The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-03-27

It's simply not in the cards.
 In the first place, the Presiden
 has transmitted to Congress th'
 National Resources Planning boart
 recommendation for Q six-year pub
 lie works program to aid post-wa'
 stabilization and the WPA, withou
 waiting for congressional action
 has already set up Q new unit t
 start making plans to put in reservoir to be drawn on when atit
 as the defense effort collapses These two moves indicate the ad' ministration has no thought o folding up relief work agencies.
 Frank A. March, who hos beer director of the project control di' vision of WPA in Washington, Ina!
 been made national director of thu new long -range planning unit, a1t
 while there has not been time t
 prepare detailed program, there are indications that 1t will consist
 mainly of super highways, swim
 ming pools, sewers and such. St
 those are the things we may b' spending for when national defense is over.
 DEFENSE SPENDING SMALL
 IN BIG WPA AREAS
 Tn the second place, defense spending is not spread evenly, likt soft butter over the national bread line. The butter knife was wiped off on the crusts, with the result that the old industrial east ant the new industrial west and the Buffalo to Milwaukee area of the Great Lakes region get the biggest gobs of governme ntal gravy. And the center of the loaf gets com- paratively none.
 Putting 1t statistically, 30 pei cent of the defense contracts awarded thus far have been ir areas representing only 20 per cent of WPA employment. Putting 4 t'other way round, 90 per cent oi the people on WPA live in areas which get only % per cent of tht contracts. Four out of i've don'l have much chance of getting ofl WpA, therefore, unless some way can be found to spread out the de- sense benefits, or until the defense effort raises the general prosperity to such . level that the non-defense areas are carried along in a flood tide of recovery.
 The idea of moving workers from the areas which need relief into the areas which have & defense boom is generally frowned on. Past ex- perience has proved that big migra- tons of labor have been disastrous failures unless carefully prepared for, and furthermore, 1t isn't the ,inskilled relief worker who Is want ed in the defense industries where the highly skilled labor shortage pinch Is felt sufflciently to make employers say Ouch!
 Another and most important fac- tor Is that there are today more workmen than there ever were be- fore, more people who need jobs. Tn the last 10 years there has been Q net increase of 6 million potential job holders, and this figure you can balance neatly against the 6 million now unemployed.
 Tn other words, there are now more people gainfully employed than there were ct the peak of the boom in 1929. In still other words, the depression now, so far as un- employment Is concerned, Is just about as acute as 1t was in 1880 and 1881, and from only Q third to a half better than 1t was in 1882 and later years when there were from g to i2 millitDa unemployed. No one, of course, knows just how many there were.
 WPA PROJECTS NOW
 HELP DEFENSE EFFORT
 WrA cannot and must not be written of as Q total loss to the defense effort. It was only few years ego, when Congress was in the big-hearted mood to spend mil- lions for relief but not one cent for defense, that WPA was given pro- jects like building military airfields and naval yard docks and machine shops. And today WPA labor has completed or Is working on no less than 1900 defense projects costing in all S266 million. In less than six years, WPA has built or im- proved i6,000 buildings for army and navy, 800 airports, 1900 new airuort buiidinRs,
 Also to WPA credit are the voca- tional refresher courses which are now training 2S,000 unemployed, formerly skilled workers, so that they can take their places in de- fense industry. If there had been more of this vocational training in times of depression, we wouldn't have the shortage of skilled labor- CTS now.
 The charge that WPA Is com. peting with defense industry for . labor supply hardly holds water for by law, Q man on WPA of- fered a job in private industry, must take 1t.
 An interesting sidelight to this is that whereas WPA labor pre- worked only 30 to 90 hours per week, it now works 48 hours a week on all defense projects. So far, there has been no objection to the longer hours, for the simple reason that they mean more pay.
 As far as reduction of unemploy- mCnt and relief are concerned. the best you can look for is a drop of three million by the end of 1042. That figure is on the basis of two million absorbed by private industry, and one million more called into the army. And the only way to wipe. out the three mill lion stiii unemployed would be to put them In the army.
 Maybe tho economic planners have already thought Cs that, toe.