Evening star., 1935-01-09
Rate by MaiI-PayapIe in Advance.
Ma ruIn nd and Airninia
All Other States and Canada
Member of the Associated Press.
A Staggering Task.

despite the depression. Otherwise
there would have been more of q gasp
when it heard that President Roose-
velt was requesting Congress to turn
over to him in lump sum $4,000
100000 to. be expended In single year
on a public works program. Even so,
thu -uitude of the task of spending
fc .ousand million dollars in a
tweIvemonth or less may impress it.
self finally upon the public mind.
This huge sum of money is not to
be given away, not to be dumped down
political sewers, but is to be expended,
according to the President, on useful
works that will add to the wealth of
the Nation. No millions are TO go for
sweeping up leaves in public parks
and streets and the like made work.
The President, apparently, has no in
tention of returning to the practices
of the defunct c. W. A
Looking back into the not dis
tant past for big expenditures on i'm
portant public works, it is discovered
that the Panama Canal was built for
400,000,000, in round figures. 1t
took, however, ten years to construct
that canal, which now joins the At
lantic and Pacific Oceans. The task
for which the President has asked is
to spend one hundred times this sum
in year and to find public works
of a hundred times the volume and
value of the Panama Canal. when
considered as whole. There indeed.
is task.
The expenditure of all this money,
even if it be appropriated by Congress
and placed in the Presidents hands,
is not necessarily obligatory Obvi-
ously, if private industry should re-
vive to the extent that it could give
employment to many of the millions
of jobless whom the President pro-
poses to take from the dole and place
on the pay roll, it would not be neces-
sary to use the entire sum. The pre-
sumption, however, is that most of
the money is to be expended And
the further presumption is that the
plans for it's expenditure are to be in
hand quickly.
Whatever the agency selected by the
President to act for him in handling
this public works fund, it will face
job before which the tasks of Her.
cules were a mere nothing OF course,
If this money is to be treated lightly
and as Chicken feed"-heaven save
the mark-the whole may be accom-
plished without a ruff1ed brow. But
if there is to be an honest attempt to
obtain honest work and value received
for these dollars which will come
eventually from the people themselves,
there will be many sleepless nights
for the man or men to whom the pro-
gram is to be entrusted.
The one criticism, voiced openly, of
the Public Works Administration, un-
der the direction of Secretary Ickes,
was that it was too slow in getting
started. Other criticisms have been
expressed by disappointed political
grafters, but that was because they
could not obtain money for purposes
less laudable. Mr.. Ickes has acted to
guard the public works funds from
graft. He has insisted upon seeing
that neither the Government nor the
people who pay the bill were gouged.
He has, in short, done a good job for
the administration The Public Works
Administration, with its many projects
in full swing, is giving employment to
many men. The experience obtained
in putting this program into effect is,
however, clear proof of the vastness
of the job Of spending four billion dol
lars in year without throwing it
away or worse.