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Hotel Taft Dear Mr. Hopkins: In Connecticut there are about 41,000 relief cases (FERA plus Public Welfare) and State authorities estimate that there will be an increase of perhaps 15% by Feb. 1. In neither Hartford nor New Haven, however, the only places visited so far, is an increase in case load expected by the local people. In Conn., as in Mass., the local Public Welfare programs are quite separate from FERA and coordinated only to the extent that it has been possible to wangle cooperation, and the inherent difficulties of such an arrangement, already reported in Mass., are found here in varying degree. They are mitigated here by the fact that cooperation, as a matter of fact, has progressed farther; more has been accomplished along the line of raising and unifying local standards, both of administration and of adequacy of relief given, and the progress is continuing. Three factors would seem to be involved in this, besides the almost universal acclaim for Miss Little that I have found, as a crackerjack administrator and one who knows how to wangle things out of the people of Conn., if anyone does: (1) The greater length of time that the set-up has been in operation; (2) The greater compactness of the state, making administrative problems simpler (it will be interesting to see whether the new regional decentralization in Mass. does not help greatly along this line when it gets into full swing); and (3) Miss Little's intangible asset in bargaining in that she is a State official and not just a federal "outsider" even though it is Federal money that she spends. Along the line, not only of trying to hold the localities to a reasonable standard of efficiency in the work on FERA projects, but of helping them to achieve it, more effort and ingenuity is being used here than elsewhere I have been, and it certainly shows results. The State people make blue prints for each project showing graphically how much work must be accomplished by a given time according to the estimates and the order in which the various parts of the job should be tackled for maximum efficiency. The local people plot on these the work actually accomplished and so run a race with themselves on performance. Local sub-foremen (perhaps not universally, but where I've been) check on their own gangs as to the number of cubic yards of dirt moved in a day, let us say, comparing with what other gangs have done and helping establish a real working esprit de corps, as well as making it possible to spot what is the trouble when there is trouble. On the social service end parallel efforts have been made but it has been slow and piecemeal work to try to blast the old Poor Law concepts out of welfare administration in these parts and welfare budgetary standards are generally well below those for FERA though in general one set of social workers administers both. A few days before my arrival in Hartford a new FERA budgetary system was promulgated throughout the State, calling practically for an individual budget to fit each case, taking into account actual rents, neighborhood food costs and variation of clothing allowances according to the needs of the person involved. No start has been made yet toward putting it into practice and it would seem that to do so effectively would need more social workers capable of more discretion than are in sight. In Hartford (pop. 164,000) man-hours of employment are up nearly to the level of last spring, the highest they had been in a couple of years, and business-is quite optimistic. There are about 4,000 relief cases, of whom about 1,300 are on FERA work relief. A fair indication of the morale on the job and the general public approval is that the city is seriously considering launching a work relief program of its own. Business criticism of the program, mild considering that Hartford has been relatively untouched by the depression, concerns itself chiefly with generalities of "extravagance" and specific examples of men said to have turned down real jobs to stay on relief. In addition to the universal problems that come up in connection with this last, Connecticut has a special problem because of its--to an outlander--horrendous garnishee laws. For ordinary debt the creditor can take all income down to $10 a week, I understand, and for board or rent he can take the whole thing. The pressure of past debts, therefore, keeps people from leaving relief for private employment, because as soon as the debtor gets a job his creditors jump him. Relief people try to negotiate with creditors and get them to be reasonable, but their efforts are necessarily haphazard. The result, of course, is that the public has to support the family while the debts are being paid, even if the debtor has the hardihood to go get a job. It would seem to me that a moratorium of three or six months or whatever would be fair for those who get off public relief might solve the problem and certainly should arouse no great opposition as it would save so much of public expenditure, but this is a matter for State determination. There is another fundamental problem in regard to getting people back into private employment that is present not only in Hartford but everywhere else I have been. When business men complain that FERA keeps people from private employment, they are often not really complaining that hourly wages or even budgets are too high. There is a difficulty deeper than that, though most of the business men haven't thought enough to know it. It is perfectly true that where large families are involved the budget is more than the head of the family was ever able to earn regularly. But this does not mean it is necessarily larger than the family income, because in ordinary times more than one member of the family would have been working. Now, however, it is often impossible for the head of the family to go back to a real job without serious sacrifice. The universality of the problem is shown by the fact that relief "cases" are multiplied by more than 4 to get the number of people involved, while there are only approximately 2.5 people in the county for everyone gainfully employed in normal times. Industry never did support these large families, even at sub-decency levels, on the wages of any one family member, and