Evening star., 1935-01-05
Rate by Mail-Payable In Advance.
MARYLAND and Virginia.
Work to Replace the Dole.

The Nation will await with keen
interest the legislative program which
gives effect to one of the most inter-
esting proposals made to Congress by
the President yesterday. This is the
proposal to substitute work-valuable,
constructive work-for the cash doles
and market baskets" previously given
as relief to an estimated 100000
able-bodied unemployed.
The last experience with work relief
on a large scale was the G. w. A.
1t was a dismal experience. Hundreds
of millions of dollars were dished out
to provide the unemployed with work
but what work! The President refers
to the few hours of weekly work
cutting grass, raking leaves or picking
up papers in the public parks" as the
sort of work-relief that is to be
summed. In the case of the c. w. A.,
it was too often cutting grass that did
not have to be cut, raking leaves from
one side of the walk to the other and
picking up trash from one place and
dumping it in another. The work was
'made" work, and so many limitations
were placed about the manufacture OF
such work that the result was in some
cases ridiculous and no doubt de-
moralizing to the workers as well as
to the communities which witnessed 1t.
The new work suggested by the
President Should be useful" The
compensation should be lin the form
of security payments that will be
larger than the dole, but not SO large
as to attract labor from private en-
ployment. The work projects should
provide work for "a large percentage
of direct labor" and be selected so as
to conflict as little as possible with
private enterprises. The projects un-
dertaken should be planned so that
they might be "tapered off, as private
capital offers opportunity for labor,
and they should provide work for the
largest number of dependents that
will fit in with the broad program
recently outlined by the National Re-
sources Board.
To find such work, of course, offers
difficulties of its own, but in the type
OF work outlined by the President
rural housing, rural electrifcation, re-
forestation, road improvement and
grade crossing elimination-there is
an effort to confine it to the under
takings which would not be financed
by private capital. The cost will be
great. Figures on the cost, the PreSi-
dent promises, will be contained in
his forthcoming outline of the relief
budget. Work relief is more expensive
than cash relief. But the President
is taking the longer view, which dis
misses as unimportant the relatively
higher cost of work-relief so long as
such an expedient promises an escape
from the n-constructive and plainly
demoralizing dole.
The greatest care, of course, will
have to be exercised in preventing
the new work-relief program from at
tracing, as in the case of the hastily
thrown together C. w. A., men from
private employment, placing them on
relief rolls which otherwise they
would shun. Such an undertaking as
the President outlines is a new ven
ture in this country. The hope of
those who agree with the President In
principle, but are assailed by skep-
ticism as to the practicability of his
plan, is that the country, in trying to
escape the evils of the dole, will not
find itself combating the equally sin
lister evils of pork barrel politics.