RELIEF: Strikers’ Stomachs

Today Federal Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins is helping to support some 16,000,000 men, women and children who cannot support themselves by private labor. Tomorrow Administrator Hopkins may find himself supporting millions more who have deliberately thrown up good jobs to let the Federal Government give them their daily bread.

When the United Textile Workers announced that they would go on strike with less than $1,000,000 in their treasury to provide strike benefits for 300,000 strikers, their leaders intimated that, of course, the Relief Administration would feed them. Manufacturers promptly emitted a deep and throaty growl at Government-financed strikes. Last week before going to consult with the President at Hyde Park, Mr. Hopkins did his best to still this protest. Said he:

“Anyone who thinks that the Government is going to underwrite the strike had best get it out of his head. . . . There was a rumor that got back to me that I was going to allot money to the unions for strike relief. … In the last 15 months appropriations made because of strikes, in excess of our regular grants, have been almost negligible. The facts of this are illustrated in the recent California strike, where we have evidence that the number of strikers who applied for relief was only 1,200.”

Yet the fact remained that a worker could strike with the assurance that the Government would not let him and his family starve. Administrator Hopkins’ policy:

“Each case applying for relief to the local emergency relief agencies should be treated on its merits as a relief case, wholly apart from any controversy in which the wage-earner may be involved. . . . Unless it be determined by the National Labor Relations Board or the Department of Labor that the basis for a strike is unreasonable and unjustified, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration authorizes local relief agencies to furnish relief to the families of striking wage-earners after careful investigation has shown that their resources are not sufficient to meet emergency needs.”

This did not silence protest. Tories demanded to know: 1) when Madam Perkins had ever declared a strike “unjustified”; 2) when, politics being what they are, she or the Labor Board ever would do so. The Illinois Manufacturers Association protested thus to Administrator Hopkins:

“While we recognize the propriety of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration furnishing aid to those who may be in temporary distress as a result of involuntary unemployment, we are convinced that the furnishing of financial aid by the Government to men who are voluntarily unemployed is fraught with grave dangers to our economic and social stability. . . . The furnishing of relief to strikers, if continued as a national policy, will . . . not only incite industrial strife but will materially increase the number of unemployed. . . .”

Other phases of Administrator Hopkins’ gigantic relief program were also stirring tax-paying industrialists and wage-earners to cries of dismay. The Relief Administrator had under way several projects for putting unemployed to work making goods for distribution to unemployed. In Texas alone 19 relief canneries were reported at work. Federal Surplus Relief Corp. bought 126,000,000 yards of cloth for sheets, towels and ticking and quantities of cotton stuffing to set the unemployed to work making mattresses for the needy. Mattress-makers took this as an unkind cut, especially after Simmons Co. had hired Mrs. Roosevelt to advertise its Beautyrests by radio. In Ohio mattress manufacturers, backed by Chambers of Commerce, kicked up such a rumpus that Governor White suspended the Federal project in his State. Declared Administrator Hopkins: “I don’t give a damn whether Governor White makes mattresses or not.” If the cotton and ticking assigned to Ohio were not used there, the Federal Government would pass them along to other States.

When FERA announced that the hides of some of the 3,000,000 cattle already purchased in its drought relief program would be tanned and turned into shoes by factories operated by State relief administrations, the shoe industry exploded. Said the National Boot & Shoe Manufacturers’ Association in a resolution to President Roosevelt:

“If the announced policy of the Government providing for the processing of these hides prevails, it will be disastrous to the business of many retailers, will vitally affect the solvency of others and will demoralize the orderly and regular channels of the manufacturing and distributing of the leather and shoe industries and of 40,000 retailers and their employes.”

Roger A. Selby, president of the shoe manufacturers, added reproachfully: “This is certainly not the partnership that was held out to industry when the NRA was formed.”

Mr. Hopkins found himself in a very delicate position. The President had just been at some pains to avoid endorsing Upton Sinclair and his unemployment panaceas for California (see p. 13). Yet the Relief Administration’s plan of having the unemployed work for the unemployed was identical in principle with Democrat Sinclair’s plan for Ending Poverty In California, and Mr. Sinclair is fond of pointing to the likeness between New Deal measures and his EPIC. From Washington the Relief Administration hastily let it be known that it would rely “principally” on private concerns rather than relief factories to turn its hides into shoes.

These troubles, however, were merely incidentals to Mr. Hopkins. His major problem was stated last week by William Green of the A. F. of L. who, after citing the summer business recession, concluded: “We have made no headway whatever this year in putting the unemployed to work in industry. Unless industry re-employs a substantial number this fall, we shall even be losing ground. . . . We cannot indefinitely support one-sixth of our population on money borrowed against future taxes.”

Stimulation of industry is NRA’s worry, but Mr. Hopkins, whose troubles grow in direct ratio to NRA’s lack of success, had to devise means for indefinitely supporting one-sixth of the population. In May 1933 the nation’s grand total relief bill for aiding 4,252,000 families was $71,000,000. Last May the nation’s relief bill for aiding 3,773,000 families was $128,000,000. Mr. Hopkins not only would like to raise the standards of relief still further, but he expects, according to a report by Donald Richberg last week, to have 5,000,000 families on relief by next February. With the Federal Government paying 75% of the costs of relief (com pared to 60% in 1933) and with the possibility of strikers swelling the relief rolls to bloated proportions, it seemed probable that Mr. Hopkins would need more than the $2,000,000,000 spent, on relief in fiscal 1934 to get through fiscal 1935.