Red Cross

Last week John Barton Payne's 75-year-old legs carried the chairman of the American Red Cross sprily up the Capitol steps and on to the ornate room of the Senate Committee on appropriations. There he sat down in the witness chair, began to tell Senators just what his organization was doing about Drought relief.

Most Senators had known and liked this tall ruddy-faced, square-jawed old gentleman from War days when he had left his Chicago law firm to come to Washington as general counsel for the Shipping Board. Afterwards he had been chairman of the Shipping Board, Director General of Railroads, Secretary of the Interior. When in 1921 President Harding made him Red Cross chairman, Judge Payne (he once sat on the bench of the Cook County Superior Court, prefers that title) stipulated that he would serve without compensation, pay his expenses down to postage stamps out of his own pocket. His Red Cross service has netted him one of the finest collections of foreign decorations in Washington.

What brought Chairman Payne to the Capitol was the fact that the Red Cross was under political fire. Senators from drought States were charging that it had fallen down on its relief job, were demanding that the U. S. Government step in and feed hungry husbandmen. Congressional attention had again been focussed on drought relief by last fortnight's demonstration at England, Ark. where 500 men & women with threats of violence obtained food from local merchants (TIME, Jan. 12).

Judge Payne's Red Cross was President Hoover's only reliance for human relief in drought-ridden areas. The President's program provided that the Government would supply loans to feed mules, to buy seed for a new crop, but that the Red Cross must minister to the physical wants of destitute farmers themselves. This plan when put into legislation engendered fierce political disputes (TIME, Dec. 29). Putting aside his political principles as a Democrat, Chairman Payne appeared before the Senate Committee to support his Republican President's relief program.

As a national semi-official organization the Red Cross supplies human relief in the wake of any disaster of nature such as fire, flood, cyclone or earthquake. Because a drought is a natural disaster, it was ready to relieve its victims. But because overproduction was a man-made calamity and not an Act of God, it was not willing to help the city jobless out of an economic predicament no less severe than that of drought sufferers.

Judge Payne told the Senate Committee that the Red Cross had sufficient means to carry on drought relief for the time being. It had spent, up to Dec. 31, $849,965.49 to this end, of which $520,802.99 was for food and clothing and $329,162.50 was for pasturage and garden seeds. Of this total the national organization had contributed $446,234.90 from its $4,500,000 emergency fund whereas local chapters had supplied the balance. Relief had been extended to 49,963 families (approximately 250,000 persons) in 17 States.

"If the winter continues mild, if employment opens up and if the Government's agricultural loan program meets a large portion of the need of spring planting," Chairman Payne testified, "the balance of this reserve fund will probably be sufficient. If we are permitted to proceed in the normal way, without excitement, we might get through the winter on our present funds. I don't say we can but I do say that if we get to the bottom of the barrel, we'll yell."

Chairman Payne's testimony which tended to minimize any need for Federal aid as part of human drought relief in censed Arkansas' two Democratic Senators -- big, leather-lunged, bespatted Joseph Taylor Robinson and little, drawly, baggy-trousered Thaddeus H. Caraway. The latter early in the week induced the Senate to defy the President's program and amend the House bill appropriating $45,000,000 for drought relief limited to feed by adding an extra $15,000,000 for human food. The House, bowing to presidential discipline, balked at this amendment, thereby setting the legislative stage for a re-enactment of the preholiday fight over the Drought relief (TIME, Dec. 22).

In a resounding speech which reverberated menacingly through the Capitol's marble corridors, Senator Robinson bel lowed: "President Hoover and the head of the Red Cross do not know and probably will not know the facts. . . . Congress has little knowledge of the true situation. . . . The riot at England was not the first of its kind but news of the others has been suppressed. . . . There are three entire counties in Arkansas where not a single bank is open today and in 50 counties credit conditions are almost as bad. . . . God forgive the indifference of human beings to the misfortunes of their fellows!"

Senator Caraway, always the gadfly, commented: "I used to have some respect for John Barton Payne. I have some pity and no respect for him now. He is old. He is rich. He spends more to maintain a pleasure resort-- than he is willing to accord 100 destitute families."

As an illustration of Red Cross relief Senator Caraway cited cases in which a Tyronzo, Ark. family of three had been given four pounds of flour, five pounds of lard, sugar and beans, all worth $1.15. and told to subsist on it a month. Said he: "I wish some people who are talking about a raid on the Treasury [President Hoover] would try to accommodate themselves on that kind of ration for a week and find out how adequately and generously the necessities of the people are being cared for by the Red Cross."

Three days after his Senate testimony Chairman Payne found himself getting down to the "bottom of the barrel." As he promised, he yelled--in the form of a recommendation to President Hoover to appeal for popular subscriptions of $10,000,000 for drought relief. His explanation was that drought suffering had spurted upward prodigiously in the last fortnight. Declared he:

"For the first time in the history of the Red Cross we've been compelled to advance money to furnish feed for cattle and other livestock. Our Red Cross chapters have increased their demands upon us and our funds are melting down to the danger point. The demands will continue to grow with the increase in intensity of winter."

*A reference to Judge Payne's elaborate farm near Warrenton, Va.

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