LABOR: Third Winter

“One good old word — work” was President Hoover’s first prescription for meeting the Depression which crashed down upon the country in the fall of 1929. On his orders a potent army of industrialists, railmen, motormen, bankers, manufacturers, public utilitarians and labor leaders marched to the White House where they pledged “business-as-usual.” More public works were planned to absorb unemployment. Private companies were urged to goin heavily for new construction. In come taxes were cut 1 % to spur economic recovery.

In spite of the President’s best efforts, the conservative American Federation of Labor counted 3,700,000 workers out of jobs that first winter of the Depression.*

Late last October when business did not bulge as expected, President Hoover started to prepare for a second winter of Unemployment and distress. His relief formula : Each community must rely on local charity and help itself, with not a penny from the Federal Treasury. Though nothing was to come from Washington but advice, sympathy and cooperation, President Hoover held another round of conferences with such notables as Bernard Mannes Baruch, Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., Charles Hayden. A Cabinet committee was appointed “to formulate plans.”

From New York City Col. Arthur Woods was summoned to take “a kind of coordinating job” as head of the President’s Emergency Committee on Employment, to prod local relief agencies and issue cheery reports. The public buildings program was pressed harder. Announced the President: “As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to our citizens who are in honest difficulties.”

In a special January count the Census Bureau estimated that the unemployed of the nation had increased to 6,050,000 the second winter (1930-31) of the Depression.

This year President Hoover did not wait until late autumn before preparing for a hard winter. In June he inaugurated his moratorium plan as a world business stimulant. This he followed up by requesting all Community Chests, through their national organization, to survey joblessness, determine well in advance the “load of distress” they would have to meet. As before, he summoned Big Business to the White House for advice and comfort. Said he reassuringly: “The problem of Unemployment and Relief, whatever it may be, will be met.” Before him loomed the A. F. of L.’s prediction for the third winter of the Depression: 7,000,000 jobless.

Last week President Hoover showed further how the problem would be met. He knew it was a third thundering challenge to his national leadership. His political life, he realized, largely depended on what he did this winter. Twice he had tried and failed to hold down Unemployment. His third attempt, he knew, will be judged at renomination time and sentenced or applauded at the subsequent election. Convinced that his relief formula of local self-help was sound, he set about enlarging its scope, enlisting Big Names to increase its prestige. No less than the rising tide of joblessness, he was combating a growing Congressional demand for direct Federal aid — for a Dole.

First Big Name to be drafted last week for White House Service was that of blond, hazel-eyed Walter Sherman Gifford, 46-year-old president of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., world’s greatest public utility. A “clean desk” executive, Mr. Gifford is essentially an actuary. He enjoys working with statistics, charts and graphs no less than the engineer in the White House. Charity work is his only hobby. On these qualifications President Hoover made him Generalissimo of Unemployment Relief, put at his disposal “the whole force of the Administration.”

Generalissimo Gifford’s job: “To cooper ate with the public authorities and to mobilize the National, State and territorial agencies of every kind which will have charge of the activities arising out of unemployment this winter.” Declared the President : “The task of proper assistance to the deserving is one which will appeal to the generosity and humanity of our whole people. It is a task which our nation will perform.”

Generalissimo Gifford, who will get no Federal salary, have no Federal funds to spend, hurried to Washington, prepared to set up headquarters in the Department of Commerce. Said he rather shyly: “The real cure for unemployment is employment. Whatever the burdens may be, they will be wholeheartedly met. I shall try to be of assistance.” Then he went off with the President to the Rapidan for the week end to talk over his new job.

