Cold Weather

A year ago this time the Federal Relief Administration was humming with great plans for taking care of the unemployed during the winter. President Roosevelt had just authorized a Civil Works program and Relief Administrator Hopkins was getting ready to provide CWA jobs for 4,000,000 jobless, to distribute the first CWA pay checks before Thanksgiving (TIME, Nov. 20). Last week, however, cold weather was almost upon the country and President Roosevelt had not yet made up his mind as to how he would handle this winter's relief problem.

In Denver, dissatisfied because the State relief administrator had cut the number of days of relief work provided for unemployed, 1,000 relief workers went on strike for his removal. After throwing the tools of nonstriking workers into the Platte River, some 300 strikers precipitated a riot when police arrested their leader.

In Albany, N. Y. five truckloads of "hunger marchers" trying to enter the city over the Hudson River bridge got into an altercation with police, were thoroughly beaten.

Such disturbances were commonly accepted as harbingers of winter. In both cases radical leaders were quick to capitalize on hunger and cold. Yet the Administration in Washington refused to be hustled into any determination of its relief plans to combat this form of discontent. Administrator Hopkins went out of his way to poke fun at Republican Ogden Mills who had declared in a campaign speech that there would be 20,000,000 people on relief by January.

Messrs. Mills and Hopkins were merely engaged in a deliberate political misunderstanding. Last week there were upwards of 4,000,000 "cases" on relief rolls. Counting the families of these 4,000,000 some 16,000,000 men, women & children were dependent on relief. An increase of about 25% in both categories is generally expected by midwinter. At that time Mr. Hopkins may say that there are only 5,000,000 "cases" on relief rolls and Mr. Mills may say 20,000,000 persons are on relief and they both will be right.

Though President Roosevelt and Administrator Hopkins displayed nonchalance about this winter program, there was good reason to believe that they did not feel it. Many relief plans had been called up and the fact that none had been announced meant little. The 1934-35 relief program last week presented a few clear-cut choices to the Administration:

1) Continuation, on an enlarged scale, of the present system, a mixture of dole and work relief that now costs about $142,000,000 a month.

2) A nation-wide setup not unlike Upton Sinclair's EPIC, whereunder the unemployed would make commodities for consumption by the unemployed. Such a program would probably be cheaper than the dole-and-relief work but it has two main disadvantages: a) economically it might tend to throw some workers in private enterprise out of their jobs; b) politically it would arouse a storm of conservative opposition from manufacturers who feel the pinch of direct government competition.

3) Renewal of a scheme similar to last year's CWA, an expensive form of relief, costing about twice as much as the dole.

4) Public works, a still more expensive way of relieving unemployment. Experience has taught the Administration that such projects, while fine on paper, are not a cure-all for joblessness because of the long lag between blueprints and actual re-employment.

5) Subsistence Homesteads and similar methods of setting up the unemployed to take care of themselves. But here again the element of delay rules out any wide-scale use of this system.

Almost certainly the winter relief plan was going to be a cross between several of these relief methods or variants of them. But which ones they would be only President Roosevelt and Administrator Hopkins could say.

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