Money, Money, Money

STATES & CITIES

In Washington last week Dr. Gotthilf Paul Bronisch, Obermagistratsrat of the city of Berlin, sat down in the Mayflower Hotel's glittering main ballroom amid the flower of U. S. civic leadership. Around him were arrayed the mayors of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Duluth, Louisville, Miami, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York, Omaha, Richmond, Savannah, Toledo, Tulsa, Saginaw, Stamford, Lima, Joplin. Durham, East Orange, Amarillo, many another city large and small. Half a hundred strong, they were ranged at long tables before the speaker's stand, they and their aides and emissaries, their bulbous noses and their pot bellies, for another solemn, straight-faced meeting of the U. S. Conference of Mayors.

The Herr Doktor Obermagistratsrat needed only half an eye to see that a common anxiety gripped their respective bosoms, that a common passion stirred their hearts. What made each & every mayor anxious was the fact that his municipality was still dangerously long on joblessness requiring relief and uncomfortably short on cash to meet that requirement. What each & every mayor was in Washington for was to get money, more money and still more money out of the Federal Treasury for local relief. Hardly had bald, hawknosed T. Semmes Walmsley, Mayor of New Orleans, opened the first session than the keynote of the Conference was struck by Fiorello H. ("Little Flower") LaGuardia of New York City, loudest bloom in the mayoral bouquet:

"I have taxed locally people of the City of New York to meet the current expense of unemployment.* I don't wish any other Mayor to do it if he wishes to stay in office. It has got to be done some way or another. We don't expect the local government to do it all. . . . We have developed a new kind of officeholder --'the semicolon boys.'

"The semicolon boys are simply a boil on the neck of this Administration, the fellows, you know, who have an office, and some law school has graduated them. They come here to get law jobs in the departments and then they sit down and look for semicolons and hold up the works. . . .

"Oh, yes, I have a few in my own administration, too, and you have also. If they would only stop the typewriters we could get the steam shovels working. You know, all of the anti-relief lawyers are not in the Liberty League. . . .

"Gentlemen, I state from my experience and from contacts with many of you that any idea that the Federal relief program can stop abruptly on July i of next year is simply unthinkable and impossible. We have to speak out! The responsibility is ours. . . ."

Such talk was sweet music to the mayors which made other subjects sound dull and tuneless. Attorney General Cummings talked about crime control and the mayors made a tour through J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation. Experts spoke to them on traffic safety, noise abatement, fire prevention. Senator Wagner urged them to support low-cost Government housing. One evening was given over to the problem of "busting the Gas Trust." But the conference really got back to business and excitement when it got back to the subject of relief and Government money.

One thing most of the money-hungry mayors did not require was that the Federal Works Progress Administration should justify its existence. Nevertheless Administrator Harry Hopkins rushed in and gave the mayors an object lesson in the kind of stump speech with which to annihilate relief critics. Example:

"There's been a lot of ridicule about our parks and playgrounds projects. Of course, it is true the parks and playgrounds in the cities of America are for poor people. They don't own any country estates, the people that use the parks and the playgrounds. . . . Playgrounds are built in the great tenement sections of every city in America for people who are poor, to put their children there to play and to keep them safely off the streets. Why don't they have nursemaids? Well, why not? . . . Sure, we have projects for the blind. . . . We've even got projects for crippled children. What do you think of that? Call it boondoggling if you like!"

Hardly a mayor present wanted to call it boondoggling, but quite a few wanted to ask Mr. Hopkins why they could not get more money more easily. Instead, Mr. Hopkins hurried off to visit the White House leaving the mayors to answer their own questions.

A thumping protest against the red tape mayors have to go through to get Federal money was sounded by the patriarch of New Bedford, Mass., Charles Sumner Ashley, 77, who in the past 45 years has served 31 years as mayor, not counting a couple of defeats at the polls and several voluntary retirements. Cried Mayor Ashley indignantly, "We are not all crooks," and the Mayflower rang with applause.

Up rose Frederick William Mansfield, a tight-fisted Democrat who two years ago was nominated for mayor by Boston's Good Government Association in opposition to the Curley machine, who was elected in a six-sided contest in which he polled less than 30% of the total vote. Chicago's Mayor Kelly, who happened to be presiding at the moment, clumsily introduced him as "Alderman Mansfield."

"I didn't come here to be demoted," shot back Boston's Mayor and then struck out: "One grave defect in the present program has been its execution in a manner which threatens to defeat its purpose. It needs only simple arithmetic to know that with 3,500,000 persons to be employed at a $4,000,000,000 cost, the average amount which could be expended for labor and materials a person was less than $1,200. Yet, despite this obvious arithmetic, large Federal public works projects were early approved, calling for the expenditure of a far larger sum a person, until, we were informed, there was a balance left of only about $800 a person. . . . The early allocations to large projects have caused a serious danger in many communities that large numbers of employables on relief rolls will not be cared for under the present WPA program."

Up jumped a small, baldish, grey-haired man, waving his arms. Shouted William Frederick Carr: "I'm the mayor of Durham, N. C. This is the first meeting I've ever been to where a small-town mayor was given a chance to speak. . . . It cost my city $50 or $75 to send me up here and I want some evidence that I've been here. What we need is more jobs, real jobs, not relief jobs."

This was too much for New York's hot-blooded little mayor. If anyone was to criticize the Federal Government, he wanted that privilege. Swelling with rage, he screamed:

"I want to say in all kindness that if the rest of the country would pay the wages that the mills of North Carolina pay to their people, perhaps we could sell to the rest of the world. But we don't want to sell under those conditions!"

After this emotional catharsis, the mayors, headed by their president, Daniel Webster Hoan, for 19 years Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, went to the White House where President Roosevelt told them:

"Is the Government going to stop giving relief next July? My answer [is] that the Federal Government--and I am sure your answer will be the same for the city governments--does not propose to let people starve after the first of July any more than during the past few years."

"It was a fine talk," said Mayor Hoan afterward, in spite of the fact that he was wiring home that the Federal Government would not advance $800,000 to enlarge Milwaukee's Auditorium. "We are all glad to have these assurances."

Then the mayors and their wives put on their best clothes, sat down to a fine banquet. Next day the Conference, made up predominantly of Democrats, elected New York's LaGuardia as its president for the year to come, adopted a resolution demanding more Federal money for cities, went home well satisfied that it had done much for the U. S.*

* A reference to LaGuardia's unpopular 2% city sales tax.

* One final tremor of excitement was caused when Mayor Alfred N. Phillips Jr. (Milk of Magnesia) of Stamford, Conn, proposed that the mayors censure Stockbroker Edward F. Hutton for urging business to "gang up" on the New Deal (see p. 60). A Republican protested and Mayor Phillips was ruled out of order.

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