The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-02-27
Liberal Viewpoint
BY DIR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

TT must be admitted that the civil works ad-
l. ministration policy is to be preferred to
straight relief, through the work carried on by
the men employed were to go no further than
the treadmill and moving piles of stones from
one spot to another. But it will be a pity II
so much money and such a large reservoir of
potential human energy are not exploited to
increase civic convenience and beauty
I recently made a considerable excursion into
the midwest and the Ohio valley. I had an
opportunity to talk with men deeply concerned
with the operation of the CWA in their re-
spective localities. I thus was privileged to get
picture of the situation from the inside.
In most places I found that the authorities
were conf1dentially, rather desperately put to it
to find something really useful at which to en-
ploy the available man power. Much of the
work being done is of purely deSultory char
acter.
I viewed one vacant lot upon which con-
siderable body of men had been employed for
weeks in the effort to clear up and beautify
the locality. I was assured by my companion,
man heartily in sympathy with the Roose-
welt administration, that it looked far worse
than it did when the men started.
NN this same trip, however, I rode miles
~ through city areas where great piles Of
rubbish could have been cleaned up, useless
fences torn down, weeds and bushes burned and
some semblance of civilization I was reminded
of H L. Mencken's famous description Of his
sentiments as he rode through the areas about
Pittsburgh
Here was the very heart of industrial Amer
ica the center of its most lucrative and char
acterStic activity, the boast and pride of the
richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth
and here was a scene so dreadfully hideouS,
so intoIerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced
the whole aspiration of man to macabre and
depressing joke. Here was wealth beyond COM
putation, almost beyond imagnation-and here
we're human habitatiOnS so abominable that they
would have disgraced race of alley cats. i.
What could be more appalling? BY the
hundreds and thousands these abOminable houses
cover the bare hillsides like graveStones in some
gigantic and decaying cemetery On their deep
sides they are three, four and even five stories;
on their low sides they bury themselves swinish-
lH in the mud Not fifth of them are per-
pendicular They lean this way and that, hang
ing on to their bases precariously. And one and
all they are streaked in CRIME, with dead and
eczematous patches of paint peeping through
the StreakS. -.
" a RE they so frightful because the valley is
L n full of foreigners-dull, insensate brutes,
with no love of beauty in them? Then why
didn't these foreigners set up similar abomina
tons in the countries that they came from?
You will, in fact, find nothing of the sort in
Europe-save perhaps in few putrefying parts
of England There is scarcely an ugly village
on the whoe continent. The peasants, however
poor, somehow manage to make themselves
graceful and charming habitations, even in Italy
and SPAIN
The situation which Mr.. Mencken describes
differs only in degree from what pertains in
thousands of other American urban localities
Here is a challenge to both the eva and the
PWA
We have to have some legitimate. basis for
comparison if we are to comprehend the mag
nitude of the opportunity which may be lost
The total cost of building and equipping the
Panama Canal was only 1915, 900 OOO-far less
than the appropriation for the civil works ad-
miniStration
Unless there is a notable change between
now and May the latter will pass out of ex-
istence leaving no perceptible or permanent
mark upon the face of the country.