Mr. Hunter: | I suppose the important news from the WPA is that I am going to reduce the total employment to 1,000,000 people the first week in July—from about 1,413,000 now.
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Query: | This 1,000,000 figure on July 1 will be the lowest strength the WPA has ever had?
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Mr. Hunter: | Very much the lowest—that represents a reduction over the average for this present fiscal years of about 700,000. When the fiscal year closes at the end of this month it will average 1,704,000.
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Query: | Is it mandatory for each State to bring its total in by the first of July?
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Mr. Hunter: | By the end of the first week. There is a very slight leeway in that we allow a regional director of one of our eight regions to make adjustments of 10% by the States in his own region, as long as the region remains the same. They don't often use that authority and it is possible at the end of the first week that it may drop under 1,000,000 for the reason that in distributing that among forty-eight States from California to Washington that there are some few States in going down that first may be temporarily under that actual quota. I anticipate we will average 1,000,000 in July and August.
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Query: | What was your July 1 strength last year?
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Mr. Hunter: | 1,655,000.
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Query: | 1,700,000 for the entire year?
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Mr. Hunter: | Yes, this present year.
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Query: | 1,655,000 last July. Are you going to maintain a 1,000,000 average during the next fiscal year?
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Mr. Hunter: | That is my present plan, but it is subject to some change. It is difficult to say what might happen, although employment probably will run about 1,000,000 for the first six months anyhow.
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Query: | Has the WPA employment been lower since 1933 than it is now?
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Mr. Hunter: | No, just slightly above this in the early fall of 1937, then it increased to 3 1/4 million the first half of 1938. The employment by States will be on a very much different scale than it has been in the past and has been for the last six months, because we have been reducing WPA employment between states on a different ratio than we did previous to the National Defense Program. Probably the best way to get some of the real reductions is to go back to July 1940 before the Defense Program started, rather than to take June of this year. For instance, the July employment on WPA this coming July compared with July a year ago before National Defense really got started shows a range in reduction from Connecticut of 75.2% for last July to a low in Arkansas of l8%. There is that much difference in the reduction—with a national average of 40.8%—nearly 41%.
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Query: | A national average reduction of how much?
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Mr. Hunter: | 40.8% over last July—an actual reduction of 53 1/2% over the year. I am just comparing the two months of July. Now by sections the reduction in New England States will be 52.2%,
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Query: | This over a year ago?
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Mr. Hunter: | Yes—and in the southwestern region—the one that includes Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, the reduction is 22.5%. The reason for that is that the reduction of the WPA is based to a considerable extent on increasing employment in National Defense. Therefore, this reflects our largest single factor—the increase in private employment opportunities. These are substantially higher in the eastern seaboard than they are in the South and the Rocky Mountain area.
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Query: | These reductions are for July of last year?
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Mr. Hunter: | Yes, that is right.
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Query: | Do you think most of these people will be able to find work of some sort?
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Mr. Hunter: | I don't think they will in many parts of the country for a while. I hope they will.
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Query: | Do you feel their chances are better in Washington?
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Mr. Hunter: | I think they are better in this whole part of the country, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Virginia. I don't think any State is going to be able to absorb all of these people in private employment immediately.
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Query: | What recourse will they have if they have no income and can't get jobs? Are there available welfare agencies to take them up?
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Mr. Hunter: | In some places. I don't think the Federal WPA can take into consideration whether or not a State has local relief available in establishing quotas. We take into account four factors. Population is a small factor. Then there are unemployment, National Defense and reemployment—we compare the latter two.
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Query: | You say you don't think the Federal WPA can take into account whether the States have local welfare available?
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Mr. Hunter: | No, I don't think we can. For instance, if the State of Mississippi has 1,000 people available for WPA and Pennsylvania has 1,000, and Pennsylvania has state relief and Mississippi doesn't, I wouldn't give Mississippi any larger employment quota just for that one reason.
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Query: | In other words, the responsibility for these people who can't find work will fall back on the State,
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Mr. Hunter: | That is right. Some of them will get jobs. The turnover in the WPA is the highest it has ever been. I mean on the percentage basis—people are voluntarily leaving in addition to those who have to leave for other reasons.
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Query: | How will this affect the distribution of work on your available projects for the next year?
