"Men at Work"

(See front cover)

The President had transformed himself into the Statesman of the Democratic Party and gone voter-wooing (see p. 7). The Vice President was puttering around his home in Texas, fishing for bass, gar and cats in the Nueces River. Congress had been gone three weeks. Most of the Cabinet were scattering for vacation.* Except for the Secretaries of State and the Navy, the only top functionaries of the U. S. Government left in hot Washington last week were the Spenders & Lenders.

Most conspicuous of these, in the daily news if not in person, was long-faced Harry Lloyd Hopkins, working in shirt-sleeves at his plebeian office on the top (ninth) floor of an old yellow-brick structure which houses the Works Progress Administration. Because more than 8,000,000 U. S. persons look to WPA for their toil-won bread, and because $1,425,000,000 is a lot of Government money to have to spend in an election year, Harry Hopkins has inevitably become regarded as a prime mover--and prime target--on the national political scene. To himself, however, he remains first & foremost the dutiful boss of "Men at Work."

Frontiersman. While most of the 85% of U. S. citizens who still earn their livings in private industry wonder whether the remaining 15% will forever remain dependent on the Government for daily bread, Harry Hopkins has long since made up his mind. Behind his immediate plans for this year's relief, is something far bigger, an economic philosophy in which work-relief is not an emergency measure but a permanent program for the U. S.

Now that the last geographical frontiers of the U. S. have been reached and exploited, Harry Hopkins believes: "The new frontier is idle men, money and machines, and all the resourcefulness, ingenuity and courage that reside in twelve or 13 million unemployed men is helpless to take up this new frontier without tremendous organization of productive forces such as only Government can supply when business is in the doldrums." Henceforth, in short, the Government should subsidize citizens who need to start or recoup their fortunes on the frontier of work-not-offered-by-private-enterprise.

He told a Senate committee last April: ". . . This program must be such that American citizens accept it as a matter of right--with no feeling of social inferiority." He saw six things to do:

1) Cradle unemployed youth in CCC and NYA.

2) Find jobs for the employable through the U. S. Employment Service.

3) Tide over laid-off workers with un employment insurance benefits.

4) When those benefits are exhausted, find relief work to keep workers going until private industry can reabsorb them.

5) "The aged population will continue to grow in the future."* Insure the aged.

6) Support other unemployables--blind, crippled, orphans, mothers, etc., etc. -- directly.

"This program," Mr. Hopkins summed up, ". . . is not simply a security program.

It would also provide a broad base of pur chasing power . . . increasing the stability of the economic system. ... I believe our economic life based on a profit motive is the most effective economy known to as sure the well-being of all." In other words he is convinced that the way to make the capitalistic system strong is to give it a socialistic appendix, to have the Government permanently employ whatever varying fraction of the people are not employed by private industry.

Politician. Frontiersman Hopkins was nonetheless, in simple fact, last week running a political show second in scope and influence only to Franklin Roosevelt's personal performance. Not a politician in the same sense as Jim Farley, he is in three ways deeply and definitely in politics:

1) He is in politics to the extent that Reliefers distinguish between what they are getting from Democrats and what they might get from Republicans. This is a fact not of Mr. Hopkins' making. It arises from the simplest reactions of human nature. The degree to which Harry Hopkins satisfies his clients, the smaller their doubt that someone else might do more for them, the better for the Roosevelt Administration at the ballot boxes.

2) He is in politics insofar as his clients, united by their status, band together to influence Administration policy. Last week sallow, long-nosed David Lasser, onetime Technocrat and moon-rocketeer, now the nimble. Socialist organizer-presi-dent of Workers Alliance of America (1.300 locals in 46 States), which claims 400,000 dues-paying members-- and 400.-ooo more who don't pay dues, announced: "The question of wage increases for 2.600,000 low-paid WPA workers is a major issue in the primary campaigns and the November elections. Our organization is in the political campaign with both feet. . . ." Having just wrung from the Administration pay-rises for all unskilled and some skilled workers in 13 Southern States (TIME, July 4), Mr. Lasser & friends are now out for: minimum WPA wages of $36 per month for the entire country (present minimum: $26); increases for all Southerners in the semiskilled and skilled classes; a merger of WPA's Wage Region II (Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland. District of Columbia and 36 Texas counties), with Wage Region I (Northern industrial States) to effect a $10 average wage increase in Region II.

