied a confidential Government report on the discontent, disappointment and disaffection of the large and potentially volatile lower middle class.

The report, written by Assistant Labor Secretary Jerome Rosow, notes that 40% of American families, comprising 70 million family members, have incomes of between $5,000 and $10,000 a year. That is hardly a new or eyebrow raising perception, but the analysis points out that these "forgotten Americans"--many of them ethnics and blue-collar workers--feel bedeviled by crime, welfare, inflation and Government inattention. The squeeze is not only economic but social; the mystique of the nobility and value of labor is all but gone.

To begin retrieving the lower middle class from its alienation--a feeling that might, coincidentally, prompt many of them to follow a George Wallace in 1972 --the report recommends an eleven-point program of tax relief, job retraining and adult education. To restore some of the laborer's lost mythos, it suggests that the Government might even issue postage stamps honoring various trades. The Administration denies that it will make any calculated appeal to hardhat militancy, insisting that the report "deals with all people in a certain economic status, regardless of race." But it is not lost on the White House that winning the hearts and votes of white workingmen and women will require more than a program of "benign neglect."

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