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Mr. Hunter: | That is one of the toughest problems we have. My instructions to the States are to effect the reduction in so far as practicable by closing down projects rather than spreading employment over the existing projects, because I don't believe you can distribute 1,000,000 people over the projects we now have. The instructions are to reduce by closing individual projects.
Let me get this point about priorities on defense projects cleared up. We do not establish WPA quotas in the states with any reference to WPA defense projects. We don't distribute the quota to the State of Florida, which has a large number of defense projects, on the basis of that, but on the basis of relative need. But, after we distribute it to Florida, certified defense projects get preference in the State. We give Florida a quota based on what their relief need is, and after they get it, defense projects get priority in the State of Florida.
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Query: | Are any defense projects to be closed down?
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Mr. Hunter: | No, not right away. The percentage of people working on defense projects is very likely about 80% in Florida and 80% in Maine down to practically nothing in the Middle Western states. I want to make another statement about closing down of projects. The assumption is that the persons working on the projects are all in the same relative need, so if we close down a project entirely that doesn't mean we make any discrimination between the individuals. They are all certified on the basis of need, and a great many projects will be closed down that are quite good projects.
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Query: | If a nonessential-for-defense project is closed down are those in the greatest need shifted to another project?
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Mr. Hunter: | In the main they will be. I am going to continue the cultural projects in the WPA—music, art, writers'. However, they will receive a cut.
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Query: | They are being closed entirely in the District, aren't they?
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Mr. Hunter: | I don't know what the actual projects are. I would say that they are not going to be closed but reduced.
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Query: | The figures we were given the other day indicated they would be closed.
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Mr. Hunter: | I have not seen the list of projects Mr. Edwards proposes to close. Those cultural projects will continue on a smaller scale.
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Query: | What is the reason?
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Mr. Hunter: | I think they are good projects, and it is harder for people on those projects to find jobs. I think there are some of those, particularly the Writers' Project, that have started work that should be finished.
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Query: | Do you feel those projects are of importance in maintaining national morale?
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Mr. Hunter: | I certainly do—especially music. While we haven't yet decided the exact number of the priorities, as to the so-called Community Service or white-collar projects, I thins you can quote me as saying that the total will not be less than the present ratio. That ratio is now 27% of the total, so by the time this gets readjusted by the end of July, we will probably have 270,000 out of the million, with priorities given to projects concerned with nutrition, health, recreation and adult education.
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Query: | In that connection, you are cutting off a lot of people and also establishing a new division both to train people for jobs and find jobs for them.
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Mr. Hunter: | That is going to receive a great deal of emphasis, with Mr. Rauch in charge. I put the emphasis on reemployment, and training, rather than training, and reemployment. The training has already started. As to reemployment, we are going to use every scheme and means we can to get our people jobs and not have them take their chances with employment offices, mail and other agencies. Our people are handicapped a little on that front in two ways. When they work on a WPA project they don't get an opportunity to go to the factory gate when the "Man Wanted" sign is out and the man is hired at the plant. In the second place, if they take their chances by registering with the employment office and do nothing else, they are in the hands of an employment officer who, in most States classes the WPA worker as employed and gives preference in private jobs to others. I don't know that I blame them. Nevertheless, the WPA worker doesn't get a fair break on that; so our purpose is to see that our local and district managers keep direct liaison between the job opportunities and the individual worker. We have an up-to-date employment register of each WPA worker, his previous experience, age, skills, qualifications, et cetera. On the training end, we propose to increase to 50,000 by the first of August. We have about 32,000 now in training. Many more have been enrolled. Already 40,000 have gotten jobs through WPA training schools. The increase will be largely in plant training. We are training them right now in plants rather than vocational schools. We are training them in a few places, successfully—experimentally. In the Bell Aircraft Company at Buffalo, they are taking on two hundred or three hundred of our people a month; the Parker Company in Cleveland is training them; the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven expects to take 1,000 of our people for training in the plant.
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Query: | What are some of the other plants where you expect to put that in operation?
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Mr. Hunter: | I don't know them by name. We have tried out about six. We are working with Sidney Hillman on that We are guided pretty largely by the OPM on that. That, of course, will cut the actual employment quota on projects by the number of people in training. We pay security wages while they are taking the training.
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Query: | Won't there be some areas whore the situation will be identical next month with what it has been right along that are not affected by defense training, and in those areas will the quotas still be cut?
