Records on Relief

The question of relief corruption, long a skulker in the flickering outskirts of national politics, suddenly leaped last week into the blazing firelight of the 1936 Presidential campaign as an issue of prime importance. For months unbiased voters have scratched their puzzled heads while Republicans snarled that the Democrats were brazenly turning last year's $4,880,000,000 relief appropriation into a campaign fund and Democrats replied that the Republican charge was merely the familiar old bleat of the Outs against the fictitious misdeeds of the Ins. Until last week neither party had cared or was able to back up its position with facts & figures. Even though highly partisan and hence open to the gravest question, the facts & figures which both political camps suddenly made public represented the closest either side had so far come to getting down to cases on the subject of relief maladministration.

Kansas. In his acceptance speech, Alf Landon declared: "We will not take our economies out of ... the unemployed. We will take them out of the hides of the political exploiters." A relief dispute in his own State last week gave the Republican Nominee a chance for further remarks in this direction. In his Fredonia. Kans. Herald, District WPAdministrator Ben Hudson lately asserted that administrative costs of Kansas' State Emergency Relief Committee were five times as much as those of its Federal WPAdministration.

Up to refute this charge rose the State Committee's Executive Director John G. Stutz, a Democrat appointed by Governor Landon's Democratic predecessor, Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring. Last week the original subject of dispute was overshadowed when Director Stutz complained, in a statement released through Landon campaign headquarters in Topeka, that he had been refused information concerning WPA's administrative costs. His requests for access to the records, said he, had been denied by the State WPAdministrator, ignored by Federal WPAdministrator Harry Hopkins. Indignantly Director Stutz pointed to an order of last June in which Administrator Hopkins had enjoined his State administrators from giving out information without his permission.

In Washington Administrator Hopkins promptly snorted: "It is too bad that he seems to think it necessary to pull this stuff that he can't get at our records. It's another of those red herrings. As a matter of fact, our records are open to him or to anybody who has a legitimate reason to see them, but we won't allow those records to be abused by individuals who would exploit them if they got their hands on them."

Back cracked Nominee Landon in Topeka: "This Administration seems to be finding a lot of red herrings. It's too bad we can't eat them. ... As I said to Kansas newspapermen some time ago, we are not only having censorship of news but censorship of the sources of news under this Administration. . . . The New Deal is resisting every attempt to get the facts about the WPA. . . . As I have said before, they are afraid that publicity would reveal waste and extravagance."

Two days later WTA headquarters in Washington furnished Director Stutz with a statement of total ($12,847,274) and administrative ($513,821) WPA expenditures in Kansas for the first six months of 1936. Director Stutz said it was inadequate.

Pennsylvania. Early last summer a 100% Republican committee of Pennsyl- vania's State Senate set out to investigate charges of WPA corruption in that State, was promptly halted by a Federal injunction on the grounds that no State legislative body had a right to investigate Federal activities. Republicans have lately demanded an investigation into the political aspects of Pennsylvania's relief by the U. S. Senate's Committee on Campaign Expenditures. Democrats have demanded that the Committee investigate large Pennsylvania employers charged with coercing their employes into the Republican line.

Meantime, the Republican National Committee prepared to take its case to the nation by way of its radio-propagandist, William Hard. Last week Broadcaster Hard began a series of nightly talks on "The Purchase of Pennsylvania," presenting affidavits which were forwarded to the Senate committee after each broadcast. Samples:

P:Joseph Maloney of Wilkes-Barre was fired from his WPA job for refusing to register Democratic last month. P: Earl T. Musselman of Harrisburg was ordered to buy a $5 Jackson-Day-Dinner ticket, paid $1 in advance but protested he could not afford the balance, lost his WPA job two months later. P:O'Neill C. Cook of Tionesta appeared at his WPA project wearing a Landon sunflower button, shortly lost his job. P:Mary Caroline Shearer of Indiana was ordered to contribute $27 to the Democratic County Committee on pain of being barred from future WPA work, refused, was barred.

P:When Harry H. Ball, WPA director in Delaware County, complained that a road foreman was unfit for his job, Democratic County Chairman Anthony P. Barrett wrote to him explaining the rule by which he picked all WPA foremen. The rule: "A good Party worker makes an excellent public servant." "It is amazing to me," roared Harry Hopkins, denying the charges in full, "that the Republican National Committee will permit Joe Grundy's henchmen in Pennsylvania to peddle their phoney affidavits and second-hand gossip. . . ." Sample Hopkins' refutation: In Delaware County, where Harry H. Ball implied that only Democrats could get supervising jobs, only 54% of 552 administrative and supervising employes are registered Democrats. Harry H. Ball, an active Republican, told friends he had been promised a job if he would make his affidavit, is now employed by State Republican Finance Chairman Joseph N. Pew's Sun Oil Co.

As for the source of Broadcaster Hard's expose, Administrator Hopkins declared : "He gets all his stuff from Sam Jones, who's an expert at cooking up this sort of material. He used to work for the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution and he put on that big campaign down at the Talmadge convention to smear Mrs.

Roosevelt. He's well-known in labor spy circles. . . . Jones has got a flock of guys out in the field, in several states, passing themselves off as newspapermen. They blow our people to parties, buy them drinks and all that, and then pump them.

It's old stuff." A few hours before Nominee Landon was to deliver a campaign speech on relief, Harry Hopkins forehandedly revealed total costs of WPA and its administration to Sept. 1. The total: $1,773,000,000.

Cost of administration: $72,000,000 or 4.1-c- out of each relief dollar. In sparsely settled Montana, the costliest State, administration took 8.6-c- of each dollar. In populous New York City it took only 2.7-c-, a national low.

Unappeased by denials, counter-charges and figures, Nominee Landon cried at Cleveland that night: "Everybody knows there is too much politics in relief. This has become a national scandal. The evidence of this playing of politics has been supported by documented and sworn testimony. . . . This probably explains why the Administration has deliberately kept the country in the dark." -

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