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25 Million


Dwight Macdonald

Twenty-five Million of Us


SECTION III:
Relief in 1939, the Year of Transition

Thus the New Deal entered on 1939, its relief policy more definitely set than ever towards the weakening and eventual complete liquidation of WPA But now the reactionary bloc in Congress took the ball out of the President’s hands. There was no basic difference in policy: what the New Deal had been doing, gradually and in a left-handed way, the Congressional Tories, unhampered by the need for any idealist-reformist false front, now proposed to do openly and speedily. For a few months there was a remarkable sham battle, with the President making political capital out of a pretense of defending WPA against the inhumane onslaughts of the Tories. But the New Deal generalship in Congress was, understandably, half-hearted, and the Tories inflicted some embarrassing defeats on the Administration. The President finally put an end to the comedy in his relief message of April 27, in which he openly joined the enemy, asking for a WPA appropriation so low as to arouse no opposition even from the Republicans.

The comedy was good while it lasted. Every one from the Workers Alliance to the “Republicrats” played their parts to perfection. The following chronology will give some idea of its richness.

JANUARY

3. Senator Carter Glass strikes the keynote of Congressional action on relief: “Whatever is asked for relief will be three times too much.” [37]

4. “The November plans of the White House advisers to shift WPA funds and workers to munitions-making have been reluctantly given up as impracticable. However, they have not been wholly scrapped ... It is still hoped that the WPA may be used.” – T.R.B. in the New Republic, Jan. 4, 1939.

13. For the first time in the history of the New Deal, the House cuts a relief appropriation asked for by the President. To make up the deficiency in funds for the rest of the fiscal year (through June 30), the President asked $875,000,000. This inadequate sum the House reduces to $726,000,000, by a vote of 226 to 137. The session lasted eight hours, and the jokes bandied back and forth “filled the House with merriment in probably the most colorful sitting of that body in years”. The “Republicrats” took over entire control of the session, shouting down all liberalizing amendments and writing into the act whatever struck their fancy. One successful amendment – thrown out of the final bill by the Senate – denied WPA jobs “to any person who attempted to influence the political opinion of another”. When the time came for a final vote on the measure as a whole, and the Speaker asked if any one wanted a separate roll-call on any amendment, not a voice was raised on the Democratic side of the House. “A gasp of astonishment went up from the crowded galleries.” The New Deal had served notice it would not even go through the motions of fighting on the relief issue.

16. Ralph Hetzel, unemployment director of the CIO, springs into action with a call to all CIO locals to – write letters to their Congressmen.

18. The Senate committee on appropriations considers the President’s $878,000,000 deficiency request. Borah makes a more militant appeal than the President or any New Deal leader has ventured:

“I am for economy, but there are plenty of places to cut Federal appropriations without taking it out of the hides of poor, helpless people on relief. Many of them are now living like beasts, hundreds of thousands of them ... Here they are, proposing to drop 200,000 people in the dead of winter, and 200,000 more when the cold March winds are blowing. God knows what these people are going to do, unless they starve ... When the armaments bill comes along, there will be no close figuring.”

David Lasser, president of the Workers Alliance, wants to know: “Is the majority of this Congress trying deliberately to provoke a situation of social disorder?” The possibility seems to worry him.

19. Colonel Harrington estimates the WPA rolls will have to be cut one-third before July if the House’s $728,000,000 is permitted to stand.

The Social Security Board releases figures showing a 4% increase in relief cases between November and December 1938.

A heavy snowstorm hits Washington. It is reported that many Congressmen are wavering in their feeling that relief should be cut.

20. Ralph Hetzel issues a bulletin: a “preliminary survey” by his staff shows that a majority of Senators favor the President’s miserably inadequate WPA figure to the House’s wretchedly inadequate figure. This seems to Mr. Hetzel to be glad tidings. Nothing is said about the $1,050,000,000 originally asked by the CIO.

21. The Senate appropriations committee votes, 17 to 7, for the House figure.

22. The Workers Alliance announces that over 500,000 members and sympathizers will parade throughout the nation next Saturday to protest against the Congressional cuts. (N.B. Parades fail to materialize, on account of rain or something.)

