Nation: THE THING IN THE SPRING

DRESSED in old clothes and overalls, the 5,000 suburbanites—men, women and children—looked ready for weekend chores in house or garden. Instead, they were on their way to help thousands of New York City slum dwellers clean, repair, paint and decorate 43 of the city's grimiest, grittiest blocks. By nightfall, when residents gave their guests an outdoor buffet, the scabrous streets were conspicuously cleaner and perhaps a little more habitable, with balloons waving from fire escapes and pastels brightening alleyways.

Last week's cleanup, titled "The Thing in the Spring," was not a headline project. It was hardly a billion-dollar item and scarcely caused much of a dent in New York City's Augean malaise. But, along with dozens of similar efforts across the nation, it demonstrated—even as Congress balks at the billion-dollar programs that are truly needed—that individual hands and hearts are committed to alleviating the wretchedness of the inner city.

Crisis Sunday. In Boston, Jewish philanthropies donated buildings valued at $1,250,000 for a community and cultural center in the Roxbury slum. In Washington, Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle announced a moratorium on all new Roman Catholic church building and improvements so that funds would be freed to "help relieve the chronic causes of poverty in our midst." In Portland, Ore., the Council of Churches designated May 5 "Summer Crisis Sunday," when each congregation will be asked to provide decent jobs for slum dwellers and help provide support for summer programs.

In New York, IBM disclosed plans for a plant to make computer cables in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant slum; starting within two months, the factory will employ 300 workers, mostly unskilled, by the end of 1969. Planning is already far advanced, under the federal model-cities program, for something like 4,000 much-needed housing units in Bedford-Stuyvesant and other slum areas of New York. Earlier this month, the Fairchild Hiller Corp., working with a black community group, opened the doors of the new Fairmicco Corp. in Washington's Shaw area. Eventually, Fairmicco, which will turn out such products as foot lockers and unpainted furniture, will employ 250 and will be owned outright by its workers.

In Los Angeles' Watts, the Green Power Foundation, founded and operated by Negroes, is already busy making baseball bats. By summer's end, 300 people will be turning out 1,000 "Watts Wallopers" a day. Giving preference to men with handicaps that would normally make them unemployable, Green Power prides itself on the fact that even though its employees have an average of twelve arrests apiece, it has had no difficulty at all with theft or absenteeism.

Principal Burner. A little more honesty on all sides might, in fact, go a long way toward cooling the ghettos this summer. Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, Betty Furness, the President's adviser on consumer affairs, noted that gouging of slum residents by merchants and markets—an unsavory but common practice—is "a principal burner under any long hot summer." She added later: "The poor are paying more. The proof was right here in the streets two weeks ago," when rioters selectively burned and looted stores they considered unfair.