President Hoover realized that Mr. Gifford would need some more Big Names to back him up. He therefore announced an advisory committee of 60 men and women, of whom 52 promptly accepted the White House draft. Among them were: Richard Henry Aishton (American Railway Association), Bernard Mannes Baruch, Newton Diehl Baker, James Herbert Case (Community Chests), Martin Henry Carmody (Knights of Columbus-see p. 26), Edward Dickinson Duffield (Prudential Insurance Co.), Pierre du Pont, Homer Lenoir Ferguson (Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.), Frederic John Fisher (General Motors), William Green (A. F. of L.), Alexander Legge (International Harvester), John R. Mott (Y. M. C. A.), John Barton Payne (Red Cross), William Cooper Procter (IvorySoap), Julius Rosenwald (Sears, Roebuck), John D. Ryan (AnacondaCopper), Matthew Sloan (power), Silas Strawn (U. S. Chamber of Commerce), Myron Taylor (steel), Walter Teagle (oil), Daniel Willard (Baltimore & Ohio), William Allen White (publicity). The presence of such good Democrats as Messrs. Baruch and Baker helps give the committee a non-partisan flavor. Notably absent, however, is Owen D. Young, a White House mainstay in 1929 for combatting Depression.

Other Unemployment and Relief developments of the week:

¶ Of all the big industries which made White House Promises in 1929, only public utilities today are earning enough to press forward with new construction programs.* To the White House went short, dapper Paul Spencer Clapp, managing director of the National Electric Light Association, to see President Hoover whom he served in European food relief and later as a special assistant in the Department of Commerce. Two years ago before the Federal Trade Commission, N. E. L. A. was depicted as a subtle industrial villain who poisoned schools, colleges and Press with “Power Trust” propaganda. It was now as something of an industrial hero that N. E. L. A. in the person of Mr. Clapp reported last week to the President that its members would spend $600,000,000 this year in new construction.

¶ To the White House Pennsylvania’s Governor Gifford Pinchot sent a letter requesting the President to call a special session of Congress for Unemployment relief. Wrote he:”Wages are decreasing. Distress is acute . . . you have yourself asked for appropriations by Congress for relief of the needy in distant parts of the world. It would seem to be most opportune that you should do no less for our own needy here at home.” Flaying his Governor for such a demand, Pennsylvania’s Senator David Aiken Reed retorted, as an Administration spokesman: “Governors should not and must not evade their responsibility. Why should they send appeals to a harassed President to do for them what they ought to do for themselves? Pennsylvania is solvent, her credit is perfect. To call Congress would only encourage legislative quackery.”

¶ From Utah came an ominous rumble when Senator Reed Smoot, no less regularly Republican than Senator Reed, remarked: “We should raise sufficient funds to feed the hungry, even if we have to issue bonds to do it.”

¶ Loud Congressman Wright Patman of Texas telegraphed hundreds of his colleagues, suggested they appear in Washington Sept. 15, hold a rump meeting of , the House, agitate for relief legislation until President Hoover heeds their demands for a special session.

¶ President Hoover asked Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming of the Public Health Service what the health of the nation had been through the hard times. Dr. Cumming said it was never better (see P-35)

¶ Governor Roosevelt announced that he would recommend to the special session of the New York Legislature this week “certain definite and necessary measures for the relief of distress and the alleviation of unemployment.” Meanwhile New York City was preparing to appropriate $20,000,000 as a relief starter for the winter.

¶ In Illinois Governor Louis Lincoln Emmerson’s unemployment committee which last year raised $4,956,534 in five months, reorganized and set about collecting $8,800,000 for this winter. Out of his job as president of Middle West Utilities Co. stepped energetic, 30-year-old Samuel Insull Jr., son of the power tycoon, to direct the drive. In his Otis Building office in Chicago, with his dark hair rumpled and his shirt sleeves rolled up, young Mr. Insull explained: “Accomplishment comes before formality. We want to keep a friendly and informal spirit right along. There’s a spiritual side to helping those who must have help this winter. It’s an emergency but we haven’t lost our grip.”

¶ In Detroit Senator James Couzens, onetime Ford partner, offered to contribute $1,000,000 to the municipal relief fund provided the Mayor’s Committee collected $9,000,000 from other private sources. Visiting his Iron Mountain, Mich, factory, Henry Ford laid down a new rule: “Next year every man with a family who is employed at the plant will be required to have a garden of sufficient size to supply his family with part of its winter vegetables. Those who do not comply with the rule will be discharged.”

* The U. S. Census, taken in April 1930, reported 2,508,151 jobless.

* Rail earnings for 1931 will drop about 30% below 1930, manufacturing industries about 20%, public utilities less than 10%.