There is a growing propaganda to the effect that the unhappy millions in this country now living on relief are unwilling to take jobs. In part this is the new version of the old saw that anybody who really wants a job can get one. But it is also part of the offensive against a standard of living which, low as it is among many sections of our population, is still too high for employers who feel that the only way out of a depression is to tighten the other fellow's belt by cutting wages and lengthening hours.
Lieutenant General Robert Lee Bullard has asserted in the Hearst press, after a "nationwide survey of the relief situation" that "we have recognized in this country a new 'inalienable right'--the right of an individual to indefinite support at public expense and regardless of private employment available." "It indicates a breakdown," he continues, "in the primary characteristics of the American citizen- initiative, independence, self-reliance." Seventy-five per cent of those on relief, he concludes, are content to stay there.
Unfortunately such propaganda falls sweetly upon the ears of an Administration harried by the staggering cost of relief which shows no sign of abating for years to come; and the last two weeks have recorded an assault upon relief clients by both national and state governmenths that is calculated to yield a bumper crop of misery. On July 22 federal and state relief in South Dakota was stopped "until all farmers needing men to help with the harvest have been supplied with such help"; several other midwestern states adopted the same policy in somewhat less drastic form; and from Washington orders were issued to deny relief to anyone refusing employment.
We agree with General Bullard that living on relief is demoralizing--we agree so heartily that we look forward to the time when a collective economy will make the dole unnecessary. But it is clear that his "nationwide survey" was of the usual Hearst variety; and a few facts culled from local relief officials are enough to refute his libelous generalizations against millions of unemployed workers. He cites among others the example of the raspberry crop in Hammonton, New Jersey, part of which went to waste "because of lack of labor during the week in which a sales tax for support of the unemployed became effective." This in spite of the fact that the pay according to the growers was "about $2" a day, depending on the number of pints picked. But the testimony of Spurgeon Cross, director of the Atlantic County FERA, casts a somewhat different light on the situation. We quote from the New York Herald Tribune:
Mr. Cross said that his office was ready to supply as much help as the growers needed but that the growers had been unwilling to pay the round-trip fare between Atlantic City and Hammonton, about eighty-five cents. Most of the pickers, he said, preferred to live at home, commuting each day. In past seasons pickers and their families have lived in shacks near the raspberry patches, five or six in a room, and have had to buy most of their own food....
Aside from the red tape that must be cut to get back on the relief rolls once an unemployed person has taken a job, however temporary, we should find it difficult to reproach a worker who was either self-respecting (even though on relief) or moderately intelligent enough to refuse to take a job which might pay $2, if he were lucky, minus 85 cents for carfare. But $2 is far above even the official average wage for farm labor in the United States. According to data just issued by the Department of Agriculture, farm wages range from 70 cents a day in South Carolina to $2.55 in Massachusetts with an average of $1.41 for the whole country without board. As for working conditions and the factors which often reduce the day's wage let us examine the report of a relief official in the South who set out to discover just why people on relief had refused jobs. In this case it was the strawberry crop. For some reason there was little response to the demand for pickers, although the growers held out promises of transportation, food, and lodging, and $1.50 to $2 a day "clear money." We quote a few of the findings of the investigator:
Transportation was indeed furnished, one way, to the fields. The dissatisfied, the cheated, and those who quit when the picking gave out, got back as best they could which in some cases meant walking thirty-five to forty miles empty-handed and empty-bellied. The good picker who could earn $1.50 to $2 per day "clear money" was not in evidence at any of the twenty-one farms surveyed. The standard rate was 1 1/2 cents a quart of berries picked. Although two cents had been mentioned at the reemployment office as the rate offered on some farms, no defection upward from the norm was discoverable.... A grower's agent was quoted as saying that "a fair picker can pick between 100 and 150 quarts a day." At ten of the farms investigated the mean picking was forty to sixty quarts.
The "housing" promised by the growers consisted of old barns and shacks with as many as twenty people, old and young and of both sexes, crowded into a room of ordinary size. As for food its quality may be imagined--and often the pickers were cheated out of it. The report continues:
The fancy promises of $1.50 to $2 a day "clear money" boiled down to exactly this on the first week's pay-off: twenty cents to one dollar for a work-week. The best exhibit of earning power was presented by a white family, father and mother and two children who had been shipped in by the relief authorities. The family of four netted $3.30 collectively for six days in the fields.
Finally we offer the testimony of a man who has been working in the harvest fields of Ohio for 15 cents an hour or $1.50 a day. He writes to The Nation as follows:
The minimum wage paid for unskilled labor in the WRA is $44 for a month of 130 hours--32 1/2 hours a week. Compare this with $36 for a month of 240 hours, about 60 hours a week for making hay in the same locality. Lest anyone should say that the wages on relief work are too high, I quote a few prices in the village where I live while working in the harvest fields at $1.50 a day. No house here with a bathroom in it rents for less than $18 a month; most rents are $20 to $50 a month. Here are prices: 25 pounds of sugar $1.40; 1 loaf whole wheat bread $.11; I box matches, $.05; 2 small veal chops, $.15; I peck potatoes, $.29. Add to everything but bread a 3 per cent sales tax. How can a man support a family on $36 a month?
