Red Cross

"All I pray for is for Congress to let us alone. If we don't do the job, then let Congress kick us."

So said Chairman John Barton Payne of the Red Cross last week in answer to the Senate's proposal that $25,000,000 of federal money be given to the Red Cross in addition to the $10,000,000 which the Red Cross was busy raising by popular appeal. Chairman Payne politely informed Congress that the Red Cross would decline to administer any money which might be voted.

Chairman Payne's objections to Congressional help were precise: 1) The Red Cross has always been supported by voluntary public donations; 2) It did not want to go into cities, as Congress wants it to do, because cities have community chests and other organized charities and because cities (except Birmingham, Ala.) have not asked for help; 3) Only the people in the Drought area need Red Cross help; 4) The Red Cross can carry on and complete that relief with the $5,000,000 it has taken from its treasury, plus the $10,000,000 special relief fund it is now raising; 5) The Red Cross "has funds enough to do it [relieve the Drought area], even if it costs three times as much as we have estimated."*

Need. The American Federation of Labor last week calculated 5,700,000 people unemployed. These were primarily in the cities. How many rural inhabitants needed help not even the Red Cross could calculate. Last week it was feeding and clothing more than 750,000 individuals in 708 counties of 19 States./- Expenditures totaled $2,860,994.60--$602,569.89 from local Red Cross chapters, $2,258,424.71 from the national organization.

Arkansas was most plaintive. Stories spread that inhabitants were starving. The Red Cross replied last week that not one authenticated case of starvation had occurred in Arkansas or elsewhere. Indeed the Red Cross, vigorously as it campaigned for its $10,000,000, forebore emphasizing individual miseries.

The New York Times, impatient for a picture of valley troubles, last week sent its Russell Owen to Arkansas. Able, eloquent, sometimes rhapsodic, Mr. Owen is the reporter who accompanied Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd to Antarctica. From Forrest City, Ark., he reported: "A more completely bankrupt territory could not be imagined. Horses and mules, farm implements and lands, are mortgaged to the hilt. Small farmers owe more than they can pay, even if they get a crop this year. . . . Nobody is starving; the Red Cross has seen to that. Animals, thin, bony-ribbed creatures, weakly nosing through lands covered only by dead cotton plants and dead leaves, are dying, but human beings are being fed. . . . Not that families are getting a ration which would be looked upon in normal times as sufficient. It consists of flour, cornmeal, beans, rice, lard, molasses, coffee and sugar, and sometimes a small piece of meat. Meat is a luxury. . . . Nutritional troubles are numerous, pellagra is common, and yeast is being used to avert some of these diseases.

"The natural game of the country has vanished, been hunted to extinction, not a raccoon is left. And as for rabbits, they are so rare that they are called 'Hoover hogs.' "

Help. Heretofore when the Red Cross asked for disaster money, contributions swiftly reached $1,000,000 daily. Last week, after nearly three weeks' appeal for the $10,000,000, receipts totaled $4,883,159. Over the radio Chairman Payne pleaded: "Drought presses slowly. There is nothing in it to quicken the emotions-- unless one sees with his own eyes the gaunt hunger and hopelessness of those affected."

* Chairman Payne apparently referred to the $3,741,598 of the National Red Cross's general funds unbudgeted last June 30; $5,000,000 of its ''special reserve" fund, $4,000,000 expected from dues (4,130,966 adults, 6,930,849 school children) and other revenues this year--total, about 13 millions--plus the incalculable openhandedness of U. S. citizens.

/- The States: Alabama, Arkansas. Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia. Only in Arkansas did every county need help. The inhabitants of the Drought-stricken parts of these States are chronically poor, their margin of prosperity never high.

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