RELIEF: Applied Economy

Last week the U. S. people were witnessing and undergoing an experiment in applied Economy. The Congressmen who initiated it having gone home to their guinea pigs, the officials who had to direct it from Washington went sadly but not silently to work.

"PWA simply has no funds to administer any program beyond next June 30," said Federal Works Administrator John M. Carmody, explaining why he must fire half his staff of 10/417 by January i, wind up all PWA public housing, power and similar projects by the end of fiscal 1940.

Works Projects' Commissioner Francis C. ("Pink") Harrington, with a reduced appropriation ($1,477,000,000) pared his rolls from 2,200,000 as of last week toward 1,800,000 by mid-September. By September i he must discharge 650,000 (one in three) WPAsters who have been on the rolls 18 months or longer. Off "on furlough" must go 56,500 of Ohio's 166,700; 62,200 of Pennsylvania's 153,000; 22,900 of New Jersey's 67,900; 22,400 of California's 89,800; 11,200 of Alabama's 42,100; 400 of smallest Nevada's 1,600. About half will be replaced with other applicants. If the record of previously discharged WPAsters holds good, only 15% of the 650,000 will find private jobs; those who do will average $2.98 per week. The rest must crowd onto overloaded local home relief rolls.

In further obedience to Congress, "Pink" Harrington last week: 1) warned subordinate officials to shun local, State and national politics, on pain of dismissal; 2) reduced the differences between WPA wages in the South and other regions. He increased the minimum pay for common labor in the South from $19 per month to $31.20 in rural areas, the maximum in cities from $35 to $50.70, meantime readjusting rates elsewhere to hike the national average from $53 to $55.50. Even this beneficence had a shock effect on the South where WPA pay already was sufficiently above private pay (for farm hands, domestics, etc.) to make labor hard to please.

Relief Rolls into Payrolls? Last week Manhattan's Republican Congressman Bruce Barton, who as a good advertising man would never try to put Business on the spot, said in Rochester: ". . . The [New Deal] heresies are being swept away; the threats [to Business] are one by one being dispelled; the responsibility now comes directly to industry. Its leaders mast banish unemployment from America . . . put men and women back to work. This is their challenge and their opportunity. . . ." The one sign vouchsafed up to last week's end indicated that Business will do very little until Congress has done much more. Said National Association of Manufacturers' President Howard Coonley: "Considerable overemphasis is placed on the claim that Congress 'has accepted industry's challenge' and that responsibility for complete recovery has now been shifted to Business. . . . Substantial and sound recovery depends on further positive action by Congress." . . . But he did add: "I know it is not necessary to urge that all members of the N. A. M. examine carefully their present and near-future production demands. . . . Industry must do its utmost, within the limitations of permissible volume of production, to translate relief rolls into payrolls."