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Mr. Hunter: | There will be cuts in every State—yes. I expect to close the WPA down in perhaps 1500 counties entirely, for two reasons—relative need and spreading the cut to where there are only two or three in one county. This distribution within the state is largely made along the same basis of relative need. There is obviously a different need in Chicago than in southern Illinois. It is much different in Scranton than in Pittsburgh. There is another factor; that is the 25% sponsorship contribution, because plenty of counties actually have enough to employ people, but will not be able to do it because of the 25% sponsorship requirement. We cannot get a sponsorship of 25% in some places, so that will be a factor working against a good distribution on the basis of need.
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Query: | You expect to close down by July 1st or shortly thereafter in 1,500 counties?
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Mr. Hunter: | Within thirty days, probably.
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Query: | Are any near the District of Columbia?
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Mr. Hunter: | I don' know, but I will soon, because I am waiting for a report from the Regional Directors now, and I am having a meeting with all forty-eight State Administrators in Chicago, July 2 and 3.
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Query: | Won't the county lists be available in the regional offices?
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Mr. Hunter: | Not now.
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Query: | When it has been decided upon?
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Mr. Hunter: | Yes.
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Query: | Mr. Hunter, going back to the point about sponsors, why should there be any more difficulty getting sponsors for the protects? Won't the people that are put out still be on the counties? Wouldn't it be as easy to take care of the people that way as any other way?
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Mr. Hunter: | They sponsor projects but cannot put up 25% of the total cost. In the past, it was running about 30% and no state contributed under 25%. The wealthier counties that carried the poor ones are the very counties in those States which have private employment and need the WPA less, and they are not going to put up additional money to carry the poorer countries in the State.
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Query: | They will have to be carried in some way?
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Mr. Hunter: | Pittsburgh doesn't have to carry Scranton. In other words, we have five thousand people in Lackawanna County now awaiting assignment. Before making any cuts, we could have employed 2,000 of them, but we could not get a sponsored contribution that would meet the requirements. That is why I think 25% is a mistake this coming year.
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Query: | What has been the sponsor's contribution heretofore?
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Mr. Hunter: | 25% on a statewide basis. The 25% did not apply to projects approved before January 1, 1940, and during this year we have operated projects that were approved before January, 1940. This 25% applies now to practically every project started.
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Query: | Just how do you decide which county you are going to close down? Any county which will put up 25% will have a project?
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Mr. Hunter: | That is not entirely the guiding rule. The most important thing is to distribute the one million people. You cannot operate a project with three or four people.
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Query: | How many counties are there?
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Mr. Hunter: | About 3,100. (3,070)
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Query: | If I live in a county where there is no project and I need a job, will I have a chance to get one in the next county? The fact that I live in one county doesn't mean that I can't get a job in another?
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Mr. Hunter: | No.
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Query: | There are a number of counties now that don't have any projects?
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Mr. Hunter: | Some, but you can't run a project or a series of projects with ten or twelve people. In 2,000 counties the number is not more than fifty people, and if it goes much below that, you can't operate projects.
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Query: | These projects that are certified as essential to defense—if they are essential, why aren't they paid for out of federal defense funds, with the result that there would be more money for unemployed employables?
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Mr. Hunter: | The defense projects of the WPA get substantial sponsor's contributions. The two largest types of jobs are airports and access roads, nearly all on local and non-federal property, and we are the only federal agency that can go in and do it. The Army cannot build anything except on military reservations, so if they want a road from one place to another, we have to build it, with the county's cooperation.
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Query: | Why do they have to go to the WPA?
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Mr. Hunter: | We are the available agency that can do it and we have the labor. I think it is perfectly proper to build what is needed.
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Query: | What do you think the probable effect of the cut will be in Washington, since there are no industries, and these people possibly are not qualified for Government jobs?
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Mr. Hunter: | There will be some hardship. The District doesn't give relief to employable people. On the other hand, we do not have industrial people here anyway. The fact that there are no industries is no factor. I think perhaps some of the people on research and statistical projects might have a chance at jobs because they are beginning to have a clerical shortage in some agencies here now.
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Query: | To get back to training for defense. Are those people on WPA now being trained for jobs in private industry?
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Mr. Hunter: | Yes. At this point the conference adjourned. Reported by: Mrs. Bonaventura
Mrs. Bishop
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