600,000 Drop?

While Franklin Roosevelt was on his South American trip last December his Relief Administration raised a storm. It announced that it was going to cut WPA expenditures to $152,000.000 a month, try to cut 150,000 reliefers off the rolls, make local governments pay a larger share of WPA costs. The U. S. Conference of Mayors went into a dither, reliefers staged sit-down strikes, and Harry Hopkins had quickly to back water, announcing, "No one who needs Relief will be dropped" (TIME, Dec. 21). Last week when the House received the Deficiency Bill appropriating Relief funds for the next five months, it transpired that Mr. Hopkins planned on cuts which made those announced in December look piddling. Yet instead of raising a hurricane of protest, the Deficiency Bill was passed by an eager House in five hours.

The committee report which accompanied the bill disclosed Mr. Hopkins' plans for WPA reductions by months:

No. of WPA

Reliefers WPA Expenses

February 2,200,000 $151,700,000

March 2,150.000 146.000,000

April 2,000,000 134,500,000

May 1,800,000 120,000,000

June 1,600,000 103,000,000

Mr. Hopkins' explanation of these figures:

"Our proposition, with a drop of 600,000 additional persons, is based on continued recovery and assumes a good agricultural year, that will make drought expenses unnecessary. The proposal provides not only for a drop of 600.000 in the rolls but at the same time provides for a gradual reduction in the monthly cost per man; it assumes that we will get more money out of sponsors" [i. e., local governments].

Several amendments to increase the size of the appropriation were offered in the House. None of them mustered more than 51 votes. The discipline of the majority had little to do with this startling amenability of the House. It was due almost entirely to a paragraph hastily stuck into the Committee report at the last minute by request of President Roosevelt: if necessary the entire $790,000,000 Relief appropriation* would be spent for Flood Relief. No Representative wanted to vote against Flood Relief and, on the flood crests of the Ohio and the Mississippi, Franklin Roosevelt's Relief program rode to an easy victory. Only flaw in his success in cutting Relief costs was the rapidly growing realization that the cost of Flood Relief would knock all Mr. Hopkins' calculations into a watersoaked cocked hat.

* Of which $655.000,000 is for WPA, $80,000,000 for Resettlement.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.