|
Walker-Johnson Building 1734 New York Avenue,. NW. Washington Springfield, Mass. November 17, 1934. Dear Mr. Hopkins, I pursued two other lines of inquiry after I wrote you from Worcester and before I left there. I found no one who knew of any existing organization among the unemployed or among relief people. A reporter said, "They have tried to organize from time to time, but the Reds step in and take the organization away from them and then it gets busted up. The police love to give the Reds a work-out." The ERA administrator said, "We have had some trouble with malcontents, of course, but we knew how to handle them. We put them all together on a job with a foreman who was--well, not tough, but who kept them working. You'd be surprised how they changed after a bit of that. I happened to run into one of them the other day and he's as contented as you please." Mr. Douglas, the administrator, also told me of a way in which large Worcester employers, including the American Steel & Wire Co., are apparently banking on relief to cut down expenses. In previous slack times (says Mr. D.) concerns that needed people for piece-work part of the day would keep them around all day, letting them fill in their unoccupied time washing windows, cleaning, etc., at a low hourly rate. Now the great bulk of those who once worked for American Wire and Steel and other big companies and hope some day to get back report every morning still with their lunches under their arms. They may be sent hone immediately' or may wait around a few hours before they are given a little piece-work. But if they are sent home they must hang around and be on call, for if at any time of day they are called and not available they are out of luck for the future (he says). Thus the companies, which in the old days managed to support their piece-workers in some fashion, by odds and ends of work in slack times so they would remain available, now apparently count on public agencies to support their people and enable them to exist on part-time piece-work, so that the companies are given a pretty saving over the old method of handling things. The city of Fitchburg (pop. 40,000) began its industrial decline long before the present depression and is today a wilderness of bleak empty factories. Payrolls in all industries have dropped steadily from more than t12,000,000 in 1923 to less than 04,000,000 in 1S33. It is a place where not only the "poor' but the whole city is struggling for continued existence. I went there because I thought it might give some clue to what may happen elsewhere if this whole situation should continue. The first and most striking difference there is that there' no slightest breath of criticism of relief or of the Federal part in it even among the most conservative. The need is so desperate and is so close to everyone there that the usual complaints of extravagance, waste, "How's it all going to be paid for?" and the rest were simply not voiced, even secondarily. Fitchburg itself has been in this war for years, in the position of having to do what had to be done and counting the costs later. Federal help was an absolute godsend and is so recognized. There is much war spirit about the whole place, everyone apparently seeing how close his fortunes are linked up with others'. Business men have banded together to face the thing in the only way they can see, tackling it from the nationally uneconomic angle of stealing industries from other places by giving away factories and helping them with their financing. In this way they have supplied work for almost as many people as there are on ERA there and they are still going ahead. A good index of the "save the ship" spirit is the to me utterly unheard-of policy of the public utilities, which carry their customers along instead of shutting off the gas, as long as the customer seems to be trying to meet current bills up to the limit of his ability. If there is ever a question of making a demonstration of industrial rehabilitation such as you have done with rural rehabilitation on the principle of "give 'em enough at one crack so they won't need relief," I would suggest consideration of Fitchburg as a darned good place to try it. From top to bottom you would get whole-hearted and enterprising cooperation. Of course, this only being a notion of mine I didn't even ask any questions along that line, but I feel confident that if such a plan could be worked out anywhere these people have their intelligence and resourcefulness and utter realization of the need to do it there. From the point of view of conservatives in Massachusetts and elsewhere throughout the nation, nothing could so disarm their criticism as such a demonstration in rock-ribbed Fitchburg (right on the NE Mass. Line) where the most conservative would join in loyally in anything that was done. If such a plan could be worked out, it would not only affect public opinion strikingly by dramatizing how great the need is and how it can be met, but it would do much to counteract the gripe felt generally here that most of Federal attention goes to the backward states (a universal misconception which derives from the fact that some of the most interesting and most publicized relief experiments have been in other sections and from the high percentage of Federal expenditures of all relief expenditures in some states where the expenditures themselves may not be disproportionate). Fitchburg was textiles and paper. The textiles have mostly moved out, dismantling their plants, and paper is way down. The relief show there is pretty high class. Three and a half years ago they started a work relief program on privately contributed funds and carried it on until the CWA a year ago. The spirit developed at that time, both among the people at large and those working on relief, seems to carry over pretty well now. In that sense the morale is swell. At the same time people are pretty desperate, both those on relief and the marginal people who are still hanging on. Apparently a nasty mess was missed only by an eyelash during the textile strike. They at last realize that they are facing a terrible winter (after all these years of slipping down, hand-to-mouth, and nor realizing anything). They are staggered by it. They don't look beyond the winter, they are that bad. "We are sitting on a volcano," says the local administrator. "Only our long training as good Americans is keeping us down. Yet there is no unrest, as such, only the natural desperate desire to live. There is no organization, no leadership, for unrest. ERA here has reached a great class of people, small home owners and the like, who simply would not go on PW. But the usual difficulties because of the short work week are exaggerated here because private agencies have not the resources to supplement when ERA wages fall lamentable below the budget. The situation is very bad as to clothes, especially men's clothes, especially shoes. ERA tries to supplement the wages, but there is so little in the commissary that it is a cruel joke where large families are involved. A typical family of 10, where the father gets $18 on ERA (theoretical budget around $28) received actually supplementation valued at $1.30 a week--a can of Federal beef a week, and some clothes, chiefly light cotton clothes for children, useful, but now warm. What is to happen to the ERA people as to fuel this winter, no one knows. The conviction grows on me, though I confess that not more than 30 per cent of intelligent ERA people agree, that it would be better to pursue a more ruthless policy, taking care of fewer people and really supplying their needs, instead of keeping a larger number on the brink of starvation. Such a policy would force local Welfare departments to find the funds to care for the others. I'll report on Springfield, where I've been the last four days, early next week. Yours truly, Robert Washburn
Mr. Harry L. Hopkins Fitchburg has 922 on ERA, 800 on PW this winter at a minimum if ERA continues at present levels. |