Although Harry Hopkins' emotional, up-from-poverty assistant, Aubrey Williams, has sympathized publicly and deeply with the Workers Alliance, David Lasser is not overly popular with Harry Hopkins. The hand that feeds feels bitten when Workers Alliance members yowl and riot, as they did last week in Manhattan, over Relief delays and "inadequate" clothing allowances. Although Workers Alliance sprang inevitably from WPA, as a pressure group it forms no part of Harry Hopkins' idea of an orderly relief setup.

3) Harry Hopkins is in politics as a lifetime social worker, who wants the Roosevelt Administration to succeed so that his plan for permanent work relief may be established. Last week he was able to deny righteously that some paper bags marked "Donated by a friend of Senator Alben W. Barkley" and given away near a WPA depot in Kentucky, were a campaign come-on fostered by WPA. Also he could deny any great consequences issuing from his most publicized political acts so far this year: plumping for Otha D. Wearin's nomination for the Senate in Iowa, and whitewashing the WPA as a whole in Kentucky. Mr. Hopkins in Washington is much further removed politically from State Administrator Keller in Iowa and State Administrator Goodman in Kentucky than are Senators Herring of Iowa and Barkley of Kentucky, respectively.

In the Iowa case, Senator Herring was for Senator Gillette's renomination against Mr. Wearin. In Sioux City, where there were 4,000 WPA workers, Mr. Wearin got only about 300 votes.

In Kentucky, no orders from Mr. Hopkins were needed to make Mr. Goodman help Senator Barkley, to whom Mr. Goodman owes his job. It is even demonstrable that Mr. Hopkins, if he wanted to, could not stop Mr. Goodman from helping Mr. Barkley.

But Harry Hopkins is not blind to the sweet uses of WPA when political necessities arise. The coming national election will be his fourth as an insider, and Mr. Hopkins has had time to learn a lot at the knees of Franklin Roosevelt and Jim Farley. Evidence of his political maturity was that he did not stand in the way of special WPA pay raises so opportunely given in Kentucky and Oklahoma last month. In these two States the primary opponents of Senators Barkley and Elmer Thomas had pointed at local WPA wages lower than those paid in neighboring States, shaming these two Roosevelt favorites for not doing better by the home folks.

Pump-Primer. If Administration political strategy is important to Mr. Hopkins in his long-term program for work-relief, so is his relief program important to the Administration in its immediate plan for recovery. Among other Spenders & Lenders busy at their desks in Washington last week were:

P: Secretary Ickes announced that all the Public Works projects he is setting afoot will ultimately provide $1,001,200,000 worth of building material orders, 14,225,000 man-months of labor, $515,600,000 in direct wages.

P: Administrator Stewart McDonald reported that FHA had insured $73,363,400 of construction mortgages in June, a 60% increase over June 1937.

P: Administrator John M. Carmody announced that REA had allotted $11,229,200 for 66 new rural electrification projects.

P: RFC reported it had lent $78,054,393.18 to industries and $9,964.571.51 to banks from February 20 to July 6, was now preparing to make 2,492 more loans totaling $93,650,000.

P: Federal Surplus Commodity Corp. got authority from Secretary of Agriculture Wallace to use its new $79,000,000 appropriation at once to buy surpluses of oranges, vegetables, peaches, flour, cereal products, to feed 2,000,000 needy families.

But the richest, smoothest, quickest of all Spenders & Lenders is, of course, the Works Progress Administration. Having learned in previous years that announcement of the amounts of money he spends is a local publicity boomerang, Harry Hopkins talked of his plans in terms of men and jobs, not dollars. WPA's assignment is to take up unemployment slack rapidly at first, then more slowly as PWA's projects get going, then at full capacity when winter comes and heavy construction slows down. Last week WPA added 60,000 workers to its rolls, two-thirds of them in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Similar increases will be made each week during the remainder of July, to bring WPA's total payroll to 2,935,700. The winter peak will be slightly more than 3,000,000 workers.*

Last week Administrator Hopkins' staff was busy checking over new projects submitted by local administrators for addition to their "back-logs"--work to be done when current projects are finished--plans to occupy 1,000 men for six months building a sewer and tunnel at Michigan Avenue and St. Clair Street, Chicago; 21,200 man-hours working the roads of Greene County, Va., etc., etc.

