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Federal Emergency Relief Administration
Clarksburg, W.Va., Dear Mr. Hopkins: A few miles out of Clarksburg, eastward along the main line of the B.&O., lies what used to be the mining camp of Chiefton. It shelters 70 of the 1,700 families which the county classifies as victims of abandoned industry--chiefly coal mining. A buckled railroad platform of rotted planks, a closed company store with a window display of cobwebs and a forbidding cluster of 83 company houses, held down by clothes-lines, lie between hills of garbage-strewn slag in the shadow of a rusty runway and an old-fashioned tipple. A few garden patches, littered now with prone, anemic cornstalks, lean toward the jaundiced, acid-poisoned creek as though bent upon slipping in and ending the effort to produce life amidst economic death. It is evident that the gardeners themselves suffer no such particular discouragement for the baby crop remains good and there are upwards of 250 children in the camp. Those not on school seem to be engaged, for the most part, in eating dirt or playing seven-up with matches and stakes. I notice that they are adequately covered with dirty clothes and all have shoes. Behind them as they eat or play life rushed by on U.S. Route 50. Follow that route to Wolf Summit and, in a stretch less than ten miles long, one will pass twenty-three such stranded communities--twenty-three mining camps along which, operating a few years ago, now are idle. Of the 800 families living in them, 400 are on relief. Odd jobs in Clarksburg or vicinity keep the rest alive. Health conditions are bad--in Phoenix Hollow, not far away, they are worse than bad--but they are being improved and, in many cases, now are better even than when the crumbling shacks were new. As Joe Pearse, of Chiefton, said, putting it more vulgarly, the camp toilets now are adequate on the outgo. Mr. Pearse suggested more governmental attention to the intake as a means of promoting their full efficiency and making for more general contentment. Mr. Pearse has not worked for three years. He gets "three or four days a month on the road" and hopes for more. Ten other men with whom I talked also hoped for more "government work." They had ceased hoping for any other kind. All were miners; five were over 45 years old; two were under thirty; two had been idle for more than two years except for their "government work"; six had not worked for more than a year except on relief work. It was plain to me that these men had lost hope in everything except the Federal government. The hope there was that more would be done for them, the feeling being that present relief standards were inadequate. Speaking of these men, Mrs. Williams, County Relief Administrator, said: "Oh, yes; they consider themselves as government workers--badly paid, or rather, inadequately employed. The general attitude seems to be that by going on relief one is working for the government. The F.E.R.A. is considered as an employer. People frankly call me up and say: 'I've been working for you for so long. Can't you do this or that for me?'" I saw Carl Horner, President of the Chiefton Coal Co., owner or part owner of half a dozen other abandoned coal mines hereabouts, Project Engineer for the County and described by the Relief Administrator as "one of the most helpful men in town who has given much time and money to those in need." "Mr. Horner," I said, "I have been out to Chiefton. Sad situation." "Very," said Mr. Horner. "Twenty-two hundred acres of good Pittsburgh coal lying fallow; nearly $400,000 worth of equipment going to waste." "What's preventing you from operating?" "The United Stated Government," he said. "Code?" I asked. "Wages too high?" "Not at all," said Mr. Horner. "Wages are all right. I could put all those men out there at work and pay them the scale and make money." "If code discrimination ceased." "Nobody seems to, or seems to want to," said Mr. Horner. "If you do, I'll tell you what's wrong with the coal code as it affects this region. Remember I'm a member of the Code Authority and on the Grievance Committee. I was down in Washington when the Code was written. So were many other coal men like me--middle fellows--not the shoestring operator nor the operator backed by millions. They were there, too, that latter class; we middle fellows might have well stayed home. The Consolidation Coal Company wrote the code for this region." "So I'm out of the coal business. But leave me out; let's take this case here as an example. This is a complaint from the Sardis Coal Company. They operated a mine ten miles from Clarksburg. Their books show that they loaded coal every month for seven years prior to October, 1933, when the code went into effect. Since that date they have not loaded 500 tons of coal. They've been put out of business--they're dead." "Mr. Francis, I pay a hundred dollars for a suit of clothes. My bookkeeper pays $25. If the clothing code authority should require all suits to cost $100, the $25 suit man would have no demand for his product. He might raise quality and compete in the $100 field but Nature made Sardis coal and it cannot be changed; it is relatively poor coal and yet the code says that it must be sold at a price equal to that of the best. Our coal differs in quality north and south of Clarksburg but the code put them all in one class. Then the big fellows went out with their high-priced sales organization and convinced the buyers that one could not produce good coal without spending $200,000 or so on mechanization. They got the business and the middle fellows' customers of years' standing stopped ordering from Sardis and me and thirty others like us and traded with Consolidation. Why wouldn't they? Consolidation offered special sizes, special service of all kinds on best quality coal and the government said that Sardis' price and my price must be the same as that of Consolidation. "But some price differential was made?" "Yes, ten cents a ton, after the business was lost. It isn't enough. These mines say: Let us sell our coal, say, at twenty cents a ton cheaper. There would be a good market for it. We can still pay the wage scale and make money and take care of such sad unemployment situations as you saw at Chiefton. I have three hundred houses housing sad situations. They would not be so sad if we could go to work. But no, we should have to spend money modernizing and mechanizing many plants when there isn't enough coal to warrant the expenditure. Take the Trotter Coal Company, near here. It's a typical instance. They have done their best to get to work; they spent a good deal, pumping out and cleaning up but they cannot get orders at this price unless they put in a new tipple and equipment for screening and crushing. With a twenty cent reduction they could operate; without it they are done. What Washington is doing is to force monopolization just as fast as it can go. This is happening in all lines--the middle fellow is being forced down and out and he is the backbone of the country. Business is heading back to the situation which brought about the enactment of the Sherman anti-trust law. Not only are the smaller mining operations being ruined but also the smaller mining equipment companies and smaller industries of all kinds. If I'm wrong I'll be glad. All I know us that people who used our coal and Sardis' and Trotter's coal and the coal that came form dozens of mines now abandoned would again buy that coal and put those mines to work if they could buy it for what it's worth or even more than it's worth. They used that coal for fifty years and were satisfied. But the mines are closed and that's why you have the relief problem you have." "Taking the business away from the big ones and giving it back to the little ones would not increase employment." "It would to a great extent. Mechanization is what is cutting down on employment. The whole tendency of mechanization is to put men out of work, you know that. These smaller mines, lacking it, would put more men to work producing a given amount of tonnage than do the large operations. And they could do it, as I say, and still pay the scale." "The code price, then is high?" "Certainly it's high; high enough for all of us to make money." Harrison County has other large industries which will be noted later but coal mining continues to absorb the activities or inspire the hopes of the principal part of the population. The companies operating include: CONSOLIDATION COAL Co., (Rockefeller interests) operating three mines. Owings mine employs 426. P.K. mine, 400; Columbia mine, 200. All operating three days a week and expecting to continue. BETHLEHEM-FAIRMONT. 1 mine employing 150 men, working 3 days a week. DAWSON COAL CO., Dawson mine.(Weaver interests, Philadelphia) sells to N.Y.C.R.R. 100 men employed. 2 and 3 days a week. Prospects same. REPPERT COAL CO., Two-Lick mine. 100 men employed. Being run by Empire Nat'l Bank, Clarksburg, as a trustee in receivership. New equipment. Sells to railroads. Working 3 days a week. May go to two days weekly soon. COURTNEY COAL CO. Local commercial mine employing 50 men three days weekly. HUTCHINSON COAL CO. Operating McCandlish mine, 200 employees, and Laurelee, 200 employees, working three days a week. KATHERONE COAL CO., local capital. Coal leased from Consolidated . Small drift mine. 40 men working five days a week. VIRGINIA-MARYLAND COAL CO. Owned by A.L. White, President N.W.Va. Coal Code Authority. Baltimore and Richmond capital. 100 men operating 3 days weekly. CORRADO COAL AND COKE CO. Cunningham mine. 50 men employed two days a week. GREEN VALLEY COAL CO. Reppert interests. 300 men working half time. GETTY COAL CO. Reppert interests. 100 men working half time. GREER GAS COAL CO. Morgantown interests. 50 men working 1 day a week. MAUREEN COAL CO. Horner interest. 60 men working 3 days a week. LONG FUEL CO. Righter mine at Lost Creek. Local capital. Has N.Y. State contract for 40,00 tons a year. Worried to death about ability to meet specifications. If politically right in N.Y. coal will pass; if not company is doomed. 