National Affairs: WPA Polo

Great fun had Baltimore wits last week as. after three weeks of rain, a crew of WPA workers resumed digging and scraping a desolate spot in Herring Run Park, hard by the city incinerator. News had got round that this project, a model yacht basin costing $40,000, of which the city was putting up $10,000, also included a polo field, WPA’s first concession to the most luxurious U. S. sport.

The dignified Sun broke out with a series of poker-faced articles on WPA Polo: What It Costs To Play (“a moderately good polo pony can be bought for less than $7,500”). Sculptor Jack Lambert offered a bederbied trophy for a politicians’ polo tournament. Reporters pestered Park Board President Frank Durkee by asking whether WPA would supply ponies and stabling.

To the defense sprang hard-boiled Novelist James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade). Describing himself as one “known all over Baltimore as Sourpuss.” Mr. Cain wrote to the Sim: “Polo is played by many different kinds of people now. … [It is] within the means of most, even those of us who are on relief, as I have the honor to be.”*

Indignant Secretary Stuart McElroy of the Baltimore Model Yacht Club then began writing to the papers, explaining that the model yacht basin would cost at least three-quarters of the $40,000. Demanded Mr. McElroy: “Whether the $10,000 polo field is a worthy project or not remains to be seen, but who can dispute the worthiness of a model yacht basin?”

* Author Cain is not on relief.