Caught in the Dole

When Esther Clark first walked into the state welfare office at Tulsa back in 1942, there was no doubt that she was in real need of help. Her husband, John Clark, a junkyard laborer, was earning next to nothing, and they had six children to support. To tide the family over, the state began giving $90 a month to Esther Clark for the support of their three youngest children.

John Clark's emergency was not permanent. He got a new job at $75 a week, and promptly informed the state that he was earning enough to take care of the house and the groceries. But still the monthly checks kept coming. Flourishing in the new prosperity, Esther Clark began constructing a life of her own on the proceeds. She took up horseback riding, bought a saddle and boots and, finally, a horse for herself. Envious friends frequently observed her cantering nonchalantly around the Tulsa fairgrounds.

There seemed to be nothing John Clark could do about it. He tried again to stop the relief checks, this time at the county clerk's office. "I told them I was making good money," he said, "and warned them they were breaking up my home by giving my wife that check for $90 every month." But the welfare office stood fast, told John Clark: "It is hard to get on the relief rolls and just as hard to get off." The family arguments about all that spare money finally got so bad that John and Esther Clark were divorced in 1947.

Last week, in a court dispute over the custody of their children, John Clark, 51, made his old predicament public. Called into Tulsa district court to explain, state relief authorities admitted keeping up the payments for four years over Clark's objections. Their excuse: the Clarks were quarreling at the time and the situation was "extremely confused." Esther Clark in her turn admitted having purchased the horse out of her relief checks. But, she hastened to add, the riding boots were secondhand.

Locking the barn after the horse had been bought, District Judge Elmer Adams gave Clark custody of his two oldest children, ordered him to give his ex-wife $50 a month for the support of the others. John Clark, who has remarried and gone back to the junk yard at $43 a week, had had about enough of officialdom. He would go to jail, he declared, rather than pay the court's assessments.

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