The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-04-27

'They're like a blind man who it's raining" he said. "They thi these people of the rolls and the honestly think that if the gov private business will pick up, fac will go down."
 UP AGAIN,
 DOWN AGAIN
 The youthful leader of the Work CTS Alliance had just finished a long session before a house committee which is probing into the affairs of WPA. He pulled a newspaper out of his briefcase and went on.
 Look at this business index and compare it with the rise and fall of public works projects" he said. For instance: there was sharp upswing late in 1883, with the start of the CWA program. In 1884, just at the time CWA was discontinued the business index takes a sharp drop.
 Tn the middle of 1885, with the start of WPA, the index takes a sharp upswing which continues to the latter part of 1887. Then there was an economy wave which knocked 100000 people of of WPA, and immediately the busi- ness index went down. Early in 1888 there was liberal WPA ap- propriation, and the index went up again. Then we got another economy wave, and the index went down again"
 MT. Lasser has no official job anywhere, but he was one of the first people the congressional com- mittee wanted to talk to. His Work CTS Alliance is by way of being a sort of trade union for the people on relief, and the committee suspected 1t of taking orders from Moscow This could not be proved through MT. Lasser, who stoutly denied un- der oath that he is or ever has been Communist.
 But when the Workers Alliance secretary-treasurer, Herbert Ben- jamin, admitted that he himself was Communist and had been one for many years, deep and startled silence descended upon the whole committee room. For while, the inquiry got long way from either WPA or the Workers Alliance as the congressman got into philosoph- ical discussion of Marxism vs. Am ericanism.
 CONFERENCE
 ON DECK
 All of this, however, as MT. Las- ser construes 1t, Is a side-issue. He wants to see a full-sized work re- lief program continued, and to this end his Workers Alliance has called National Right-to-W Work Con- gress" to meet in Washington on and after May 27. At this confer ence, which will draw 1900 Work era Alliance delegates, he says, the Alliances two-point legislative pro- gram will be considered.
 This program calls for, first, restoration of the $50,000,0O0 which was recently cut from the WPA budget for this fiscal year.; second, f. enactment by congress of ina tional work and security bill" for next year.
 That bill would provide not less than 100000 work relief jobs, provide a 20 per cent increase in monthly wages, establish a labor relations division in WPA with full power to handle all labor problems, and relax the eligibility rules governing certification to WPA. All in all, MT. Lasser esti- mates that the program would cost $2,700, 100000.
 Of the current plan to return control of the work relief program to local authorities, MT. Lasser speaks scornfully.
 "That would be confusion worse confounded," he says. 'The fed eral government would be dealing with 10000 local communities, each community having a different sys- tenn, different standards, different types of projects. Either It would let 'em go and trust to luck that somehow they'd work out all right, or else it would have to try to su- pervise and regulate all of 'em-in which case you'd have worse bu- reaucracy than anything we've dreamed of so far"
 HE'S NOT
 WORRIED
 The going-over which his organi- zation has been getting from the congressional committee doesn't t worry MT. Lasser. Indeed, the criti- cism is apt to be helpful, he thinks, passing his notion on what happened last August when the Dies commit tee undertook to show that the Workers Alliance was revolution ary outfit dominated by Moscow.
 We took in 10000 new mem bers that month," he recalls. And that was in midsummer, when we ordinarily have slump. These fel- lows think they'll destroy us by cre- ating hostile headlines. Instead they create confidence in us."
 He carries on his job for a