23. David Lasser writes a letter to each and every Senator. Comrade Lasser is hurt because his testimony before a Senate committee last week was deleted from the printed record. “We regret ... It is our feeling ... If the committee had informed me that my statement was awkwardly put, I would have been glad to clarify it.” (N.B. No one asks him to “clarify”.)

26. Ralph Hetzel issues a clarion call for more postcards to Congress. Mr. Hetzel: “The tide seems to be turning.”

27. The tide turns – backwards. The Senate votes, 47–46, for the House figure. The vote is apparently a terrible shock to Majority Leader Barkley, who had promised the President victory by at least five votes. Barkley had been so sure of winning that he had allowed Senator Thomas to use up all the New Deal’s debating time with a speech on the silver issue. By now, such bungling – if bungling it was – in the handling of the New Deal’s relief bills in Congress has come to be taken for granted. Relief somehow is not an issue that brings out the best efforts of New Deal parliamentarians ... The importance of the relief issue is shown by the fact that the Senate vote is the biggest to be turned out in the last three years. Every Senator either voted or was paired, except Senator Chavez, Dem., of New Mexico, who was detained at home defending a score of friends and relatives against Federal indictments charging misuse of WPA funds.

The Hon. Mr. Chavez put himself on record, however, as favoring the House figure.

FEBRUARY

7. President Roosevelt signs the $725,000,000 deficiency appropriation bill. He asks Congress to appropriate $150,000,000 more at once, as “a state of emergency” exists. He states, without bothering to mention it was his administrator who did it, that WPA rolls have been reduced by 360,000 since last October by not filling vacancies, and that by now there is a big waiting list of certified relief cases desperately in need of WPA jobs. But now it will be necessary to cut 1,000,000 off WPA on April I. The President announces that from now on, he himself will personally lead the fight for $150,000,000 more.

15. Representative White, of Ohio, says that Congress made the WPA cut as “an experiment”.

MARCH

6. Headline: ROOSEVELT FOR RESTORATION OF $150,000,000 RELIEF FUND BUT AGAIN ASSURES BUSINESS. PROMISES NO NEW TAXES.

9. Colonel Harrington states that even if the President’s $l50,000,000 is voted by April 1, it will still be necessary to drop 150,000 more WPA workers.

“This reduction, Colonel Harrington said, had been contemplated all along by the President and was intended by him when he originally asked Congress for $875,000,000.”

14. More than a month after he personally assumed leadership of the great battle for $150,000,000 more funds, President Roosevelt gets around to writing a formal letter to Congress about it. It is significant that neither now nor at any time in the last few years of such fake struggles with Congress over WPA appropriations has the President carried the fight to the people. Relief is too explosive an issue to be handled over the radio. The President prefers to rely on parliamentary maneuvers. Thus at this juncture, he “persuades” the mild New Dealer, Chairman Taylor of the House appropriations committee, to supersede the anti-New Deal Woodrum as head of the subcommittee on WPA The persuasive instrument is a promise of a million dollar irrigation project for Taylor’s home county. This Metternichean maneuver bears no visible fruit whatever, so far as the WPA fund is concerned.

It is revealed that, pursuant to the first WPA deficiency bill, 30,000 aliens have been dropped from WPA. In signing the bill, President Roosevelt made no objection to this provision.

David Lasser threatens that if the pink slips go out next week, “we will print 3,000,000 ballots for distribution among WPA workers to determine whether they want to stage a protest march on Washington”. (N.B. The ballots were printed, the vote was, according to the Workers Alliance’s own figures, about 20 to 1 in favor of a march, but no march took place. Once more, parade called off on account of rain – or something.)

20. The Workers Alliance brings one hundred hand-picked delegates from the South to plead, in the Congressional corridors, with the Southern Democrats for more relief funds. Net result: a Workers Alliance lobbyist gets his face slapped by Congressman Cox of Georgia when he makes the social error of presenting to the Congressman a Negro constituent. (The more respectable the left becomes in matters like this, the more unrestrained is the violence of the right.)

27. Congressman Cox gets the House to approve, 362 to 27, his proposal for an investigation of the WPA.

30. “We have never sought by the Federal program to provide for all who are eligible for WPA. If the full amount of $150,000,000 were appropriated there would still be approximately a million certified as eligible for WPA who would have to rely upn their own resources or upon the care of the states and localities.” This is an argument advanced against the $150,000,000 figure, by Representative Woodrum of Virginia, veteran leader of the anti-relief forces in the House.

