Still in the Sink

At Waco. Texas in October 1952, Presidential Candidate Dwight Eisenhower dwelled on "the absurdity of the situation in Washington." The Department of Agriculture, he pointed out. was distributing a booklet telling the housewife how to wash dishes. "Now someone whose salary is paid by the taxpayer's money made a remarkable discovery and put it right in the booklet," said Candidate Eisenhower. "He says dishes should be washed in a dishpan, not just any dishpan, either. The Department of Agriculture says you will want a pan large enough to accommodate your dishes. But it must also fit into your sink if that is where you use it . . .*These things are a symbol of the shameful wasting of tax funds . . ."

Last week a reporter made another remarkable discovery in Washington: the Eisenhower Department of Agriculture, which had 15,000 more copies of the booklet printed last July, was still selling it. In fact, Miss Hazel K. Stiebeling, the holdover chief of the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics, was still stoutly defending the old DOA view that the Government should perform any useful service that a group of citizens want. Said she: "These booklets are published to fill a need. When they get into the hands of people who do not need them, they lend themselves to the humor of incongruity."

The day after the press wires clacked out the news that the booklet was still available, a DOA spokesman said that before any more were printed, the text would be "reviewed."

Another of the booklet's profound pronouncements: "If you hang the pan on a hook for storage, it should have a hole for the purpose."

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