it is hopeless to expect it to do so now. In the case of a man making $12 a week on FERA and getting supplementary aid of $18 a week to meet his budget, he naturally will not go out and take a job for $20, thereby depriving his family of $10. But the general set-up works to keep his children from going out and getting jobs, too. In Conn. two thirds of whatever they make is "subtracted from the budget. In the above family, if a girl gets an office job for $12 a week, $8 would be subtracted from the family budget. But the four that is left her may be insufficient for carfare, lunches and extra clothes she needs to hold the job, so she is not only working for nothing but may actually find that the whole family is worse off than before. A way out would seem to be to pin relief on all the employable members of the family instead of upon its legal head, reducing the relief case factor to somewhere near the factor of 2.5 for employment. I mean that in the above case, if the father were on FERA for $12, an able-bodied son for $12 and a daughter for $6, then it would be to the advantage of each and all of them to go out into a private job that paid more. Also there would be the added moral value of getting just what you worked for. The necessity for such large supplementation cuts down greatly on the benefits of work relief. Hartford had a curious experience recently which strengthens its faith in work relief. It picked out 30 of the highest type people it could find on direct relief to act as mature traffic cops at school crossings, paying them a couple of dollars a week in addition to the relief they were already getting. Within ten days half had found private jobs. Hartford officials feel that the jingle of a few coins in their pockets had wakened these people to some gumption, self-respect and desire for a job. An indication, if true, of what they had lost on direct relief. Hartford has a commissary system, a well-run one, if such things can be well-run, where deliveries are made once a week and the housewife gives her order for the next week to the delivery man, choosing what she want from a fairly wide variety of food. Savings have apparently been fairly well passed on to the clients, who now because of increased food prices in the open market are faring better than their budget allowances would indicate. Direct relief budgets are actually about the same as FERA budgets, in practice as well as theory, and supplementation of FERA budgets seems to work out in practice as well as theory--one of the few places where it seemed to be true. As most everywhere else, data on what's happening to the health of people on relief are lacking or vague. The total death rate is up a little, but that's figured on the 1930 population; if the population has dropped, as some suspect, then the rate is up a lot. Neither TB nor malnutrition, as far as reported, is alarming. As everywhere, it seems that the health of the lowest stratum is better than ever, the strain having come hardest on the highest class people on relief. In the Hartford Negro colony of 7,000, the death rate in normal times was twice that of the white population. Now it is only 1 1/2 times. Public health people date this from the start of the commissary. The commissary makes it so that the women and children of these families actually get the food. Since the work relief program is small, only a little more than a third of the whole load, it can be choosey as to its workers; practically everyone would rather be on it because it pays in cash, even though the total is about the same. Work morale on the jobs is just about the best I have seen anywhere. Nearly a third of those on FERA are white-collar people; nearly half are skilled artisans. Using for the most part salvaged materials, they have done a lot of most useful construction work, including a golf-course club house that is utterly charming. No other city I have been to seems to have got as much as Hartford in permanent physical benefits (Swimming pools in parks in the heart of congested areas are another feature--one of the three, completed last-summer, averaged 3,000 people a day) The outstanding quality of the work would seem to have had an effect on the morale of the men on the jobs, and on public opinion as well. As I said, criticism from business people is not nearly as rife as might be expected in a city as prosperous as Hartford still is. It is always prefaced by bouquets for the way the thing has been handled locally. Mayor Beach asked me to tell you that they are "behind FERA 1,000%, that it seems to them the best solution to the problem." He says Hartford, through a multitude of small projects, can get needed improvements through FERA, whereas to take advantage of PWA it would have to go in for grandiose things that it really should not undertake in sober thought, leaving itself with a fierce bonded indebtedness. PWA projects, he also feels, reduce the actual relief load but a tiny bit for the money that goes into them. Hartford classifies 26% of its direct relief cases, or about 18% of the whole load, as unemployables. In New Haven (pop. 163,000) business is about the same as last year and is expected to carry on at that level this winter. Sentiment has been more optimistic in the last few weeks without anything very tangible to base itself upon. About 2,400 families and 700 single men are on the local public aid; about 1,300 more are on FERA. Relief officials do not anticipate any very marked increase in this load this winter. A quick idea of the adequacy of local aid is given by the figures: FERA has been spending about $75,000 a month to care for 1,300 cases; the city has been spending about $71,000 to care for the 3,100 cases cited above. The fact that the city has set an arbitrary limit of $10 a month on rents and that it hasn't paid them with any consistency accounts for a large part of the difference. The social-work end is utterly swamped and snowed under, so that in practice decently adequate relief goes to those who yell loudest and there is at most but very haphazard rechecking to uncover those who have concealed resources. Since the same goes for Bridgeport too, I may as well describe both together here. Miss Little finally held up New Haven's check until they put in a competent social worker