75 men working two and three days a week. WADDELL COAL CO. Running 1 mine. 300 men employed 3 days a week. Working on contracts made before code became effective. Coal operators interviewed and questioned concerning prospects were generally unwilling to make predictions. They are watching the steel industry and are hoping for a continuance and, possibly, a betterment in railroad orders. All agree that there is a surplus of mining labor in the county which might be reduced somewhat by unlooked-for code price changes. But even then there would be a number of miners who, wither because of age or disability, never could be re-employed. The number is estimated variously at from 2,000 to 3,000. The relief caseload in the County on November 28th was 3,659, compared with 3,276 as of the same date a year ago. In May last the load had dropped to 2,142 but a slowing down of industry generally this summer brought it up again. In July last the tinplate mill of the Weirton Steel Company closed down throwing more than 1,000 people out of employment. Many of them still are in relief. It is authoritatively said that there is no hope for this plant to resume work before January although some of the unemployed workers told me that their foreman had promised them pay-day before Christmas. The town is full of rumors concerning the reopening of this plant. Its non-operation means a monthly loss to the community of more than $125,000, I was told. The good old Hazel-Atlas Glass Co., the Washington, Pa., plant of which was whooping things up close to capacity when I was there, is doing even better with its plant here, 1,700 people being employed full time as compared with 900 in 1929. The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., is giving full time work to 700 and two other glass companies to more than 400 more. Outside of a little complaining about the tariff the glass people are relatively optimistic, especially those equipped to dabble in liquor bottles. The plant of the National Carbon Company closed for several years, its personnel having been moved to the parent plant at Niagara Falls, N.Y., now has installed a superintendent in the factory here and begun housecleaning preparatory to resuming local operations on a fairly large scale and employing several hundred early in the New Year. Half a dozen other sizeable concerns employing around 100 people or slightly less are keeping busy and hoping for better things. A survey made in April last of twelve representative industries in the county showed 1800 more employed than in April, 1929. There has been a decline since then in the number employed, largely due to the closing of the Weirton Steel's tinplate mill and a falling off of orders in certain glass plants but if the tin mill reopens, as expected, in January, this decline will again be offset. Commercial activity has increased during the last months; retail business is reported by leading merchants to be infinitely better than it was last Fall and progressive gains have been noted month by month. Credit is good for those who don't need it and impossible for those who do. Two large, or fairly large mercantile establishments gave up the ghost last month, failing to obtain working capital. W.H Davidson, trust officer of the Union National Bank, said: "We have more than $1,000,000 increase in deposits since July, 1933. The same is true of the Empire National. We are on the look-out for good loans, anxious to make them. Restrictions from Washington obstruct real estate loans. I doubt whether it is the province of a commercial bank to make them but it does seem too bed that good realty cannot be helped. As to your relief program, my principle criticism would apply to the policy of paying labor so much. My department is in charge of land. The prevailing rate of pay for workers on farms is $1 a day, plus keep, house, etc. Men working for this wage become dissatisfied when they see others working on the roads at forty-five cents an hour. Some have left their farm jobs to go on relief work at this rate. Others, without work, will not accept farm jobs." Mr. Somerset, cashier of this bank, said: "We have made some loans on realty, principally where we had money involved already. Real estate loans, not being rediscountable by the Federal Reserve, are not attractive. We could get money like that through the R.F.C. but that's not good banking." "Well, if the public heard that we has a lot of real estate loans and had to borrow from the R.F.C., it would create an unfavorable impression. We might have trouble. After all we are a commercial bank." "Have you increased your volume of commercial loans within the last year?" "Within the last six months--a substantial increase. But demand is not good. The people we should like to lend to do not have occasion to borrow." Both Davidson and Somerset said relief "had done wonders for retail trade." Wholesale groceries had been helped although