Besides planning and giving work in the manner to which it has become accustomed, WPA last week started something new; buying $10,000,000 worth of men's & boys' clothes to give not only to its "clients" but to any persons who can prove "need," an idea sold to Administrator Harry Hopkins by President Sidney Hillman of Amalgamated Clothing Workers (TIME, June 20). Bids were in and samples received from 1,800 manufacturers. At the Manhattan office of the U. S. Treasury's Procurement Division, WPAdministrator Corrington Gill inspected long racks of garments including tuxedos and racy sports clothes (see cut). He announced that nothing "flashy" would be accepted, that WPA would buy about 1,000,000 quiet garments--durable overcoats and one-pants suits--ranging in price up to $25. Meanwhile, Mr. Gill rented warehouses in Manhattan, Baltimore, Chicago to store these gifts. Manufacturers of ladies' garments flocked after Mr. Gill to see what they could sell him.

If the Reorganization bill had passed, Harry Hopkins would have become de jure what he is de facto--an important member of the President's Cabinet. He may yet do so next session. If and when a new Department of Welfare is created, it will doubtless be staffed by Harry Hopkins' present crew headed by idealistic Chief Deputy Administrator Aubrey Willis Williams who also is chief of the National Youth Administration. As a new Department of the Government, WPA would come in full-fledged and ramified to a degree rivaling even what Herbert Hoover made of Commerce, what lazy thinking made of Interior, for years the great catch-all department. Head of it would be a lanky, cadaverous Cabinet officer of 48, unlike any who ever sat at the big table in the White House.

Slums & Horse Parks. As WPA extends from storm sewers to nursery schools, so the interests and adaptabilities of Harry Lloyd Hopkins are equally diverse. He is at home in the slums, planning improvements, and in his rich friends' boxes at race tracks, picking winners. He can talk with equal charm to dear old ladies and to glamor girls, can sit with groups of serious thinkers, or join the boys in the back room. Since he got rid of his stomach ulcer last December and recuperated at Ambassador Joe Kennedy's house in Palm Beach, he can eat and drink more freely than he has for years, and have more fun. Yet he still and often works long hours after his staff has gone home.

His rise in seven years from an obscure Tuberculosis & Health Association worker to the front rank of Federal officialdom is one of the major phenomena of the New Deal. It could not have been done by a character less elastic and resilient. He has not let his prodigious capacity for work stunt his private life. He likes par ties on Long Island, weekends at Sara toga, shirtsleeve poker with Jesse Jones & cronies. His little house in Georgetown, which he took to be near James Roosevelt, has been more of a sleeping place than a home to him since his second wife died last year, but he manages to be a pretty good father to his daughter Diane, 5. (His son, David, 22, has an advertising job in Manhattan.) If he remarries, his friends think one good reason will be that he finds it hard to be a mother and an executive at the same time. He says it is nobody's g_ _ d_ _ _ business whether he is en gaged, as reported last spring, to Mrs. Dorothy Donovan Thomas Hale, 33, a beauteous Pittsburgh-born glamor girl whose legend starts from a convent and includes a Broadway chorus, luxurious homes in Paris and Southampton, sculp ture, breeding wire-haired dachshunds, life as an artist's wife (the late Gardner Hale, muralist) and the movies.

Normally even-tempered and, though often profane, seldom bitter, Harry Hop kins becomes aroused when WPA is at tacked. One of its loudest critics lately has been Representative Hamilton Fish of New York who last month said of WPA that "the whole rotten mess stinks to high heaven and, like a dead mackerel in the moonlight, it stinks and shines and shines and stinks!"

Convinced of his own honesty, increasingly active in the political councils of the "Kitchen Cabinet" (Messrs. Corcoran, James Roosevelt, Joe Keenan et al.), and increasingly convinced of his right to play a part in politics, Harry Hopkins replies to such attacks: "They can call names just so often. I know a lot of adjectives my self and I am going to start in pretty soon. . . ."

*The Morgenthaus to their farm at Fishkill, N. Y.; the Woodrings to Cape Cod; the Cummingses to California; Mr. Farley & children en route to Alaska (sec p. 13); the Wallaces to Colorado; the Ropers and Madam Perkins in England.

--President Roosevelt's National Resources Committee last week reported that the U. S. population will reach a minimum peak of 139,457,000 in 1960 (based on low birth rate, medium death rate, no immigration), or a maximum peak of 174,330,000 in 1980 (based on high birth rate, low death rate, no immigration). Between 1935 and 1975, persons 20 to 44 years old will increase by 6% , persons 45 to 64 by 69%.

*Dues: 2-c- monthly to the national, 50-c- monthly to the local body.

*WPA's all-time peak: 3,035,852 workers, week of Feb. 29, 1936.

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