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WHAT'S W R O l WITH Our understaffed veterans' hospitals have had to fire more help, and our reserve pilot training has had to be cut, but there's plenty of money for "teaching" veterans anything from ballroom dancing to "mixology"

B Y A I i B E R T Q. AIAISEI.

Edmund Kubashack learns a new step at the Joliiiny Johnson Dancing Studios in C^liicago

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N TOPEKA, Kansas, the Veterans' Hospital last August was forced to fire 139 nurses, attendants and other help. In some wards, for acutely sick mental patients, the number of attendants had to be cut in half. At times only one attendant has been available to cover five wards in five buildings—wards filled with violent or disturbed patients. Both patients and attendants are in constant danger of serious injury as a result. The quality of medical care has declined. Similar dismissals have had similar results throughout the country. What is the reasoti for all this? It is a penny-pinching congressional appropriation that has left the veterans' hospitals at least $32,000,000 short of their needs. Meanwhile, in the flying fields around Topeka the same Veterans Administration that is too broke to run its hospitals on an adequate basis spends thousands of dollars every day to teach flying. There isn't enough money to man the hospital wards. But, believe it or not, there has been plenty to pay for the training of ballroom dancers, bartenders, amateur photographers, amateur piccolo players, horseback riders and chicken sexers. We have been robbing our most deserving and needy veterans—the sick, the disabled, the wounded—of essential medical services. We have not done enough for the more than a million veterans who, under the G.I. Bill of Rights, are pursuing educational objectives that are worth while to themselves and to the nation. Meanwhile, we have squandered at least lialf a billion dollars supporting what in many instances is the greatest boondoggle of all time: the questionable Veterans' Education program. Consider, for example, the wonderful art of chicken sexing. Before the war a fewscore Japanese-Americans made a not-too-splendid living by separating male baby chicks from the females. If one Nisei wanted to learn the trade he worked beside another, Stanley S. Honda, left, a war veteran, receives instruction in chicken sexing from George Sagano in Chicago Collier's for May 1, 1948

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Henry Ridcout, left, veteran war pUot, is told how to bank a slow passenger plane at die Brayton Flying Service near St. Louis, Mo.

and that was all there was to it. But today the Veterans Administration, under the law, is paying up to $500 a year for the training of any veteran who wants to go to any state-approved school. Thus has been born a chain of chick-sexing colleges. In Chicago we have the National Chick Sexing School of 837 North La Salle Street, accredited by the State of Illinois to render to veterans a sevenmonth course for a mere $500 of good taxpayers' money. What a Visitor Will Find If you go to 837 North La Salle Street you may have a httle difficulty finding the school. The hallway of this not too prepossessing building is Hned with signs in Japanese, in English and in mixed English and Japanese. You may notice that the place contains the offices of the National Chick Sexing Association and the business premises of the Sagano Brothers—Distributors of Eggs. But do not worry. The school of higher learning, the citadel of chicken-sexing knowledge, is also there, and fully equipped. The state has seen to that. It made Mr. George Sagano file a complete report, just to make sure he had adequate educational equipment. So Mr. Sagano sat down and carefully tabulated his educational supplies: 2 tables 8 chairs 8 lamps Chicken boxes Blackboard, and Accessories. Live chicks used to work upon. On this basis of the foregoing, the sovereign State of Illinois, on October 14, 1946, designated the National Chick Sexing School as an appropriate institution "qualified and equipped to furnish education and training to World War 11 veterans." Of course, after ex-G.I.s have spent seven months absorbing the learning imparted by brother Sagano and after the taxpayers have ponied up $500 and seven months' subsistence allowance for each of his students, one might expect that the veterans would be fully qualified to go out and make

Instructor Martin Weber watches Joe Burgoni (in dark shirt) shake a cocktail during class at the Continental Bartending School, Chicago, 111. The Continental has received state approval