the F.E.R.A. had put out a "tremendous amount of products on competition with some of their lines." Arthur J. Parsons, president of the Parsons-Souders Co., a four-story department store employing 120 people said. "Retail business generally is better than any of us had hoped for. We are gaining month by month and have been for more than a year. Now we are competing with some really good months last Fall and are showing still better figures. I doubt if we get any relief money in our store; it is all natural, not artificial, business. We are operating strictly under the N.R.A., which means more employees. We pay $12 a week minimum for seven hours. Our average pay is over $22 and we have on our staff the highest paid woman executive in the state. When I speak of average pay I do not count executives. We are satisfied with the present and have high hopes for the future so far as our store is concerned. Speaking of Clarksburg as a whole I feel that the greatest need is for an industry which will employ women. We have a thousand or more who need jobs. As President of the Chamber of Commerce, I have interested myself in trying to get the industries to come here. I dealt with several concerns which made underwear. They were interested until the code came in and then all plans dropped through. I have not criticism to make of our local relief administration. The policy of paying relatively high wages on relief work is meeting with much disfavor. Then, talk as you like, politics is affecting its working. I am not willing to go into that except to say that I do not believe you can stamp it out. All the unions, of course, except perhaps the miners' union, are against you. Your relief work carpenters are scabs in the opinion of the Carpenters' Brotherhood. The general public is with you and feeling that the Federal Government is doing its darndest to help the needy. But it also feels that much money is being wasted on those who are undeserving and denied those deserving. Politics is blamed for this throughout the State generally although here I do believe that political meddling has been absent. The relief program was alright as an emergency measure. I see now that Washington is going to do something more constructive. I hope that it will do so here. We have thousands here who cannot be absorbed by existing industry even in good times. I do not know what can be done for them. I have no ideas" In an effort to find an idea in this connection I got in touch with the County Planning Commission and lunched with three of its members. They were: Mr. James Rodney, City Manager of Clarksburg; Judge E.G. Smith, President of the Board of Governors, West Virginia University and Mr. Carl Horner, previously introduced. Also present was Mr. Wilson Harris, of the County Relief Administration. Following the luncheon we were joined by Mrs. Josephine Williams, County Relief Director. It was said by Mr. Rodney that while the Planning Commission was not without ideas, it was, however, without a plan. It recognized the fact that several thousand men, formerly employed in coal mining and other industry, would have to be provided for in some way which would offer them the means of eventually becoming self-supporting. Two years ago an attempt had been made by the Central Relief Committee of Clarksburg, which was financed by voluntary contributions, to get people living in abandoned mining camps to go on farms. At that time 110 vacant houses had been found on farm lands. The County Court contributed $200 and a man had been hired to contact the owners of the vacant houses and attempt to interest them in locating worthy people in such houses. An attempt was made to fit the applicant for a house to the needs of the owner. For example, a farmer who needed a good milker was put in touch with a former miner whose wife or son could fill the fill; another who needed someone to drive a truck was supplied with a truck-driving candidate for farm opportunities. In this way sixty-three stranded families had been moved back to the land from closed mining camps. The venture, in almost every case, had proved successful. This started a movement which had some extension and to-day it would be difficult to find a dozen vacant houses on farms in the entire country. All agreed that, even were such houses and opportunities available to-day, it would be difficult to get many stranded workers to accept them on similar terms. To-day they want more. By Mr. Horner: Of course they would. You've spoiled them. They can do better on relief than they can on the land. That's no incentive to make an effort. By Judge Smith: I think that's incorrect. If they could be offered means of acquiring land eventually and helped to make a living on it in the meantime I am persuaded that many would prefer such a plan to any form of relief. By Mr. Horner: I agree that many of them would. The older men certainly. Men who were 45 and 50 when coal was good now are 55 and 60. They will never go back to work in industry. Boys who were 