Work Relief Administration Press Conferences
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Press Conference
Harry Hopkins
March 30th, 1934
10:30 A.M.

Mr. Hopkins:	The longer I stay here, the more ridiculous these press conferences seem to me. The trouble is that I don't take myself seriously enough with you fellows around. Well, we have 2,133,000 people in the CWA and for the week ending March 22nd, the payroll was about $29,000,000. I think that the CWA will have spent, in payrolls for wages, about $750,000,000 and about $250,000,000 for materials, or about a billion dollars altogether. It gave jobs, for an average number, between about December let and April 1st, to 3,000,000 people, and reached a peak of 4,000,000.
Query:	What was the high spot?
Mr. Hopkins:	Just over four millions and a payroll of just over $60,000,000 a week.
Query:	The CWA ends today or tomorrow?
Mr. Hopkins:	It ends April 1st.
Query:	How many people will stay on in the new works division?.
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, we had 2,133,000 for the week ending March 22nd and with that, I can still give you the figure of between 1,500,00O and 2,000,000 who will go to work on the new program on Monday. I can tell you next Friday exactly how many there were.
Query:	You have not announced the rural relief plan for the middle west.
Mr. Hopkins:	We have announced it for the whole country. I do not think we will hold a conference out in the middle west until the middle of May. In the meantime, they will go ahead in accordance with the plan. It is not being delayed out there.
Query:	What have you learned from this experience just being concluded?
Mr. Hopkins:	Of course, you know how I feel. I think it was a grand thing and that it was altogether successful, and that that was due to the literally thousands of volunteers and others in all these communities of America, who put their shoulders to the wheel to make this thing go. We were told by our friends and others that we could not put four million men to work, and later we were told that we could not demobilize them. Now, we put four million men to work and it has been demobilized.
Query:	Would you say that the work relief program will be adequate to meet the situation?.
Mr. Hopkins:	I would say that we intend to see that everyone in the United States who needs relief gets it. I think that the CWA, during this past winter, gave to these millions of people an opportunity to earn, on a real job, an income and now that it is over, I think more than ever that these millions of men and women did excellent work, worked hard and earned their money. As an effort on the part of the government to meet a critical situation, it seems to me that it did the trick and that the stories about graft and politics and inefficiencies were relatively unimportant, and that it has resulted in works of social usefulness that will be beneficial for years to come. When you realize that in one State, in four or five short months, we spent more on rural schools than had been spent in the past twenty years—
Query:	What State was that?
Mr. Hopkins:	Mississippi. When you realize that, from one end of the country to the other, we built playgrounds, swimming pools, repaired buildings and roads and bridges and engaged in these enormous drainage projects, and, probably, in a few months, did more to control malaria than was done in the last twenty-five years; when you realize that not a single county in America was omitted from this enterprise, it seems to me that it speaks well for the kind of cooperative endeavor that can be done by the American people in a crisis, and particularly for those people who were out in the field, who were interested in and working on this job. I do not have anything but words of the highest praise for the people who have been running this show and for the workers who took part in it. And, too, the way the workers have met this difficult transition period, difficulties of which I am fully aware, has been another indication of the stability of the government in America. I think I should say this, also, about this thing; that while I have been disturbed about some cases in which I thought business men took advantage of the CWA in terms of contracts, when you realize that we actually made hundreds of thousands of contracts with business houses, in which they sold us goods at fair prices and gave prompt deliveries under very trying circumstances, it seems to me that, in the main, this thing represents a real cooperative effort between business, government and public officials.
Query:	You will need that more and more, won't you?
Mr. Hopkins:	The entire recovery program demands it.
Query:	How many people will be demobilized tomorrow?
Mr. Hopkins:	I cannot tell you that. I really do not know, exactly. I think the figure had better rest at between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000.
Query:	What did the schedule that you gave out call for?
Mr. Hopkins:	I do not remember at the moment, but I will get the schedule for you.
Query:	Tomorrow is the last CWA pay-day?.
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, they will be paid today and tomorrow.
Query:	May some of the States not get as much as they had wanted and planned to use, and have to take back less men than they wanted to on the new plan? Won't there be more people, in other words, back on direct relief, than expected?
Mr. Hopkins:	I hope not. I appreciate the fact that in a period of transition like this, we must meet the relief situation head-on, right now, and that we cannot quibble over things. I think it is fair to assume, however, that the numbers that were on the CWA yesterday, represent the number of people who are actually in need, or a number, and I do not mean to say by that, that some of the people who have been . demobilized are not in need. I would hate to see a decline in the work program and a return to direct relief. Of course, we have some serious financial problems to work out
Query:	Is that working out process under way?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes.
Query:	Have you any idea as to how much money there is to go into the works program?
Mr. Hopkins:	I think, approximately, $600,000,000 from the first of April.
Query:	That is to last until when?
Mr. Hopkins:	From now on.
Query:	These people will be off the CWA on April 1st and onto the new plan, but in rural areas they cannot get started.
