RELIEF: Warm Springs Swarm

City editors last week ordered their cameramen to begin harvesting the winter crop of breadline pictures. For four years breadline pictures have been obtainable almost any month of the year, any day of the month, but the time when pictures are wanted is when there is text to gowith them. Editors knew that the text was arriving: accounts of below freezing temperatures; William Green’s assertion that “our relief problem this winter is the most serious this nation has ever faced”; the appropriation by New York City of its biggest relief budget ($19,000,000) for any month during Depression; an estimate by Federal Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins that nearly 5,000,000 families will be on his rolls this winter.

Another good text for breadline pictures was the fact that Warm Springs, Ga. was last week swarming with the suppliers of the lumber from which President Roosevelt will build his 1935 relief structure. Big problem was how much money to spend and where.

Day after election U. S. business was suddenly pressed with a desire to cooperate with the Administration, to help head off wild spending by Congress, to give a semblance of recovery. The President’s advisers, both those who believe in giving business a chance and those who believe that the Government should run far ahead of business, went down to Warm Springs to help make the Administration’s big relief plan. And the President sat ex officio in the conference, for he would toss their well-laid plans either 1) to Congress for adoption, or 2) to the wastebasket for oblivion.

The first adviser to arrive was Housing Administrator James A. Moffett. Direct relief was not his problem, but more & more the Administration has come to think of relief in terms of stimulating the construction industry. He went to Warm Springs on the heels of a fight with Secretary Ickes over whether PWA’s desire to build low-cost housing with Government money would scare private capital from entering Mr. Moffett’s housing scheme (TIME, Dec. 3).

Mr. Moffett conferred two hours with the President. Everything was patched up. An excellent theoretical solution was agreed on: Mr. Moffett would encourage people who had private capital to build houses while Mr. Ickes would build houses for those who had nothing.

“That’s straightened entirely out,” he exclaimed with enthusiasm. A newshawk asked whether the Ickes plans would not depress real estate values and upset the Moffett scheme. Hastily Roosevelt Secretary Marvin Mclntyre interposed: “Mr. Moffett has only five minutes. Let’s not ask him about controversial matters of policy.”

Day after Mr. Moffett’s visit arrived Donald Richberg and Harry Hopkins. They and Braintruster Tugwell, who had been recalled to Warm Springs for a second visit, began their session by swimming with the President in the Warm Springs pool, continued it around the presidential luncheon table. Two days later came Secretaries Ickes and Morgenthau.

Prime points on which they were, in the main, agreed: 1) WTork relief in some form should be devised as a substitute for the outright dole. 2) Substantial Government spending must continue to provide enough “reflation” to keep business from laying off more employes. 3) Al-though many billions might be bandied about in headline talk, actual expenditures must not be fantastic. 4) Something effective must be done to put the construction industry back on its feet, thereby re-employing some 3,000,000.

Not for the first time during the 21 months since Franklin Roosevelt took office had the same gentlemen discussed doing something for the construction industry. As actual steps they had undertaken $3,700,000,000 of Public Works, had set up Mr. Moffett’s Housing Administration. Results, however, had been pitifully small. And there remained a fundamental disagreement on the very issue which Mr. Moffett had described as “straightened entirely out.” Some at the Warm Springs conference felt that the Moffett job of stimulating private building had not yet been given a chance, that it alone could do the job. Others, among whom were Messrs. Ickes and Hopkins, felt the Moffett method would not get results in a reasonable length of time, favored rushing Government money into the gap.