31. The House votes $100,000,000 for relief, almost unanimously. This is the outcome of an extraordinary situation. The New Deal leaders in the House became convinced they could not carry the $150,000,000 figure. Woodrum offers to “compromise” on $100,000,000. The New Dealers agree and withdraw from the fight, leaving the fight against those who would cut relief below even this figure in the hands of Woodrum. Thus, for one day at least, Franklin D. Roosevelt yields his sword and buckler as the peerless champion of the unemployed to the gentleman from Virginia.

APRIL

11. The Senate considers the President’s request for $150,000,000 WPA funds. Senator Barkley, majority leader, makes a remarkable speech refusing to fight for the White House figure, on the grounds that $100,000,000 is all that can be gotten. “I am not going to kid the Senate, or kid the people of the United States by holding out the hope that they can get something they cannot get,” declares this great liberal statesman.

“So far as this amendment is concerned, I have not tried to exercize control over the vote of any Senator. I thought it unwise to precipitate this fight. ... I have not hawked myself around and electioneered in the cloakrooms.”

Such a display of high-mindedness in a party floor leader, approaching the scrupulous detachment of a Gallup Poll investigator, is a worthy companion-piece to the behavior of the New Deal leadership in the House on this same matter. The Senate votes for Mr. Woodrum’s $100,000,000, just as Senator Barkley predicted would happen.

14. Colonel B.B. Somervell, WPA administrator for New York City, proposes to his charges that they all work doubly hard, so as to complete all possible projects before the lay-offs begin. To stimulate their enthusiasm, he announces that the WPA group which has done most work by the end of the month will receive – “special mention.”

27. President Roosevelt sends to Congress his annual WPA message. For the fiscal year beginning July 1, he suggests an appropriation of $1,477,000,000, which will mean dropping 1,000,000 off the rolls. “The sum asked produced little unfavorable reaction in Congress.”

MAY

14. John L. Lewis, fearless leader of labor and militant champion of the masses, speaks out boldly, mincing no words, against the proposal to cut 1,000,000 off WPA, demands emphatically that at least 3,000,000 WPA jobs be provided next year. For a man in high public position, however, Mr. Lewis seems strangely ill-informed. He apparently is unaware that the 1,000,000 cut was proposed by the President, since in his eloquent letter there is not a single reference either to the New Deal or Roosevelt. Furthermore, through some clerical error, the letter is addressed not to “Franklin D. Roosevelt, the White House”, but to “Edward T. Taylor, chairman, House Appropriations Committee”.

23. Colonel Harrington, WPA chief, tells the Woodrum Committee that the Administration expects to be able to reduce WPA rolls to 1,500,000 by July 1, 1941 – a cut of just half.

JUNE

12. The Woodrum Committee ponders next year’s WPA appropriation. “Even the more conservative members,” reports the NY Times, “were said to regard Mr. Roosevelt’s request for $1,470,000,000 as ‘most reasonable’.”

17. The House passes its WPA bill for 1939–1940, an extremely reactionary measure, following almost completely the suggestions of the Woodrum Committee. The seriousness of the New Deal objections to this bill may be seen in the final vote on the measure: 373 to 21.

“Confusion marked the later hours of debate ... Hoots, catcalls, and boos greeted speakers ... The session was held before packed galleries, enjoying the ‘show’ ... As the hour grew late, the members shouted down the reading clerk as he attempted to read amendments. And without hearing them – it was impossible in the press gallery directly above the reading clerk to distinguish the words – the House voted them down.”

23. The Civil Service Standard, official organ of District I of State, County, and Municipal Workers of America (CIO), runs an editorial on the WPA situation: “The new Public Enemies can be routed! The civil service will rise to a man behind Roosevelt, LaGuardia, Lewis, Harrington, Somervell, and Hodson!” There is talk of the Standard being tinged with Stalinism.