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, they do not do a lot of work in the rural areas.
Query:	Have you received many protests against discontinuance of the CWA?
Mr. Hopkins:	Lots of them, and I have talked with lots of people who protested.
Query:	What was the total of expenditures on the CWA?
Mr. Hopkins:	About a billion dollars since it started.
Query:	This schedule you gave out calls for a big cut, to 1,505,500 workers on CWA for the week beginning March 30.
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes, and it also calls for a cut to 1,787,050 for the week ending March 23rd.
Query:	That was not done, then?
Mr. Hopkins:	A reason was that we decided to carry the federal and research projects through to May 1st. That does not account for all of it, but it is substantially it. Some of the States, also, got down to a point where everyone on the CWA had been transferred to the relief rolls. I think you can make a pretty good guess here now, though. Take 280,000 from the 2,133,000 and it makes it close to 2,000,000 who will move into the new works program on April 1st.
Query:	How much would it cost on direct relief for 3,000,000 people, as against the work relief?
Mr. Hopkins:	Practically, it costs less. Actually, though, and in terms of other realistic things, probably our direct relief is inadequate. I find that the difference is somewhere around $10 per month per man. On the other hand, if you look at it from other levels, our averages for the CWA, run from $12 to $15 per week. If you take those very families and line them up against our own budget. If you take these family budgets that we make ourselves and include the items of rent, payments on insurance and for sickness—the elementary things—you get budgets of around $65 or $70 per month. I think you can safely assume that the approximate 2,000,000 here now, all come from separate families, although it may also represent some single people, so that what you have on April 1st is about 2,000,000 people who were on the CWA, plus X number of families who were on direct relief. I will have those other figures in due course.
Query:	What are the instructions given to the CWA heads and cities where they are trying to work out a financial program? In Detroit, they have figured it out under a new State allotment, and they have a grand total of 8,000 people who can be put to work, as against 20,000 under the old plan. They have to decide whether to cut the number down to 8,000, or go ahead and try to get some more moray.
Mr. Hopkins:	Well, I presume that they have some leeway and that they can average it, with varying numbers each week. Now, the other day. I told you that I thought your officials in Detroit were pretty grand fellows, and the next day all the papers there said I had said they were, that they were the grandest people. Those boys will be asking for higher salaries.
Query:	But you said it.
Query:	On these federal and research jobs will the people still be considered as CWA?
Mr. Hopkins:	Yes.
Query:	In other words, there will be about 200,000 of them.
Mr. Hopkins:	But that number is going down every week. You see, too, we have to clean up the CWA, the accounting reports, etc., and we will have to keep people on for that.
Query:	Have you had any reports from the National Labor Board about giving relief to strikers in any case?
Mr. Hopkins:	No.
Query:	What are you doing with Giles, in Oklahoma?
Mr. Hopkins:	We are discussing money with him today. About how much he will need.
Query:	What about his personnel? He seems to think he has a lot of trouble.
Mr. Hopkins:	I do not think that is serious. Giles doesn't know what trouble is, really.
Query:	How about the farm rehabilitation program he was speaking to you about for Oklahoma?
Mr. Hopkins:	We talked that over a bit, but it is part of our program. There is nothing new about it.
Query:	How about the NEC idea?
Mr. Hopkins:	I never heard of it.
Query:	Why, the National Emergency Council.
Mr. Hopkins:	Oh, Good Lord. Frank Walker would shoot me it he knew I said I had never heard at it.
Query:	What will they do?
Mr. Hopkins:	You must go to Frank for news on that
Query:	It does work in with your relief, doesn't it?.
Mr. Hopkins:	I am very much interested in it, but any news about it must come from Frank Walker.
Query:	Are you giving relief to strikers and where?
Mr. Hopkins:	I cannot tell. But we have been giving relief to strikers ever since I have been here.
Query:	What will the outlay of the federal government be for this new plan, as against the CWA?
Mr. Hopkins:	Somewhere between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000 a week, as against a peak of $70,000,000 a week and as against an average of about $50,000,000 a week.
Query:	What will that outlay include?
Mr. Hopkins:	Everything.
Query:	When Mr. Ickes spent all of his money, he gave us a party.
Mr. Hopkins:	How about you people giving me a party. You've gotten a lot of news from me.
Mr. Hopkins:	(continued) OFF THE RECORD Now, off the record, I think that, on the whole, the papers gave us a very good break with the CWA, all along the line. Some your editorial people that you had nothing to do with, went out of the way, but, on the whole, you fellows gave us an awfully good break on the CWA, and you had plenty of chances here to give out stories. But I think that you gave us an awfully good break.
Query:	Are there many graft spots left?
Mr. Hopkins:	Oh, we have some. ON THE RECORD
Query:	What was the average weekly wage under the CWA?
Mr. Hopkins:	About $13 a week for the whole period and for the whole country. At this point, the conference adjourned. Frank J. Hartnett