Work Done

In the first real down-to-business week of the 1963 session, Congress also:

> Approved, by a 73-12 Senate vote, a wilderness bill designed to keep woodsy parts of the U.S. in a state of nature. The bill would put 6.8 million acres of National Forest into a new preserve system, authorize the President to add up to 54 million more acres of public land over ten years. The Senate also passed the wilderness bill in 1961, but it was bottled up in the House Interior Committee, headed by Colorado Democrat Wayne Aspinall. Aspinall opposes the bill again this year.

> Authorized, by a 50-34 Senate vote, a youth conservation bill that would provide for spending $120 million to aid some 1,000,000 young people who are out of school and out of work. In one program under the bill, boys would be offered jobs in Government parks and conservation projects. In another, both boys and girls would be offered jobs working on community programs in their own home towns. The bill next goes to the House, where its future is in doubt.

> Held in the Senate the first secret session in 20 years.* The action was demanded by South Carolina Democrat Strom Thurmond, who said he had classified material to present in defense of his move to add $196 million in funds for Nike-Zeus missile sites. The Senate was evidently not impressed by Thurmond's information. When the Senate reopened its doors four hours and 26 minutes later, Thurmond lost by a vote of 58 to 16.

* The last secret session of the Senate was called on Oct. 7, 1943, to hear a two-day report from five Senators who had toured the battlefronts of World War II.

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