15 then are 25 now. They have learned that they can live on nothing. The old men will stay on a farm. Only thirty-five per cent of the young fellows will. That's a good percentage. What would you do with them and the older ones?" I asked. By Mr. Horner: I'd give them land on any credit scheme you like--not an acre or two but enough for them to live off. Put them in it in a simple way; just decent shelter for man and beast. Give them a horse, a cow, two pigs, a few chickens, seed and a minimum of necessary equipment. Each family could be fixed up for $1,500 as compared with Arthurdale where the cost is $10,000 a family. At worst the children would be better off and you could keep them for half of the present cost. Don't get them congregated; scatter them all over the country and have a traveling supervisor to help and advise them. Don't tell me it won't work; I'm working it. I've lent money to such men to get started and they are making good on such a proposition. By Mr. Rodney: How many such men do you think we have? Men who have the initiative to get along with as little supervision as that. By Mr. Horner: Supervision! A good many don't want supervision and wouldn't have it. They can run their little farms without it. I know our people. Too much supervision would ruin everything. Have someone ready to advise and help but don't stress the supervision part. "How many do you suppose could work out their problem that way--with a minimum of supervision or advice, if you like?" I asked. "I could give you a list of 100 on forty-eight hours' notice," said Mr. Horner. "That would be a beginning. It would be enough to start with. I would pick the very best, people I have known and can be sure of." All agreed that it would be easy to find 100 first class risks. It then was a question as to the others--those who would require not only supervision but also training before they could be expected to "go it alone" on a farm. It was generally held that this class would constitute a large majority and there was divergence of opinion as to the matter of dealing with it. Judge Smith suggested the need for a careful survey in areas of stranded populations, intensive casework study of families in order to establish a basis of selection. It was then suggested that a farm school might be set up to train a member of each family in farm work. During the course the trainee might be paid on the same basis, let us say, as C.C.C. boys, $25 monthly being assigned to his family. Following such period of training the graduated worker and his family to be set up on some such homestead as proposed by Mr. Horner. Mrs. Williams, who had joined the group at the outset of this "supervisory" phase of the conversation, agreed that the scheme had possibilities and all heartily concurred with the exception of Mr. Horner who regretted the inevitable "massing of discontented minds" at such a proposed training school. The Commission members however agreed to consider the need further and to endeavor to elaborate a plan to provide for these victims of failed or failing industry and I went out to talk to some. Tony Sadowski, born in Warsaw in 1888, is one of them. He worked for fifteen years for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company as a tank "teaser." Then they put him to work in the yard and from the yard he went out into the street, fired because he was too old to fit into a group insurance policy. Mr. Howard Hallible, the superintendent, told Tony that he had kept him two years overtime. He just couldn't keep Tony any longer; it was against the Company rules. So Tony turned over his $1000 policy to Mr. Hallible and walked out, jobless after 15 years. He started work on May 4, 1917; he was discharged on December 23, 1933. It was a poor Christmas for Tony and his family. His wife had died at the beginning of the year, leaving him with four children, a boy 22 who left home 4 years ago, a daughter married in Chicago with troubles of her own, a girl 15, and a boy, 13, in the 8th and 6th grades respectively, both living at home. Besides them, Tony has a cow which he used to take walking in summer in search of edible grasses. The cow is a Jersey, 7 years old and a good milker when in fodder. At present she's out of it, Tony being unable to buy hay at $28 a ton. Tony would like to get some relief for the cow; he has corn for the 18 chickens and "one damn big rooster." He grew it, together with an amazing crop of garden truck, on his 50 by 50 plot beside his house. He owns the house--he bought it in the palmy Pittsburgh glass days--and there's no mortgage on it. Tony owes only one year's taxes, too, for in 1931 he was paid in full and in 1933 when the previous year's taxes came due and Tony's bank, the Clarksburg Trust Company, folded up with $400 of his money in it, he borrowed his daughter's savings and paid the levy. The Savings Bank had remained open. A thirty-five per cent dividend from the other bank went to pay the doctor's bill and funeral expenses for his wife. Any other