Enough to Eat

Two months ago, as winter closed in, Ohio cities began to run out of relief funds, got no adequate new appropriations from the State, faced another of many crises. Cleveland's situation was more critical than most. From mid-November to mid-December, 16,000 single persons and childless couples in the city were denied any further food orders, left to forage. Orders for 40,000 others were cut to an average of 5 1/2-c- a meal.

Last week the Cleveland chapter of the non-political American Association of Social Workers made public a report on conditions during those weeks, in the midst of which (Dec. 5) Governor John W. Bricker valiantly declared: "Nobody is starving in the State of Ohio."

Said the society: "With the absence of riots and mass demonstrations people were inclined to believe that 'there is no real suffering.'" Among 374 cases picked at random it reported having found:

> A boy vomiting in school because he had had only tea for his breakfasts; six destitute children shivering in an unheated room, waiting for the moment when their mother lighted a brief wood fire and cooked their one meal of corn bread; a mother and eight children living in one room in the house of a friend; a nine-year-old boy, stricken last year with spinal meningitis, without underwear, clothed only in a cotton blouse, a pair of pants; a mother recovering from childbirth, still confined to her bed, living on black coffee and cereal.

> An agent of the society looked into the larder of one middle-aged couple, found "two apples, one quarter of a melon, and about a cup of beans." Said the wife: "If we could just once get enough to eat."

> A story told by a 14-year-old girl: "I found my aunt and the little children crying . . . because they were hungry. They hadn't had any food that day and nothing but cornmeal the day before. My little cousin had found some onions and was eating those with mustard. . . ."

> With hunger and cold came pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, pleurisy, aggravations of cardiac and diabetic cases, said the society's matter-of-fact report.

> Sixteen of the 374 cases were close to nervous breakdowns. "In ten cases there was definite threat of suicide ... in four cases mothers threatened desertion and in two, mothers threatened to 'do away' with their children." Cleveland's crisis came to an end when the City Council approved a $1,050,000 bond issue, restored "full relief." Commenting on the report, Governor Bricker disowned responsibility, said his duty was "not from the standpoint of administration, but only to see that funds were available. Any lapse there was the sole responsibility of the local stations."

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