29. The committees of the House and of the Senate wind up their long discussions of the WPA bill, which must be passed by both houses before midnight, June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Throughout these discussions, it has been clear that the House is more reactionary than the Senate as to the new bill. The liberals and organized labor pin their hopes to the Senate – but they forget that the House is also much more determined. The final joint bill reported out by the committee is, in all important respects, the House’s bill, that is to say, Representative Woodrum’s bill.

30. On the last day of the fiscal year, the 1940 relief bill, which goes into effect tomorrow, passes both houses of Congress. In the House, Representative Woodrum has a field day. “Congress for the first time has vigorously moved into this picture and asserted its prerogatives,” he quite correctly declares, and promises more such “assertions” in the future. The New Deal “opposition”, halfhearted at best, by now is completely helpless and demoralized. After taking up almost all the debating time, Woodrum “yielded to several New Dealers, who were forced to be content with whatever words they could sandwich in between derisive shouts from the other members, who showed an unwillingness for any delay and for any defense of WPA or its projects”. The final vote is carried by “a shouting, cheering majority of 321 to 23”. The minority was unable to force a roll-call. In the Senate, the bill was passed not only without a roll call but without even a record vote.
 

The Roosevelt-Woodrum Act

Thus was passed by the representatives of the people – who took care not to put their votes on record – the act which laid the legal basis for Federal relief in the present fiscal year (July 1, 1939 to June 30, 1940). It is by far the most reactionary relief measure to be passed since the beginning of the New Deal. It makes basic changes in the whole WPA set-up. The liberals, the Stalinists, and the CIO leadership unanimously blame its drastic provisions on the Congressional Tories. Just what does the act provide? What is the effect of each provision? And who is responsible? Let us see.
 

1. Provision: This fiscal year’s WPA appropriation set at $1,477,000,000. This sum, furthermore, is to be spent in twelve equal monthly instalments. (Hitherto, WPA funds have been spent when and as determined by the administrator.)

Effect: WPA rolls must average 2,000,000 this year, down 1,000,000 from last year. The equal-monthly-instalments provision is designed to make it harder to put through deficiency appropriations. In the past (see Chart II) the initial appropriation has usually been completely spent before the end of the fiscal year, and Congress has then had no choice but to vote more funds.

Responsibility: Credit for the equal-instalments provision goes to the Congressional “Republicrats”. Credit for the cut in total funds belongs to President Roosevelt, who wrote in his relief message to Congress on April 27:

“For the fiscal year 1940, I recommend, therefore, that the specific sum of $1,477,000,000 be provided for the Works Progress Administration ... This represents a reduction of one-third below the amount provided in the current fiscal year and will permit the employment of slightly more than 2,000,000 persons during the twelve months beginning July 1, 1939.”
 

2. Provision: All employees to work 130 hours a month, at no increase in wages.

Effect: Hitherto, WPA workers have been paid a monthly “security wage” – which is not affected by this provision – and the hours of work required of them per month have been adjusted so as to make their rate of pay that prevailing in private employment. The new arrangement means that union wages are no longer paid on WPA, and is therefore a serious blow at the national wage structure, especially in the building trades.

Responsibility: Rests entirely with the White House. Roosevelt’s WPA administrator, Colonel Harrington, first advanced this suggestion in his testimony last spring before the Woodrum Committee. After a long description of the technical difficulties of administering WPA with work-months of varying lengths and of the “inequities” the system inflicted on the unskilled workers – a smoke screen for the real object of the White House: to break the unions’ power on WPA – Colonel Harrington concluded:

“It is my recommendation that persons employed on projects of WPA be required to work 130 hours per month and that the earnings of such persons be on a monthly basis ... and that substantially the present national labor costs be maintained.” [38]

In signing the final bill, President Roosevelt made no objection to this provision – although the Democratic platform in 1936, on which he was reflected, included a specific prevailing wage pledge. We have already seen how the White House tried to abolish prevailing wages on WPA in 1935. And the current investigation by the Department of Justice into building-trade wages fits into the same general pattern. As the Washington columnists, Alsop and Kintner, recently put it:

“The President was not sorry to see the prevailing wage struck out of the last bill ... He is well known to regard the unions as primary obstacles to recovery.” [39]
 

3. Provision: All persons who have been on WPA for more than 18 months must be cut off the rolls by September 1. After thirty days, they can get back on again if

  1. they are re-certified as completely destitute by the local relief authorities,
  2. there is room on the WPA rolls, and
  3. the local WPA head wants to take them back on.