to head the investigations, Bridgeport finally put one in without having its check held up. These two poor women have terrible jobs ahead of them and it is a question whether they will ever be able to get enough workers under them to improve things much. The records are in such bad shape that in neither place can they even tell what their actual case load is. The character of the population is about the same in both places: New Haven, apart from Yale, is perhaps an even lower grade town, economically, than Bridgeport. Each place has a high Sicilian population. The effect of this sort of relief, spotty and haphazard and confused, has been to exaggerate the tendencies found in this type of relief population elsewhere. A premium has been placed on lying and concealing, and these people follow the line of least resistance. I have found thoughtful people here who take the perhaps extreme view that it would be a more healthy reaction (as to morale) if these people raised more kick than they do over their kicking-around. (There are two organizations of unemployed in Bridgeport, not active recently, though they had a "relief strike" in June--none in New Haven) Perhaps it is true that if they still had much self respect they would be less cow-like in their acquiescence. Certainly the attitude of the average citizen is not healthy. His feeling is that chiselers do beautifully for themselves on relief, faking, concealing and getting away with it, while the man who really needs it and who tells the whole truth will probably find himself barred by some technicality. FERA in practice has apparently done little to help the home owner with a small or imaginary equity in his property, etc. And yet the decent citizen accepts these conditions as probably inevitable. Such reform as is in sight is being imposed from the top (Miss Little) and is not the result of any feeling on the part of the people. (I was curious over the effect on public opinion of Miss Little's withholding the check--As near as I could make out the general feeling, though not very keen, was that the net result of it all was only the adding of expense to the administration of relief by putting the social worker in.) Added to all these confusions is the further confusion that has obtained all over the State, where a policy has recently been pursued of dropping from FERA all those "unsettled" cases not chiefly chargeable to the town in question. This, no matter how good a worker he might be, or how much he might need a job morally. The reason is that the State, or some other town, will reimburse for unsettled cases if the client is "on relief," but not if he is on FERA. Concentration of FERA and Public Welfare in the same hands, in Bridgeport and New Haven, has failed to accomplish the desirable end of having relief standards uniform, and at the same time has pretty thoroughly colored the FERA with the old poor relief idea of "not making things too soft." I think this general description of New Haven and Bridgeport is fair and accurate. It is perhaps potentially unfair by comparison with my reports of other places, because in both New Haven and Bridgeport I happened to have avenues of insight not available elsewhere. Of all the places I have visited, I suppose Boston, Waltham and Worcester--and perhaps Providence--belong pretty much in the same boat. In many places the private agencies do much to fill in the inadequacies of public relief, extending to obviously higher standard people extra assistance that cannot be given under the public program. In New Haven they pride themselves, so to speak, on the fact that their standards are as low as those of the public agencies. Their top limit on rent, for instance, is $15 a month, the same as the FERA's. Perhaps a reason lies in the cleavage between Town slums and Gown. Nowhere else have I found relief people quote so satisfied with the job they are doing or so conscious of their feeling that these people on relief are a different sort of people. As the rent policy works out, the city has beaten the landlords so low, even where it pays at all, that the landlord often comes after the client for more rent. If the client goes on FERA or a real job the landlord whoops the rent way up; the only club FERA has over him is that it can cut the client off relief altogether if it catches him paying more than the allowed $15. The FERA administrator explained to me with some sympathy the mayor's feeling that the rent policy cannot be bettered because the city must keep expenses down. (Because of FERA the 1934 City Charities expenditures are lower than those of 1933 by an amount well up in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) Of the 1,500 FERA workers, 1,000 are unskilled. About 175 are white collar (some other C&P's are employed on State and Federal projects). Relief people, public and private, say that there is not much of a white collar problem, that there are practically no white-collar people who are competent and unemployed; skilled labor is so scarce that on jobs that require it they often have to go out and get it on a non-relief basis (It seems that most of New Haven's skilled labor lives in outlying towns; the University has kept up a heavy building program all through the depression, as well). The efficiency on the jobs they estimate at from 25% to nearly 100%. I saw some of the best of it, including a parkway with 600 men working as well as I ever saw people work on any job. Because of the number involved and the character of the work, clearing woods, drilling by hand through rock ledges, etc., that seemed remarkable. They said that the morale on the job had been improving steadily since its start as they had been able to train the men to the work and provide better and better supervision. They feel that the low ratio of men on work relief also helps, as it gives them the pick. (Of the 2,400 families on direct relief, half are classified as unemployable. This means the head of the family; it does not mean that no member of the family is employable, and even then it includes shirkers on their jobs, etc., who would not ordinarily be called "unemployable.") In Bridgeport (pop. 147,000) private agencies, though keenly alive to the situation, are unable to help much because of a hard-and-fast rule by the Welfare