No Visible Means

For six months of the year young Ken Keltner, of Milwaukee, Wis., has a good job--playing third base for the Cleveland Indians. This year it paid him about $10,000. The season over, he has no visible means of support. A friend drew this fact to Ken Keltner's attention.

"Are you broke?" said the friend.

"Yeah," said Mr. Keltner, shifting his gum. "I'm broke."

"Why don't you apply for unemployment pay?"

Impressed, Mr. Keltner wrote to the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Commission in Columbus, Ohio, applied for a $15-a-week handout. He was entitled to it, wasn't he? What was wrong with it?

What was wrong was that Ohio is in the midst of a relief crisis. The Indians' third baseman was turned down.

"Oh, well," decided Ken, "if there's going to be a stink about it I'll withdraw the application."

What Ohioans were wondering last week was why there was not more of a stink about the relief deadlock in Cleveland. Relief funds in Cleveland continued to dwindle, approximately 16,000 unemployed (ablebodied, unmarried, childless couples) were dropped from food lists, left to feed themselves, somehow. Cut to crusts were the food allowances of families with children.*

Meanwhile, in ironic contrast, Cleveland's businesses were booming towards 1929 levels. Yet the city could not tax to raise funds for relief without empowering legislation from the State General Assembly. And Governor John W. Bricker refused to convene the Assembly. Why?

Ohio's Treasury has a tidy little surplus. A special session might vote to spend the surplus, and more too, in relief bills. "If [Bricker] sits tight now," observed Columnist Raymond Clapper, "he can clean up this year with a surplus of perhaps $5,000,000 and offer himself as an economical administrator who would make short work of extravagance at Washington."

Promised for Cleveland's relief were 17 carloads of surplus commodities from the Federal Surplus Commodities Corp., 6,000 new WPA jobs. But--"We already are receiving from ten to twelve carloads a day and it is not going very far," said Sidney T. Rowley, assistant relief commissioner. As for the WPA jobs, WPA Director Frank T. Miskell announced there were no new projects available, and few of the 16,000 were even fit for WPA work.

*Reported diet of a family of five, which included a newborn baby and a nursing mother: cornmeal and coffee.

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