hard luck that you can think of has borne down on Tony. He had pneumonia this Spring but he's over it and still the strongest man in Norwood. Before he went with the Pittsburgh Company he was a blacksmith at the Pennsylvania R.R. shops in Scranton. He gets five days a month work relief. Give him three acres of land on credit, he says, and he'll go off relief till next Fall. Then men in Norwood will go his bond on that statement. Mrs. Bessie Howell lives a mile from Tony. She has an illegitimate child by a lay preacher who warns the neighborhood of the wrath to come. Two other daughters, 15 and 17 respectively, are "on the town." They use $1.50 compacts and lip sticks. The family is on direct relief. The visitor says Mrs. Howell is syphilitic. "We're doing the best we can," she told me. "If things would only pick up a bit we'd be alright. My girls might get work. I can't leave the baby." Tom Cole lives in Park Branch. He is eighty years old. He has twenty-eight children, borne by four wives. All, including the wives, are on direct relief somewhere. Tom Cole boasts of the fact that every member of his family is a public charge. Some of the boys travel. One has been brought back twice from Texas by the relief organization. All are known to the transient bureaus, Mrs. Williams says. Benjamin Burdick is a former miner. He lives in Stonewall Park in a H.O.L.C. house. Pays $13.50 a month. Is on work relief 5 days a month. Had a splendid garden and has a cellar full of preserves. Commodities help out. Daughter, 19, formerly worked with Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., but was let out four months ago. She walks six miles to the plant and return to look for work. She is going again on Wednesday and, as the Relief visitor has interceded for her, hopes for a chance to earn $12 a week again. It would be the salvation of the family, Mrs. Burdick says. What they really need is more land. Burdick could make a living for them all on four acres, she says. The morale of the elder Burdicks is fine. The daughter is ready to crack under the strain. She's intelligent, good-looking. But there's fire in her eyes. Charles West, formerly a miner and more lately a janitor, received underwear from the relief organization and, upon our visit, begged that it be changed for shoes for his wife. "I can get along without underwear," he said. "Give the missus some shoes, instead," Mrs. West shrank back in embarrassment, flushed and stammered refusal. Both are real people. Own their home. Owe two years' back taxes. Mrs. West's father, an invalid, lives with them. He's eighty; they're over fifty. Still, he has a good garden and still hunts work. On work relief, 5 days a month. Should not work on roads. Has a bad heart. Home is spotless. Clothes needed badly. Cyrus McClintock, printer, about 50, encountered on the street in Clarksburg. "Are you with that relief outfit? Say could you help me get a bed? I just came in on the freight from Charleston. Some bulls were waiting for us so I hopped off and cut my knee. (Displayed deeply gashed knee, covered with blood) I'm on my way to Fairmont--have a pal on the Times there and may get a night's work or so as a sub." Asked for help at relief headquarters and then returned to report as directed. Displayed bottle of iodine. "That's all they do for me, Buddy. No doctor there, they said. Told me to come back tomorrow and nothing doing about a bed. To hell with 'em. I'll put some of this iodine on in the gas station toilet and find a flop somewhere. You haven't a dime, have you, for a bit of grub?" Invited to return to the relief office with me, McClintock refused. He'd tried relief before and never gotten anything. He went to gas station and bound his leg with handkerchief. Cut was not as bad as I had thought. Upon reiterated refusal of McClintock to seek relief at transient bureau, I gave him a quarter. "Thanks, Buddy. I'll be alright, now." "Don't you know you have a right to go and ask for help? Don't you know that Americans are being taxed to help fellows in a fix?" "Sure, I know all that; I've set columns of that stuff. But try to get it, buddy, try to get it. You're a Northerner, ain't you? So'm I. From Watertown, N.Y. Try to get something out of these Southern babies. Believe me, if you ain't one of the home folks you'll get nothing except a flop in jail and then a run-out. Say, I'm lucky I got this bottle of iodine. Guess I look like General Lee with this here beard. So long, buddy, and thanks a lot." Miss Emma K. Davis, sister of John W. Davis, and formerly case supervisor of the County Relief organization. Miss Davis was described as a highly developed social consciousness and a liberal giver of time and money to relief work. In her home, it was said, she maintains an office from which she administers aid to a large number of people. I found her singularly disappointing. She reflected the views of a feudal overlord. People should be made to work. If nothing more offered they should be made to break stone. They should