RELIEF: Blue Duck

Newshawks at the White House one day last week watched the dandruff-flecked coat collar of Federal Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins as its owner hurried up a corridor to keep an appointment with President Roosevelt. Later the bowlegs of Hugh Samuel Johnson carried that old-time cavalryman over the Presidential threshold. And when General Johnson reappeared, it was to announce without much pleasure that he had just been made Federal Works Progress Administrator for New York City. Boarding a plane with his faithful secretary Frances (“Robbie”) Robinson, the General therewith flew off to New York.

At Newark Airport the private car which the pair had expected did not turn up. A fellow passenger obligingly motored them to Vincent Astor’s Manhattan hotel, the swank St. Regis. That evening General Johnson watched Fisticuffer Joe Louis pummel Fisticuffer Primo Carnera at the Yankee Stadium. At a luncheon next noon the General was initiated into the Circus Saints & Sinners Club, where he promised to “help the needy circus man” (cautiously muttering, “this is unofficial”), was treated with a shower of popcorn, decorated with a plug hat and a paper medallion certifying him a BIRD TRAINER, presented with a duck painted blue. Wryly observed the late Blue Eagle’s onetime master: “This is exactly like the New Deal was in about June 1933.”

In miniature, it was. Just two years ago the industrial researcher for Speculator Bernard Mannes Baruch had bellowed to newshawks that NRA was to be operated “in a goldfish bowl.” Last week Hugh Johnson met Manhattan reporters with the promise that in disbursing New York City’s share of the new four-billion-dollar work relief fund he wanted to “give it all a public airing.” And he had been only a little more sanguine about taking over NRA and putting six million men to work by Labor Day than he was at becoming a Works Progress Director. At Washington, Newark and Manhattan he growled: “The President said he wanted me to take the job. I did not want to take it. … I was called in today to the log cabin on Pennsylvania Avenue and told I should accept the job. I’m a soldier and I do what I’m told to do. … It feels like hell!”

Today in New York City (pop. 6,930,000) live 1,222,331 men, women & children on public bounty, half of which comes from the Federal Government. Of the four-billion-dollar Federal work relief fund, this greatest single pool of public destitution in the history of the U. S. will get about $220,000,000, just over 5%. To see that the jobless get it with minimum inefficiency is Soldier Johnson’s job. Responsible only to Administrator Hopkins, he will work four days a week, receiveno salary, draw $25 a day for expenses.

The very day of his appointment, General Johnson in his syndicated newspaper column had pointed out that useful public construction was an arithmetical impossibility if 3,500,000 unemployed were to share the allotted four billion, characterized the whole Federal program as “a more ambitious kind of leaf-raking.” In Manhattan, however, now that he had been made Model No. 1 for the 48 other Works Progress Administrators who will be designated to supervise state Federal spending, the loyal General changed his tune, promised “no boon-doggling.” Most of New York’s municipal organization of 3,000 professional relievers General Johnson planned to retain. For his immediate official family he “borrowed” Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward F. McGrady, former NRA Assistant Administrator, to supervise labor relations. Also from the old NRA organization come most of the rest of his staff, including the ubiquitous “Robbie” who will act as office manager and probably will soon be recognized as second in command.

Works Progress Administrator Johnson had complained that he “lost between $30,000 and $35,000 on the NRA, and I don’t know how much I’ll lose on this job.” To a friend who felicitated him on his appointment, he snapped: “Say, anyone who congratulates me on this job is crazy!” Why, then, had the General taken it? Washington gossips thought they knew the answer: the General, his appetite for public life whetted, hankers for a Cabinet post, thinks the President will recognize that one good turn deserves another. His term in New York expires Oct. 1. Significant was this dialog between a reporter and the General at Newark Airport.

“Why are you going back to Washington, General?”

“Because I live there!”