Nation: NIXON, THE NEGRO AND THE BUDGET

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Funds for the Job Corps, a prime Nixon target in the 1968 campaign, have already been drastically cut. By July 1, said Secretary of Labor George Shultz last week, the number of openings in the corps will shrink by more than a third, from 35,000 to 22,000, and the number of centers will be reduced from 113 to 84. Claimed savings: $100 million. The Job Corps has had a mixed record of success and failure, but it seems recently to have learned from its early mistakes. The Administration maintains that equally good training can be provided for less money in other programs. It will now be on its mettle to make good the claim.

Federal Lever. Many of Nixon's 1968 supporters, particularly in the South, are more than happy with inaction on civil rights. The pressure, in fact, one top Cabinet aide notes, "is very stiff and real" not only to stay put but to move backward. "The Southern state chairmen," he says, "tell you very directly that their people supported Nixon because they'd been promised that we'd let up on things like the school desegregation guidelines. And now they expect us to do it." They are hardly happy with Mitchell's court suits or with the decision of Robert Finch, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, to continue using the withholding of federal funds as a lever to force integration in Southern schools. At the same time, they can only be gratified by the Administration's other face.

The larger question for Nixon is more than lawsuits or guidelines, important as they may be. It is, as it was for his Democratic predecessors, the issue of basic priorities, the lines upon which his Administration will be drawn. So far, the problem of the Negro appears at least third down his list, after Viet Nam and inflation. It may not stay there, however, and Nixon might heed some words in his own Inaugural. "To go forward at all," he said on Jan. 20, "is to go forward together. This means black, and white together, as one nation, not two." Nixon proved in November that a candidate could be elected without Negro votes. But it is doubtful that he can prove that a President can govern effectively without Negro confidence.