$471 a Year

Franklin Roosevelt's familiar, oft-reiterated assertion that "one-third of a nation [is] ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished" has been cited by New Dealers as justification for vast Governmental spending.

Last week it seemed that Franklin Roosevelt's estimate would have to be revised-- upward. For a searching report on Consumer Incomes in the U. S. by the National Resources Committee demonstrated that nearly one-half of the nation fitted the President's dismal description.

The National Resources Committee, composed of a number of Cabinet members, New Deal economists and liberal businessmen, considers its job "the most complete picture ever presented of the division of the national income. . . ." For its survey the National Resources Committee used figures compiled from a nationwide sampling by WPA through the bureaus of Home Economics and Labor Statistics. Between July 1935 and July 1936, some 300,000 families in 30 States (66 farm counties, 140 villages and 51 cities) were questioned. Correlated by a small, hard-working spinster named Dr. Hildegarde Kneeland, who was once a home economics teacher at the University of Missouri, has been with the National Resources Committee since 1935, results of the survey appeared last week in a slick, terse, 104-page brochure much of which made astonishing reading.

National income was estimated at $59,983,000,000,* consumers at 41,000,000 family units and individuals. Of 29,400,300 families spending nearly $48,000,000,000, the survey showed 14% getting under $500 a year, 42% under $1,000, 65% under $1,500, 87% under $2,500. Ten percent had incomes from $2,500 up to $5,000; only 1%, $10,000 or over. Individuals had practically an identical income range. Lumping the two, Dr. Kneeland found that 32% of the total had annual incomes under $750, 47% under $1,000, 69% less than $1,500.

Following the Roosevelt lead and splitting the nation's consumer incomes into thirds, Dr. Kneeland found that the 13,000,000 families and individuals in the lower third received under $780 a year, were not a distinct or unusual social group but included all types of consumers in all sorts of communities. Fully 70% of them were not getting any form of relief, although their average income was$471 a year. The middle third of 13,000,000 averaged $1,076; the top third, just under $3,000--but this was a meaningless figure because of the tremendous range of income included. If the total estimated income of $59,983,000,000 were divided equally, the average would be $1,622 per family, $1,151 per individual.

*For the same period the Department of Commerce computed national income at $59,584,000,000. Dr. Kneeland's report explains the difference by pointing out that her survey, but not the Department of Commerce's, added in such items as "imputed net rental value of owned homes occupied by their owners."

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