Charity & Good Cheer

In Manhattan--a town whose citizens assay high for canniness--a leisure-loving group of bums made a delightful discovery last year. They discovered that life and even love on the dole was not such a bad racket. A sharp operator could live in a good hotel room (even when travelers were being turned away) and get generous allowances for restaurant meals simply by talking fast and avoiding employment. And he could sometimes live the good, gay life for months without hindrance by welfare authorities.

This benign state of affairs was just too good to last. The New York World-Telegram printed embarrassing stories. Then New York's Republican state government, which contributes a lion's share of the relief funds dispensed by the city Democratic regime, began investigating. Last week, at a public hearing, State Department of Social Welfare Supervisor Bernard Shapiro lifted the racket's lid.

The city welfare department had supported one woman and her three children in a good hotel room despite the fact that 1) she seemed to be acting as a front for bookies, and 2) her husband earned $100 a week and used $90 of it to pay off a $14,000 debt incurred in passing bad checks. Another woman used her room to entertain "boy friends" (one of whom threatened to knock the hotel detective's block off) and kept her five children playing in the lobby until midnight, to the distraction of the desk clerk.

One man kept his mistress at city expense while his wife and three children lived on relief elsewhere. Another sharp fellow kept himself jobless, and thus on relief, by a trick of dress--he wore a fez and a flowing robe while looking for work, secure in the knowledge that few employers wanted anyone in Oriental costume.

But all these stories were capped by the fascinating tale of Madam X. She had been divorced in 1940 and had collected $40,000 in the process. She had sold $20,000 worth of stocks & bonds in 1942. When she came to Manhattan with her illegitimate daughter, the welfare department had put her on a $222.75-a-month allowance and had allowed her to stay at a hotel of her own choice. When a welfare investigator called, Madam X had "awed" him by appearing in a mink coat and a mink hat.

No sooner had the state produced Madam X than the city began trying to prove that she was more to be pitied than censured. It sent an investigator hustling off to get the mink coat--he came back with an ermine wrap, too, that the state had overlooked. Then the city called in a furrier and triumphantly announced that the mink was worth a mere $300 and that the ermine was just a "worthless rag." Somehow this simply stirred things up.

At week's end, four noisy investigations of New York City relief were going on. The state was investigating, the Mayor was investigating, the grand jury was investigating, and so was the city welfare department itself. City Welfare Commissioner Edward E. Rhatigan was unceremoniously fired by Mayor William O'Dwyer. His successor, Benjamin Fielding, came down with what was described as a case of exhaustion after only five days on the job and tottered off to Doctors Hospital, asking to be shut up in a quiet room.

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