Their Honors' Opinions

The mayors of New York City, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Louisville, Ky. and Amarillo, Tex. appeared last week before Representative Woodrum's sub-committee which is looking into WPA's past before appropriating for its 1940 future.* To the mayors' debt-ridden cities, WPA is a fairy godmother and they are her loyal courtiers. All the mayors were unanimous that: 1) WPA must go on, 2) work relief must not be returned to the States & municipalities, 3) WPA has done a great job of permanent value. This year there was a sober note in their pleas:

Milwaukee's Hoan. Socialist Daniel Hoan grew pungent about what would happen in Milwaukee if WPA stopped: "There would be parades of hungry people through the streets. And they would be headed by Communists; that's the kind of fellows, you know, that get into these movements, and that means trouble."

He grew pungent also about turning relief back to the States: "I wouldn't want any Governor handling my funds, even if I were a Governor. It's too political. Governors always want to be Pres- idents. . . ." But Mayor Hoan, a Socialist whose boast is that his city budget balances, added that he wished for a pay-as-you-go WPA, financed by taxes, not bond issues! "Let me tell you, as an American citizen, it worries me, this going deeper and deeper into debt."

Detroit's Reading called WPA's shortcomings "only flyspecks on a great picture. . . . They can be taken off without hurting the picture."

Boston's Tobin advocated that Federal taxes collected locally, as on cigarets and theatre tickets, be labeled for local WPA work, so that citizens could see just how much WPA costs them.

Amarillo's Rogers. For four years the mayors have pictured their cities as poor relations, dependent on the U. S. Treasury, communities already at or near their legal debt limits and unable to cope alone with unemployment. A unique mayor last week was Ross D. Rogers of Amarillo, Tex., home of cows, dust storms and helium. Said Representative Ludlow, Indiana Democrat: "I have been in your city on several occasions, Mr. Mayor, and it strikes me that there wouldn't have been any serious trouble if there had been no WPA."

Mayor Rogers: "To be frank about it, there wouldn't have been, even though we went through four consecutive years of drought."

Ludlow: "No one would have suffered? No one would have starved?"

Rogers: "There would have been some suffering, yes, but no one would have starved. If the WPA would close down tonight . . . there would be no starving."

Olin R. Holt of Kokomo, Ind. might have been among the mayors testifying in Washington had he not been turned out of office by Kokomo's voters last November. Last week, Olin R. Holt was convicted, with five other Kokomen, of diverting WPA labor to private enterprise. Mr. Holt spent seven months in Leavenworth eight years ago for protecting bootleggers, regained his civil rights in 1934 when Franklin Roosevelt gave him a full pardon.

* For which President Roosevelt has asked $1,477,000,000. Fiscal 1939's original WPA appropriation was $1,425,000,000, since increased to a total of $2,163,868,000.

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