The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-10-03

on relief than perhaps any man in
history, slowly lights one Of his fire.
quent cigarets.
Il can see how that would con-
fuse people," he admits, turning
from the window. But there's
really nothing inconsistent about it.
They're really separate things, en-
ployment and relief, and they have
little directly to do with each other
at least at any given moment.
Resources Give Out
You see, only about hall the I'M
employed are on relief rolls at all.
The number of relief depends not
so much on the number of unem-
ployed as it does on the percentage
of those unemployed whose re-
sources are utterly exhausted and
who must ask for relief.
Say you have ten million unem-
ployed. Suppose five million are on
relief. One million get jobs, but at
the same time the last resources of
two million others give out. their
savings accounts, insurance loans,
and the like.
Then you have unemployment
reduced to nine million, and relief
rolls increased from five million to
seven, at the same time.
And that unemployment of a
million people doesn't necessarily
take a million people off relief. AS
a matter of fact, the first to be en-
ployed are generally the last to have
been laid off, that is, those who
have been out of work for the short
est time.
Many of these people may not
have been unemployed long enough
to have gone on relief at all.
Gain in Both Lists
Something like this is what has
been happening. The increase in
the number of jobs is genuine
enough. But the percentage of un-
employed who find themselves fin
ally reduced to asking public relief
has continued to increase.
Now it's including in greater
numbers the 'white-collar' people,
whose savings and resources are at
last being exhausted"
Mr.. Hopkins ponders slowly an
other question. Then he answers,
deliberately, after slow puff of his
cigaret.
mo, 1 don't think we're going
to have 100000 families on re-
lief this winter. OF course, your
guess is just as good as mine on
that.
But if it hadn't been for the
drought, I'm certain that we'd have
a lighter relief burden this winter
than last. Even now, it may be
less than last winter if you con-
slider that a large number of those
who benefited from CWA last year
would have been on relief rolls"
Good evidence of that lies in the
fact that when CWA was demobil-
lied, relief rolls promptly reached
their highest point, in May, 1884.
of 100000 families. This had
been decreasing early in the sum-
mer, but when the drought. added
l 100000 cases in eighteen states, all
hope of greatly reducing the relief
burden this fall vanished.
Whole Answer IS Jobs
Mr.. Hopkins, through intensely
interested personally in social Sc
curity legislation, regards that as
outside his job today.
There is only one final answer
to this relief problem" he says
fatty. That's unemployment, jobs.
But that's the aim of the whole re-
covery program. Right here our
job isn't to speculate about the un-
employed, but to feed them when
they need it. And that's what we're
going to do"
Yet the cost of maintaining the
relief rolls is rising 1t now aver
ages about $23 a month a family,
up 20 per cent from a year ago.
That's partly because of the rising
cost of food and other relief neces-
sites, partly because of greater
amounts spent for work relief (about
100000 are on work relief today
Mr.. Hopkins explodes at ques-
ton on this: "Of course work relief
is more expensive than direct re-
lief" he says. I'VE use it because
it's the decent way to take care Of
the unemployed. because it's better
in every way.
And you're just 100 per cent
wrong if you think people prefer
to sit back on direct relief rather
than work for the same income