Department that it will drop any family from its rolls if the private agencies are helping too. (The Jewish Soc. bootlegs kosher food to some of its people--they would starve otherwise, as direct relief is administered from a commissary that takes no account of such trifles.) For years until just last week people had been kept on just one diet, week after week. Example is given of a teacher who complained finally that a child stank so of onions; the mother came in tears and said onions were the only vegetable she had to give him to eat. That's probably not true literally, because other stories tell of the revolt of children's stomachs after eating canned tomatoes continuously, two meals a day. Meat is now allowed to the extent of 15 to 50 cents a week depending on size of family, I'm told. The recent change is that two diets have been established, for use alternate weeks. (Bread and milk are delivered separately. The latter is passably adequate, as it is also in New Haven, by the way) No household supplies incidentals such as carfare are allowed. These must be chiseled out of the $5.60 cash wages (for rent heat and light) that each man gets for city work relief, or else by selling some of the groceries to buy dish towels, when needed, or pots. One cake of laundry soap weekly is allowed. About 92% of all relief cases have some member of the family on work relief, city or FERA. There are about 1760 on FERA, of whom 1,200 are getting supplementary aid, given here in cash; about 1950 on city work relief; and only 300 cases where no work is given for the aid received. The load is expected to rise 25% to a total of 5,000 before the winter is over, on the basis of present intake, though local business expects to maintain its present levels of employment. Having 92% on jobs naturally includes a number of the lame and the halt, but considerable ingenuity has been exercised in finding jobs for partial cripples, one-armed men as water boys, etc., and the morale on the jobs is fair, perhaps better than the average of the places I've been. It is best on FERA and under the City Dept. of Public Works' because there the people are not so readily identified as being on Welfare and do not think of themselves so much that way. It is worst on jobs run by the Welfare Department itself, which carry the stigma, but not so very bad even there, by comparison with other places. In a town where politics is as muddled and as muddy as here, it's hardly sensible to talk about public opinion in regard to anything. Obviously the commissary system, and the way it's run (complaints of wrong sized shoes, etc.) cuts down very greatly on any added self respect that the people on the city's own work program might be gaining. The head of the Welfare Board here is at the moment on trial with a number of gentlemen from other departments for accepting free coal from a company from which their departments bought coal. In the mores of this community one does not resign under those circumstances unless convicted (There is no question that the coal was received, over a long period, and is still unpaid for. The only defense is intent of eventual payment and oversight in not noticing that the company had sent no bills.) What the private agencies think of the whole situation is practically unsendable-through-the-mails, even on official business under frank. They charge utter (and perhaps purposeful) inefficiency in letting the administrative end get so bogged down that even any impartial relief administration would be out of the question. They charge that the whole thing has been used baldly to further personal political ambitions by the paid executive, not the man referred to above. Until most recently he has apparently controlled personally who went on FERA and personally himself set their budgets. I suggest this as a possible reason for the relatively high working morale. I have noted elsewhere that whatever else may be destroyed in places where those on jobs have reason to feel that they are favorites, they often work surprisingly well. Business men in general, as elsewhere without intimate knowledge, feel that a pretty good job is being done. That, say the private agencies, is because of the shrewdness of the personal political job that has been done. On top of that, the man in question has a Statewide if not national reputation and business people not intimately interested would have no reason to go behind that. He was seriously put forward for Miss Little's Job of State FERA administrator in the first place, and this has made her course in Bridgeport difficult from a natural reluctance on her part to do anything that would seem to show antagonism. Mr. McLevy, the Scotch Socialist Mayor, has kept pretty well out of the situation. He appointed none of the present Welfare board and has no direct control of them though may gain it in the near future--two appointments come to him in natural course Jan. 1, I believe, and the third and controlling one in the board of five may come if the gentleman on trial is convicted. According to Miss Little he has pretty decently kept from playing politics with the situation. He tells me he believes strongly in work relief, in the commissary as well, and even further, along good Socialist lines, in production for the unemployed by the unemployed on a large scale. In talking to me he brought up no projected changes in policy that he would favor. This all seems an unhappy note on which to end my six weeks' study and reports. The relief administrator of Providence told me a story that perhaps is not amiss. One day he was glowing a little over some phase of the job that he felt was done rather better there than in some other places, when a friend cut him short. "You can't compare relief," he said, "any more than you can compare two rotten eggs." You can compare, though. It is perfectly obvious that in some places it is doing more for morale and worthwhile physical improvements than in others. In these two cities last visited the situation is bound to improve from now on with competent and sensible social workers in key positions, even though they may have tough sledding. I'll send a general summary report from New York on Friday
Yours sincerely,(signed)
Mr. Harry L. Hopkins,
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