all the living a chick sexer can make. Such, alas, is not the case, as the good professor was careful to point out to the State of Illinois. "The length of the course," the professor wrote, "is seven months, after which the student still requires a year or two of experience in the field before he becomes an expert chick sexer." Suspicious folks, with little faith in human nature, might come to the conclusion that this explanation is offered in order to prepare the V.A. for further payments from the public treasury later on. For if veterans leave Mr. Sagano's college with anything less than full qualifications as expert chick sexers their future employers may render them further, on-the-job training. And in that event the law provides that the V.A. will supplement their salaries up to $250 a month. At the Chicago V.A. offices I asked R. W. Marshall, chief of the Training Facilities Section, just how he could be sure it really required seven months and $500 of training to make an inexpert chicken sexer. He shook his head and cited the law, which says plainly the states shall have the last word in approving schools. If Illinois thinks chicken sexing is worth five hundred bucks, the Chicago Branch of the Veterans Administration has stood ready to take the state's word for it and pay the freight. Not so at the V.A. regional office in St. Louis. There, C. B. Sherry, vocational rehabilitation and education service director, has taken a tougher attitude under circumstances that permit a more liberal interpretation of the law. The Richardson Chick Sexing School of Alva, Oklahoma, proposed to charge $300 for a four-week course in chicken sexing. The Veterans Administration cast a disapproving eye upon this proposal and declined—at least up to the middle of last February —to enter into a contract at that price. Another Richardson Chick Sexing School in Arkansas City, Kansas, offered the Veterans Administration a proposal based on $300 for 100 hours of instruction plus 15 cents for each baby chick squashed by the hands of a trainee. But Sherry and his assist-

ants, analyzing the cost data submitted with the contract, came to the conclusion that S80.86 would be a maximum "fair and reasonable"' tuition charge. The John E. Smith School of Bolivar, Missouri, proposed a $400 charge for a three-month chick-sexing course. After a suitable period of palaver, however, a contract was signed providing for $40 tuition for a ten-week course, plus 15 cents for each chick destroyed. Thus we have a curious situation in which the noble art of chicken sexing —taught in not a single accredited agricultural college as a separate course—is costing the government as little as $40 in some schools and up to $500 in others. In Chicago, the veteran is expected to spend seven months being "educated" as a chicken sexer. But in Bolivar, Missouri, only a tenweek course is deemed necessary, and in Arkansas City, Kansas, and Alva, Oklahoma, the required period of instruction is less than a month. V.A. Draws a New Contract Let it not be said that the Veterans Administration authorities in Chicago have been completely asleep at the chicken-sexing switch. They haven't questioned the National Chick Sexing School's right to a $500 fee. But they did insist that Mr. Sagano was not offering quite enough instruction for that money. So now they have prepared a new contract that says the veteran student there must get at least 730 hours of instruction to justify Mr. Sagano's $500 tuition fee. Chicken sexing is small-fry business. The Veterans Administration is paying for the training of more chicken sexers than ever existed before. But the really big-time operators in the educational game have found far richer fields to plow; for instance, the ancient art of bartending. In the words of the Maryland School of Mixology —which advertises that it is both "G.I. and State Approved"—bartending is a lifetime profession. All over the country, state approving authorities have certified bartending schools as G.I. educational institutions. Some of the schools give

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short courses providing 200 hours of instruction. Otheis have a different estimate of the intelligence of the veteran and stretch courses to as much as seven months—long enough to justify a $500 tab for Uncle Sam. In this field, too, curious facts can be observed. In Illinois, for example, Hense's Tavern of Mount Steriing had been approved by Vernon L. Nickell, the state superintendent of public instruction, as a "facility for the training of tavern managers," under the provisions of the G.I. Bill of Rights. But something upset Hense's educational applecart. On November 14, 1946, approval was withdrawn by Mr. Nickell, who wrote: "We are advised by representatives of labor and management in the retail alcoholic beverage industry that training on the job beyond a 60i-day period is unnecessary to qualify a bartender or tavern operator," (A careful survey by the author of bars from coast to coast confirms Mr. Nickell's astute judgment. Most bartenders learn their gracious art by experimenting on their customers. As one cocktail maestro succinctly puts it, "If you're smart enough to read the labels on the bottles, you can get by without going to college.") Maybe you don't want to be a bartender? Okay, just name whatever you want to learn and we'll find you a school ready and willing to furnish instruction at the taxpayers' expense. How about ballroom dancing? That can be real fun, and you can learn it all over the country, in any state where the state authorities certify it as a legitimate form of G.I. education. But here you'll have to be just a wee bit careful. When you go to enroll at a dancing college you may find that you're taking a course that will qualify you as a dancing instructor. It doesn't matter that you may have no intention of ever becoming a dancing instructor. No one will try to find out what you earn now as a physician, a lawyer, an architect or whatever you are. Just keep your mouth shut about it and ask no questions, and you can learn dancing at government expense. (Continued on page 54) 85

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