Surplus Sal

Most people think of Rochester, N. Y. as a rich, solid city where Kodaks are made and music, subsidized by Eastman millions, flourishes. Rochester is also a sick city whose thousands of immigrant, unskilled unemployed compound the effects of Depression II. Dependent on Relief is one in five of Rochester's 330,000 citizens.

A Rochester Reliefer is Miss Mabel McFiggins. "I used to work in a button factory," said middle-aged Miss McFiggins, "but that was a long time ago. My arthritis, y'know." Along with others on local relief in Rochester, Miss McFiggins last week received her semimonthly check from the city welfare department. She then did something that Reliefers had never done before. She bought a booklet of orange and blue stamps issued by the U. S. Government, thus became the first feminine guinea pig in an experiment designed by the Department of Agriculture to relieve the glut of surplus farm produce (TIME, March 13).

Mabel McFiggins bought $4 worth of orange stamps (in 25-c- denominations), good for $4 worth of any food she cared to buy at any of Rochester's 1,200 groceries. For every dollar which she spent for orange stamps, she also got 50-c- in blue stamps. These were premiums, given to her by the U. S. Government. They also could be "spent" at any grocery, but only for farm produce officially listed as surplus: butter, eggs, flour, cornmeal, prunes, dried beans, citrus fruits. Grocers who took Miss McFiggins' stamps, or wholesalers who accepted them as payment from retailers, can cash them for ordinary money at any bank, for they are drafts on the U. S. Treasury.

The Federal Surplus Commodities Corp., which is running the Rochester experiment, normally buys food direct from farmers, cooperatives, etc., and distributes it to the needy through 22,647 outlets in charge of local and State relief agencies. Many are inefficient, careless, hard to deal with, and FSCC is far from satisfied with its own system. So are retailers, who complain that the farm-to-stomach route cuts them out of much business.

FSCC's perky President Milo Perkins, in devising a substitute and trying it at Rochester, is well aware that it costs the U. S. twice as much for handouts. For "surplus" in Rochester means any & all brands of designated foods, stocked and sold by the grocer in the usual way, at prevailing prices, which the U. S. Government has to pay when it redeems blue stamps. If Milo Perkins' plan works well enough to be spread over the U. S., its advantages will be that it balances Relief diets, stimulates the food trade, moves more farm produce through ordinary channels than FSCC could move through its artificial drains.

No optimists from the start, Milo Perkins & colleagues were moderately pleased by the early showing in Rochester. Of the 8,600 local Reliefers who received their checks, 3,900 had purchased stamps during the first three days. Total cost to them (for orange stamps): $29,026 to which the U. S. added $14,513 for blue stamps. After the first rush, stamp sales noticeably slackened, and Relief officials concluded that many of their clients would require much "education" before they would give up regular money for pretty pieces of paper. One in four of Rochester's WPAsters volunteered to accept stamps in lieu of part of their next paycheck.

Meanwhile mothers with babes, laborers in workless working clothes who bought stamps last week, leered at the figure of the Goddess of Plenty printed on them, promptly dubbed her "Surplus Sal."

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