Money for Politics

Two months ago Aubrey Williams, Deputy Administrator of WPA, told relief clients to "keep your friends in power." Fortnight ago David Lasser, able, ambitious, long-nosed little president of the Workers Alliance (which claims 1,000,000 unemployed as members, of whom 400,000 pay 10-c--50-c- monthly dues and are mostly WPA workers) called on his followers to raise a $50,000 Workers Alliance campaign fund for the fall elections. Last week this proved too much even for Mr. Williams' easy-going boss, Harry Hopkins.

"I suppose it is legal enough," said he, "but I just don't like the idea of getting money from these workers for political purposes. What they need to do is spend their money on food and clothing and shelter."

Aside from the obvious moral objection to diverting WPA's relief "wages" to political ends, the legal fact remained that the money is paid by the U. S. Treasury and that Section No. 208 of the U. S. Criminal Code specifically prohibits recipients of Federal funds from soliciting each other for political contributions.--*

Aware of this, President Lasser went to Chairman Sheppard of the Senate's Campaign Expenditures Committee to explain that the Workers Alliance fund would not: 1) be raised exclusively among WPA workers, 2) be contributed to any party war-chest, 3) spent by anyone but the Workers Alliance--for pamphlets, mass meetings, radio time to tell the unemployed where their "interests" in the Congressional campaign lie. Unimpressed, Chairman Sheppard last week wrote to President Lasser: "Personally, I warn you . . . not to carry out this proposed plan. . . . If you proceed. . . and if the committee should agree with my interpretation of the law, it is my intention to request the committee to refer the matter to the Department of Justice."

Then President Roosevelt himself boomed in on the discussion: "I hope very much that people on relief will not contribute any money for the purpose of aiding any political party."

To David Lasser, who (like Aubrey Williams, Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt) regards work-reliefers as an established U. S. economic class, and sees himself as their established, politically potent leader, this was bitter. He asserted that his Alliance would go ahead and collect its fund anyway "from small businessmen, professional groups, and sympathetic organizations, together with voluntary contributions from members."

--*The U. S. Civil Service Commission last week warned its 533,325 classified Federal employes to abstain from political campaigns.

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