be grateful for the opportunity to do so and if they were not willing to work at anything at all they should be allowed to starve. If they worked well they should be treated kindly, not cruelly. The old "enlightened" slave owner technique. Dr. Robert Hood, child specialist, who has given much time to volunteer medical work in collaboration with the relief organization. Politics was holding back relief work in Harrison Count. He would speak plainly because he knew that Mrs. Williams would not. He had no axe to grind; merely an interest in getting the best results possible. Such results weren't possible under the present system. Planning was out of the question because of the lack of coordination. The Director never knew from day to day just how much money would be available. Tentative appropriations only were made; after plans had been laid and work orders sent out, appropriation cuts made it necessary to cancel work orders. There was a lack of interest and sympathy on the part of Charleston. Economical handling of funds was not possible under such conditions. What was needed was a definite commitment as to monthly budgets and then more local control. Complete local control under Federal supervision would be the ideal. Local politics should be kept out. They were not out, no matter what was said to the contrary. A P.W.A. project for a $1,500,000 sewer construction scheme had been scuttled by political machination. It would have kept 500 men at work for three years. It was necessary from a health standpoint and under the Hoover administration, the Board had voted against it. All kinds of political huggamuggery had been used to defeat it. Long range planning would have to be done to take care of at least three thousand people who were at present unemployable. Rehabilitation of many on the land was possible and desirable. Economic planning for the whole Valley was under way. Dr. Lunt, of the President's Committee, had elaborated a plan which he was coming to present to certain interested people in the region. All had great hopes for his being approved. It would be an administrational triumph. But there were other things which the Administration would have to face, to wit, the need for the dissemination of contraceptive information and for sterilization of defectives. This simply must come. It might be political suicide but he believed that Franklin Roosevelt was too great a man to hesitate before so great a need. Captain E. Pickering, of the Salvation Army, threw the "blame for much of the depleted morale" of the idle on the churches which had failed to carry their mission into the camps of the unemployed. The Salvation Army was doing its best to cooperate with the relief organization. It was conducting services in mining camps, stranded communities, etc. On the whole conditions were not so bad as they had been. More and more people were finding some sort of work to do and all had faith in the New Deal to see them through. Captain Pickering believed that 90 per cent of the employable idle would rather have jobs than relief in any form. Former Governor Howard M. Gore, of West Virginia, found that what was needed most in relief work in this state was a "warmer sympathy" on the part of the visitor with the client. "I know these people; I'm one of them and they know me. You're doing a splendid job and your motives are the best but it I may be permitted to say it, I find that your visitors too frequently, either because of their youth and inexperience in some cases or lack of imagination in others, fail to appeal to the hearts of the needy people. That is why you have as much discontent as you have. Our people can be reached easily through the heart; it is difficult to reach them through the head. Do not try to make them think; try to make them feel. They would be happier and more hopeful and morale would be better. I know you have the best people you can get doing this planning in Washington and all chains are as strong as their weakest link. If I might suggest it, I do believe that you should try to strengthen those weak links. In going about the state as I do, I hear a lot of criticism, not of the relief administration itself--all agree that that is about as good as can be hoped for but of the matter of administering it. One feels too frequently, I gather, that private lives are being too familiarly scrutinized. I do not mean too intimately; there is a difference between intimacy and familiarity." On leaving Clarksburg I stopped in Charleston enroute to Logan, from which town this will be mailed. While there I happened to pass by the County Relief Office. What I took to be a protest group was congregated about the entrance. Inquiry elicited the information from an outrage citizen that a woman had been arrested at the relief office and taken before a justice of the peace thence to jail. Why was she arrested?" I asked. "She asked for something and it wasn't given her and she got mad," said a man who was waiting in line for his turn to enter the relief