The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-10-31
Y RODNEY DUTCHE Democrat Washington
 COrresu0ndent.

q member the amazing sleight-of- hand feats the Hoover administra- ton used to perform with so-called statistics on unemployment, you probably recognize certain none too faint odors which can be detected as the New Deal girds for battle in the 1936 campaign.
 Suspicion that someone has been trying to bury a dead mackerel is heightened by indisputable evidence that the administrat suppressed a proposed unemployment census such as, at one time or another, had been proposed by nearly every one in it's ranks.
 One Mans Guess
 More than one statistician and more than one economist in the government suggest, privately, that action made 1t much. easier for President Roosevelt to make his re- cent claim that the New Deal had re-employed nearly 5,000,000 since March, 1883, in the private indus tries reporting to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
 Roosevelt didn't explain whether he had suddenly found the 5000, 900 General Johnson was going to put to work through MIRA in the fall of '33 CT the 5,0O0,000 Jim Moffett was to employ in the fall of '34 through FILA.
 But everybody knows tlnemploy- ment figures are statistician's guessing game and if the A.. F. of L. estimates-mor than 100000 out of work now as compared with 13,000,000 in March, 1883; unem- ployment greater than year ago are no good, neither are various other estimates.
 Census Turned Down
 The Co-orinating Statistical Committee, through which the Gen. tral Statistical Board and WPA ap- proved survey work relief projects for white-collar unemployment, unanimously recommended a Gen. sus Bureau survey xof unemployed, which would cost $9,000,000. The schedules were all worked out and the census would have begun Nov. IS.
 But MT. Roosevelt and MT. Harry Hopkins-who long ago promised such a census-and Miss Frances Perkins-who made devastating ex- , posures of the last administrators faked figures and had also promised census of jobless all turned thumbs down. I
 Even individual states seeking grants for unemployment censuses of their own have found they can't have any WPA money for them.
 All of which may have some con- nection with the fact that a scien- tific chart of unemployment sec cretly worked out 'rtfis summer by federal statisticians indicated that 8O0,000 more persons were unem- ployed in June, 1885, than in June, 1884.
 It certainly suggests an unwilling ness to face the fact that indus trial production is outstripping re- employment.
 #s
 Ickes Has Sweet Revenge
 Secretary Ickes, who once re- fused to attend cabinet meeting on shipboard in Annapolis harbor with the assertion that I'm willing to die for my president, but I won't get seasick for him." had very little fun on the presidential cruise to, through, and from the Panama Canal. Except at shore stops.
 Some of the correspondents thought Roosevelt played Ickes a dirty trick by making him go along, though admitting he had hardly dare leave either or both Ickes and Harry Hopkins in Washington.
 Just the same, Ickes has confided to friends that balm entered his soul when, after he alone had ex- perienced miserable days going down the west coast, the cruiser Houston hit heavy seas in the Car- ibbean. It was then that Harry Hopkins proceeded to get seasick, too. ,&