Breakdowns

"No one in the city will starve even though it means taking all the city's money for relief operations." So promised Cleveland's Mayor Harold H. Burton last week, but the city still had no means of repairing its relief agencies, which broke down when funds ran out three weeks ago. While 75,000 Clevelanders were getting short rations instead of checks, all 19 of Chicago's relief stations last week shut their doors with a bang. Thirty-four thousand of their 93,000 relief cases (each "case" represents about three people) got, instead of monthly checks, baskets doled out by Federal Surplus Commodities Corp. A month's provisions for each family of four consisted of: 2 lb. of dried beans, 4 Ib. of butter, 4 Ib. of prunes, 20 Ib. of cabbage, 8 stalks of celery, 15 Ib. of oranges, 2 Ib. of rice, 2 Ib. of potato flour, 24 1/2 Ib. of wheat flour, 8 lb. of skim milk.

Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins pointed out that Cleveland's work relief rolls have jumped from 20,000 to 70,000, Chicago's from 50,000 to 120,000, in the last five months. Direct relief rolls have also bulged, but here the difficulty was aggravated because Ohio's State Legislature, due to assemble in special session next week, squabbled last winter over relief funds, adjourned without solving the problem. Chicago's Relief Administration, which gets its funds from a city real-estate tax and the State Relief Commission, had spent its entire 1938 allowance from the city $5,404,000, by May 1 and no more State funds were due till June 1. Last week, Illinois Governor Henry Horner called his State Legislature into a special session to pry money from downstate legislators who think that Chicago already gets more than its share of State relief funds.

P: In Washington last week, Unemployment Census Director John D. Biggers, whose Libby-Owens-Ford-Glass Co. has contributed to Ohio's relief troubles by discharging 4,000 of its 5,000 Toledo workers, contributed a garish reminder of the size of the relief problem. He released his final figure on the total number of unemployed who registered in last November's census: 7,845,016. This, as he pointed out, is as big as the combined population of Nevada, Wyoming, Delaware, Vermont, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, New Hampshire, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Maine, Oregon. But it does not include: 1) an estimated 28% of the unemployed who did not register, 2) the huge increase in unemployment which has taken place in the six months since the census was taken.

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