office. "I tell you if she was my wife I'd have seen red. I did, as it was, they way they handled her. Just threw her out bodily and then a State policeman and another fellow from the office yanked her off screaming." I entered the office and inquired for the person in charge. I was directed to the office of Mrs. Haddon, the case supervisor. She was busy in another room and I was invited to wait. As I waited a man, illy-clothed and evidently a client, was brought into the room by an office worker. He approached a desk at which Mrs. Sally Evans, assistant case supervisor, I believe, was seated. "Oh, you again," said Mrs. Evans protestingly, "alright we've got to let you have them, I suppose, though they'll be filthy in a week. You'll be back in the cave again in a week, I suppose, won't you?" The man mumbled something, smiling weakly. His face was lacerated. He was thin, emaciated, sickly-looking. "It's an outrage," said Mrs. Evans. "Giving people like you things when there are good Charleston folk in need. Alright, give them to him. Here's the order." Mrs. Haddon having returned during this conversation, I approached her and told her who I was. I then made a general inquiry as to relief work in the county. Mrs. Haddon did not immediately reply to this question but began to explain the case for which two mattresses had just been issued by Mrs. Evans. "That's Mr. Tony," she said. "Oh, he's gotten himself in the newspapers. He and his family lived in a cave and some of the business men became interested and found him some rooms in town. They send out trucks and moved him and took up a collection of furniture for him. Now we've given him two mattresses." "How many are there in his family?" "Six, I think. They're on relief. Oh, yes, they're being taken care of." "Has he caused you any trouble?" "No. We don't have any trouble. We give relief where it's needed but we make them work for it." "How about the woman who was arrested here to-day?" "Arrested?" said Mrs. Haddon. "No one was arrested. Oh, Lulu White, you mean. She wasn't arrested, was she? I don't think she was arrested. Wait, I'll ask about that." Mrs. Haddon then telephoned to the Director's office and I was invited to go there. The Director knew nothing of Lulu White's arrest. He doubted that she had been arrested. She had visited the relief office and become abusive. She had used indecent language. She was a mental case. A report on her case was offered to me to read. The report cited Lulu's misdeeds in the way of "chiseling" for flour and other commodities. She had obtained flour under different names. Furthermore she was morally depraved. Her husband was in the poor house; her two children in reformatories. Lulu was a mental case but, lacking a helpful relative to certify her as insane, she could not be sent to an asylum. While I was reading the report the Director's secretary came in and verified the story of Lulu's arrest. She had been arrested in the Relief Office on a complaint of a relief worker. The charge was that she had threatened the life of someone at the County Court. But she had not threatened anyone in the Relief Office; she merely had been abusive and indecent in her language. "She didn't threaten anyone here?" asked the Director. No," said the Secretary. "Miss So and So made the complaint against her because she had threatened Miss So and So at the County Court." "What should we do about it, Mr. Francis? I should like to have your advice." "I'm sorry," I said, "I cannot advise you." In the evening paper I read about Mr. Tony. Mr. O.J. Morrison, owner of 14 stores throughout West Virginia, had come to the man's rescue. Conditions in the cave were described. There was no criticism of the relief organization in the article. But as I left the office I passed through the sidewalk indignation meeting which still was in progress. High-handed methods were the rule at the relief building, it was said. People were getting pretty sick of it. They had a State Policeman in there all the time and "one peep out of you and out you went." Across the street on the river bank a group of men were sitting. The old Benjamin Franklin, a stern-wheeler, came tooting down the river pushing ten barges full of coal bound for Cincinnati, via Point Pleasant. Old Tom, a waterfront character and formerly cook on one "of the real boats as could push thirty o' them there barges" was "letting on" about the good old days on the river. It was long ago. Now the river was dead. It would never be the same. "Just think," said an old toothless cripple, "you ain't on relief yet." "No, sir, I ain't. . . An' I ain't agoin' to be, no matter what happens. Lord, I'd just as much chance goin' down to the Post Office an' asking for a handful of stamps as I'd have over there in that there office. Folks there don't think much o' me because I hang around the river here and don't work. You let one of them old timer boats come along alooking for a cook. Yes, sir; I'd work and have turkey for dinner." Yours truly, HENRY W. FRANCIS |