At nearby P.S. 120, a junior high school, four other Corpsmen are undertaking similar projects. They are also counseling slow learners and troublesome students, trying to keep them from dropping out of the school and onto Harlem's already overcrowded streets.

Also in the field of education one volunteer, a 56-year-old woman, is undertaking a study of the causes of the high dropout rate in Harlem's schools.

In overcrowded Harlem Hospital, four Corpsmen are currently at work in the Mental Hygiene division, counseling patients and learning the routine of the hospital. Ultimately they hope to set up a volunteer visitors group at the hospital.

Scattered among four Harlem community centers are the remaining 13 Corpsmen, currently undertaking such projects as teaching preschool children and holding "vocational guidance" classes with students to explore job opportunities.

"Actually," said Gwendolyn Jones, who found the jobs for the Corpsmen in co-operation with local social agencies, "enough things need to be done in this neighborhood that we could employ a thousand volunteers. We had to restrict carefully the kind of jobs the boys do. We couldn't let them just go as additional clerical help to some social agency, but since they're non-professionals we had to have some kind of supervision."

Miss Jones said the June volunteers will go to work on projects involving housing, labor, and voting registration. "We want to spread-out our volunteers a bit so they'll be able to train local kids in quite a number of areas," she explained.

Ambitious Plans

After the Corps is running smoothly, ACT plans an even more ambitious program: an Urban Youth Services Corps in which Harlem teenagers would be trained to operate social work programs in their own neighborhoods. The Domestic Peace Corps workers would serve as teachers for the Urban Corps units, but they would leave the Harlem youths to run their own program once the units were set up.

This kind of program has never been undertaken before in Harlem and it's easy to see why; even to get the Urban Corps underway ACT is planning to ask for a million-dollar government grant for more staff, new equipment, and more facilities for an increased number of Corpsmen.

ACT currently has an ambitious working program, a number of eager volunteers, a fine reception from the community and broad plans for the future. The organization's future would seem to be assured; it is not.

Ever since Sen. John R. Williams (R-Del.) included an attack on ACT in his scattergun blast against Powell on the Senate floor last January, criticism of the Domestic Corps has been widespread; newspapers from the liberal Washington Post to the conservative Chicago Tribune have blasted the Corps; more than 15 Senators and Representatives have attacked ACT in Congress.

None of these attacks, however, has been directed against the Corps' program. The opponents have been content to criticize Powell for employing his own assistant, for serving as incorporator, and for renting the Powell Center (the back half of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, of which Powell is rector) to ACT.

PBH Criticism

The only criticism of the program itself has come from Jon W. Clifton '63, president of Phillips Brooks House, who visited ACT's head quarters in January and returned disillusioned with the project. Clifton said an official of ACT to whom he had spoken seemed totally unaware of any detailed future plans for the volunteers. "Every question we asked about the program met with a blank wall," he reported.

Officials of the Domestic Peace Corps grimace when reminded of the incident. "The man Clifton spoke to was a very competent organizer who had helped us greatly in getting the program underway," one explained. "But he was also something of a con man, who was trying to retain as much power as possible within the organization. He was trying to get things done behind my back and (ACT director) Livingstone Wingate's. For example he never told us of Clifton's visit at all."

Actually by the time Clifton visited Harlem the plans for the Corps had been developed in great detail; the volunteers began their field work three days later. Any of ACT'S responsible officials could have answered all Clifton's questions.

Organizational blunders of this sort have proved nearly disastrous for the Corps; with the constant Congressional criticism the Corpsmen must be careful to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

In any case the future of the domestic Peace Corps in Harlem does not look bright. In the year of the $99 million budget, Congress is increasingly unwilling to provide funds for welfare projects, and the unwillingness is increased when the funds are ticketed for Adam Clayton Powell's district. The President's Committee on Youth will probably be willing to back the Corps as long as the Committee itself has funds, but shortly the Committee will have to go to Congress for more money. "When that happens I think Congress will take a long, hard look at the possibility of ending this particular program altogether," one Republican Congressman said recently.

It would be a pity if opposition such as this should destroy the Domestic Peace Corps; ACT has worked out a good program, and Harlem surely can use any number of new social work projects. But with Powell around its neck, the future of the Domestic Peace Corps seems bleak indeed