The Bonfire of Discontent

Men have been city dwellers for 50 centuries, but barely two centuries have sufficed to bring U.S. cities to a desperate crisis. With seven out of ten Americans now living in cities, the U.S. is the world's largest urban society. The growth of the cities has been so swift that it has spawned some of the nation's deepest and most pressing problems. Throughout the U.S., the big cities are scarred by slums, hobbled by inadequate mass transportation, starved for sufficient finances, torn by racial strife, half-choked by polluted air. The nation's urban population is expected to double by the beginning of the next century--and so are the cities' problems.

Last week the cities, which have long complained of indifference at the hands of Congress and state legislatures, held the center of the stage as an immediate national concern. In Washington, a Senate subcommittee met to investigate what can be done about the worsening plight of the city and its poor, whose frustrations and resentments have erupted in a succession of bloody riots every summer since 1964. And Lyndon Johnson, who is acutely aware that his Great Society can hardly stand on a foundation of urban decay, took up the cry for action during a threeday, five-state trip through the populous U.S. Northeast.

Tattered Dollars. The President talked as usual about the Viet Nam war, his chief preoccupation for many months, and did a little politicking in favor of Democratic Congressmen who need his help in November. But he kept going back to the theme of the cities' problems. In Buffalo, he studied with obvious distaste a bucketful of sludge from a river that feeds Lake Erie, vowed that he would press the fight against pollution--mostly a result of the cities' industrial waste--so that "this great inland sea will sparkle again." In Syracuse, he scored those who "line their pockets with the tattered dollars of the poor"--and promised to "take the profit out of poverty" by preventing slum landlords from exploiting their tenants. "Not all the answers are in," he said. "Not even all the questions have been asked. We need constant study and new knowledge as we struggle to cure what plagues the American city."

Noting that he had sent to Congress "a broad program to help solve the problems," the President put the legislators on the spot by presenting an extraordinary litany of requests. "Give us action, give us progress, give us movement, and American cities will be great again. Give us funds for the Teacher Corps. Give us more resources for rent supplements. Give us the civil rights bill. Give us the means to prosecute the war against poverty. Give us the child-nutrition act. Give us the hospital bill. Give us the money for urban mass transit." And so on, through a list of bills that, if passed, said Johnson, "will give us the power to move ahead. This is no time for delay."

Sharp Clashes. On Capitol Hill, where Senator Abraham Ribicoff's Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization launched its hearings into the cities' problems, the Administration came under heavy criticism for not properly using the money and power it already has to attack urban blight at its roots. Anticipating such an attack, the President had called together several Cabinet members on the eve of the hearings for a confidential strategy session, advised them to acknowledge the indisputable criticisms of his programs but to accentuate the positive--notably a $16.8 billion federal outlay for urban programs in the last year. Then he sent five of his top men off to the hearings: Health, Education and Welfare Secretary John Gardner, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Robert Weaver, Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz and Poverty Program Director Sargent Shriver. They ran into a blistering barrage of questions, criticisms and complaints, many of them from Senators who are keenly aware of the value of the big-city vote, notably Connecticut's Ribicoff and New York's Robert F. Kennedy and Jacob Javits. Ribicoff scolded Weaver for reciting past Administration achievements: "We've had all these programs, but we're reaping a whirlwind of violence. You're talking about AP the past." Kennedy impatiently commented that "it sounds on paper as if the problem is disappearing"--when actually something on the order of a domestic Marshall Plan is needed. He lat er clashed with Katzenbach, an old friend and his former deputy at the Justice Department, who sharply disagreed with Kennedy's charge that the Administration's programs were "a drop in the bucket."

Expensive Habit. As sharply as they disagreed on the effectiveness of existing programs, defenders and critics alike agreed that much more needs to be done. Still, cautioned Gardner, it would be a mistake to try to correct the problems with indiscriminate outpourings of cash. "We should be particularly wary of the old American habit of spending a lot of money to still our anxieties," he said. Besides, he added, it reminded him of an Indian rain dance. "The dance didn't bring rain," said Gardner, "but it made the tribe feel a lot better." What is needed even more, he said, is a coherent program that can cut through the "maze of overlapping jurisdictions" that exist among cities, counties and states, and that can inspire heretofore laggard mayors, county executives and Governors to pitch in.

If conditions are not changed, noted Katzenbach, the potential for new violence is almost limitless. "I don't know of a city that is not facing a serious problem today," he said. "There are 30 to 40 cities with the same frustrations, the same tensions that need only some unpredictable event to set them off." He dismissed the idea that left-wing agitators are responsible for the riots but conceded that they lose no time in joining them. The riots "were indeed fomented by agitators," said the Attorney General, "agitators named disease and despair, joblessness and hopelessness, rat-infested housing and long-impacted cynicism." Further complicating the problem is the fact, said Katzenbach, that policemen lack the confidence of the poor because they are "the visible symbol of faceless, nameless frustrations."

Goaded by Criticism. President Johnson has indicated that, while economy is always to be considered, it is not his overriding concern when it comes to curing the cities' ills. The Administration's major effort to lessen the tension of the slums is its "demonstration cities" program, a two-year, $900 million effort that will provide a subsidy of up to 80% to overhaul selected slum areas in 60 or 70 cities. A comprehensive attack, it is more than a mere brick-and-mortar program, concerning itself with such nonhousing problems as schooling, unemployment, health and recreation. The plan was approved by the Senate last week, but faces a rough-fight in the House--a possibility that the President clearly had in mind in publicly urging the Congress to action.

Goaded by criticism of his urban programs, Johnson announced on his tour further plans to establish neighborhood centers to serve slum dwellers, directed that the number of storefront legal offices in rundown areas be increased to protect tenants from rapacious landlords, and called for the creation of a commission to undertake the first broad review of municipal codes, zones and taxation since 1931. All this --and much more that is needed--will cost money, and Lyndon Johnson may be indulging in just a little bit of rain dancing to make city dwellers feel better. This time, though, some rain had better fall. Otherwise, what New Jersey's Senator Harrison Williams calls the "bonfire of urban discontent" could very well singe Johnson in 1968--or sooner.

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