Jobless Census

On May 18, 1917 Congress voted a selective draft and President Wilson proclaimed June 5 as Registration Day. So early a date would have been impossible had not a daring young officer named Hugh Samuel Johnson in the Provost Marshal General's office presumed to draw up and have printed in advance 45,000,000 registration questionnaires. Major Johnson, who had also written the draft bill, promptly mailed his cards to 80,000 sheriffs and mayors. Governors divided their States into registration districts of approximately 30,000 inhabitants. Newspaper notices told prospective draftees where to report--at their regular election polling places. On the appointed day nearly 10,000,000 men appeared, were handed questionnaires, wrote on them details of their domestic and economic circumstances. Within a few days the War Department had a complete national picture of the raw material from which it was to draw its man power for overseas service.

Since 1930 a major obstacle to intelligent handling of relief and recovery has been the lack of accurate statistics on the number, occupations and geographical distribution of the unemployed. Before 1932 the Democrats lambasted President Hoover for this blind spot on the nation's No. 1 problem. Since 1932 the Republicans have not hesitated to point out that President Roosevelt has done no better than his predecessor in assembling facts and figures on the extent of joblessness. Last year the Administration got the House to appropriate $7,540,000 for hiring 105,000 canvassers to take a census of the unemployed around election time (TIME, June 18). Screaming mad at this possible use of public funds to hire 105,000 Democratic campaign workers, Republican Senators succeeded in killing the House bill.

Last week, with a fresh $4,000,000,000 in his pocket and national elections still far away, President Roosevelt heard not a murmur when he announced that he might shortly spend $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 on a jobless census. Since he aimed to employ some 600,000 white-collar idle for the job, it seemed highly unlikely that the census would be conducted along the quick and economical lines of the 1917 draft at a cost of $300,000, as proposed in his column this week by United Feature Columnist Hugh Samuel Johnson.

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