National Affairs: Misery Question

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Blessed are they who hunger in the land of Drought, for they shall be told that a great Government feeds the starving in foreign lands.

Blessed are the little children who shiver from the cold, for their suffering shall receive "sympathetic consideration."

Virginia's Glass flayed Democratic Leader Robinson of Arkansas, who accepted the Compromise, for his "abject surrender" on the principle of free Federal aid. Idaho's Borah in one last dramatic revolt against the Compromise, exclaimed:

"A few kernels of corn for the hungry child, the drippings from the mouth of the merciful mule! . . . These people are going to suffer beyond the power of human language to portray. . . . When did these picayunish objections to feeding the hungry first appear? They appeared when the income tax payers became afraid of an increase in taxes."

Perfectly plain to all was the Democratic backdown on food relief. Senator Robinson had first proposed an outright Federal gift of $25,000,000 to feed the hungry who had no other means of sustenance. By the Compromise he had accepted a proposition whereby $20,000,000 was to be loaned for food only to those who could put up collateral. Piercingly to the point critics showed how the family, without food, without grocery-store credit, without security for a Federal loan, would get none of the $20,000,000, would be as dependent as ever upon the Red Cross.*

President Hoover had also changed his position since December, agreed to far more Drought relief than he had originally intended. Last week, through Secretary Hyde, he surrendered to the Senate's primary plan of 'Federal loans to feed the hungry, a proposition he once flayed as ''playing politics with human misery."

Meanwhile the Red Cross was caring for 255,735 families—about a million mouths. Its $10,000,000 relief drive climbed slowly past the $8,000,000 mark. Rations were being distributed on the basis of 42¢ per person per week. Still unreported last week was any authenticated case of death of starvation in the Drought area.