RELIEF: Youth & Yield

When interviewers lately sought out Mrs. Charles E. Williams in her modest apartment over a backyard garage in a suburb of Birmingham, Ala., her first remark about her son, Assistant Federal Relief Administrator Aubrey Willis Williams, was: “He’s a self-made man.”

Aubrey Williams’ rich planter grandfather voluntarily freed a thousand slaves, involuntarily lost the rest of his property in the Civil War. Trained only for leisure, Aubrey Williams’ father turned to manual labor, became a notably unsuccessful blacksmith. Son Aubrey went to work at 6 in a torpedo factory, at 7 became cash-boy in a Birmingham department store.

At times his whole family of four had to live on his $3.50 weekly wage. As he grew older Aubrey got other jobs, studied nights in a Y.M.C.A. He earned his way at Maryville College, Tenn. by painting signs and at University of Cincinnati by managing a Chautauqua. A post-War stay in France got him a doctor’s degree at the University of Bordeaux. Not until he reached 30 was he ready to begin the career of social work in Ohio and Wisconsin which was eventually to make him the No. 2 U. S. Relief man. a tall, gentle, tweedy, eminently useful citizen, noted for his personal integrity, his whole-souled devotion to his job and to his chief Harry Hopkins. Last week it became Aubrey Williams’ duty to see that other U. S. youngsters should not have to follow his own rocky road to success.

Already the New Deal had done something for The Unemployed, for Farmers, for Labor, for Business, for Railroads, for Homeowners, for Bank Depositors, for Investors. Last week its roving eye uncovered a new category. “I have determined,” announced President Roosevelt, “that we shall do something for the nation’s unemployed Youth . . .”

By executive order the President forthwith created a National Youth Administration, with Aubrey Williams as executive director, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Josephine Roche as executive committee chairman. Following the usual New Deal formula, there were to be 48 State Youth Divisions under 48 State Youth Directors, plus Youth Committees in cities, towns, counties. Beneficiaries would be all boys & girls aged 16 to 25 not regularly attending school.*

The New Deal had already spent $736,000,000 to put 350,000 idle city-bound youngsters in CCC camps, $14,000,000 to help students stay in college. Much of NYA’s work was to be along the same lines. About 150,000 youths, drawn exclusively from families on Relief, would be given work relief jobs at $15 per month, set to building Youth Centres, taking a Youth Census. About 100,000 high-school youths would get $6 per month for carfare, lunch, incidentals. About 120,000 college undergraduates would get $15 per month and a selected few thousand would be financed in post-graduate study.

NYA’s final function will be not only to train some 150,000 youths for jobs but to try to get jobs for them. Explained President Roosevelt: “We can ill afford to lose the skill and energy of these young men and women.” Employers “in all types of industries” will be asked to take on the Government’s wards as apprentices. Some will be taken into Government offices in order “to develop a new type of trained public servant.” What hard-headed realists could not understand, however, and what President Roosevelt’s sweeping blueprint failed to make clear was just how “all types of industries” could or would make room for these energetic youngsters when there were estimated to be no less than 9,711,000 energetic adults last month waiting and wishing for the first opportunity to get private jobs.

Its sponsors were reported last week to be hoping that all of NYA’s functions except work relief would be permanent. Fifty million dollars—roughly, enough to endow two Duke Universities; or to pay the ordinary expenses of the U. S. Government in 1850 with enough left over to acquire Alaska & Hawaii; or to build another Normandie; or to finance the World War for five hours—were set aside for NYA’s first year. Said President Roosevelt: “The yield on this investment should be high.”

*Same day as President Roosevelt’s announcement, Reichsführer Adolf Hitler decreed all German youths aged 18 to 25 subject to conscription for six months’ service in Nazi labor camps.