OKLAHOMA: Free-for-all

Oklahoma has had many bounties. Between 1889 and 1902 some 420,000 U. S. citizens got free homesteads in Oklahoma. Other lucky Oklahomans have struck oil. Their less lucky neighbors have made Oklahoma a No. 1 centre of easy money crusades, including the Townsend Movement, whose Cherokee-blooded onetime Vice President Gomer Smith Oklahoma last year elected to Congress. Last week it appeared, however, that some dishonest Oklahomans had found another bounty, the Social Security Board’s old age assistance plan.

Not to be confused with old age insurance (toward which U. S. employers and employes pay a premium with every salary check), old age assistance payments are outright gifts to needy U. S. citizens 65 or over. Although each State administers its program independently, the Federal Government matches the State’s contribution and adds 5%, for administrative expenses. Some $10,000.000 of Federal money has poured into Oklahoma since the State got its program going in July 1936. When Oklahoma’s indigent old reached the impressive total of 68,000 the Social Security Board began to investigate. A random check of the rolls in 46 of the State’s 77 counties disclosed that $685,000 of the assistance money had gone to ineligibles, indicated that a complete State check would raise the total to $3,000,000. At this point the Board’s Director Arthur Altmeyer summoned a number of officials, including Chairman John Eddleman and Director Henry J. Denton of the State Welfare Commission, which had charge of the program, to explain to him in Washington.

At the public hearings before the Board last week blame for the State of Oklahoma’s rolls appeared to rest on: 1) political subordinates, 2) Indians, 3) the possibility that Oklahoma’s politicians hadencouraged old folks to confuse their program with the Townsend plan. Whatever the cause, Oklahoma’s oldsters had leaped onto the bandwagon with a vengeance. One pensioner, a physician, had just bought a new Ford for cash. A pensioned blacksmith owned his own shop, a car, two lots, owed no debts or back taxes. Of 47 ineligibles on the rolls in one county, 20 were not 65 years of age. Among the discovered beneficiaries were 157 corpses, twelve inmates of insane asylums. Over 1.400 case files were missing. Other interesting pensioners: an aged Negro who lived on a county line, had changed his name to draw pensions in both counties; the mother of a $14,000-a-year major league baseballer; a woman at whose home the investigator had been received by a butler. Snorted Representative Jack Nichols of Eufaula: “I didn’t know there was a butler in Oklahoma.”

Since the Board temporarily cut off funds for Illinois last year on far less flagrant provocation, that was the prospect which at week’s end disturbed many a worthy old Oklahoman.