Still With Us

To taxpayers who had hoped that they might soon get rid of the old shouldergalling burden of relief, WPA's new, handsome chief, Howard Hunter, last week made the announcement that the poor are still with the U.S.--and will be for some time to come.

WPA lists have shrunk from their all time high of 3,364,000 in October 1938. But in the fiscal year that ends this month, despite the fact that farmers in some parts of the country were crying for workers, a monthly average of 1,700,000 people still counted on the Federal Government to make jobs for them. Hunter hoped to get some of them back into private jobs (said he: "If we isolate [them] from the regular economy of the country they'll be with us until they die"), but the chances of defense industry absorbing many of them during the next fiscal year are not very good.

Reasons: 1) defense work is concentrated in a few areas and a few industries; 2) average age of a WPA worker is 42; 3) 18.8% of WPAsters are women; 4) demand is for skilled workers, and65% of WPAsters are unskilled; 5) industry continues to draw the color line and some 15% of WPAsters are Negroes; 6) employers are prejudiced against people with a long record of unemployment. The war itself has added another stricture: employers are turning down Germans and Italians.

Hunter prayed that a sympathetic Congress would boost the budget figure ($875,000,000) for operation of WPA in fiscal 1942; otherwise, he said, he would have to pare his list 41% to an average monthly roll of 1,000,000. He also hoped that Congress would lift a prohibition against employment of aliens on relief. This week the House Appropriations Committee, sending a relief bill on to Congress, refused to do either of those things.

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