Effect: This will cause much suffering to hundreds of thousands of WPA “veterans”, who will be forced onto relief at half or less their WPA earnings. It will also make it much more difficult to hold together WPA unions, since the organized workers will be largely replaced by new people from the rolls.

Responsibility: Rests primarily with the Republicrats. But it a worth noting that this ingenious union-busting device was first publicly proposed by Colonel Brehon Somervell, who has been in charge of WPA in New York City since 1936. The press in June 1937 was full of discussion of “The Somervell Plan” – identical with the present one – for getting rid of what the Colonel called “WPA career men”. [40] It is also worth noting that Colonel Somervell was not rebuked publicity by his superiors, nor did the President object to this provision in signing the bill.
 

4. Provision: Wage differentials between various parts of the country to be abolished, except insofar as they reflect differences in living costs.

Effect: Hitherto, wages have varied widely in different regions. Unskilled workers in the South, for instance, have been getting $26 a month, in the big cities of the North, $56. There is nothing like this much difference between Northern and Southern living costs. (A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics study put it at less than 3%.) There is, however, a great difference in living standards. The new provision aims to eliminate this difference. This is being done chiefly by raising WPA wages in the South. In New York City, for example, unskilled WPA workers have had their monthly pay cut $8 (from $60.50 to $52). In Southern cities WPA unskilled rates have gone up about $15 a month. [41]

Responsibility: The Southern Democrats put this one across. Their aim was partly to force a further series of wage cuts, but chiefly to get more WPA money for the South, whose share has always been low. (According to figures presented by Senator Byrnes of North Carolina: in 1936–1938, the thirteen Southern states, with a total population of 33,800,000, got only $609,400,000 WPA funds between them; while New York State alone (Pop.: 12,600,000) got $737,200,000, or about three times as much per capita.) But there is likely to be one unexpected kick-back to this provision: even a small rise in WPA wages in the South will bring them above the coolie level of private-employment wages down there, and thus tend to force up the whole Southern wage level. This is, of course, the last thing the Southern Democrats would want to happen.
 

5. Provision: Administrative costs may not exceed 4% of total expenditures.

Effect: Ostensibly a way of insuring that the maximum of funds spent go for relief, this provision is actually a cunning way of wrecking the whole program. It will reduce administrative outlays below the level of efficiency, will make it impossible to plan out projects with enough care, and so will lower the quality of work done. Thus public opinion will be prepared to favor complete liquidation of WPA.

Responsibility: Rests entirely with Congress.
 

6. Finally, there are a number of less important provisions, originated by Congress but not opposed very strongly by the Administration. All aliens are to be dropped from the rolls. At least twice a year, the financial status of every WPA worker must be investigated – at a cost of between $5 and $10 a head! In future; no project is to cost over $52,000 for materials – a limitation designed to restrict WPA to the kind of “boondoggling” projects most vulnerable to political attack. The Federal Theatre Project is abolished outright, and the art, music, writers, and research projects have been greatly restricted. The Administration put up a comparatively strong fight against this last change.
 

7. One minor provision deserves a paragraph to itself. One, at least, of the WPA millions got a raise in pay, namely, Colonel Harrington, whose salary was raised from $7,200 to $10,000. It seems the Colonel completely charmed the Woodrum Committee, and its chairman in particular. When the House discussed a proposal to replace the Colonel with a bi-partisan board –

“Colonel Harrington’s chief supporter turned out to be Mr. Woodrum himself, who in appreciation of Colonel Harrington’s precise and dignified testimony, publicly urged that he be made one of the proposed three-man WPA administrative board”. [42]

When it came to signing the bill, the President showed that he agreed with Mr. Woodrum that the Colonel should have his pay raised, just as Mr. Woodrum agreed with him that the other WPA-ers should have their pay cut.

Notes

37. This and all other facts and quotations in this chronology, from NY Times, unless otherwise specified.

38. Time, July 17, 1939.

39. Quoted in Northwest Organizer, July 27, 1939.

40. Literary Digest, June 12, 1937.

41. WPA General Order No. 1 (Aug. 15, 1939).

42. New Republic, July 5, 1939.

 


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