Fifth Winter

Last week the first chill of the fifth Depression Winter hung in the air. While the Federal Government was preparing to bring relief to 3,253,000 jobless families (1,500,000 less than last year) on a scale unparalleled since hard times began, in Manhattan President Roosevelt made a speech which warned the nation that the Government could not possibly handle the job alone, that local governments and private charity would again have to do their share.

Occasion of President Roosevelt's address was the 19th annual National Conference of Catholic Charities. He had detoured to Manhattan, on his way back to Washington from Chicago, to deliver it. ". . . This is the time," said he, "when you and I know that though we have proceeded a portion of the way, the longer, harder part still lies ahead; and that it is for us to redouble our efforts to care for those who must still depend upon relief, to prevent the disintegration of home life, and to stand by the victims of the Depression until it is definitely past. . . . Government can do many things better than private associations or citizens, but in the last analysis, success in personal matters depends on the personal contact between neighbor and neighbor. . . ."

While private charity was thus exhorted, Harry L. Hopkins in the dual role of Federal Relief Administrator and head of the new Federal Surplus Relief Corp., fired the first salvo in the Government's war against human misery:

P:From the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Federal Surplus Relief Corp. acquired 9,200,000 Ib. of pork, started it on its way from Chicago to feed New York City's and Buffalo's hungry idle.

P:Administrator Hopkins ordered emergency relief committees throughout the land to feed 6,000,000 undernourished children of unemployed parents one meal a day at Government expense.

P:Administrator Hopkins and Secretary of Agriculture Wallace gave Secretary of the Interior Ickes his third extra-Cabinet Government job when they drafted him for FSRC, "because he is a good man to have around." Federal Surplus Relief Corp. announced that it would provide for the needy by extending the processing tax to other commodities beside wheat and cotton, buying up surpluses with the proceeds of the tax. For instance, a 1-c-a-lb. tax, it was calculated, would secure for FSRC between 50 and 100 million pounds of butter. Commodities which FSRC could not provide, Emergency Relief Administration would buy with the $330,000,000 it still has left from the $500,000,000 NRA relief appropriation.

P:The Public Health Service entered the relief field when it announced that it would cooperate with FSRC in the employment of jobless men in the South to work on mosquito abatement projects this winter.

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