Goals to Go

In the 1960s every American is summoned to extraordinary personal responsibility, sustained effort and sacrifice. For the nation is in grave danger, threatened by the rulers of one-third of mankind, for whom the state is everything, the individual significant only as he serves the state.

Thus the President's Commission on National Goals this week put a challenge to the U.S. in the bluntest terms to come out of an official document in the Eisenhower Administration. Established by President Eisenhower last February, the commission, headed by Henry M. Wriston, president-emeritus of Brown University,/- had as its charter the development of a "broad outline of national objectives and programs for the next decade and longer." The Wriston Report not only fulfills that requirement but details some hard specifics and boldface imperatives. Items:

Equality. Religious prejudice and racial discrimination are "economically wasteful, and in many respects dangerous." Equal opportunities and rights, "the core of our system," require action at all levels. "Municipal, state and federal legislation is essential." The report urged that 1) federal funds should be denied those who discriminate on basis of race, 2) discrimination in higher education should be entirely eliminated by 1970, and 3) "every state must make progress in good faith toward desegregation of publicly supported schools."

Education. "Within the next decade at least two-thirds of the youth in every state should complete twelve years of schooling and at least one-third enter college." Small and inefficient school districts should be consolidated, reducing the total number from 40,000 to about 10,000. Teachers' salaries must be improved, graduate school capacity doubled, public and private expenditures doubled (to $40 million), federal spending increased from $24.9 billion to $33 billion a year.

Arts & Sciences. "Knowledge and innovation must be advanced on every front . . . We should be highly selective in our space objectives and unexcelled in their pursuit. Prestige arises from sound accomplishment, not from the merely spectacular . . . In the eyes of posterity, the success of the U.S. as a civilized society will be largely judged by the creative activities of its citizens in art, architecture, literature, music and the sciences . . . Our society must stimulate and support richer cultural fulfillment . . . Thus far, television has failed to use its facilities adequately for educational and cultural purposes, and reform in its performance is urgent."

The Economy. Government participation in the economy should be limited to areas that are essential to the national interest. But economic growth, "consistent with primary dependence upon free enterprise and the avoidance of marked inflation," should not exclude increased investment in the "public sector," i.e., federal spending. The U.S. can increase its annual gross national product by 3.4% "without extraordinary stimulating measures." The work force will increase by 13.5 million in the next decade, and "we must seek to keep unemployment consistently below 4% of the labor force." "Substantial" tax reform is needed, says the report, in order to "assure equitable treatment of all types of incomes, to encourage the accumulation of risk capital . . . and to remedy the many contradictions and flaws which have grown up within the system."

Agriculture. For the 50% of the nation's farmers who operate at subsistence levels and produce only 10% of farm output, the report recommends "new opportunities." In short, the 1,500,000 U.S. farm operators now earning less than $1,500 a year should sell their small farms and take up a new trade. Price supports "will continue to be necessary for some time," but the U.S. must continue to develop overseas markets for its surpluses as well as improve the nutritional levels of many Americans if it wants to reduce farm surpluses.

Welfare. "The demand for medical care has enormously increased . . . We must have more doctors, nurses . . . hospitals, clinics and nursing homes." Federal grants for hospital construction, medical facilities and doctor training should be continued and extended; a maximum research effort on mental health is needed.

Goals Abroad. Since "our principles and ideals impel us to aid the new nations," the U.S. should support the United Nations and international economic organizations, devise new forms of cooperation, and encourage "far larger numbers of qualified Americans to live and work abroad." The threat of Communism demands the "most effective countermeasures." Communist China's "blatant hostility" requires "urgent" strengthening of Pacific defenses and ties with Pacific allies. Limitation and control of nuclear armament is imperative; a "safeguarded agreement to suspend nuclear testing may well be the first step."

"Man has never been an island unto himself," concludes the report. "The shores of his concern have expanded from his neighborhood to his nation, and from his nation to his world. Free men have always known the necessity for responsibility. A basic goal for each American is to achieve a sense of responsibility as broad as his worldwide concerns and as compelling as the dangers and opportunities he confronts."

/-Other members: Frank Pace Jr., board chairman of General Dynamics Corp. and onetime (1950-52) Secretary of the Army; Erwin D. Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor; James B. Conant, president-emeritus of Harvard and onetime Ambassador to West Germany; Colgate W. Darden Jr., former president of the University of Virginia, former Governor of Virginia and member of Congress; Crawford H. Greenewalt, president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.; General Alfred M. Gruenther, president of the American Red Cross and onetime Supreme Allied Commander in Europe; Retired Judge (U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) Learned Hand (who in October withdrew from the commission because of illness); Clark Kerr, president of the University of California; James R. Killian Jr., chairman of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and onetime special assistant to President Eisenhower for science and technology; George Meany, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. These members had the help of 14 experts, who in turn drew on the recommendations of about 100 specialists in various fields.

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