RELIEF: Dead Men, Dead Cats

When the truth is known about the Roosevelt Administration, the Harding Administration, with its Ohio Gang, will look like a convention of Sunday school superintendents.

So Republicans have been hopefully promising each other since 1932. on the theory that no body of politicians can handle the New Deal’s easy-come-easy-go billions without malpractice and corruption. Last week the GOP hopefully pricked its ears when William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal blew off an “expose” of the WPAdministration in New York City.

Source of the Journal’s exclusive story, quickly picked up by other Manhattan newspapers, was a special survey started last March by 35 WPA investigators to find out whether WPAbsentees needed medical attention. So astounded by the first findings that it had its own investigators trailed, the WPA kept its report secret. By some remarkable prestidigitation the Journal produced a copy, spread it flamboyantly over the front page. Investigators found, the survey stated, that 27% of the 2,084 absentees could not be located at the addresses given, that the residences named turned out to be vacant lots, playgrounds, parks, cinema theatres, the post office. Some streets listed did not exist. A few WPAbsentees were found to be hopelessly intoxicated at home.

Others were off vacationing. A girl announced that her brother “worked only when he pleased.” A mother reported her son was visiting his fiancee in Florida.

Not a few of the absentees were in sore need of immediate medical attention.

Both tragic and ludicrous were the cases outlined by the survey: Case 49,021: An investigator called on a woman in Henry Street, wanted to find out why her husband had been absent from his job for three days. “Absent-absent—these last three clays?” stammered the woman. “But—but—my husband died last year.” Case 33: The worker was convicted of robbery last year, sentenced to from two to ten years in the Connecticut State Prison. Concluded the interviewer: “In-asmuch as this worker will be unable to work in the future, he should be separated from the payroll.” Case 2,490: “Upon being ushered into this man’s apartment, a sight greeted me that was not only repulsive but nauseating. Worker himself was in a semi-drunken stupor.His wife was lying on a dirty, sheetless bed. so drunk she could hardly raise her head. A mother cat with young kittens was in a box near the bed.

The box was in a cleaner condition than the bed. … In the kitchen it was very evident that John Barleycorn reigns supreme. . . . Fifteen or 20 bottles of beer and ale, one quart of whiskey (unopened) and a fifth of gin, partly consumed, adorned the buffet. The table was strewn with dirty beer and whiskey glasses.

Recommendation: This worker has no self-respect nor any for his wife. His salary is a detriment instead of a help.

I recommend that this worker be separated.” “This worker” is still on the WPA payroll.

Not confined to drunks, crooks or dead men was the survey. “In the matter of hiring and firing personnel,” it reported, “there is much that suggests bureaucratic injustice.” Case 1,081: “The family are all in bad health, which is being aggravated by the need of clothing, shoes and properly ventilated apartment. The bedrooms have no windows and the house is damp.

Mrs. A. showed the interviewer medicine for every member of the family. Reason for absence: Discharged due to reduction in staff.”

Having thrown dead cats at New Deal Relief for two years, Republicans eagerly picked up this fresh ammunition from the Journal, let it fly. Quick to the WPA’s defense rushed the New Dealish New York World-Telegram which pointed out that the survey covered only one WPA worker in 100.

In Washington tart-tongued WPAdministrator Harry Hopkins, who loves to flay Republicans for dragging Politics into Relief, snapped: “Republicans will be in a tough spot if they really want to cut down expenditures by ‘taking it out of the politicians’ instead of the needy. But of course they won’t try to do that. What they really want to do is to cut relief costs by taking it out of the hides of the needy.”

Calmest ‘reaction to the hullabaloo was that of New York Times Pundit Arthur Krock. Wrote he: “The most steadfast vigilance on the part of administrators has been unable to prevent successful cases of malingering, double-timing and false pretenses of need. . . . How can they be eliminated entirely? Do the Republicans know the answer? If so, they have not yet imparted it.”

Only thoroughly unperturbed person last week was Colonel Brehon Burke Somervell, third to have charge of New York’s relief machine in a year, whose character was recently gauged by newshawks who asked him where he came from. “From Arkansas,” growled the Colonel, “where men are men and women are glad of it.” Last week he responded in similar vein to a Journal newshawk: “I think this is swell publicity, and the more weaselers we can find, the better pleased I’ll be. If there are any dead men on the payrolls, we want to know it.”